"Mm, this should do it."
Pardofelis looked at the unnamable meat pie on the floor. Her cat ears twitched happily, and the corners of her lips curled into a cunning arc.
The smell of blood permeating the air made her wrinkle her small nose, but there was no trace of pity in her eyes, only the satisfaction of a finished chess match.
From the second time she had punched through that man, she had felt something was amiss. Consequently, she had quietly wound a slender gold thread around his wrist.
One must understand that the reason Aglaea's Golden Thread could detect lies was essentially because it sensed the emotional fluctuations in the other party's heart.
Therefore, when the man clutched his bloody wound and asked, "What exactly is your superpower?" in a tone full of indignation and a thirst for knowledge, the information fed back by the gold threads quickly exposed his performance.
That fear was more like an instinctive reaction to intense pain rather than despair over death; that curiosity was even more superficial. Beneath it was a pool of business-like calm, as if he were merely a shell executing a mission, utterly unafraid of death. Asking the question itself was the sole objective.
"Heh, trying to bait me?" Pardofelis had been amused when she realized this. "Fine, since the script has been handed to my lips, wouldn't I be failing the directors' painstaking efforts if I didn't accept it?"
She immediately decided to beat them at their own game.
Since the other party wanted to know the truth? Then she would offer a meticulously concocted, logically consistent, and highly impactful truth! A truth sufficient to make the prying eyes in the shadows believe without a doubt, eventually becoming excellent nourishment for her Puss in Boots item.
Step one: the room-clearing performance.
She first fabricated a superpower capable of destroying all surrounding electronic equipment, instantly making every monitor, listening device, and vital signs monitor inside and outside the vault smoke and become scrap.
This was not only for the audience on the ground but also for the hidden cameras tucked even deeper.
She didn't believe for a second that the people at Apex Entertainment were the kind of idiots who would rely solely on physical equipment to monitor a suspected S rank target.
Destroying all known equipment served to force the other party to show their hand while creating a seemingly absolute private environment for the ensuing monologue.
Sure enough, after she destroyed all the equipment, the shock in the emotions transmitted by the gold threads was exceptionally strong, yet there was not a hint of panic over a failed plan.
This settled her heart—the fish hadn't just stayed on the hook; it had bitten even tighter.
"Audience in position, lights focused," Pardofelis whispered to herself at the time. "Let the show begin!"
So, she leaned down, wearing a mask of three parts pity and seven parts mockery, and tossed that secret sufficient to shock the entire superpower world to the life-hanging mouthpiece:
"Copy."
To make this play authentic and shocking enough, she even added some special effects regardless of the cost: the flames dancing on her fingertips, the winding electric arcs, the glint of strengthening on her skin, and the exuberant aura of life... every detail was to solidify her identity as a copier.
Finally, she used the other party's signature Spatial Collapse to give him his final curtain call—a perfect, closed loop of evidence.
"With this textbook-level deathbed confession and the ironclad proof of dying under his own ultimate move," Pardofelis thought satisfyingly as she looked at the mangled prop of flesh, "even if the group at Apex Entertainment still has doubts, it's enough to make this lie become a definite truth."
As for why she didn't fabricate an all-powerful ability that sounded fake and hollow?
Pardofelis curled her lip. She was a smart cat-girl who valued cost-effectiveness; making a lie come true required a foundation of credibility.
A copy superpower that solved its own limitations and had relatively consistent logic was easier to accept through fear and shock than a vague omnipotence, making it much easier to believe.
After all, while she hadn't heard of such a superpower in this world yet, it frequently appeared in novels.
She understood the principle that greed was like a snake trying to swallow an elephant.
"Alright, the stage is swept clean, and the play is over," Pardofelis clapped her hands as if to brush off the bad luck, a relaxed and casual smile returning to her face. "Time to count the salary!"
Immediately after, she flipped her wrist, and a massive, ordinary-looking U-shaped magnet appeared out of thin air in her hand.
"After working hard for so long, I have to take some souvenirs!" She winked playfully, then gripped the center of the magnet and aimed it at the area in the center of the vault filled with gold and various official supplies.
"Give it to me—inhale!"
With her sharp cry, the center of that seemingly heavy magnet suddenly erupted with a violent suction force!
The scattered gold ingots on the ground, the chips placed on shelves, and even the terminals stored in safes... every valuable object was snatched as if by an invisible giant hand, letting out sharp whistling sounds as they turned into blurred streams of light, competing to shoot toward the center of the magnet.
Then, the moment these items touched the distorted force field at the center of the magnet, it was as if they were thrown into an invisible black hole; they vanished completely without even causing a ripple.
In reality, these things had simply been sucked into her System Inventory.
In just a few breaths, the originally messy vault became clean in no time.
Every high-value item had been looted clean, without even a single chip remaining. Only the smooth alloy walls and floor reflected the cold light, as empty as a giant dinner plate that had been licked clean.
"Mm-hmm, job's done!" Pardofelis weighed the magnet in her hand, admiring her masterpiece with satisfaction. Then, the magnet dissipated like a phantom in her hand.
She took one last look at this vault that had brought her quite a bit of fun and a rich payout. Her cat tail flicked comfortably, the tail blade carving a faint cold glint in the empty space.
"The big gift package from Apex Entertainment has been signed for~" She spoke to the empty vault as if taking a bow to an invisible audience, her voice carrying a winner's lightheartedness.
"Looking forward to our next collaboration. Bye-bye~"
Before her voice had even faded, her figure began to fade as if erased by an eraser. After a moment, she completely vanished into the cold alloy walls, leaving behind only a ransacked vault and Cipher's One-Eyed Coin glinting coldly under the lights.