Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!

New York. Morning.

The city moved like it always did—loud, restless, blind to anything that wasn't on its schedule. Rush hour had taken over the streets like a hungry god, taxis honking like war drums, Wall Street suits charging down sidewalks with half-eaten bagels and five-year plans in their heads. No one noticed the building on the corner of Varick and Barclay—the one with mirrored glass and a corporate name slapped across the front in bold silver letters: Citaeus Bank.

And absolutely no one noticed the boy crouched beneath its shadow.

He stood pressed into the building's shade like he was born of it—his presence thin, weightless, impossible to spot unless you already knew he was there. He didn't breathe. Didn't blink. He watched. From across the street, eyes low under a dusty hoodie, skin shadowed by more than just sunlight.

Not even twenty-four hours had passed since the gods had whispered his name and poured shadows into his soul—but already, he could feel it. The power. Raw. Growing. Every second, he felt more real. More dangerous. Every shadow he absorbed felt like another bone snapping into place inside a body that was finally becoming what it was always meant to be.

And the one he was in now was vanishing.

The shade he hid in, once thick and cool, had started to thin—slowly, steadily—unnaturally. The building still stood tall, the sun still shined across its windows, but the shadow was gone. Eaten. Pulled into him like smoke through cracked lungs. The sidewalk beneath him now stood lit, despite the architecture above. It was like the light had lied.

Like reality had skipped a beat trying to explain why one building cast no shadow.

Because he was the lie.

And this world was about to believe in him.

Golden text flared across his vision when he absorbed the shadow, appearing, not on a screen, not in his mind, but inside his being—etched into his bloodstream.

[Power Level: Ascended – Tier 4]

He blinked once, and the world dimmed slightly—his version of it adjusting to the deeper layers of the shadow field he was about to bend into something no one had ever seen. Citaeus Bank didn't know it yet. But this was their final sunrise.

The street rat was done watching.

He smiled—casual, quiet, like he was about to ask the time or order coffee—and vanished.

The shadow beneath his feet rippled once, then snapped shut with a vacuum pop, and he reappeared across the street in the fractured shade of another high-rise building. But this time, he didn't just hide within it—he claimed it.

The shadows didn't remain still; they responded, flooding outward like black veins tearing through sunlight. Across the entire block, the day dimmed. No clouds above, no eclipse—just reality being rewritten by his presence. The sun still burned overhead, but its light no longer touched the street. The asphalt turned the color of night.

The windows along the avenue blackened like dying screens. Every streetlamp flickered violently before bursting, glass raining down like failing stars as electricity screamed and choked into silence.

Panic erupted like wildfire. Screams. Footsteps. Chaos. Civilians ran without direction, shoulder-checking each other, dropping phones, stumbling into parked cars. But he didn't care. He wasn't here for them. Not yet.

And so, while the world spun into hysteria, he moved—no footsteps, no transition—just sudden presence at the front doors of Citaeus Bank.

The glass doors didn't creak open but split apart. The air snapped cold. Shadows cloaked his figure like a cape woven from nightmares, wrapping tight across his chest and swirling around his limbs like smoke under pressure. He looked like a sculpted hole in the fabric of day. Inside the bank, however, strangely, there were no shadows.

Not a trace. The lobby remained sterile and fluorescent—intact and untouched—because he wanted them to see him clearly. To see what had come for them.

Every person froze. Panic. Fear. Confusion. The silence inside was glass-thin.

Then one of the security guards twitched—too slow, too human—raising his gun with trembling fingers. The Street Rat didn't even flinch. He didn't speak. He just looked at him and scoffed.

From beneath the guard's feet, his own shadow turned against him—elongating, warping like ink in water, then launching upward with feral speed. A massive hand, forged from obsidian shadow, erupted from the ground, seized the guard by the throat, and slammed him downward.

The marble floor cratered, sending a deep crack spiderwebbing across the tiles. The man's body hit like meat dropped from a rooftop.

His consciousness blinked out on impact.

That's when the real screaming started.

The other five guards didn't hesitate drawing their guns. Total of ten bullets fired.

Too late.

The moment the triggers clicked, a solid wall of shadows roared up in front of the Street Rat—high as a fortress gate, thick as midnight. The bullets entered and were devoured mid-flight, soundlessly swallowed into a realm where even physics held no jurisdiction. They never came out.

His eyes gleamed.

He waved his hand once, like he was brushing off a bad idea, and from behind the guards—without warning—five short shadow-forged blades ripped through the air and stabbed through their spines. Not a single shot fired from them again. No blood spilled. The sound was surgical—final.

They collapsed where they stood, their bodies thudding quietly against the pristine floor. But it wasn't over.

From beneath each corpse, their shadows peeled away—detaching, twitching, like things freed—and slithered silently toward him, merging into the living shadow that curled beneath his feet. Feeding it. Strengthening it.

He didn't gloat.

He just stood there—center of the room, wrapped in death and darkness, untouched—while the chaos around him finally realized what it was dealing with.

Not a thief.

Not a criminal.

But a god wrapped in shadow, and he had just entered their bank.

The shadows he'd taken slithered up his limbs like they knew exactly where they belonged—curling into his spine, soaking into his bones, nesting behind his ribs like old memories coming home.

And when they merged—when those five fallen guards became part of him—

A euphoric jolt. Like swallowing lightning dipped in velvet. His chest expanded with a slow, greedy inhale as the surge bloomed across every inch of him.

His muscles twitched. His jaw clenched. His eyes rolled back for a second as raw, intimate power crawled through his veins and settled under his skin. The kind of rush no drug on earth could replicate.

He didn't shake from the high.

The building did.

The floor trembled. The lights above flickered once, then dimmed. A pulse—silent, invisible, heavy—radiated from him like a low-frequency shockwave that twisted the air. Marble cracked beneath his boots not from motion, but from the sheer pressure of what he was becoming.

A walking, breathing anomaly. The shadows around him didn't just darken—they vibrated, as if applauding.

And that's when the panic snapped.

A teller—blonde, mid-40s, trembling but stubborn—slammed her palm down on the hidden emergency button beneath her desk.

He saw it. knew it would happen since it was routine . Didn't stop it.

Didn't even blink.

Let them come.

The cops. The guards. The elite response teams. The more that came, the more food they dragged with them. More fear. More power. More shadow.

His head tilted slightly. The darkness at his feet thickened, crawling across the floor like tar.

The shadows twitched violently.

He raised his voice—

"Get down. Face down. Stomach flat," he said, calm as a sermon. "Or you'll end up like them."

There was a half-second of silence that immediately turned into chaos.

People screamed as dove to the floor dropping their phones and purses abandoned, only away from kicking their shoes off mid-sprint. Grown men scrambled like kids caught stealing. In a heartbeat, the entire lobby hit the ground like it was Judgement Day and the devil was taking names. Some sobbed. Some prayed. Most didn't even dare breathe loud.

He watched it all.

And then he smiled again.

That slow, twisted, euphoric grin like this was just the beginning.

Because it was.