Chapter 21
Vrooooom!
Manticore tore down the road, its engine roaring with a sound worthy of its name.
The sunset burning across the evening sky was a beautiful shade of amber.
But its light could not reach beneath the forest of buildings that jutted up in every direction.
As always, the streets were dim.
In this place where it was difficult to distinguish day from night, the only illumination came from rusted streetlamps and sinister neon signs.
Jin looked out at the world beyond that faint glow.
A woman nervously spinning a pistol around her finger.
A shirtless man sprinting down the street while high on drugs.
A sex toy grabbing passersby and making lewd advances.
Distant gunfire.
Gangs.
The homeless.
The people of the streets.
A scene utterly different from the one in his hometown.
And yet, it had now become a part of his life.
As Manticore gradually picked up speed, all of it began to lose its shape and blur together into a single mass.
Under one name.
Downtown.
Vrooom.
At some point, the motorcycle slowed as it crossed the boulevard and entered an alley.
The road twisted like a maze between buildings packed tightly together.
After traveling through it for a while, Manticore came to a stop beneath the dim light.
The engine shut off, and Jin stepped onto the ground.
He patted his stiff lower back a few times, looked up at the building before him, and then opened the door to Anecdote.
Jingle.
The first thing he saw was Khalifa seated alone at a table in the hall.
With one long leg crossed over the other, she had just brought a glass to her lips when her gaze shifted toward the opening door.
One eyebrow rose higher than the other as she let out a disbelieving laugh.
“...Hah? Well, look who it is.”
“Hey, Khalifa.”
Jin waved as he entered the shop and took the seat across from her.
“Why are you sitting here looking so miserable all by yourself?”
“I’m not being miserable. I’m enjoying some time alone.”
“I’m not interrupting, am I?”
“This isn’t so bad either.”
Khalifa rose from her seat.
As always, she served him cookies and warm milk before speaking.
“Why did you cut off contact?”
“Ah, my terminal got—what’s with that expression? Were you worried about me?”
“...Jin. Do you think I’m just some woman who gives you cookies? As your Linker, confirming whether one of my affiliated Solos is alive or dead is obviously part of my responsibility.”
Khalifa let out a faint sigh.
Jin, however, merely tilted his head.
For someone who claimed to have been worried, she had looked remarkably calm when their eyes first met.
Sure enough, she continued speaking with the composure of someone who already knew most of what had happened.
“I heard about it. You nearly died.”
“Did Fenrir tell you?”
Khalifa neither confirmed nor denied it.
She merely raised the glass to her lips and took a smooth sip.
Then she set it down on the table.
“...Fenrir is a Level 3 Solo. As I told you before, that’s enough for anyone to consider him a veteran. On top of that, Fenrir almost never resorts to beast transformation unless the situation is truly serious. Personally, I think he deserves to be rated a full level higher than he officially is.”
Jin said nothing.
It didn’t feel like the sort of moment where he should interrupt.
“That’s why I wasn’t particularly worried. I thought Fenrir would be more than capable of handling a job like that, even while bringing along a rookie like you.”
After saying that, Khalifa suddenly pushed back her chair and stood.
Is she going to bring me another plate of cookies?
Jin drank his milk with expectant eyes.
But when Khalifa returned, she wasn’t carrying cookies.
She held a large leather bag.
She set it down heavily beside the table.
“Who could’ve expected that Fenrir would end up owing his life to a rookie?”
Jin blinked.
“What are you talking about? We owe each other our lives.”
They had both desperately needed the other to survive.
He had fought with the mindset of, Please don’t die. If you die, I’m dead too.
“Fenrir doesn’t see it that way.”
Khalifa smiled and nodded toward the bag on the floor.
“Open it.”
Jin reached out with a suspicious expression and pulled open the zipper.
Then he flinched at the neatly stacked bundles of banknotes inside.
When he shot her a look asking what all of this was, Khalifa answered,
“Twenty-five million credits. The full success fee after commission. Fenrir transferred his entire share to you.”
“...Why?”
“Who knows? Ask him yourself the next time you see him.”
That was all Khalifa said.
Jin only became more confused.
Did he hit his head during the fight or something?
In truth, Jin had intended to thank Fenrir the next time they met.
After all, Fenrir had been the one who carried him out after he lost consciousness in the warehouse explosion.
But giving up his entire share?
Jin couldn’t make sense of it.
Still, he had no particular reason to refuse.
So he quietly pulled the bag closer to himself.
The crisp scent of newly printed bills made his head spin.
How much money is all this?
Just as Jin closed the zipper with trembling hands, Khalifa spoke.
“Don’t you have something you want to ask?”
She poured herself another drink as she said it.
With her long eyelashes lowered, she slowly swirled the liquor in her glass.
She looked as though she had been waiting for a particular question.
So Jin naturally opened with it.
“That measuring mage. Who was he?”
Perhaps it was exactly what she had expected, because her answer came immediately.
“Crow Madeye. He’s a measuring mage affiliated with Styx. Most people just call him ‘that lunatic.’”
“...Styx?”
The word wasn’t unfamiliar even to Jin.
The moment he heard it, he thought of the river connecting the world of the living to the underworld.
It was knowledge burned into his mind from childhood.
All thanks to that legendary bestseller of children’s literature:
Greek and Roman Mythology in Comics.
Anyone in their thirties who didn’t know that series was practically a spy.
It had been so damn good.
Of course, Jin didn’t bother wondering whether Styx was merely a homonym or another real-world element borrowed for convenience.
If he started examining things like that too deeply, he would probably have a panic attack.
Here is the continued translation:
Meanwhile, Khalifa began her explanation.
“They’re a group made up entirely of criminals ranked Threat Level 5 or higher. Every member has an enormous bounty on their head, but the number merely represents how monstrously powerful they are. In reality, no bounty hunter or Solo goes after them.”
She paused.
“Well, there used to be some. Until the corpses of those who tried to hunt them piled high enough to build a tower.”
Jin’s upper lip twitched.
It would probably be tactless to ask, So how much are the bounties?
“At the same time, they’re troubleshooters like us. Of course, you can’t hire them just by offering money. Apparently, you have to pique their interest or something. Either way, they’re lunatics. Sometimes they act so infuriatingly selective, and other times they suddenly appear somewhere completely unexpected and turn the whole place into a disaster.”
Khalifa paused before adding,
“Like that warehouse.”
“Got it.”
Jin nodded.
No wonder something had felt off.
The difficulty hadn’t risen from one to five.
It had suddenly jumped straight to twenty.
So basically, we stepped in a giant pile of shit.
Clicking his tongue, Jin brought another cookie to his mouth.
Afterward, as he brushed the crumbs from his fingertips, Khalifa lowered her voice.
“Jin. What I’m about to say isn’t meant as comfort or an excuse. It’s simply a fact you’ll have to accept.”
Her calm red eyes reflected his face.
“As long as you continue living as a Solo, things like this will happen all the time. Unexpected threats. Situations beyond your control. Countless variables born from them. Preparing for every possibility in advance is infinitely close to impossible.”
“In the end, all that remains is your own ability.”
“That’s simply how this line of work is.”
She paused briefly.
“Cruel, you might say.”
“...”
“Are you still confident?”
Jin remained silent for a moment.
He didn’t know why she, who was supposedly nothing more than a broker taking a commission, was asking him something like this.
But he understood what she was trying to say.
A warning to someone standing on the threshold.
What lies ahead is hell.
But when had it ever not been?
Since opening his eyes in this world, Jin had never once lived without feeling that his life was under threat.
Knives and bullets?
They hurt.
No matter how much time passed, he could never grow accustomed to being stabbed or having his bones broken. Some nights, after hours of groaning in pain, the misery became unbearable, and he would cry his eyes out despite how humiliating it felt.
Yet what frightened him more was lying comfortably in bed with all four limbs intact.
The nights when his thoughts grew too loud.
One thought leading endlessly into another.
Is this really a game world?
Then what exactly am I?
Someone possessing another body? A game character? Why me?
How did this happen? Can I escape?
Even if I make it back, how am I supposed to live with these memories?
Goddamn status window.
Goddamn it. Goddamn it. Goddamn it.
Without fail, a black wave would come crashing over him.
At some point, Jin became unable to sleep with the lights off.
After acquiring a terminal, he sometimes left it beside his bed with loud music playing.
Perhaps that was why he felt as though he had been split into two opposing sides of the same coin.
On one side was a superhuman who hurled cannonball-like punches and kept advancing no matter what part of him broke.
On the other was a coward who feared the night and curled himself into a ball.
As time passed, the gulf between the two only widened.
In the end, Jin accepted the only choice available to him.
He would reach the end of the path laid out by the status window.
And whatever waited there, he would smash it apart with his own two hands.
That goal was still unimaginably distant.
For that reason, life as a Solo was merely one stage of the journey toward that far-off end.
At last, Jin spoke.
“Of course. I’m confident.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
Khalifa smiled faintly.
“Anyway, you’ve been through a lot. Surviving a confrontation with Crow and returning alive is practically proof of your value by itself.”
She leaned forward slightly.
“So, I have good news.”
“Good news?”
As Jin stared blankly, Khalifa smiled and clapped her hands once.
“Pow!”
As though he had been waiting for the cue, the bartender suddenly popped out from behind the central shelving.
“You called, Manager?”
His perfectly timed appearance felt so deliberately staged that Jin couldn’t help grinning.
Khalifa turned toward him.
“You tell him yourself. You said you wanted to.”
Pow nodded politely and looked at Jin.
“Congratulations, Jin. Through officially recognized procedures, you have fulfilled the compensation requirements necessary for promotion.”
He continued in a formal tone.
“I am pleased to inform you that you have been registered on the Solo intranet as a Level 2 Solo.”
At that exact moment, dopamine exploded inside Jin’s brain.
「Promotion」
A little farther.
A little higher.
You have been promoted to Solo (Lv. 2).
Reward: Perk XP 2,000
“It is extremely rare for a rookie who has not even passed through every screening stage to receive a promotion. One might call it a remarkable achievement possessed only by legendary Solos of Level 7 or above.”
“Pow. Don’t exaggerate.”
Khalifa gave him a mild glare before turning back to Jin.
“From now on, I’ll arrange better jobs for you. Things will naturally move in that direction anyway.”
She held out her hand.
“So, I look forward to continuing our partnership.”
Still dizzy from the drugs flooding his brain, Jin took her hand and answered with slurred pronunciation.
“Yeeaahh. Mee tooo.”
“...? What’s wrong with you?”
Afterward,
once he had cleared up the minor misunderstanding, Jin left Anecdote carrying the heavy bag of money.
He placed it inside the storage compartment and climbed onto Manticore.
The motorcycle’s engine growled softly, ready to run once more.
Jin looked up at the sky, which had already grown dark.
Where would he go tonight?
Nothing had been decided.
He would simply live wherever his feet—or wheels—carried him.
Perhaps he had become a little more like a vagabond.
A faint smile crossed his face.
Then he twisted the throttle.
Vrooooom!
Beneath the hazy moonlight, the motorcycle raced through Downtown.