
by AssassinCat
A mysterious and extraordinarily skilled underground hacker and intelligence peddler codenamed "Black Cat" roams in the shadows of Neo-Chinatown Metropolis - a world-renowned capital of cyberpunk culture since the 2070's near Vancouver, Canada.It's a ghost in the depths of the data abyss, there is no vault it cannot crack, no data stream it cannot intercept. Yet it acts solely on whim, charges exorbitant fees, and remains elusive. It never reveals its true form, appearing only through a virtual avatar of a black cat.It accepts commissions from clients to solve their problems, demanding “stories” and large amounts of credit points as payment. To ensure Black Cat’s services, several conditions must be met simultaneously:1.Black Cat must be interested in your case.2.You must pay an enormous fee.3.You must allow Black Cat to implant a highly covert monitoring code into your cyberbrain — it will act like an invisible recorder, faithfully capturing and documenting everything you see and hear until the commission concludes, at which point Black Cat remotely retrieves both the code and the recorded data. As a witness—and sometimes even a participant—Black Cat will recount to you the bizarre, grotesque, twisting, and thrilling stories it has gathered from its commissions: Story 1: Stardroop: Lost in TransitTwelve "passengers," each with their own purpose, are trapped aboard a virtual consciousness train speeding toward destruction. As victims fall one after another, suspicion runs rampant among them. Forced to cooperate even as they distrust one another, they must unite against the killers hiding in their midst. This is no game of Werewolf—it is an orchestrated slaughter. Story 2: Fog over Science CastleIn Science Castle, which founded as a salvation "ark" to combat the rampant cognitive virus, a hawk-like Indigenous private detective who was hired to infiltrate under the disguise of a security guard, encounters a nightingale-like genius female scientist. What kind of story will unfold between them? This is a precious sample of how humanity, under the crushing wheels of technological hegemony, is both fragile and tenaciously flickering. Story 3: Ghost of MontrealThe Montreal round of the FSA (the airborne version of F1) is imminent. A washed-up driver from a struggling team asks Black Cat to look into the so-called "track haunting". Meanwhile, a Chinese racing team gets a threat letter demanding they quit the race, and a young cop heads to the team to investigate after the report. The two groups' separate probes unexpectedly cross paths... Story 4: Requiem for the Summit Over thirty heads of state from across the Americas will soon gather in Neo-Chinatown Metropolis for the Americas Trade Summit. Meanwhile, various individuals and organizations are on the move, each planning acts of disruption of varying scales to take place on the opening day of the summit. The Deputy Security Commander in charge of on-site protection is about to face wave after wave of pressure and attacks from multiple factions… How will she rise to these gruelling challenges? A soul-shaking requiem is set to ring out across the entire summit hall... Story 5: Brink of WarIn the wake of the murder, the United States and Canada stand on the brink of war. Shortly afterward, the US delegation — split into three separate evacuation columns — went completely dark at the exact same moment. Hidden from all eyes, a secret interrogation spanning multiple factions unfolds in the shadows. As the truth is peeled back layer by layer, an overlooked blind spot leads to an enigma far more horrifying than the murder itself…
No streak history
One state-enhanced oracle order, filtered by each list. Observed Royal Road ranks remain separate ground truth.
Rank updated 2 Oct 2026, 06:58 UTC
Entry forecast updated 2 Oct 2026, 06:58 UTC
Ranking model: rs-public-oracle-state-v1
Forecast model: rs-model-entry-v1
Chart history contains only this ranking model's runs; legacy points are not spliced in.
Coupled 14-day outlook
rs-joint-entry-copula-v1
Any eligible RS entry
9%
Two or more lists
3%
Likely threshold order: Sci-fi → Mystery → Main.
Leading bundle: Sci-fi (6%).
Estimated from one fitted shared story path; category probabilities are not multiplied as if lists were independent.
Separate entry forecast; this probability does not enter the ranking score.
Overall Rising Stars Shadow RS rank
#8697 of 12,161 · 8647 below RS #50
By genre
beats 95% of similar stories
beats 99% of similar stories
beats 5% of similar stories
Hidden gem — exposure is the bottleneck
Readers who find this story follow it at a high rate; there just aren't enough of them. In our cohort data, near-daily posting lifted the odds of reaching 25 followers from ~0% to 17% — more chapters, shoutout swaps and ads buy the eyeballs this conversion deserves.
Benchmarks: 8,060 active Royal Road stories, percentiles within the 150+ chapters band, cohort of 2026-07-02. Conversion is measured as followers gained per 1,000 views over the recent window.