Blood Verification, Underworld Market

The Underworld was open twenty-four-seven.

Its reach extended to nearly every hidden city, supernatural enclave, and hidden user across the globe.

Here, people could hire hitmen, post assassination requests, trade cursed artifacts, sell rare alchemy materials, or even upload information to be bought by collectors.

Black Markets were not illegal. They were equivalents of normal markets but for supernaturals.

"Now, let's get started."

I navigated to a hidden folder on the desktop, then ran a program I'd created over the last two years.

It was a custom script—a spoofing and cloaking tool that masked my connection and wiped any location trace.

The code was clunky, but it worked.

My parents thought I was just watching YouTube videos and playing Flash games on this computer. When in truth, I was creating this program.

They never bothered to ask what I was really doing.

Once the program was running, I opened a browser and typed the web address.

The Underworld website loaded within seconds.

At first glance, it was just a normal site.

A collection of pages about ancient myths, legendary beasts, and fabricated stories about gods and monsters.

To anyone outside the supernatural world, it looked like a harmless fan site.

I clicked the crescent moon icon in the top right corner.

A login box popped up.

I selected [Create New Account].

A form appeared asking for basic details.

Name:

"Alan Veritus." I typed, using one of the aliases I'd prepared.

Age, Region, and Class were next. Age and Region were optional, but Class was where things got interesting.

While most people left the Class section blank or filled it with fake data, I had a reason to be honest, at least somewhat. It would be needed to earn money.

I entered: 3-Star Mage.

It quite impressive for people who had been supernaturals for decades.

After completing the form, a message appeared on the screen.

…

[Registration must be completed through Blood Verification.]

Would you like to proceed with the test?

[Yes] [No]

Note: Upon selecting "Yes," a one-time portal will form next to you. Drop a small amount of blood into it to complete registration. Your account will be bound to your blood. Each person may only create one account. Password recovery is also blood-verified.

Reminder: We do not and cannot track the physical location of users. Portals are generated via relative-position artificiate, not GPS.

…

I leaned back slightly.

That part was true.

In my last life, when I came back to earth, I'd researched how Underworld created blood portals for verification.

The system they used was thanks to an Anomaly, not artifact.

Normally, people would create a commotion if the truth got out. Anomalies were enemies. Feeding a blood to Anomaly was quite dangerous.

"Well, I know it's not harmful. Besides, since the portal is created by an Anomaly, they cannot control it fully. Having it open a relative-location portal, and bringing the blood is all they can make it do."

It meant they couldn't track me directly.

As for my blood, even if its information got leaked, I would be fine, since I had drunk a [Blood Viel Elixir].

I clicked [Yes].

A small red swirl materialized in the air beside me.

It pulsed softly, like a spinning thread of blood.

I took out a small knife from my pocket, pricked my finger, and let a drop fall into the portal.

The moment the blood touched the swirling red, it flashed once and vanished.

The screen updated.

…

[Registration Complete]

Welcome, Alan Veritus

Account ID: #U-349128

Class: 3-Star Mage

Supernatural Rank: Rank 0

Blood-Bound: Verified

Status: Normal User

Balance: $0

…

I now had access to the black market.

The screen changed again, now showing the full homepage of Underworld.

A black background replaced the light theme.

Red and silver accents lined the border.

The top menu bar read: [Market], [Services], [Weapons], [Jobs], [Information], [Account].

I opened the [Market] tab.

…

[Beast Fang - Direwolf, Rank 1] - $30,000

[Fireroot Ash (Alchemy Material)] - $5,500 per gram

[Cursed Dagger of Forgotten Vale, Rank 1] - $32,000

[Mana Core of Evil Turakh (Lesser)] - $45,000

[Nightshade Powder, Refined] - $21,000

[Service: Hire Tracker (Low-Grade)] - Starts at $2,000

…

I sucked in a sharp breath seeing the prices.

Why the hell was everything so expensive?

"Dammit, I need a lot of money to buy the ingredients I want."

I opened the next tab, [Alchemy]. It had a lot of useful and rare ingredients.

These things were personally grown by some supernaturals, or collected from dungeons and supernatural zones.

"I don't see a catalyst here. I guess I need to create one myself."

There were some nice benefits despite that.

Access to Underworld meant I could now purchase rare alchemy materials.

I was using substitutes in alchemy until now.

But Substitutes couldn't be used to create higher rank potions. I needed proper materials for those.

More importantly, I could sell potions here.

Potions were always in high-demand, even ordinary ones like healing potions.

I could create rare potions and sell them for money, or favors.

Delivery was quite easy too. It could be done through masked drop-points or teleport crates, depending on one's security preferences.

Of course, I'd need to prove myself as an Alchemist first.

"I don't have materials to create good potions yet."

"Besides, I have an easier way to earn money right now."

But first, I checked other tabs.

I needed to know everything there was before starting my 'business'.

I opened the tab labeled as [Information Requests].

You could buy things like:

Hidden blueprints of private manors.

Weakness reports of Rank 0 or Rank 1 Anomalies.

Schedules of low-level clan movements.

Historical information about dungeon sites.

…

Then the [Jobs] tab.

Most were assassination contracts, artifact recovery missions, or Anomaly elimination requests.

But there were others like escort missions, delivery jobs, even temporary lab assistant positions for alchemists or curse-smiths.

I could already think of a few easy missions I might take once I had a bit more leeway in leaving the house.

For now, though, my goal was to earn the money.

I looked at my profile.

[0$ Dollars]