1.
The next day.
We were in an open lot, studying the Path of Destiny.
Or rather, not studying—testing.
I wanted to see just how far I could push this ability called the Path of Destiny.
Sky Leap was a technique I had devised while thinking about a clown’s acrobatics.
If it was related to Pleasure, or even just connected to it, then naturally the Path of Destiny’s linkage would grow stronger.
For example.
Like this die I’d just created.
“Hmm...”
“So this is the new ability you came up with?”
Silver Wolf stared at the die, her face pale.
She mentioned she’d had a rough morning because she’d drunk far too much the night before.
“It’s the most basic form of gambling.”
“...Gambling.”
Gambling, huh.
People's perceptions of gambling are always the same.
Something you should never get involved with?
A pastime reserved for dopamine addicts or those whose brains have rotted away?
It's hard to argue with the truth.
The difference is that when a billionaire born into wealth gambles, it’s called entertainment.
When a poor commoner gambles, it’s called insanity.
“Dice Roll!!!”
“I swear, you’re unbelievable.”
This die was the concentrated mass of my hopes and desires.
The dopamine needed to fill the void in my head after being unable to visit a gambling den lately.
My second ability.
[1]
“Ah, shit, seriously!!!”
“And what happens if that comes up?”
“Adrian Servet’s stats are cut in half.”
“...???”
My strength drained out of me as if I were a wrung-out rag.
The second ability I’d imagined was a simple dice game.
If a high number came up, I’d grow stronger.
If a low number came up... I’d end up in a miserable state.
Sky Leap had also been a technique I improvised to break through a crisis in the moment.
This kind of high-stakes volatility suited my natural tendencies better.
Huh? Adrian’s status?
Congratulations!
Adrian has clearly and indisputably regressed from the King of Rank 7 to a Rank 8 loser fixer!
“That drop is way too brutal...”
“Isn’t this too dependent on luck? What if you’re in the middle of a fight and the die rolls a 1?”
“On the flip side, that means it could roll a 6.”
“I don’t usually say this, but are you insane?”
!Congratulations!
You’ve successfully been called insane by Silver Wolf for the first time!
“What am I supposed to do without you, seriously...”
“Huh? That line actually moved me a little.”
It felt like a wife worrying about her husband.
I’d never experienced anything like that.
Silver Wolf, who had always seemed so tiny, had grown so much!
“What about the cooldown?”
“I set it as short as possible for testing, so... about five minutes?”
“That’s not bad.”
If it was a short-term debuff instead of a long-term buff, it was usable.
I’d never seen how others handled the Path of Pleasure.
For now, I’d just have to keep flailing around on my own.
“Honestly, Sky Leap seems more efficient...”
“You said it was a technique related to acrobatics. Don’t you have anything else?”
“If I could just whip up techniques however I wanted, do you think I’d be in this position...”
Then I’d be like those regression freaks from the novels.
I alone know the ending of this world.
That kind of thing, probably.
“Silver Wolf, can you use that thing you used last time again?”
“Huh? Ah, if I try, I think I could...”
Silver Wolf avoided my eyes.
She looked like she didn’t want to do it.
Come to think of it, last time she’d summoned that small, round Pac-Man thing and paid for it by bleeding profusely.
It didn’t seem like something she could maintain for long, either.
It felt more like she had squeezed it out in a crisis, forcing the ability to manifest.
...Wait a second. The real protagonist isn’t Silver Wolf, is it?
I’m the protagonist, right?
The debuff from the dice game ended.
I stretched my stiff body and stood up.
“All right, let’s get back to work.”
“...Adrian, maybe you should rest a little.”
“Nah, Silver Wolf. If you’re tired, go home and rest first. I’ll handle everything!”
Finally, it was my turn.
Time to crush the weak!!!
Silver Wolf still looked pale, so I could just tell her to rest while I carried the load.
We’d killed three Rank 7s. Maybe we’d already become incredibly famous?
“...I’ll go too.”
“Huh? If you’re tired, you can go in and rest. I’ll finish the job and bring back something tasty.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“Silver Wolf! You finally realized how important I am!”
“You want to go home?”
“No way! Come here!”
I cuddled Silver Wolf for a while.
Then we headed to the pawnshop where the frog-faced old man was.
The city was unusually quiet today, but that didn’t matter.
Maybe word had spread that two Rank 7s had died, so everyone was keeping their heads down.
When we reached the pawnshop, the shutter was down and the door was firmly shut, which was unusual.
“Old man, we’re here!”
I shouted while banging on the shutter.
This guy almost never went outside.
Most of the time he stayed inside the pawnshop, right? And it was quest time now, so he should definitely be home.
Five minutes passed.
Ten.
“No way.”
Did those damn Rank 7 bastards send people to the pawnshop when they attacked us?
It wasn’t impossible.
They had plenty of numbers when they came after us.
It would have been easy to peel off a few and send them to the pawnshop.
“Old man!!! No!!! Don’t die!!!”
To shake off my anxiety, I joked around and started raising the shutter.
For some reason, it went up smoothly.
“...Fuck.”
The shutter rose.
The interior came into view.
“Old man!”
Silver Wolf shouted and ran inside.
The window was shattered.
The smell of blood, which had been hidden before, began to spread.
There was a strange tree branch growing out of the old man’s body, and bloodstains were painted around it like a macabre picture.
“Don’t fucking do this...”
Why, again?
What the hell was the problem?
This wasn’t just a death without resistance.
It was more like a child crushing an ant, playing with it until it died.
A branch blooming between the broken body and the head that had been sent flying.
The tree with ginkgo leaves had withered before it could even bear flowers.
I approached and carefully touched the branch.
“This is...”
“Adrian.”
It was a power similar to mine.
In other words, the Path of Destiny.
Someone with the Path of Destiny attacked the old man and killed him?
Or had the old man hidden the fact that he possessed the Path of Destiny?
The questions only multiplied.
He wasn’t a bad person.
He was the kind of guy who didn’t usually do anything to earn resentment.
Why?
“Silver Wolf, come out.”
“But... at least the body—”
“This isn’t the time. Get out, now!”
Silence.
Why hadn’t I noticed?
The city was too quiet.
It had sunk into an eerie, terrifying stillness, like something submerged at the bottom of the sea.
Inside Neon City, the dazzling neon signs and the lights of the skyscrapers were still shining, but the outskirts receiving that light were frighteningly silent.
“It’s coming.”
“Wh-who is? Adrian, don’t squeeze my hand so hard. It hurts...”
The woman I absolutely could not beat at this level.
The monster that had put an end to my second life.
“Silver Wolf, go.”
“And you...?”
“Run without looking back. No matter what, don’t look back.”
I grabbed Silver Wolf’s face and spoke firmly.
Our eyes met.
“...No.”
“Silver Wolf!”
“At least explain properly! I need to know what’s going on if we’re going to run together...!”
Step, step.
Footsteps drew closer.
“Adrian Servet.”
That voice I could never get used to.
“Fuck!!! Sky Leap!!!”
Without even considering the recoil, I unleashed Sky Leap at full power.
Without looking back, I wrapped Silver Wolf in my arms and launched myself into the air.
Only now did I realize a person could actually fly if they jumped hard enough.
My legs screamed in pain, but as the wind brushed past, I—upside down in the air—met that woman’s eyes.
A clean white coat.
A candy-colored evening dress.
A slender scalpel.
It really was that bitch.
“Adrian!!!”
“Silver Wolf, the ring! Give me the ring!!!”
Silver Wolf threw the ring she’d been wearing on her ring finger to me, and I snatched it out of the air.
Distance didn’t matter.
That woman had already finished raising her scalpel and was ready to slice me in half.
Was this really the right time to use it?
Using it wouldn’t make my chances of winning very high.
But if I didn’t use it,
Silver Wolf, held tight in my arms, would definitely die.
An already failed loop.
A meaningless act.
A worthless waste.
So what?
Fuck, if I’d spent my life calculating profit and loss, I wouldn’t have ended up buried in the gutter like this.
What’s in my hands right now—
I’ll protect it no matter what.
“Come on already!!! Good Fortune!!!”
Because it’s Good Fortune!!!
At least once, it’ll let me dodge!!!
The ring shone gold.
Bright yellow traces of gold began to drift through the air.
A slash that would cut me in two.
Sensing it, I reflexively twisted my body to evade it.
“...You dodged that?”
For the first time, surprise flickered in the woman’s eyes.
I wasn’t sure if I should call it surprise, though. It was more like the feeling of a psychopath seeing something refuse to go the way she wanted.
“Stay there, you bitch!!! We’re leaving!!!”
Since it was Good Fortune, it should at least cancel out the recoil from Sky Leap, right?
I was an idiot for expecting that.
“Agh!!”
“Kyah!”
I landed by rolling across the rooftop of a building.
I’d shielded Silver Wolf with my body.
My whole body ached.
That bastard Aha.
You call this Good Fortune?
Is this luck?
You said if it wasn’t 0%, you could make it 100%!!!
Does that mean the chance of me landing without getting hurt was 0%!?
“What a total scammer...”
“Adrian, that woman...!”
“Silver Wolf, don’t think. Just run.”
I picked up Silver Wolf, whose face was still ghastly, and ran.
Just to put even a little distance between us and that monster.
But then a strange thought suddenly hit me.
Silver Wolf was always the one who tried to prepare something before a fight.
So why wasn’t she using Ether Editing now?
Was this another accident caused by Good Fortune?
My thoughts kept spiraling.
She’d saved me when my body was in a state where I should have died?
When I’d overused the power of the Path of Destiny to the point that the backlash should have killed me?
And then there was the condition for that woman’s appearance.
Cartridge.
“Ha, ha...”
“Adrian, we need to run now...!”
“Cartridge.”
Pale face.
A body so cold it wouldn’t be strange if she died at any moment.
“Silver Wolf, where is your cartridge?”
“...”
If I called up the status window, only the normal status window appeared.
Even if I tried to pull out the LV.9 cartridge I currently had, it wouldn’t come out.
There was a reason for it.
“Where is the cartridge!”
“...W-why? We need to run first.”
Like a child who’d done something wrong.
She couldn’t meet my eyes, clearly at a loss.
There are no miracles without a price.
What had Silver Wolf paid as the cost for using her cartridge?
If I’d thought faster and used my head, maybe I could have figured it out. Maybe I could have realized the truth sooner and changed it. But even with the truth right in front of me, I kept choosing to think only in the best possible way, and this was the price.
“You...”
“Ugh... seriously! If I saved you, just be grateful and take it!”
Silver Wolf shoved my chest and hit me.
“First, we have to survive.”
“...You.”
“Me? I’m fine too. I just became normal, that’s all.”
Lie.
Pale face.
Bloodless body.
Even a short run left her breathless, and her whole body was unstable.
Things I hadn’t been able to see before were now visible.
I wiped my dry face and looked at Silver Wolf.
“Hey, you little bitch!!! Who asked you to save me!? You should’ve just let me die there!!!”
“If I saved you, be grateful for it!! And watch your mouth!!!”
I can just regress anyway.
I felt awful.
Even when I’d been in debt.
Even when I’d been kicked out of the team.
Even when I’d been cut out of the family registry, I hadn’t felt this bad.
That filthy feeling of clawing your way up from the bottom.
It would’ve been better to just die cleanly.
This loop was a clear failure.
Silver Wolf didn’t have much time left, and behind us, a crazy woman with a knife was chasing us.
The ending was already decided.
Then, even if this world was going to disappear, I’d give it the best ending I could.
“Silver Wolf.”
“...What.”
“This time, your big brother’s really going to show you something amazing.”
The hidden-strong cliché.
Here we go.
“Temporal Prism.”
[WARNING!!!]
[WARNING!!!]
[WARNING!!!]
[The lifespan already consumed can never be recovered in this loop.]
“Proceed.”
I couldn’t let the final moment be the worst one.
I’d burn everything I had and tie up this story with Silver Wolf here and now.
[Select the amount of lifespan to consume.]
“Everything except one day.”
“Adrian, what are you... doing?”
“Just a second. Wait just a second.”
I didn’t care if I met the worst ending without thinking about it.
But Silver Wolf was different.
Right now, in this moment, after meeting her and spending time with her.
I couldn’t turn my back on Silver Wolf, who had saved me and believed in me.
[Loading....]
[Select.]
Three choices rose up in my mind.
[Path of Pleasure]
[Path of Preservation]
[Path of Trailblaze]
Only one of them was familiar.
Only Pleasure, which I’d already handled before.
I pressed Pleasure.
Red began to seep over the golden haze that had been covering it under the influence of Good Fortune.
- Look■
After the red spread over the status window, a grotesque, warped noise rang out, like the time I’d been under Aha’s gaze.
- You■re ■
- The■ ■most ■nteresting■■?
Blood flowed from my ears.
My body staggered, and I braced myself on the ground with one hand.
- Cartridge level ■■, LV.■ and ■V.■
- O■, Er■o■, E■■or, ■류, ■■
- Confirm existence of ■ cartridge that can exist
A ringing filled my ears.
The world was being overlaid.
- Your ■■■ level, confirm
- Cartridge level ■■ adjustment
- LV.■■■
A curtain was falling over the world.
Like blacking out the audience with a stage curtain before a play begins, before showing them something important.
Paint spread.
Somehow, a mask had been tilted onto my face.
“Silver Wolf, let’s go.”
“No, we need to run first!”
“Wouldn’t it be a shame to end the story like this?”
My hair had gone white.
My clothes, too, were no longer the shabby fixer outfit—they had changed at some point into a sharp suit.
Silver Wolf’s outfit changed as well.
Not ordinary clothes, but attire that could only be described as that of a Punk Road hacker.
“H-how...?”
Seeing my suddenly transformed appearance and her own, Silver Wolf looked stunned.
I could feel it instinctively too.
This power was a force that came infinitely close to the name of a god.
- Only ■
- I ■will take ■the rest!
The Temporal Prism floating above my hand shattered.
Reduced to fine dust, it scattered into rainbow light and vanished.
“How petty, for something called a god.”
“Th-this is...”
A dazed expression.
Even with different clothes, she was still just as cute.
Let’s go finish this.
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