1.
Perhaps this blessing could become the key item for this quest.
Because the shop had deleted the 1-star option.
It was a crimson thread that had suddenly popped out.
[Red Thread of Fate]
- Rank: ★★★☆☆
- First Effect: When used, it connects you to the person you need most right now.
- Source: "Destruction" ■■■
- Note: One-time use. Might create a new bond?
Wow! A blessing that’s actually useful!
For someone like me, who had never pulled anything decent besides the Ring Blessed by the Luck of the Whole World.
I stared at the red thread in my hand and clenched my fist.
"Please... connect me to someone who can actually help me."
The quest’s clear condition was maddeningly vague.
It had just tossed out, "Pursue the truth behind the incident and Hanabi’s story," and left me to figure out the rest on my own.
It was so unfriendly I wanted to punch the screen.
Honestly, it was ridiculous.
If it had simply said to kill the ringleader, or to find the source of the problem and eliminate it.
Then I could have used the advantage of regression and all my abilities to lock onto the objective and force my way through.
But the problem was not knowing the exact clear condition.
If I were strong.
Oh, look. An enemy.
Kill them all.
Ringleader, ninja ending.
Wow, case closed!
I could have ended it like that.
Bottom line: I was still way too weak to go head-to-head with the strong.
Because of Silver Wolf, who had talent but lacked experience and polish.
"I really want to quit everything again..."
Waaah, I want to give up.
If the red thread didn’t point me to my fated partner, I’d spend all thirty days holed up in a gambling den.
This world was full of that infuriating "if you don’t know, you die" nonsense.
If everything were neatly established and connected like in a normal fantasy novel, maybe I’d understand.
But the Path itself varied too much from person to person, so everyone had completely different abilities.
Meaning information warfare mattered too.
If I had known about Hanabi’s goldfish, I might have found a way to counter it.
But there hadn’t been enough time to improvise a solution on the spot.
And then...
The red goldfish Hanabi had caught.
I looked at the red goldfish lazily swimming around in the corner of the house.
Light poured through the transparent tank and reflected off the water.
"That little thing sure lives easy."
It swam around, gulping down the fish food Silver Wolf fed it.
Did that fish even know how hard its owner had it?
Ugh. Lying around wouldn’t solve anything.
Even a high school orphan couldn’t come up with a better answer.
"Silver Wolf, I’m heading out."
"Alone?"
"Yeah. I’ll probably be working separately for a while. If you want, you can spend time by yourself or go train and take requests."
"..."
"Even if you glare at me like that, it won’t change anything, so go on your own."
Silver Wolf was under quarantine.
This quest, I’d handle with my own two feet.
Silver Wolf was a huge help to me, no question.
But I couldn’t let her get tangled up with Hanabi.
Cutting off even the smallest possibility first was the law of a regressor.
"It’s been a while since I’ve gone around alone."
The lonely fixer of Neon City.
Back in those bloodless, tearless early days after possession.
Running around with Silver Wolf had softened me up a little, but my nature hadn’t changed.
If something got on my nerves, I’d clear it away, even if it was alive.
I was barely keeping myself alive as it was. Where was I supposed to find room to care about other people?
After moving a little ways out from the crowded outskirts.
I pulled out the red thread and lifted it toward the sky.
"Sa!!! Yo!!!"
I shouted with all my heart.
Please, let this be useful.
The dozens of strands the red thread had split into all connected into one.
It stretched out long and straight, leading down an alley.
"...Am I supposed to follow this?"
At the end of this line was the person I needed most.
Suppressing my excitement, I hurried after it.
"Let’s go!"
Passing through several districts on the outskirts.
Thirty minutes after I’d started moving at a brisk pace, something felt off.
The line wasn’t ending.
I’d circled the same places more than once, and I’d even passed people standing in the exact same spot, talking.
"Is it moving?"
"Hey, buddy. You look like you’ve got some cash on you..."
"Shut the fuck up and get lost."
I smashed the jaw of the swaggering creep who came up to me.
Then I crouched down and drew a map on the ground with my finger.
"...Even if it’s moving, that still doesn’t make sense."
I had been running.
Not a normal walk, but a full sprint with fragment bait and stamina that wouldn’t wear out even after thirty minutes.
Unless the person connected to the red thread was running away from me, this made no sense at all.
Was I chasing a ghost?
While I was sitting on the ground, sketching the outskirts map and thinking it over.
I eventually realized that thinking alone wouldn’t accomplish anything and got moving again.
"Give me a beer."
"...To go?"
"Yeah."
I didn’t even need to keep running.
I drank straight from the bottle as I walked.
If I still couldn’t find the destination after walking all day, then it would be confirmed that the other side knew me and was avoiding me.
I had briefly wondered if this line might be connected to Hanabi, but after the last loop ending up like that.
If it led me to Hanabi or the ringleader, then the status window was officially braindead.
I would never trust the status window or any blessing again.
"Another one."
"...?"
How many times had I gone in circles?
"..."
"Here."
"..."
Four hours.
I had thrown four hours of my precious thirty-day time attack into the trash.
Every time I circled back to the same shop.
The owner would look at me with pity and toss me another bottle of beer, and profanity just kept bubbling up out of me.
"Fuck, status window. Is this really right?"
I hadn’t come out here to do some old-man health walk.
If I failed the quest, people died!!!
I was already past eight bottles of beer cracked open with a bottle opener.
Even a blue-eyed cat passed by, meowing as if it were mocking me.
I just gave up on my sanity and started running.
The line wasn’t overlapping the same place over and over.
The single thread was just making me circle the same area endlessly.
"Fine, let’s do this. I’m going to find you no matter what."
My stubbornness flared for no good reason.
If I’d been put through enough dog-training bullshit, I ought to at least win as the idiot who survived it.
After using fragment bait, I sprinted with everything I had.
Whenever there was a stretch where Sky Leap would be useful, I threw myself into the air with all my might.
"Where the hell are you!!!"
Three minutes of running while unable to control my boosted speed.
Then another twenty minutes of using Sky Leap until my legs hit their limit.
Even after I gave it everything I had, as a one-trick jumper, the owner of the red thread still didn’t appear.
At this point, it almost felt like someone was watching from a rooftop and laughing, "Wow, that guy sure can run."
"...This is really not fun."
Even a dog knows when it’s being toyed with.
I’m a person.
It felt like I was being played with in someone else’s palm.
I threw the red thread in my hand onto the ground.
I pulled a fresh cigarette from the remnants of my past, lit it with my lighter, and took a long drag.
"Hoo... what a livable city, Neon City."
How many cigarettes had I smoked after that?
I ground out the flame by stomping on the cigarette with my foot.
Then I turned around and was about to head back home when—
"...?"
The convenience store that had happily boosted its sales by selling me twelve bottles of beer was gone.
What stood in front of me was a nearly dead sign and a shop whose interior I couldn’t see.
I hurriedly turned my head to look for the red thread I’d thrown on the ground, but it was gone. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I was seeing things after slapping my own cheek, but nothing changed.
There was definitely something inside.
I had to go in.
The moment I lifted my foot from the ground and tried to move.
My instincts rang the alarm.
Fuck, if you go in there, you might die!!!
Master, boss!!! Please, reconsider!!!
You really need to think this through again!!!
I didn’t know what was inside.
But the only time my intuition had ever screamed this hard and gone wild was when I encountered that crazy psycho sword saint with the scalpel.
I’d grown a little since then, but when I replayed that fight in my head, I still couldn’t imagine winning.
Impossible.
An opponent I could only beat if luck was on my side, using a temporal prism and every scrap of possibility I had.
Something on that level was inside.
"...Nanook, I’m really going to trust you on this."
The red thread had been given to me by Nanook, the Aeon of Destruction.
Destruction and fate really didn’t sound like they belonged together.
"What’s the worst that could happen? I die?"
Having experienced death before, I wasn’t afraid.
"Hoo, hoo...! Don’t chicken out. If you’re already scared of something this small, what are you going to do later?"
I took a deep breath in front of the shop’s door.
Click, the bell hanging above the door rang as I opened it and stepped inside.
"...A customer, huh."
A restrained interior and a quiet bar furnished with dark brown wood came into view.
Behind the man were rows of liquor bottles and glasses I didn’t recognize.
"Well now, how unexpected."
A black fedora pulled low.
A purple necktie with a strange pattern hanging from the tip.
It was a peculiar suit that didn’t match the atmosphere of the bar at all.
The collar of the white jacket had purple accents, and it was obvious at a glance that the clothes had been modified.
The hands were dyed bright red, as if he were wearing gloves.
A yellow vest and a black shirt.
And beneath the fedora... dice.
The light shone down on me.
What existed beneath the shadow was not a human face.
A twenty-sided die engraved with bizarre patterns.
And the hand supporting that die.
I’m screwed.
"A new kind of fun has come into this boring, dull life."
"Can I go back out now?"
There was no way a guy whose neck was a hand and whose head was a die was normal.
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