1.
"Ah! I want to get stronger!!!"
"Don’t yell that so loud, idiot."
It was day one of Hanabi joining us.
Nothing much had happened.
I’d even suspected the troupe leader might kick the door open and storm in like some psycho sword saint.
But nothing like that happened overnight.
It was a perfectly uneventful day.
Hanabi was rolling up the blankets and tidying them into a corner while watching us.
She kept sneaking looks at us like someone sitting on a bed of nails.
She’d completely fallen into a what do we do now? state.
Even if the world ended tomorrow, we still had work to do.
We didn’t even have a clue what kind of [quest] this was, let alone any real lead, so I’d lost all motivation.
I stepped out onto the balcony, lit a cigarette, and took a drag.
"This is seriously fucking awful."
"If something’s bothering you, talk to me."
"Gah!"
Silver Wolf had followed me out without me noticing.
She sat on the chair and leaned over my shoulder to look at me.
Hmm.
Hmmmm...
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Come here for a second."
We had a little happy time.
"Nngh, you really are... a pervert."
"Thank you for the abuse."
After fully charging Silver Wolf to 100 percent, I sat her on my lap, leaving a red mark on the back of her neck.
Many hands make light work.
I explained my situation to Silver Wolf while complaining about it in a roundabout way.
"Isn’t that basically fever time?"
"Huh?"
"If proficiency and synchronization rate both go up tenfold... this isn’t the time to sit around. We should be doing something!"
So this was the difference between me and Han Siu, that pathetic life loser.
She was already thinking about moving right away.
"Agh, don’t pull my ear!"
"Come on, hurry up!"
Silver Wolf dragged me out by the ear.
Hanabi got dragged out too, as a bonus, by Silver Wolf.
"Why am I coming too...?"
"I don’t tolerate freeloaders."
"I’m not a freeloader!"
The first place we went was the pawnshop.
Wasn’t it always a good place to visit whenever we took a request?
"...You’ve got another woman now?"
"My face is pretty good, after all."
"If you get stabbed in the gut, don’t come crying to me. Jealousy is the most complicated mess in the world."
The pawnshop owner clicked his tongue at Hanabi.
Honestly, I’d rather it were a jealousy mess.
My dream of gambling with women at my side was drifting farther away by the day....
"So you want a request?"
"Yeah, old man. Give us a request."
"Something hard?"
"Yeah."
The pawnshop owner rummaged around and pulled out a sheet of paper.
Inside were the reason for the request and the bastards we had to beat down.
"A bunch of gutsy idiots stole something from Oasis."
"What gave them the confidence?"
"No idea. Oasis can’t exactly move openly, so they’re outsourcing it. Mostly rank 7s, with a lot of rank 8s mixed in."
"That’s experience points..."
"This bastard sees people as experience points."
Requests that were awkward for the client to handle directly, and awkward enough that subcontractors didn’t want to touch them, usually had a reason.
There might be someone who was rank 7, but not really rank 7 strong.
"You taking it?"
"Sure, why not."
This wasn’t exactly a warm-up request.
Even if it was a pretty brutal one.
Trial was what made people grow.
If I wanted to properly use this 1000 percent growth multiplier, I had to get tossed around like I was really on the verge of death.
In other words, like Silver Wolf said, this wasn’t the time to sit around smoking and taking it easy.
Even when I chased Hanabi yesterday, a sudden realization had hit me.
Right now, I was basically in the same state as regressors who gobbled up lucky breaks and learned enlightenment like it was part of their daily meals!
Thinking that way, my confidence surged!
"I’ll finish the request fast and come back."
"Hiss, this bastard’s acting so confident that it’s making me nervous..."
Just you wait, my experience points!
The regressor armed with enlightenment is coming!
2.
Putting the troupe and Hanabi aside for the moment.
It was time to level up.
"Silver Wolf."
"What?"
"We should bring freeloading Hanabi here."
"...I’m not a freeloader."
"You are. If you don’t work, you’re a freeloader."
When you’re up against a strong enemy, you’re supposed to build your fundamentals slowly and steadily.
Rushing in without thinking is something only idiots do.
The target was a warehouse abandoned in Scrap Mountain.
That two-story warehouse was the bastards’ hideout.
They were less a fixer office and more a band of raiders.
They outnumbered us by a lot, but the two combatants on our side were one-man armies.
"All right, let’s roll once..."
"You’re rolling the dice now?"
It wasn’t like there was a time limit.
The request was simply to kill all the trash who stole Oasis’s goods and take the goods back.
Oasis.
To be precise, the Oasis Network.
A corporation rooted across Punklorde, and the place where the strongest hacker in the present era resided.
There was someone there who was called a legend.
That was all I knew.
Not many fixers had the guts to mess with a corporation directly.
They knew all too well that only ruin waited at the end of that road.
Those bastards had fallen for a moment’s temptation and ruined their lives.
Honestly, Oasis was more of a cartel than a corporation.
These days, there were a lot of internal conflicts because of that giant interstellar company called the Corporation.
None of my business.
I wasn’t getting involved.
All I had to do was take care of my own bowl.
"Let’s go!"
I rolled the die I’d thrown yesterday, the one that had changed from a six-sided die into a twelve-sided one.
I had no idea why it had changed.
Maybe the growth acceleration had kicked in and evolved it.
The die hit the ground and rolled. Silver Wolf and Sparkle watched it. On each face were patterns and numbers even I, the owner of the die, couldn’t understand.
Last time it came up, the ability I gained from understanding the hacker was the Eye of the Past.
This time...
[11]
"Yeehaw!!!"
A high number.
There was no way a high number could be bad, so I kicked the door open and went in.
"Hey!!! You bastards who look even worse than Japanese fixers!!!"
Hanabi and Silver Wolf stared blankly at my antics.
They looked like they hadn’t expected me to just charge in without preparing anything.
I could see the fixers smoking cigarettes inside.
Along with the number [11], I saw a pattern stretched out like deer antlers and an arrow cutting across the background.
Before they could react, my fingertips naturally extended and moved.
What rose into my hand was a longbow of blue light.
An arrow filled with starlight was nocked to the bow.
Let me show you the ace marksman Adrian Servet of the Sixth Army!
I had never once shot a bow before.
And yet my body moved naturally, as if I’d held one hundreds of times.
Aim.
Target acquisition.
Fire.
With a light whoosh, the arrow flew through the air.
Thwack!
The sound of flesh being crushed.
The head of the man I’d been aiming at burst the instant I released the string.
Blood sprayed out like paint.
The ember of the cigarette he’d been holding scattered, reflecting in my retina.
I could see the others drawing their swords and rushing me, but I was faster.
Even as a Path-walker, my body was acting at an absurdly impossible speed.
"Got you!"
Their movements looked like slow motion.
I drew the bowstring again, and another enemy’s head exploded like a firework.
Hunting beasts.
"Bang! Bang!"
I shouted playfully.
What stood before my eyes were beasts.
The highest HIGH feeling possible. The Path unfolding inside my body spread like a spiderweb, supporting my movements and stuffing my head full of knowledge and common sense about bows.
Silver Wolf joined in late.
Hanabi, who’d come along from a distance, watched me seriously.
"Why’d you run ahead on your own!"
"I’m carrying this!!!"
The slingshot shot down the enemies.
The arrows smashed through the walls and pierced them.
My movements became more familiar than they’d been at first. Once I got the feel for it, I could move efficiently, and the enemies were torn apart as my coat, the trademark of a fixer, flared behind me.
Some tried to hide and run.
But somehow Silver Wolf’s Pac-Man caught their hems and dragged them back to be fed to the fixers.
We slaughtered nearly thirty people.
One-sided violence.
I’d been prepared to take at least one injury.
"...Is this really an experience point burning event? I can’t feel it."
"I can feel it because I’m the one watching from the side, so keep fighting."
Silver Wolf stepped toward me, treading through the sticky pool of blood.
I spun the sling and looked at the remaining enemies.
"Adrian, you’ve gotten stronger."
"It’s luck. If the number hadn’t been high, I couldn’t have done this."
"Luck is part of skill. That’s how it works in games too, right?"
What was left were a few rank 7s with some bite to them.
Around four people glared at us with their weapons drawn.
Of course, just as I was about to draw the bowstring and fire naturally...
"Ah, time’s up."
"..."
Boss!!!
Give me a little more time!!!
Ten minutes is way too stingy!!!
"If you’ve got a bow, you’ve got a sword too."
"Then should I try fighting with a sword too?"
"If you can keep up, then keep up!"
After grabbing a wooden sword smaller and shorter than the one I was holding,
Silver Wolf chased after me as I ran ahead.
Neon City’s light seeped through the shattered windows broken by the earlier battle. I, the one in front, used Sky Leap first and charged forward at speed.
Unlike before, when I’d used it three times and practically gone limp,
I felt like I could control my strength now.
The power was weaker too, but that didn’t matter. When fighting strong opponents, pacing was important too. Our reflections flickered across the broken glass as we swung our swords in sync.
Silver Wolf’s sword swings were clumsy compared to mine.
I kept swinging while staying aware of her.
"Silver Wolf, focus."
"I know that!"
She was moving like she was only barely managing to parry the enemy’s attacks with her sword.
Because I was there, the enemy’s movement started to get pushed back, but Silver Wolf kept falling into the same pattern. Even when I took on three and she handled one, it was still the same.
KRAAAANG—!!!
One of the enemies I was fighting ignored me and tried to slip past to kill Silver Wolf.
To punish that disrespect, I used Sky Leap at full power.
Using the recoil, I kicked him square in the head. I slammed him into the floor, and a watermelon-bursting sound rang out with a deafening boom.
Dust billowed up in puffs.
The moment my vision was obscured,
unable to catch the enemy’s movement, I widened my eyes and sharpened my senses.
What came to mind was the sight I’d seen when chasing Hanabi.
Past sight.
The world split like a kaleidoscope and rewound.
Watching both the rewinding scene and the present scene at once, I brushed away the dust and smashed the box with perfect accuracy.
"How?!"
"Easy."
The fixer with the spear stared at me in shock.
I swung my sword at the guy, who clearly hadn’t expected me to keep up.
Pshaaak!
His arm was severed and blood sprayed out.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I thrust my sword forward and pierced his throat.
Fuck, my eyes hurt like hell.
It felt like less than a second had passed, but my eyeballs felt like someone had poured on a pain-relief patch.
I rushed over to help Silver Wolf, who was still being pushed back.
She was used to ranged combat, after all.
She was blocking well enough, but she kept getting shoved back without end, and a few wounds had opened between her arms and thighs.
I charged in at the opening in their attack. The spear aimed at Silver Wolf spun half a turn and changed direction. The enemy’s eyes met mine, and we glared at each other.
Silver Wolf was the decoy.
What they were really aiming for was me.
Watching the spear swing, I realized it instinctively.
This guy was the leader of the group.
Just one attack.
The human body was fragile enough to die from a small wound.
I’d die.
The spear was aimed at me with perfect precision.
The blade rotating in a half circle would soon reach my neck, sever my carotid artery, and kill me.
- Hatred, resentment, and pursuit have no end.
The world slowed down.
- How could one measure the worries of you, the hunter?
The sensation of nocking an arrow and firing a bow came back to me.
- The star arrow is drawn, and golden eyes burn.
An attack I couldn’t react to.
In that fleeting moment where time flowed slowly,
what rose in my mind was an arrow shattering stars and pressing onward.
- Heavenly Bow, do not look back.
Was this a perk granted by the [status window]? Or was it the struggle of a man staring death in the face? Like a hunter who took up a bow to hunt beasts and immortals, my body moved in a grotesque way and dodged the spear.
"...How did you dodge that?"
"I don’t know, you fucking bastard."
What the hell was that just now?
Who was I looking at?
The man with the spear in front of me ignored Silver Wolf and charged straight at me.
He was my equal as an enemy.
Even without walking a Path, the hacker augmentation plastered all over him gave him power similar to mine.
But I didn’t feel like I was going to lose.
Adrenaline surged through my body and seemed to crush my senses flat.
His spear technique was far better than mine too.
Sword and spear collided, spitting sparks in an instant.
Instinctive movement. I, who knew nothing about swordsmanship, swung my sword wildly. The man facing me calmly responded and thrust his spear. When it felt like dozens, maybe hundreds, of exchanges had passed...
"Sky Leap."
I held my breath.
Using Sky Leap, I lunged at him.
■■—!!!
The sound of an arrow that should never be heard.
As my body sprang forward like a bowstring being released,
I met the blue light head-on and swung my sword.
"——!!!"
The enemy screamed.
At a speed he couldn’t even react to, the sword I swung smashed the spear shaft and cut through his neck.
Pshaaak!!!
A fountain of blood burst from the severed body.
Steam rose from my own body.
As blood rained down on me, I looked at Silver Wolf.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register