Chapter 24
Jin was fairly quick on the uptake.
That was thanks to the thirty years he had spent living in South Korea.
Wasn’t it a country so sensitive to reading the room and handling things appropriately that people even spoke of a “nunchi culture”?
For example, in a survey asking what type of new employee people most wanted to work with, honest employees who admitted their mistakes came in dead last with only 25 percent of the vote, while employees who were quick at reading the room ranked first with a staggering 67 percent.
For reference, second place went to employees who greeted others properly.
When society’s ideal worker was someone both perceptive and polite, earning someone else’s money was certainly difficult in that country.
And yet the people of South Korea were expected to pull it off!
In any case, Jin was also a true son of Korea, and his roots had not gone anywhere. Although the many hardships he had endured had considerably reduced his politeness stat, his instinct for reading the room remained as sharp as ever.
Thus, he roughly grasped what was going on.
The guy lying over there was the seller.
The masked one was the buyer.
That much was easy.
The problem was the man with the ugly scar beside his eye.
Judging by how he spoke as though the artifact belonged to him, along with the seller’s obvious fear of him… he was probably the seller’s superior.
Then the answer was obvious.
The seller had stolen the item.
Jin had finally gone from being the man who knew nothing to the man who understood the situation.
That said, the words he had already blurted out had earned him some unfriendly looks.
“A thief?”
Henri frowned at Jin.
Then a vicious smile spread across his face as he raised his foot.
“This bastard’s the thief. Right? Isn’t that so?”
“Ughhh…”
A muffled groan escaped Mikel as his head was ground beneath Henri’s boot.
Even then, he refused to release the case in his hand, his determination to protect it at all costs plain to see.
At last, he stammered out a reply.
“I… found it. Fuuuck…”
“Ha!”
Henri snorted in disbelief.
A moment later, his eyes turned murderous as he pressed down harder with his foot.
“Let me ask you one thing. How much were you supposed to get? Just how much money did it take for a piece of shit like you to even consider stabbing me in the back?”
Even Jin held his breath at that.
He remembered Khalifa saying something about the artifact’s appraised value.
Before he knew it, his fists were clenched.
He stared intently at Mikel’s stubbornly closed mouth.
Come on. Just say it already!
Perhaps Jin’s desperate wish reached him.
Unable to endure the pain any longer, Mikel finally screamed in a fit.
“Five hundred million! Five hundred million credits!”
At that moment—
Henri’s expression disappeared.
Jin staggered like a man who had witnessed cosmic horror.
And the masked figure said nothing.
“What?”
“Fuck! I told you! Five hundred million!”
“…Is that true?”
Henri asked the masked figure.
No answer came.
Henri, however, seemed to take the silence as confirmation.
A burst of wild laughter erupted from him.
“Ahahahaha!”
Henri laughed so widely that his uvula was visible, then finally lowered his head again.
“Mikel! Mikel! Mikel! I misjudged you. That’s right! This is the kind of ambition Sweet Dream’s second-in-command ought to have. Ahaha! Five hundred million! Well done, Mikel! Well done!”
He generously praised the traitor he had seemed ready to crush like an insect only moments before, then turned to the masked figure with a face full of delight.
“I take back what I said about not selling. So where’s the five hundred million? Where’s my money?”
…This bastard.
Why the hell is it your money?
Jin barely recovered from his shock and glared with all his might.
At last, the masked figure spoke.
The voice was faintly distorted by static, making it impossible to determine the speaker’s gender.
“The item first.”
“Who said you had to hand it over right now? I just want to see it.”
The masked figure placed a hand near their temple.
A chip popped out with a click, and they caught it between their fingers.
“This credit chip allows five hundred million credits to be withdrawn from the Blacknet. You may verify it if you do not believe me.”
“…Don’t mind if I do.”
Henri stared intently at the credit chip.
He appeared to be scanning it from a distance.
A moment later, he nodded, his face filled with joy.
“Very good.”
Then he stomped down once more.
This time, Mikel screamed as his hand was crushed beneath Henri’s foot.
“Aaaaargh!”
That was the end of his resistance.
No one could keep hold of something after the bones in their hand had been shattered.
“You’re noisy. Get lost.”
Henri kicked the writhing Mikel away and reached for the case lying on the ground.
At that moment, Gravis spat fire.
Bang!
The bullet tore through the night air and blasted through Henri’s forearm.
At the exact same time, the masked figure sprang forward like a leopard, rolled across the ground, and snatched up the case.
It looked like perfectly coordinated teamwork planned in advance.
But it was nothing of the sort.
Jin was startled by the masked figure, and the masked figure was equally startled by Jin.
They had simply acted at the same moment, and their movements happened to fit together that way.
Jin pulled the trigger to finish Henri off, but hurriedly swung the muzzle toward the masked figure instead.
“You fucking bastards!”
Henri was suddenly engulfed in flames.
He swung the arm that had been replaced by fire in a wide arc—
and fireballs erupted along its path, sweeping across everything before him.
The masked figure was hit first.
Jin came next.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The condensed flames struck the ground and triggered a chain of explosions.
The road was instantly swallowed by thick smoke.
Within it, a flash of blue light flickered.
Whoosh!
The next moment, Jin burst through the smoke and drove his fist into Henri’s abdomen.
Henri bounced across the road several times like a skipping stone before crying out and planting a hand against the ground.
Grrrrrk—
His fingertips carved furrows through the pavement as he managed to slow himself down.
By then, Henri’s body resembled some fusion of human flesh and living flame.
Jin recognized what he was immediately.
A pyrokinetic.
A psychic with the ability to control fire.
Why the hell does he have to look so damn cool?
Jin scowled.
He had once seriously considered choosing the [Psychic] perk as his second Starting Star.
Henri had already risen to his feet and was roaring.
“How dare you destroy my arm…! Fuck! I’ll crush you!”
Perhaps psychic abilities themselves were influenced by emotion, because the flames engulfing Henri’s body grew fiercer.
Without pausing to consider the consequences, he launched himself through the air, looking exactly like something out of a movie.
The human torch accelerated by causing explosions behind his back, wrapped his arms around Jin’s waist, and arched upward toward the sky.
Jin planted his feet and tried to hold his ground, but Henri’s charge, propelled by successive explosions, lifted him clean off the pavement.
As their bodies shot upward and completed a broad half-turn in midair, Jin repeatedly drove his elbow down onto the head of the man clutching tightly around his waist, even as his skin burned.
“Let! Go! Of! Me!”
But Jin’s vision turned completely upside down before the fireman’s skull could split open.
Blood rushed toward his head.
For one disorienting instant, heaven and earth reversed places.
Henri accelerated again.
Boom!
The intertwined red and blue lights crashed into the ground.
Shattered chunks of concrete sprayed through the air.
A short distance from the point of impact, Henri coughed out dry, ragged breaths.
The flames around him had visibly weakened.
Even so, he was alive.
He had used Jin as a cushion at the moment of impact.
His original plan had been to drop Jin from the air, but after taking so many blows to the head, he had lost his judgment for a moment.
Considering that pyrokinetics gained increased resistance to physical force while emitting flames, the fact that Jin’s blows had affected him at all was absurd.
“Monstrous bastard. Don’t know who you were, but good riddance…”
Henri’s shoulders trembled as he drew in a long breath.
Having his arm destroyed had taken too much out of him.
He had overused his power so badly that the flames looked ready to die at any moment.
He slowly steadied his excited breathing and began to rise.
Then a powerful hand seized the back of his neck.
“Ghk!”
Henri’s struggling body was lifted into the air.
A voice filled with metallic rasp reached his ears.
“…I seriously thought I was going to die, you bastard.”
What Henri saw and felt next was simple.
Wind so fierce he could barely keep his eyes open.
And the ground racing toward his face.
Boom!
The chokeslam drove him face-first into the road, splitting the pavement apart.
As his body lay spread-eagled and convulsing, the flames finally faded.
Only then did blood gush freely from beneath the right forearm that no longer had fire serving as a substitute.
“Haa… Haa…”
Jin watched with bloodshot eyes and finally exhaled a scorching breath.
He had been driven into the ground like a rocket from a height of thirty meters, and his vision was still spinning.
He could not straighten his back properly either. It seemed several bones had been thoroughly wrecked.
Jin did not know it, but the scalp at the back of his head had been torn loose and was hanging by a flap.
It was a truly gruesome injury, almost impossible to look at directly.
Had the experience points from Henri’s death—the massive burst of dopamine exploding through Jin’s brain—not dulled the pain, he might have collapsed on the spot.
Feels like twice as much as that chameleon beastman gave me last time.
…If I had to put a number on it, maybe around 2,000 XP?
Jin thought that as he braced one hand against his knee.
His upper body naturally leaned forward, drawing his gaze toward the ground.
Before long, he saw a pair of shoes approaching.
Even in his exhausted state, Jin raised his head and gave a faint grin.
“Why didn’t you run?”
The masked figure stood at the end of his gaze.
No, that was no longer accurate.
Both the mask and the hood covering it had burned away.
Short black hair.
Cold, pale blue eyes.
The woman, whose overall impression was as frigid as ice, slowly opened her mouth.
This time, she spoke in her real voice, without static.
“It wasn’t there.”
Instead of elaborating, she took out the case and opened it with a click.
Just as she had said, it was completely empty.
Jin stared blankly and rubbed his eyes.
Then a dying voice came from a short distance away.
“…I have it.”
It was Mikel.
He remained curled up like a grub in the exact spot where Henri had kicked him.
The woman turned her attention toward him and began walking over.
Jin staggered after her, thinking,
I don’t think I can handle her too. What do I do?
Her steps looked unusually light, and in his current condition, he could not see any chance of winning.
He had earned enough experience points now.
Should he take the perk he had already chosen in his mind?
As Jin seriously considered it, Mikel spoke to the approaching woman.
“The deal… it’s still on, right?”
“The item first.”
The exact same answer as before.
Mikel pressed his lips together, but apparently understood that he had no choice.
He took the ring out from inside his clothes.
Then he carefully placed it on his palm.
Elegant curves.
Strange lettering covering its surface.
And an uncanny red glow that immediately drew the eye.
That’s the artifact?
It definitely looks special.
But doesn’t it feel kind of unpleasant?
Jin narrowed his eyes and studied the ring.
At the same time, hidden from sight, he kept wiggling his fingers, toes, and joints, waiting for his battered body to recover enough to move properly.
“…I took it out earlier because I thought something like this might happen. Since I kept clinging to the case like my life depended on it, you naturally assumed it was inside, right?”
Mikel let out a quiet, wheezing laugh and continued slowly.
“I’ll take three hundred million. So kill that blood-covered bastard over there, and you can take the item. That’s all I need.”
“…?”
Jin tilted his head.
What is this idiot talking about in front of the woman who was about to run off in the first place?
But when he looked more closely, he realized something.
Mikel’s eyes were unfocused, and his entire body was covered in burns.
It appeared he had been caught in the explosion and was no longer thinking clearly.
Even so, Jin could not dismiss the possibility that the woman might grant his request.
He somehow forced his bent back upright.
Then her cold voice reached his ears.
“That isn’t what we were looking for. Its appearance is a perfect match, but the mana coming from it is far too crude. Even I was fooled until I saw it in person. It is probably an imitation from that era. Haa. This is why I said I hated going out into the field.”
The woman let out a faint sigh and turned away.
Mikel flew into a rage at the sight of her retreating back.
“Hey! Hey! Where are you going, you fucking bitch?! Hey! Hey! Hey! Do you know what I went through because of you?! Hey! You fu—”
His stream of abuse did not last long.
A dagger was embedded in Mikel’s forehead as his head abruptly dropped.
It had sunk so deep that the blade was no longer visible.
The throwing technique was so close to divine that Jin, in his present condition, had no confidence he could have dodged it.
He held his breath and quietly watched.
Then the woman’s voice came from where she seemed to be walking away.
“You’re a solo, aren’t you?”
Apparently, it was not a question that required an answer.
Before Jin could say anything, she continued.
“You can keep the ring.”
“Are you sure?”
“But deliver a message to your client.”
Her pale blue eyes flashed coldly for an instant.
“I’ll let this go today. But if they keep giving in to greed, the city government’s blade will come for them.”