CHAPTER 328: SHARDS.

After checking with the boy, Dante learned that the office he was looking at was located in one of the buildings belonging to the Daggers. Its upper floors were studio apartments while the ones below were dedicated to private businesses, including the one they were looking at.

"Is he connected to the gang?" Dante asked.

"No doubt about it," Finn replied. "He was escorted by at least ten people. They seemed wary of their surroundings, so I guessed he must be someone important."

"I see..."

The man seemed to have settled well into his forties, with black hair that seemed artificial, and wrinkles that showed he had yet to have his first cosmetic enhancement. He was smartly dressed, and probably liked the outfit so much that he didn’t even take his coat off while doing what he set out to do.

He had a briefcase open on his desk and was checking the contents. The footage was captured through a Scorpio-bot, and due to its position, seeing said contents was impossible.

Thankfully, there was no need to look for a better angle. The middle-aged man turned around and grabbed the large painting that was hanging on the wall behind the desk, revealing a safe.

"Is he being serious right now?" Dante asked.

"That’s... what it looks like..." Finn replied.

The safe itself looked of a high enough quality, but it was hidden in the most obvious spot a safe could be hidden in, making Dante wonder why they bothered to hide it in the first place. A thief looking to steal its contents would have a tool of some kind to help them locate it, so unless they had some way to counter that, there was no point in placing the safe in such a location.

Dante tried not to care about that detail and focused on the contents of the safe and the briefcase, unsure what to expect. When the safe’s door was opened, what he gleaned were some binders and a few stacks of paper.

Paper had gone out of fashion for a while now, but it was still used on some occasions, like when there is a contract of significant importance or things that needed to be kept on record without having it on a device that can be connected to the net.

Those papers looked important enough, but it was the other contents of the safe that caught Dante’s attention. The man didn’t take anything out so Dante was still unable to see everything, but when the contents of the briefcase started moving over, he instantly got an idea.

Little by little, the dark-haired man took some small rectangular objects, holding them with such care one would think they would break from a little pressure. A closer look revealed they were stacks of thin plates, all of them red in color.

"Shards?" Dante raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously?" Finn said.

Dante had no doubt about it. The small red objects the man was transferring to the safe were Shards, one of the most sought-after currencies in the world, and one of the few still in physical form. They were small, 7x5 centimeter plates made from the rarest metals on earth. Depending on the type, one plate could easily reach the hundreds of thousands of Gold, making them one of the best ways to store wealth.

Going by the color, Dante guessed they were neurosteel plates, a type of alloy that’s very difficult to create. It’s mainly used in the creation of bionics, specifically the parts that serve as a connection between implants and nerves, making it one of the most valuable materials in the world.

Realizing what this meant, Finn looked up and saw the grin slowly spread over Dante’s face. The creepiness oozing from it gave him the chills, and before he could recover from it, Dante turned around and left for the exit.

"H-hey! Where are you going?"

"To kickstart our plan," Dante said. "I will be back in a minute."

Descending the stairs, Dante flipped through the files Rose had sent him and picked one from among those on the lower ranks.

’Volcan, can you find this one for me?’

The one he settled on was a young man in his thirties, was about as tall as Dante, and also had the same haircut. Other than that, they didn’t share any features, but the main difference had to be the skull tattoo taking over the right side of the man’s face.

[I found him.] Volcan replied a couple of seconds later.

’Get a good look at his face.’ Saying that, Dante opened the Equip screen, going through the clothes he had stored. ’I want you to make it so his face would appear instead of mine on security feeds.’

The jacket he was wearing vanished and a large hoodie took its place.

[You want me to project this individual’s face on yours in the captured security footage?]

’Yes.’ Dante marched to the end of the hallway, ’Now, give me 8-3’

Light enveloped his body, and a second later, the dark armor manifested around his figure. He didn’t waste any time activating rift creation then stepped through the gate he opened in front of him, passing the wall and arriving outside the building.

With no floor under his feet, gravity took hold of him and pulled him down. Waiting a little to catch some momentum, Dante then opened a second gate right under him, and another one a short distance away, this one tilted at a certain angle. When he dove straight through the first gate, he came flying out of the second one as if he had been launched from a cannon.

Arriving at his destination, he used one more gate to kill his momentum, and another one to sneak into the building. This method of travel had been on his mind for a while now so he decided to give it a try. The rush from the free fall set his mind on fire, helping him wake up, but he doubted it would become a mainstay in his arsenal.

Falling into the hallway leading to the office they were observing, Dante covered his head with the hood and whispered in his mind.

’Deactivate Ghost Mode.’