Chapter 1

My name is Arthur, a bottom-tier financial drone relying on liver cirrhosis to survive on Wall Street. My greatest dream is to land a normal labor contract that includes weekends off and social security, but this is destined to be impossible.

Because my dad is a Primordial Vampire, my mom is an Alpha Werewolf, and my older brother is an Urban Legend Wraith.

When my tycoon boss, trying to save on severance pay, deployed over a hundred heavily-armed mercenaries to physically eliminate me, I had no choice but to blow the bone whistle my old man gave me...

Chapter 1  

My name is Arthur. I am a bottom-tier financial drone surviving off sheer liver endurance in a top-tier Wall Street investment bank.

My life motto is incredibly humble: drink two swigs of cheap instant coffee a day, submit my PowerPoints on time, pray I don't get laid off, and clock out exactly on the dot.

My ultimate dream is to secure a "normal human" labor contract complete with comprehensive dental insurance and strict weekends off.

However, from the moment I was born, this dream was doomed.

Because none of my family members are human.

My old man is a vampire progenitor who has lived for two thousand years.

My mom is the alpha of a werewolf pack.

And my older brother is even worse—he died, came back to life, and became the central wraith figure in countless urban horror legends.

To help me smoothly assimilate into this "Empire of Money" forged from glass and steel, my monster family forcefully shoved a "Workplace Starter Pack" down my throat.

My dad thoughtfully provided me with a commuter vehicle: a "Bat-Ford," its engine modified from my Second Uncle’s heart, its exhaust pipe continuously dripping fresh blood.

My mom forcefully hung a pale "Primordial Blood-Wolf Fang" bone whistle around my neck, instructing me, "If anyone dares to bully you in the pantry, Mom will bring three thousand Siberian werewolves to raze this building to the ground."

As for my older brother, the wraith with severe ADHD, he mysteriously slipped a skull paperweight carved from a Black Goat's bone into my briefcase, euphemistically calling it a "feng shui ornament to help you eat up workplace negative energy."

And so I, a materialist corporate slave who only wants to arm his mind with Marxist economics, walked into Wall Street’s most luxurious high-rise office in absolute despair, clutching a briefcase stitched from deep-abyss demon dead skin, with a cursed paperweight stuffed in my pocket.

The air here reeked of high-end cologne mixed with the scent of failing livers from bottom-tier corporate animals dropping dead from all-nighters.

The rigid class barriers dictated that even the air conditioning was strictly hierarchical. In my synthetic suit bought from a discount supermarket, I looked like a walking trash bag.

"Good morning, Arthur. I heard you've been sleeping at your desk for three nights straight for that ten-billion-dollar cross-border M&A deal?"

An aggressively arrogant voice interrupted my thoughts.

I raised my severely bloodshot eyes to see Vincent standing at my desk.

He was a core senior partner of the firm and the crown prince of the financial consortium behind it. Rumor had it his family descended from the Mafia, and he had a penchant for bespoke suits.

Without even looking me in the eye, Vincent reached out a slender finger and unapologetically snatched the M&A proposal I had spent 72 sleepless hours drafting and revising over eighty times.

"The leverage structure is barely passable. At least the company gets its money's worth hiring cheap labor like you," Vincent scoffed contemptuously. He whipped out a diamond-encrusted Montblanc fountain pen, fluidly crossed out the words "Project Lead: Arthur" on the cover, and signed his own name.

"Mr. Vincent," I said, fighting down stomach cramps and trying to communicate using the most subservient human workplace etiquette, "all the due diligence and financial modeling for this project were done by..."

"Were done as your obligatory duty as a bottom-tier asset of this company," Vincent interrupted coldly, a cruel, mocking smirk playing on his lips. "Arthur, Wall Street only believes in bloodline and class. You are just a rusty, oil-stained generator in the basement, while I am the master enjoying the brilliant lights. Now, go take today's shredder trash down to the basement, and don't let your poverty stench ruin my carpets."

As the only person in this entire narrative trying to think with human logic, I took a deep breath.

This wasn't workplace gaslighting; this was a "hostile takeover" of my personal intellectual labor.

Had this been the past, I might have smashed my keyboard into his well-maintained face.

But I endured it.

I needed this job too much to prove I could be a normal human. I didn't want to go home and inherit a vampire sweatshop that built its wealth by draining medieval principalities dry. I just wanted to clock out on time.

"Yes, Mr. Vincent. I'll get right on it."

Looking down with extreme Zen-like resignation, I reached into my demon-skin briefcase to grab my employee badge.

However, my passive "the more I tolerate, the more absurd things get" constitution kicked in right on schedule.

My fingers accidentally dragged out the "feng shui ornament" my wraith brother had given me.

Clack.

The fist-sized, ghastly pale Black Goat skull paperweight rolled across the desk and onto the carpet, stopping precisely at Vincent's feet.

Vincent looked down, a flash of disgust in his eyes.

Then, lifting his custom alligator-skin shoe, he unhesitatingly stomped on the skull paperweight.

With a crack, a fissure splintered along the edge of the goat horn.

I gasped. Not out of heartache, but because I was saying a final prayer for Vincent's physical safety.

But Vincent felt a mere stomp wasn't enough to assert his class dominance.

With a cold sneer, he flicked his wrist and poured half a cup of scalding, eighteen-dollar espresso directly over the top of the skull.

The black liquid dripped down the skull's hollow eye sockets, emitting a faint sizzle.

"Arthur, whatever gothic, poverty-ridden fetishes you have, in this office, your existence is just as cheap as this broken plastic toy," Vincent looked at me triumphantly.

The air suddenly went dead silent.

In that instant, I abandoned all human nonsense of begging for mercy.

My expression became exceedingly sincere. I looked at the high-and-mighty Vincent with the almost pitying gaze of a priest, my tone unusually gentle.

"Mr. Vincent, from an absolute compliance and risk assessment perspective, your actions just triggered the highest-level force majeure clause in my personal workplace survival system."

Vincent froze for a second. "What kind of gibberish are you spouting?"

"I mean..." I sighed, pointing at his feet, "because my older brother suffered inhuman torture before he died, he has a terrible temper. Also, he’s an extreme germaphobe."

As soon as the words left my mouth.

The espresso-scalded skull paperweight began to vibrate violently under Vincent's sole.

Two clusters of eerie green hellfire ignited unprompted within the hollow sockets. In less than half a second, the radiant blaze pierced through the shadows beneath the desk like a geyser.

Immediately following was a scalp-numbing clatter—the sound of hundreds, thousands of human teeth frantically grinding and chewing. It sounded like rusty steel needles sliding straight down the spine and plunging into the cerebral cortex.

Vincent snapped his head down, his arrogant expression freezing instantly.

He watched as the "plastic toy" squirmed like a living creature. The goat-bone jaw wrenched open to an impossible angle, revealing rows of dense, black fangs growing inward like a meat grinder!

"What the f—"

Before the profanity could leave his lips, the physical parameters of the entire executive floor experienced a cliff-drop collapse.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Overhead, the expensive LED tube lights flickered wildly like dominoes before exploding all at once! Shards of glass rained down like a storm, dragging the glamorous office space into a murky, spectral gloom.

The central air conditioning let out a teeth-grinding wail, and the vents began continuously spewing a sickly white frost reeking of raw formalin and rotting corpses.

The room temperature plummeted below zero in three seconds. A layer of spiderweb-like blood-red frost spread rapidly across the floor-to-ceiling windows, forcibly severing the sunlight outside.

"You... what did you do?!" Vincent stumbled backward. A layer of green cadaver spots had already formed on his alligator-skin shoes, and the extreme chill made his body tremble uncontrollably.

"I didn't do anything, I'm just a corporate slave desperate for weekends off," I spread my hands helplessly. "Also, friendly tip: based on my brother's usual modus operandi, there is no statute of limitations on prosecuting workplace bullying."

"Security! Throw this lunatic out!" Vincent's composure shattered completely as he screamed in horror.

Just then, Vincent's number one lapdog—Human Resources Manager Brad—charged out from behind a cubicle.

As an exceedingly sycophantic mortal, he assumed this was merely an electrical failure, eager to prove his loyalty to the corporate prince.

"Arthur! You mess up the AC and dare talk back to Mr. Vincent!" Brad lunged at me like a vicious hound, his eyes locking dead onto the demon-skin briefcase on the desk.

"I have every right to suspect you're stealing company trade secrets! Hand over the bag!"

Bellowing, Brad didn't hesitate to thrust his chubby, gold-ring-adorned hand directly into the bottomless opening of the briefcase.

My heart skipped a beat, and my remaining scraps of humanitarian spirit made me instinctively yell: "Wait! Don't stick your hand in there! That's not a real briefcase!"

That was the "Endless Contract Devourer," custom-ordered by my dad from the Seventh Circle of Hell—commonly known as the Hell's Paper Shredder.

Its opening connected directly to the stomach of an abyssal hellhound.

"Stop bluffing!" Brad sneered, trying to pull his hand back out. "I'm going to make you realize..."

His words abruptly cut off.

Brad's eyeballs bulged outward, the veins on his forehead popping. He couldn't pull his hand out.

Not only could he not pull it out, but the pitch-black leather surface of the briefcase began heaving violently, as if some gargantuan beast were breathing beneath it.

At the same time, a spine-chilling sound of chewing and bone-crushing echoed crystal-clear from inside the briefcase.

Crunch... Crunch...

Brad opened his mouth wide and unleashed the most agonizing scream I had ever heard in my life.