1.
Ta-da. Surprisingly, my choice wasn’t a scam after all.
On a dark night, while Silver Wolf was fast asleep in bed, I stood alone on the balcony, staring at the cartridge I’d received as a [quest] reward.
It was an unremarkable thing.
A plain cartridge labeled LV.1.
“If the [status window] gave it to me, there’s no way it’s actually ordinary...”
Clear the [quest]~
And my era of success begins~
It’s common knowledge that a [status window] in a novel is the ultimate cheat code.
Of course, in a world where everyone has one, it would be worth less than roadside trash, but this place is different.
This isn’t some game fantasy. This is a brutally realistic otherworld.
In other words, I’m the only one with a proper [status window].
I need to sort out my thoughts.
The choice wasn’t a scam. The decision to pick up Silver Wolf was real, and from that moment on, my [quest] had begun.
A [quest] that started without telling me the clear conditions—without even notifying me that it had begun.
How rude.
That's not how things are done these days!
After receiving the cartridge, I called up the [status window] with a flutter of excitement, but the blue screen still didn’t appear. It was a [status window] that did whatever it wanted. By now, shouldn’t it at least be a little nicer to me?
I’d already been through enough hell.
If this were a novel, the amount of suffering I'd endured from the start would take up a hundred chapters. But if I explained it all now, it’d get too long, so I’ll skip it.
“You trust me, right? You really trust me?”
I removed the cartridge I’d originally been using—the LV.9 one.
A slight weakness crept into my body, but it didn’t matter.
Click.
Because I immediately slotted in the LV.1 cartridge.
The weakness draining my body vanished, and I felt as if I’d moved into a brand-new house.
I felt a little weaker, yes.
But it didn’t matter.
This wasn’t some worthless LV.1 cartridge.
I believed.
“Staaatus window!”
With a heart full of anticipation, I shouted for the [status window].
A blue light flashed before my eyes.
“Hey, hey, I knew I could count on you!!!”
========
Daily [Quest] - Basic Training
Push-ups [0/100]
Sit-ups [0/100]
Squats [0/100]
Running [0/10 km]
Note - If you do not complete the daily [quest], you will suffer penalties.
========
It just tossed me one thing.
There was no explanation of my condition, no stats, nothing.
“Uh... huh.”
Isn’t this plagiarism?
It was such a famous training regimen that there probably wasn’t anyone who didn’t know it.
“Damn it, whatever. If I do this, I can say ‘Rise’ too, right? I’m in.”
If the price was going bald, then there was nothing I could do about it.
No, wait. That wasn’t something I could just shrug off.
Baldness is a serious matter, damn it!!!
For a while, I tore at my hair and made a fool of myself. The result of this training method was that one guy went bald and one guy didn’t, but the common point was that both gained overwhelming power.
“...Even if I go bald, I still need power.”
Screw it, I’ll be bald. Throw a rock at me.
Even facing that fate, I still had to get stronger.
Soon, that shitty morning song would be blasting through the air. Silver Wolf would wake up soon too. I should train before she got up.
“Hup! Hngh!”
My body was already well-built, so it didn’t matter.
If I’d been fat as a pig, that’d be different. If I walked around Neon City looking like that, I’d end up as pork stir-fry and go straight to the crematorium.
After doing about forty reps, I stood up to take a break.
I wasn’t someone who worked out regularly, so doing it all in one go was a little hard...?
[0/100]
The count hadn’t gone up.
Oh, no way.
“Haaah... huff.”
“...What are you doing?”
After basically doing 180 reps, I flopped down and breathed hard.
“I-it’s hard...”
The [status window] bastard was surprisingly strict.
It wouldn’t count unless I did each one with perfect form!
But did they really think some petty [quest] like this could stop me?
I, Adrian Servet, am a man who went through liquidation five times in Korea.
The only thing that can stop me is the U.S. president who tore my stocks to pieces.
“So, what are you doing?”
“Silver Wolf... I’m tired......”
Silver Wolf looked at me strangely because I was suddenly doing something I never did.
I’m not the type to get up and exercise first thing in the morning. If anything, I’d rather cling to Silver Wolf, inhale that clean-fur smell, and lie around all day.
“A divine... gasp... revelation... came down.”
“You’re still pushing that concept...?”
“It’s... not a concept...”
After resting a bit, Silver Wolf was up too, so I’d have to do the rest later.
There was supposed to be a penalty. Once I got stronger, I’d have to experience it at least once.
For breakfast, I had the soup rice I’d bought yesterday after drinking because I was in a good mood.
I ate quite a lot.
It was cheap beer, but the sharp scent of barley and the alcohol had left me pleasantly buzzed.
“Let’s eat!”
I quickly finished a bowl and looked out at the street.
Today was a holiday. The way to work hard is to rest well and play well.
It was a day I’d been looking forward to.
Why?
“Silver Wolf, I’m going out for a bit. I’ll be back.”
“You’re not taking me with you?”
“Yeah, I’m going alone, so stay home and wait. If you get bored, you can go out too.”
Right now, I was riding the momentum.
[Quest] cleared, daily [quest]. The spotlight of the whole world was shining on me.
So what does that mean?
Obviously, it meant I had to go to the gambling den!
I had about 2.5 million credit points in bullets.
Real bullets I’d scraped together by saving every last credit I could.
“Yahoo!”
Ah, the dopamine was really kicking in. Was I ready? The momentum was perfect. Luck had caught the flow. If not now, then when would I gamble again?
“Wow...”
For the first time in a while, I was inside Neon City instead of the outskirts.
A neatly organized city.
It was nothing like the stinking outer districts.
I looked at the building glittering brilliantly in gold.
This was one of the two gambling dens legally operated in Neon City.
The other one was a place where I’d been set up and didn’t really want to go back to, so I came to one I’d never visited before.
“Hoo!”
The inside of the casino was different from the outside, where the lights were kept somewhat restrained.
Smoke rose in thick, murky curls. This was obviously a place where the lowest of the low and the highest of the high coexisted.
I could hear the roulette wheel spinning.
There were chips coated in gold.
There were people puffing on cigarettes with grim faces.
And women fluttering around men at their sides.
“My blood is boiling.”
It felt like coming home. Remaining bullets: 2.5 million credit points.
With this, big brother’s going to multiply it tenfold and come home, Silver Wolf!
2.
So many things happened.
So, so fucking many things happened......
I was reminded once again that even if I was given a broken-cheat [status window], my luck would still stay the same.
I didn’t get seduced. I went to several gambling dens and met several gamblers.
Of course, I could tell whether these bastards were cheating.
I got pushed back by pure luck.
That was what really pissed me off.
I wanted to stand up right then and there and split the face of the dealer grinning in front of me in half with a hatchet, but if I did that, the hackers would mentally split my head open and turn me into a useless wreck.
After two months, that cold sensation returned.
This is what the world of competition is like.
Not everyone can be a winner.
But still.
I gamble because I love this feeling.
The sensation of a blade being pressed right to the tip of my throat.
One wrong step and it’s the edge of a cliff.
It’s a shitty, irritating feeling—anger rising from my gut, my stomach twisting.
That kind of feeling.
Lose, win, lose, win. How many times did I repeat it?
By the time night had fallen and dawn was almost here,
I threw out one final gamble.
“Do you do loans here?”
“Oh my, customer! How much are you looking for?”
“Everything I own. All of it.”
Four million, with 20 percent interest deducted up front and my still-healthy organs as collateral, on the condition that I’d have to work it off as labor until the day I died.
I also had one million in bullets.
But I had a firm intuition.
I’m definitely going to win.
My intuition was telling me that with absolute certainty.
Of course, other people might sneer and ask why I was risking my life on nothing but intuition.
But I, Adrian.
I’m not going to break here.
Losing and walking away doesn’t suit my pride.
I gulped down an expensive cocktail I’d ordered for 150,000 credit points in one shot.
I didn’t even know the name. The only drinks I knew were the ones I used to have often in Korea.
They were saying something about a Penacony cocktail, but that was outside my interests.
“Ahh, as expected, it tastes good because it’s expensive.”
Now that I’d cleared my palate.
Let’s go.
What I was playing was baccarat, something even ordinary people who don’t know much about gambling can play.
While I was trying other games, this dealer in particular gave off a slight newbie vibe.
That could happen. Baccarat is basically a game of odd or even.
Even if all casino games are set up to favor the house a little, there’s always some kind of switch.
Among them, the symbol of baccarat is the tie.
High risk, high return: if the player and banker end up with the same total, you get nine times your money back.
But there’s one gamble even crazier than a tie, and that’s the pair.
Like a real man, I trust my intuition.
So I place a ridiculous bet that isn’t even on a tie.
“Banker pair, five million.”
The first two cards come out with the same number.
I’m betting on that.
The gamblers watching from the side are shocked, wondering which lunatic is about to get stripped of his organs this time.
A gamble with his life on the line, and he’s betting on a pair?
Even the dealer, who’d been keeping a calm face, visibly cracks.
This is why beginners fail. I hadn’t even changed my expression.
“P-pair. Five million credit points.”
Objectively speaking, five million points isn’t a huge amount of money.
If the pair doesn’t hit...
The payout is eleven times.
If it succeeds, that’s 55 million credit points.
If I win, that dealer is definitely going to see a very unpleasant sight.
Or maybe he’ll have his organs ripped out and be forced to serve the casino until he dies?
Because the dealer could feel the tiny chance—the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it could happen—piercing right through him.
I looked at that sight and grinned.
Even the host upstairs was watching me with interested eyes.
This gaze, this feeling.
Yeah, this is why I gamble.
“R-really? You won’t regret this?”
“You talk too much. Flip it already.”
No one knows that card.
Even the dealer, not being a gambler, had to rely purely on luck.
Then again, who would think someone playing baccarat would bet their life on a pair?
I flicked one of the colorful chips with my finger and caught it.
Would the goddess of luck love me?
Or would my intuition smack me in the back of the head and make me take another breath-held love dive off a building?
The dealer’s hand trembled.
I could see the number on the card as it flipped over.
My heart pounded.
My brain and organs all went still, as if they’d been dunked in ice water.
The first card was the ace of spades.
The second was......
“Fuck.”
A scream announcing that one’s life is ruined.
As the dealer couldn’t bring himself to flip the last card, I turned it over myself and called out the number.
“Ace of hearts.”
The organs that had gone cold were suddenly burning hot again.
Hah. This time, my intuition didn’t betray me.
“Aaaaaaagh—!!!”
The dealer screamed while tearing at his own hair.
The gamblers watching started shaking me and slapping my shoulders, shouting that I was a crazy bastard.
“Whaaat! Waaaaait!!!”
“What the hell are you! You’re the first bastard I’ve ever seen at this table!!!”
Ah, this cold, heavy sensation.
It’s time to return to Adrian Servet, the apocalypse of gambling.
“Fuuuuuuuck—!!”
I won.
You idiots.
The sticky thrill running up my spine and the triumph of having pierced through an absurd probability intoxicated my whole body and sent me into ecstasy.
I immediately repaid the five million I’d borrowed on the spot.
Then, to keep the mood going, I threw the cocktail I’d been drinking to the people around me.
The host was smiling with interest, but the way he kept glancing at the dealer made it clear the man was screwed.
“Take care, you bastards! I’m out of here!!!”
Silver Wolf, big brother’s coming home this time with insanely expensive meat and wine!
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