Yuri came through with frightening speed. The very next morning after our little chat, Amelia got a message asking how and where she wanted our first batch of goods delivered. She was, of course, already prepared for that.

My sneaky girlfriend had rented a small storage unit a couple megabuildings over. We simply had to message a passcode for the doors to her uncle, and he got everything else sorted out.

It wasn't that she didn't trust him to have stuff delivered directly to her address. She was, however, extremely paranoid when it came to her father's reach. The man had held a grudge against Yuri for years, even after he'd killed the man's sister, simply because Yuri had chosen to pull out of a ton of their deals and 'acquisition agreements', whatever that ominous as fuck term referred to.

So, Amelia was worried that her father could have slipped spies into her uncle's organization. It was doubtful they'd be able to infiltrate high enough up the chain of command to know about our visit. But even if they found out and her father tracked the shipment to its destination, all he'd find was a storage unit that had been paid for in cash, with no cameras nearby.

I was kind of impressed by that last point. On her own and solely through the net, Amelia had done research, narrowed down her choices, and then decided which storage unit was best for our purposes. I checked in on that by visiting the megabuilding myself and tapping into the cameras from the inside, and she was right.

The unit was in a nearly perfect blind spot.

That was when my last niggling bits of doubt about letting Amelia fully control my 'mission' prep work evaporated. I'd have gone through with it anyway, but the security provided by my absolute acceptance of her competence was nice.

The gear she got also went a long way towards assuring me of our success.

Yuri had somehow managed to get me the exact same gun model Mela used, in duplicate. With how often she'd bragged about the mods she put on her weapon, I'd been able to remember and request those, too. Which, again, Yuri had been able to provide. This gave the guns a whole host of nifty little features like expanded ammo capacity, lower recoil, and better aim.

Now, I'd argued against armor a little when Amelia initially brought up equipment. Whenever someone mentioned armor, it brought to mind massive, bulky suits of protective material that made it hard to move, let alone effectively fight.

At this point, something inside me strongly protested the idea of wearing that type of armor.

So, it was a good thing that Amelia had threatened me with both calling off the mission and grievous bodily harm if I 'continued acting like an idiot', because the armor I got was some premium shit.

Both weapons and armor were classified from tier 1, the lowest end of the spectrum, to the highest tier 10. Honestly? The Cadmus E-20, the very first gun I ever owned, couldn't even qualify as tier 1. Mela's precious babies did fall under the classification, though, as did most of what could be classified as 'chemically powered ballistics.' Tier 2 were electromagnetism-based weapons, like the good old railgun, and were much scarier.

Things got progressively worse from there on, moving through the tiers with things like lasers, beam weaponry, sonic weaponry, etc. Eventually, they transitioned from items you could reasonably carry on your person to planetary defense level stuff.

Which was to say, tier 1 weapons were close to the peak of what you could expect even fancier mercs to use, with a few electromagnetic tier 2 weapons thrown into the mix. Only if they were really, really successful and wealthy might they own a tier 3 laser rifle or something similar.

Armor directly followed these classifications, too. If it can stop tier 1 weapons, then it's tier 1 armor! Rated for laser weaponry? Congrats, you own tier 3 armor! And so on, up the scale. Certain types of 'armor' got so ridiculously advanced that they either had to be built into a full mech or just served as planetary defense installations.

Yuri got us genuine tier 1 armor, rated to stand up to the punishment of most commercially available firearms. And it wasn't even bulky or anything! It was made out of a mix of super thin, advanced alloy metal plates and a special kind of mesh that boasted incredible toughness and kinetic absorption. Sure, the pants-and-top combo looked a little off and poofy. But when I put them on, they didn't inhibit my movement at all.

It did come in pure black, which Amelia wasn't particularly happy about. Apparently, this made the armor both 'eye catching' and 'unfashionable.' But she wasn't about to call her uncle and complain.

The equipment package was rounded off by a stealthy earpiece-and-microphone combo for Amelia and a bunch of high quality MaxDoc supplies for me to take along on missions. They weren't going to restore me to perfect health with a single puff like some VR game consumables, but they would swiftly stop bleeding, numb any pain I was feeling, and provide me with a temporary boost to my physical abilities.

In other words, they were just the thing the doctor ordered if you needed to get your wounded ass to a ripper while also running away from a gunfight.

The other thing Yuri pulled through on was securing us a space for Amelia to practice with firearms. This was also a space for me to shake some of the rust off and, well, learn a bit more myself. Again, Mela had done a remarkable job of getting me up to basic competence. If it wasn't for my Clairvoyance, though? I'd still be missing ninety percent of my shots in live combat.

I was a cheating cheater who cheated, but Amelia wouldn't have that option. So, I tried my best to emulate the helpful bits of Mela's training and pass them on.

It… didn't go great. Which is to say, Amelia didn't turn into a master sharpshooter overnight.

She did learn basic gun safety and handling, however. That significantly decreased the chances that she'd fumble her gun and shoot herself, at least.

My final bit of prep was actually related to my skills.

There wasn't much I could do about my stats in the short term. I didn't like looking at them anyway, since the Essence entry was right there, mocking me. But the skills were a different ball game altogether.

It didn't take me long to track down the location of a massive bazaar-style marketplace inside our megabuilding. Then I was off to stalk and explore it, Amelia back-seating the experience with my eyes' vision feeding directly into her scroll.

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The practice sessions I ran were simple.

I'd pick a target, typically someone rougher, more aware and dangerous-looking. Then I'd stalk them through the bazaar, trying both to keep track of them and to remain unseen. It was kind of fun, actually.

This feeling was only enhanced to ridiculous proportions when the first exp notifications rolled in.

Stealth +1 exp

Tracking +1 exp

Focus +1 exp

Grace +1 exp

Frankly? I was floored. If I'd known something so simple could yield those kinds of rewards, I would have engaged in the hobby way earlier!

Every once in a while, I even managed to get a different kind of ping, too.

Quickhacks +1 exp

This particular little source of experience came from my habit of hacking cameras as I went along. They helped a ton with keeping track of my target and identifying any threats trying to sneak up on me.

Not that there were many. Thus far, the only result of my routine checks was one time when I realized a megabuilding security clanker was trailing me at a respectable distance.

I hadn't been flagged yet for 'suspicious activity.' Otherwise, the fucking thing would have opened fire long ago. Still, the fact that the android was clocking me at all was mildly alarming.

I quickly changed my pattern, varying the times when I visited and my preferred 'game' target, etc. This seemed to work. The clankers quickly lost interest in me after that, leaving me to dedicate myself to my skills.

Skills which were growing!

Stealth +1 exp

Stealth 0 has levelled up!

Upgrade to level 1 deferred.

Would you like to accept the information packet?

Y/N

That final point that pushed me from 99 to 100 came when I executed a flawless escape strategy. My target of the day, a somewhat wealthy-looking man with a woman on his arm, had clocked my pursuit of him and his lady love and sent the security clankers after me.

Shaking them off had been a nightmare. Doing so while keeping them from spotting anything that could easily serve to identify me? Doubly so!

It was all worth it in the end, though. The tension, the slight thrill of the 'hunt', even the risks I'd blatantly taken. They were all rewarded when my package helpfully attempted to melt my brain with new knowledge, and a whole new world of Stealth opened up in front of me.

Focus followed shortly after that, levelling up to 1 as well. Then Tracking joined Clairvoyance, Movement, and Assault at the vaunted level 2. Annoyingly enough, my Clairvoyance had ticked up to 99 thanks to my stalkerish hobby, but had refused to budge again. And my new activities took time out of my day I typically would have dedicated to Programming, so that skill was also stuck on lvl 1.

Then, ever so reluctantly, Grace ticked over into 2 as well!

With so many Stalker skills piling on, the change I underwent was kind of drastic. My balance improved by leaps and bounds, making me feel like I would never be able to trip over my own feet again.

The way I walked, talked, and even behaved in my daily life shifted, too. I'd always been a little awkward and preferred to stay out of the way, but now I knew exactly how to make myself all but genuinely invisible to the wider masses.

It was so simple. A slight change in attitude, a bland smile, a partially vacant expression, and suddenly you were a completely flat, unremarkable part of people's day.

It really was funny how people's brains worked. We tended to latch onto anything that stood out, no matter if it was 'good' or 'bad.' A person seductively strutting down a hallway was just as likely to stick in our brains as one who cursed and glared at everyone, or someone who looked like a complete nervous wreck. Show no particular emotions or behavioral ticks, though? Suddenly, everyone had trouble saying if they'd even seen you recently.

The possibilities of this revelation were as exciting as they were alarming to me.

Tracking, however, was the thing that most altered the way I perceived the world. And not quite in the way I'd expected.

Oh, sure. There was the whole simple ass 'tracking tracking' aspect of it. Spot the scuff marks on the ground, the trembling of a recently closer door, yada yada. And I got good at that.

However, the skill highlighted so many small things beyond that, I felt dizzy with it all sometimes. The way people glance about before doing something. The way your own body and muscles betray you before you make a move. The way I could pin down behavioral ticks and habits in total strangers.

If I spent enough time on someone, I was pretty sure I could analyze them to the point where I could convincingly mimic their behavior, even around their friends and family. There was nothing I could do about the appearance limitations, of course.

Yet.

But if I wanted to? Yeah, the Unseen Stalker was filling my head with the sort of skills and knowledge that most people would freely label 'creepy.'

Not that this skill turned me into some genius-level detective who could rely on cold reading to pretend like he could see people's thoughts. If anything, that aspect was almost wholly missing from what the skill was feeding me. I could note aggression, preparation to strike or run, things like that. Signs of emotional distress? Lying? Happiness? Sure, I could slowly learn them and link them to relevant emotions myself, but it didn't come easily or instinctually.

This wasn't some people manipulator package. This was the package skill of a predator assessing its prey. Learning how to blend in. How to worm its way seamlessly into its prey's everyday interactions and interpersonal dynamics.

Perfect mimicry, with no understanding required.

For the first time, I was annoyed by both the skill naming convention and how little we knew about Unseen Stalkers.

The files Amelia shared with me were clearly lacking. How did they interact with other eldritch life forms? If the Stalkers didn't have their whole freak-out issue, what would our world look like now? Would they be able to integrate into our society, lurking and feeding, whatever that looked like for them, at their own leisure?

Similarly, whoever had named the skill, be it Amelia's mother or father, clearly had no idea of its true scope. 'Tracking' just didn't cover everything it did!

Which made me ask myself: had I missed something when it came to my other skills, simply because of their names?

Regardless, I was making definite progress:

Shadow Runner Package:

Clairvoyance 2 (94/100) → Clairvoyance 2 (99/100)

Programming 1 (99/100)

Movement 2 (0/100)

Quickhacks 1 (8/100) → Quickhacks 1 (67/100)

Assault 2 (21/100)

Tongue of The Ravening Observer

Unseen Stalker Package:

Stealth 0 (0/100) → Stealth 1 (84/100)

Tracking 1 (0/100) → Tracking 2 (62/100)

Focus 0 (28/100) → Focus 1 (58/100)

Grace 1 (0/100) → Grace 2 (12/100)

Faultline 0 (31/100)

By the time the party was almost upon us, I felt so much more ready. I felt like I had a genuine chance to pull the mission off. Doubly so, since I had Amelia's help. She hadn't been idle while I practiced, either.

I just had to make sure not to fuck things up.

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