1.
Have you ever heard the phrase “illegal orphan” before?
For most people, this would be the first time.
Even I had only ever called them orphans. I never thought to stick the word “illegal” in front of it.
It happened on a rainy day.
Amidst the hazy, neon-soaked nightscape of Punk Road.
I met a girl.
Tap-tap-tap.
The rain blurred my vision.
A heavy downpour was falling, and the girl looked up at me, wrapped in a rag that couldn't even keep out the damp.
On the planet Punk Road, authority and status were determined by the cartridge you were born with. With levels reaching up to 99, your level was the absolute proof of your social standing and class.
But a cartridge you were born with...
could never be changed.
It was impossible to raise it; impossible to alter your level.
The reason this girl had been kicked and knocked down by passersby just moments ago was simple.
LV.0
This girl was not a recognized citizen of Punk Road.
Illegal refugees who had slipped in, or stateless people who couldn’t even prove their identity, were stuck at level zero. People looked at them as if their very existence were a crime, despising them regardless of what they did.
An illegal orphan whom nobody cared for.
The reason I became interested in this kid was simple.
She was the one who had just triggered something in me—for the first time, a status window appeared before my eyes.
[ 1. Pick up the illegal orphan. ]
[ 2. Don’t pick up the illegal orphan. ]
“...What is this?”
I stared at the blue window floating in the air and spoke in disbelief.
It was so ridiculous it was almost funny. After all the time I’d spent surviving on Punk Road as a mere laborer, I’d somehow been blessed with a perk as amazing as a status window.
I hadn’t even known it existed.
This was the first time one of these windows had ever appeared.
Back when I first fell into this world, I’d looked up at the sky like a lunatic and shouted, “Status window! Status! System!” but nothing had happened.
And now, only now, it was finally revealing itself.
“Haa.”
In any case, I had no idea what these choices actually meant.
But the choice was right there in front of me.
The illegal orphan had collapsed at my feet.
I had to make a decision.
Ignore this girl, or stretch my already nonexistent finances to add one more mouth to feed and raise her like precious cargo.
My thoughts spun rapidly, and I made my choice.
After all, if there was even the tiniest chance...
If the girl in front of me might somehow be a five-star, SSR-rank character...
Then adding another mouth to feed wasn’t such a bad gamble.
My brain, soaked in dopamine, thought exactly that.
Besides, wasn’t the reason I’d ended up on this land because I’d kept piling up debt until I crashed?
My nature was to throw the dice on even the smallest gamble, without fail.
That was the fate I’d been born with.
It had always been that way.
Why had I been fired from my job as a pro gamer?
Because I’d been taking my salary to Thailand and the United States to gamble overseas, and I got caught.
Damn it, if I’d just been a little more careful, I could’ve milked that for five more years.
Back then, I had the skill and a solid fanbase, but in the end, I was kicked out because I couldn’t quit the rush.
After that, I kept wandering in search of something to fill the void in my broken brain.
Family, friends, some nameless loan shark—it didn’t matter.
I borrowed money, gambled, lost some days, and won on others.
Whenever a gacha game came out, I’d only play for the pulls, savoring the thrill of landing a five-star or SSR, and then I'd quit the game immediately.
The beautiful pleasure of winning against the odds.
I even tried extreme sports.
Wingsuit flying, motorcycles, diving.
I tried everything to satisfy my senses, but in the end, I only really stuck with wingsuit flying.
For a while, I lived buried in gambling, crypto, and gacha. Then, unable to handle the mountain of debt growing over my head, I jumped off a rooftop to end it all.
I’d even gone to a doctor and talked about it, but in the end, I was beyond fixing.
There was even a time my family nearly had me locked away in a mental hospital. I trashed the place and tried to stage a mass escape.
After being permanently banned by the psychiatric hospital that had grown sick of me, I stopped looking at hospitals altogether.
I’d jumped off that rooftop gladly just to escape the debt collectors.
But I never expected to be given a second life.
Replaying my life after possession really is a hell of a thing.
I thought that too.
Never in my life had I imagined that a man who died after throwing away his fortune gambling would be given a second chance.
“Hey, kid.”
The silver-haired girl with dead eyes looked up at me.
“Want to come with me? Of course, there’s no option where you don’t.”
There are no heroines here to help me in this possessed other world.
No kind saintess with strong holy power, no stereotypical tsundere mage, no cold kuudere thief, no sweet megadere maid. None of that existed.
The light returned to the eyes of the girl I’d thought was dead.
And immediately after, she pulled a dagger from around her ankle and swung it at me.
Well, well.
Even cats hiss at strangers the first time they meet.
Would a person be any different?
Especially an illegal orphan on Punk Road, with no one to trust. Of course this was normal.
Without thinking, I opened my palm and blocked the dagger.
A chilling sound rang out, and the blade sliced across my hand.
“Come with... Aaaagh, fuck!?”
Ah, I was trying to act cool for a second there.
Why does it hurt more than I expected!?
Kyaaa!
The dagger was buried in my palm, and blood poured down.
The girl had lost her only weapon because of my hand.
She looked at me rolling around in the mud with utter contempt.
Poise? I don’t have that. You think I can get a dagger shoved through my hand and not even scream?
Seeing me rolling across the wet ground, the girl turned and tried to run. But before she could, I reached out with my uninjured hand, grabbed the rag around her neck, and slammed her down.
“Huu... damn, that hurts.”
The girl’s eyes filled with fear.
It had been a single act of resistance, and it had failed.
Instead, she closed her eyes, unable to face what I might do next.
“Why are you closing your eyes?”
“...?”
“Damn it, my palm hurts. Feels like I’m gonna die.”
She’d probably closed her eyes because she thought I might hurt her.
But this girl had only one meaning to me.
She was for confirming the choice.
Nothing more, nothing less.
“Okay, from now on you only have one choice: come with me.”
“...You think I’d just obediently follow you?”
She glared at me like a hissing kitten.
I didn’t care about the hissing.
If this kept up, there’d be no chance of getting close. At this rate, even if I woke up with a knife in my neck, I’d have to accept it as normal.
I roughly yanked the dagger out of my palm and threw it back at the girl.
“Ghh, damn that hurts. There, is that enough to trust me?”
I gave her back the only weapon she had.
If she really fought tooth and nail not to come with me, there was nothing I could do anyway.
This much was necessary to earn her trust.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing, nothing. A little while ago, a divine revelation came down and gave me a choice: take you with me or leave you behind.”
“...What?”
“Don’t look at me like I’m some complete lunatic.”
It hurts my feelings when people look at me like that.
You cheeky little brat.
“Anyway, come with me. I want to escape this gutter someday.”
“...”
“Of course, refusal is not an option. If you don’t come with me, I’ll annoy you purely through persistence.”
I grit my teeth.
I know she’s young and can’t really do anything. If I were an adult saying this, she wouldn’t even be able to refuse.
“...Then can you promise me one thing?”
“What?”
“Don’t touch my body.”
“No problem. I’m not into little kids like you. I like big-chested, pretty women.”
I lowered the dagger I’d been aiming at her.
The girl still looked suspicious, but perhaps she couldn’t reject the only stranger who had suddenly appeared to help her.
She nodded.
“I’ll follow you. I don’t have... a choice.”
“...Good.”
Now then, let’s see what choice the system gave us.
[ 1. Pick up the illegal orphan. ]
Only number 1 remained, shining brightly after number 2 vanished.
“No, hey.”
That was it.
The briefly shining first choice disappeared just like the second one, and all that was left for me was an LV.0 illegal orphan.
“...Fuck?”
This wasn’t what I wanted.
My amazing status window and choices had just run away on me?
“No, my choice!!!”
The girl stared at me shouting into empty air as if I were a total lunatic.
Did she hear the sound of my yelling?
From the alley behind us, I heard rustling.
“Y-you. Hand over everything you’ve got.”
He was wearing a rag similar to the girl’s.
Probably one of the drifters who’d staked out this back alley.
The homeless man pointed a crudely made dagger at me and glared. But in the way he looked at the girl, I could see a filthy lust mixed in.
I know.
I know what kind of world this is.
Looking at the homeless man, I took a light step forward.
Toward that idiot who thought he had the advantage just because he held a weapon.
I closed the distance in an instant and struck first.
“Ghk, gyaaah!”
He must not have expected me to throw a punch.
With my fist driven straight into his face, the homeless man went flying before he could even make a clumsy stab.
Of course, it’s best not to pick a fight with someone holding a knife. If muggings weren’t so common on Punk Road, I would’ve tucked my tail and run.
But.
What I’d learned was this.
This world does not care about the weak.
There are no homeless shelters or gambling addiction centers here like there were in Korea.
If you’re weak, you fall. If you’re strong, you rise.
What a simple, clear-cut world.
The homeless man’s face caved in.
His teeth flew out in a spray, and blood streamed from his nose.
“Khk, ugh! P-please... spare me...”
Just a moment ago he’d been pointing a knife at me, and now he was staring at me with fear in his eyes.
Killing a person.
The weight of it should not be light.
But such thoughts cannot come before your own survival.
You can’t survive on a pathetic little shred of pity.
Any future threat must be eliminated completely.
That was also a lesson I was teaching this kid.
“P-please, spare me—!”
I picked up the crude knife the homeless man had dropped.
He didn’t even seem to have the strength left to run.
“If you’re going to take what belongs to others, you’d better be ready to have your own taken too.”
That was the first principle and belief I set down after falling into this world.
I would never forget what kind of world I was standing in.
And the second principle I set down after that.
At the very least, I...
would never let go of what I held in my hands, and I would take it all to the grave.
Sticky blood smeared over my hand.
Then I turned and looked at the girl.
“Come to think of it, we never even introduced ourselves. My name is... Adrian. Nice to meet you!”
“...”
“Ah, is it weird to shake hands with blood on mine?”
I wiped my hand roughly on my clothes.
The bloodstain remained on my shirt, but I didn’t care.
When I held my hand out again, the girl stared at it for a moment. Then, after a brief hesitation, she took my hand.
“I’m Silver Wolf. I don’t know if we’ll keep traveling together, but nice to meet you.”
That was the first meeting between me and the girl.
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