1.
She played with a joystick every day.
A fast-food restaurant with only her as the employee.
An arcade converted from a basement.
A few old game cabinets.
That was her childhood.
She had no legal name or ID number.
All she had was a nickname given to her by the woman who owned the fast-food shop.
Because she had silver hair and wolf-sharp eyes.
[Silver Wolf]
She had no friends.
But she was never lonely.
She loved playing Pong. One glowing dot, two horizontal lines.
The simplest ping-pong game.
She never got tired of it, even if she played all day.
She loved Battle Wheel 32. Eight differently colored pieces on a starry sky made of grids.
There was only one rule.
Win first place by any means necessary.
She played all kinds of games—Geometric War, Odysseus, Star Cheetah...
The scoreboards for those games were filled with astronomical numbers left behind by customers who had visited over the years.
She played with the joystick every day.
Until only one person’s name remained at the top of every scoreboard.
She set the joystick down.
She looked at the empty basement.
There had been many people who stopped by for a while. Few stayed long.
Many left, but few ever came back.
By the time even the last game had reached its end, she...
blinked a few times and touched the arcade machines in the basement.
That night, the fast-food shop’s only employee said goodbye to the owner and left.
The game called [Basement] ended on that day.
What was a game to her?
A refuge where she could turn away from a brutal reality?
You can’t stay a child forever.
You have to grow up.
Leave.
Fall into the abyss all alone and stand on your own.
LV.0, a lonely journey.
She thought she would be alone forever, even as time passed.
And then she met a man.
“Hey, kid.”
“......”
“Want to come with me? Of course, there’s no option to say no.”
From that day on.
Every day, every moment, every hour, every life with you was a festival and a game.
2.
After falling from a building in Neon City.
What washed over my body was a brief sense of floating.
Cause of death: falling.
This was the second fall.
With the sound of my head smashing apart, I drifted through the void. Fear swept over my body, but my mind had no room to care about that.
The sensation of being crushed returned.
My vision flipped, and sunlight pierced through the clouds and poured down on me.
Silver Wolf was in my arms.
This was the moment right before I handed her the cartridge in front of the fast-food restaurant.
The silence was unbearable. I bit my lip. I wanted to say something, but no words came out. I held Silver Wolf tightly and did not let go of our joined hands.
“Adrian?”
“......”
Emotion rippled in my chest.
A nauseating sense of wrongness and anger forced its way up my throat.
“You... are you crying?”
“Silver Wolf.”
“Are you okay? What’s wrong? Does something hurt?”
“Wait.”
What I had let go of.
What I was too weak to protect.
“Wait. Let’s stay like this.”
I thought I wouldn’t have any lingering attachment.
I thought I wouldn’t regret it.
It was precious.
And because I had thrown everything away and fought back with everything I had.
I thought I wouldn’t feel that kind of emotion.
But I was wrong.
The last words she left behind dug into my heart like a thorn-tipped drill and would not disappear.
The sense of loss I hadn’t even felt when I severed my own bloodline.
Because the hollow ache of loss was gnawing at me.
I could do nothing but hold Silver Wolf in my arms without saying a word.
3.
On a meaningless table.
I cracked open the fruit soju Silver Wolf liked and drank straight from the bottle.
Silver Wolf had stayed home alone to practice Ether Editing. Since I already had the power of the Path of Destiny, my body adapted right away without any practice at all.
“Krrr...”
Clearly, at this point, I was not walking the Path of Destiny.
But instinctively, I knew I had already stepped onto that orbit, and I could use the power of Pleasure regardless.
“Damn it... what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
I felt lost.
I could clearly make better choices than I could in the past.
But I still couldn’t do anything the way I used to when I was a kid.
Part of me wanted to go all-out, all-out, all-out.
But I also needed time to let my body relax.
If I kept living like that, I’d break. I had spent four full months running nonstop without a single break. Now it was time to let my body and brain loosen up, to let go of the thoughts and the strength for a while.
But only after I finished what I had to do.
The ones who had nearly killed me.
The ones who had brought that psycho sword saint bitch here.
Those three Japanese 7-ranks.
I had to kill those bastards, at least.
I stood up from the table, downing the soju bottle in one go.
Maybe because my body had been enhanced, I didn’t feel drunk at all.
“Mister~”
“......So now you’re drunk?”
Seeing the face of the pawnshop owner, the one who had been caught up in all this, made me oddly glad.
Still, I had gotten my revenge for him. I’d worn down that near-world’s-strongest bitch until she burned through her own lifespan and broke.
“Explain the ginkgo leaf!”
“......The ginkgo leaf?”
“You know how to walk the Path of Destiny! So why the hell did you scam me, you piece of shit!!!”
If this old man had only taught me.
After beating those two 7-ranks to a pulp, I could’ve enjoyed a happy, happy Neon City life with Silver Wolf.
“You...”
“Ah, can you see this? I, Adrian Servet, have finally been reborn as the undisputed king of the 7-ranks...”
“Pleasure?”
“How the hell did you know that right away???”
What the hell.
Was this guy not just a normal pawnshop owner?
I’m feeling seriously betrayed.
I thought he was a comrade who’d climbed up from the bottom with me!!!
“I did expect you’d walk that Path.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You’re obviously Pleasure.”
“It’s not a good thing to judge people so quickly.”
Was he actually a hidden powerhouse?
Not some pathetic Neon City underclass loser like me?
“So why’d you come here all of a sudden?”
“The 7-ranks with Japanese names—one’s Yuto, one’s Ren, and the other one I don’t know.”
“What about them?”
“I’m going to go kill them.”
“Don’t. They run an office together, and they’ve got plenty of 8-ranks under them too.”
“Just tell me where they are!”
The pawnshop owner clamped his mouth shut, apparently with no intention of telling me.
“Waaah!!! Tell me!!!”
“......What are you, a brat?”
I flopped down and threw a tantrum in full rain-soaked-kid mode.
The pawnshop owner didn’t react, probably thinking I’d get embarrassed and stand up after a while.
I, Adrian Servet.
I was not that easy to handle.
After a full three hours of tantrums and shouting, the pawnshop owner threw up both hands and surrendered.
“You’re seriously insane. There’s no one who suits the word Pleasure more than you.”
“Could you please stop mentioning that utterly useless Path...”
“?”
Pleasure?
Already, the image in my head was incompetence itself.
A power full of abstract concepts that was a guaranteed loss if luck didn’t favor you.
If any other Aeon so much as glanced at me, I’d switch sides in a heartbeat.
THANK YOU, Pleasure Adrian Servet.
WELCOME, Trailblaze and Preservation Adrian Servet.
I’m always waiting for your call.
What a golden opportunity to use a regressor as a subordinate!
Aeon of Trailblaze and Lord Qlipoth of Preservation, please contact me anytime. I, Adrian Servet, am ready to obey like a dog if it’s the word of an Aeon.
“I told you where they are. The rest is on you.”
“I’ll go cut off all their heads before this tea gets cold...”
“As if.”
I went to the location he gave me.
I sat down in front of the office that reeked of Japan.
“Thump-thump-clap, thump-thump! Should I show you the hand I’ve got...!”
Of course, even with Sky Leap, there was no way I could storm in alone and cause a scene.
I might end up becoming A/d/r/i/a/n if I screwed around.
Sky Leap wasn’t my only trick.
I had one more ability, just in case.
Dice Roll.
It was simple enough that even an elementary school kid could understand it.
Set up buffs and debuffs with a 10-minute limit.
Then roll the dice.
Until a high number comes out.
「1」 「2」 「1」 「3」 「4」 「5」 「3」 「4」 「1」 「2」 「1」
“??? Seriously, stop screwing with me.”
How was a 6 not coming up even once?
The expected value had already been surpassed, hadn’t it?
By the time I had spent over 110 minutes glaring at the office,
the number I wanted finally came up.
「6」
Power surged deep inside my body.
Preparation complete.
Right now, I was a 6-rank who had surpassed even the 7-ranks perfectly.
I was completely different from those 7-ranks who only had power because of augmentation.
“Adrian is coming!!!”
I kicked the door open and made my entrance.
The door flew through the air and smashed the window to pieces.
“Who the hell are you now!”
“A Japanese butcher.”
After lightly splitting the head of the fixer sitting in the chair with my hatchet,
I moved so fast they couldn’t even react and cut down the throats of the four people in front of me.
“You bastard! Why the hell are you storming in here all of a sudden...!”
“Die!!!”
Your crime?
Bullying a passerby and driving me to death.
I crushed a man’s face with my bare fist.
The red spear I’d experienced a few times already shot toward me, but it looked as slow as slow motion.
“Osoi.”
“......You dodged that?”
The 7-rank who had annoyed me over and over by firing that spear.
“I’ll kill you first.”
“Like hell I’ll die that easily!”
“Sky Leap.”
The 7-rank reflexively hunched down, gripping the spear and preparing to fight.
His eyes were wide open as his head flew off and he stared at me.
My legs ached, but thanks to the dice buff, the pain was dulled. Maybe because I’d been smashing the skulls of every 8-rank I saw, the only ones left were the 7-ranks called Ren and Yuto.
“D-damn it... why are you doing this to us!!!”
“That’s the law of the city. You were eyesores, so you die.”
If you hadn’t attacked us back then.
If that bastard Yuto hadn’t protected his own people after they’d done wrong.
None of this would’ve happened.
It had all been erased by time rewinding, yes.
But I remembered.
I would remember every moment of my time, without forgetting a single second.
That was why I had to kill them with my own hands.
Ren rushed at me with a Japanese sword in hand.
Yuto charged like a beast, swinging a blood-red fist.
“Look at this pathetic punch.”
To have been hit by this kind of thing.
That’s a little embarrassing.
“Sky Leap.”
Adrian’s body check!
The effect was tremendous!
I slammed the guy swinging his bare fist into the wall with a body check.
Then, when the Japanese sword came slashing in to exploit the opening, I grabbed it with one hand and smashed it with my hatchet until it broke.
Blood streamed from my hand.
Then I crushed Ren’s face with my bare fist.
“Hk, cough...”
“Die. Just die already. I want you to die in agony. All of you.”
Again and again.
I spat out those cursed words and drove my fists forward.
My fists were soaked red with blood, and they couldn’t even fight back.
Even after Ren’s breath was gone, I kept swinging until his head was smashed and the floor cracked.
“......Hiiik. P-please, spare me.”
“Why would I?”
I grabbed the last 7-rank, who had been cowering against the wall and trying to crawl away.
After swinging my hatchet and cutting off all four of his limbs, I looked down at the guy left with only a head on top of his body.
“K-kill me... damn it.”
“Swearing?”
I gave him the same treatment.
I lit a lighter, searing the wounds with fire, then smashed his face a few times with my bare fist until it was ruined.
“......”
“Ah, did he die?”
I shouldn’t have let this bastard die so easily.
My hand had moved first.
I staggered to my feet and searched the office.
What I found were bundles of credit points and documents wrapped together with stacks of bills.
After taking only the things that could be sold for money, I looked up at the sky.
“......At least I got my revenge, Silver Wolf.”
Something that had been erased.
Self-satisfaction.
If Silver Wolf had been here, she might have grabbed my arm and stopped me.
But I couldn’t help it.
Because I remembered everything, I had to do at least something like this.
Otherwise, I might go insane.
Remember kids, Regression = Depression 99% of the time. The 1% are a different kind of insanity.