Carlton City was the stomping ground of the Venomous Snakes. They were a gang best known for running low-profile, unofficial gambling rings—underground tables that shifted locations constantly to stay ahead of the law. One night they’d set up shop in a abandoned suburban home, the next in a cheap motel room, or wherever else they could fly under the radar.
But these weren’t your typical penny-ante basement games; these dens were specifically designed to handle incredibly high stakes. The Snakes were smart, too—they were perfectly willing to accept jewelry, car titles, and real estate deeds when a player’s cash ran dry.
They weren’t the biggest sharks in the sea, sitting firmly at the criminal organization stage rather than a true syndicate, but they pulled in a massive amount of revenue. Their secret weapon was a handful of specialized, highly talented hustlers who could rig a deck or load a set of dice using seamless sleight of hand.
Of course, when you cheat people for a living, customers are bound to get violent. Players would routinely realize they’d been taken, accuse the house of pulling a fast one, and demand their money back. Because of that, the Snakes made sure to recruit heavy hitters—vicious street fighters who knew exactly how to break a jaw and throw a body out into the alley.
Lately, though, the gang had been sliding into a rough dry spell. Their pockets were getting light, and to pull off their high-stakes grifts, they needed a very specific kind of wealthy clientele to walk through the doors. The best marks were the ones they could string along for months, bleeding them dry slowly rather than just robbing them once and tossing them aside. If they cleaned out every tourist who walked in, the cops would shut them down in a week.
Desperate to inject some quick cash into their draining accounts, the leadership had come up with a shortcut: enter a few of their top enforcers into the underground fighting tournaments hosted by the Black Hounds.
The plan backfired spectacularly. Instead of bringing home a heavy bag of prize money, their boys had been absolutely dismantled on the cruise ship stage. The survivors had slunk back across the city limits with fractured ribs and bruised egos, their pockets completely empty.
Now, the entire gang was gathered on the single floor of a rented, run-down office space that served as their headquarters. The mood in the room was suffocatingly grim, the heads of the upper management shaking in disbelief as they went over the fallout.
"I knew the Black Hounds were backed by a new syndicate, but I didn’t think their personal guards would be that terrifyingly strong," muttered the leader of the Venomous Snakes, a man who went by the name of V. He was pacing the floor, tightly adjusting the collar of his snake-skin textured jacket.
"Boss... are you worried the high-ups might come looking for us?" one of his lieutenants asked, shifting nervously in his chair. "We did break their rules on live television."
V let out a harsh, dismissive laugh. "You honestly think a monolithic syndicate is going to waste their executive time on a mid-tier crew like us? They’re the new kings of the central district, and every rival gang and federal task force has eyes locked onto them. Trust me, they aren’t about to mobilize an army just to settle a petty grudge with the Snakes."
The words had barely left V’s mouth when a thunderous explosion rattled the concrete walls. The heavy reinforced door at the back of the office was ripped entirely off its hinges, flying through the air like a piece of cardboard before crashing violently into the back wall.
"What the hell! We’re under attack!"
The office erupted into absolute chaos. Men scrambled over desks, panicking as they sprinted toward the weapons racks bolted to the walls to grab machetes, pipes, and pistols. But before a single guy could rack a slide, the dust cleared to reveal a massive, heavily armed wall of women marching into the room.
Every single one of them was draped in flowing white tactical gear, their fingers wrapped tightly around the hilts of heavy wooden swords. Shooting stepped into the center of the office, her wild hair pulled back into a tight, practical ponytail as she leveled her bokken straight at V’s throat.
"We are the Fallen Rose!" Shooting declared, her voice ringing out with absolute authority. "And we are executing this raid on behalf of the Billion Bloodline group. You idiots decided to cause a scene and spill blood in one of their territories, so we’re here to completely take you out."
The Snakes froze, the color draining from their faces. "Wait... the Fallen Rose?" one of the lieutenants stammered, his hands shaking as he held his pipe. "Aren’t they that legendary, nomadic fighting syndicate from the outer border? Why the hell is a high-tier mercenary crew playing lapdog for a local street gang?"
"We don’t have time for a corporate Q&A," V snarled, realizing there was no way out of the trap. He gripped his blade, his survival instincts taking over. "Brace yourselves, boys, because we’re officially in the fight of our lives!"
It wasn’t a fight; it was a systematic execution. The Venomous Snakes were completely outclassed from the very first second. The women of the Fallen Rose were professional soldiers who only got paid when bodies hit the floor, and their recent daily conditioning sessions with the Billion Bloodline’s top rangers had turned them into a flawless machine.
A standard street brawl was a messy thing, but the lethal conditioning of the arena allowed their senses to sharpen to a razor’s edge under pressure. The bikers were moving with a fluid, terrifying precision, effortlessly dodging the frantic swings of the gamblers and countering with bone-shattering strikes.
In the end, the entire Venomous Snake organization was eliminated at a velocity that left even Shooting surprised. The raid was over in minutes, the office completely silent save for the groans of the broken gang.
The fallout from the assault didn’t stay inside the concrete room. News of the slaughter spread through the veins of the underworld like a flash flood, carrying the terrifying name of the Billion Bloodline even further into the dark.
The massive intelligence leak that a nomadic, Syndicate-level fighting force like the Fallen Rose had actively aligned its assets with the up-and-coming Bloodline group sent shockwaves through every major family in the country. An alliance of this magnitude had never manifested in the history of the territory. Every criminal organization, corrupt precinct, and shadow player was now officially keeping their eyes locked onto Max’s borders, terrified of what the new empire would do next.
But the city wasn’t the only territory where the pieces were moving.
Far away from the concrete grids, up in the high, windswept hilltops, the afternoon sun was beating down intensely on a secluded mountain cabin. The alpine wind blew violently through Hercules’ hair as he stepped out onto the threshold of his porch.
He didn’t look down at the dirt. Instead, his unblinking gaze locked onto five distinct individuals who had materialized from the treeline, standing in a loose, predatory semi-circle around his property.
"I’m entirely certain you people didn’t hike up this mountain peak just to say hello," Hercules said, his massive, bare chest expanding as he took a slow breath, his fists curling into boulders.
"We have been commissioned to execute a very specific, high-paying task," replied the man standing at the front, his flowing orange monk robes fluttering in the wind as a deadly smile stretched across his face. "Our directive is to completely eliminate you from the board, titan.
"You should honestly take an immense amount of professional pride in this deployment, Hercules. Never in the history of our foundation has the Black Hand agreed to collaborate with an external client, and never have all five of our top single-digit agents been deployed simultaneously to liquidate a single target. I absolutely cannot wait to test the true limits of your legendary strength."