Chapter 9

Anecdote.

Seated across the long table from Jin once again, Khalifa got straight to the point.

“There’s something I need you to retrieve.”

With that, she slid a file folder toward him.

While Jin examined the neatly organized documents and the photographs fastened with paper clips, Khalifa continued.

“It’s a data chip. As the file says, it contains the Solard Family’s secret magic.”

Jin happened to be reading that very section.

He saw an emblem shaped like a blazing flame.

Beneath it was the word Solard.

“If it’s secret magic, isn’t it supposed to be incredibly powerful?”

Even with Jin’s limited knowledge, he understood that the status of a “Family” in this world was extraordinary.

They were powerful organizations composed of purists.

Successors to swords and magic who rejected the modern age of advanced technology.

Every other day, Jin regretted becoming a drifter instead of joining a Family.

On the alternating days, he regretted not joining a corporation.

Unaware of his circumstances, Khalifa answered,

“It is. But only a few basic spells were leaked. Of course, even that would be a disgrace from Solard’s perspective.”

Jin’s gaze naturally returned to the documents, and Khalifa continued.

“While investigating the source of the leak, Solard discovered evidence that the data chip had been copied. One of those copies made its way here, into Downtown. Then someone acquired it.”

“And that’s this guy?”

Jin muttered as he examined someone’s mug shot.

Half the man’s face was covered in tattoos. Wearing a piercing reminiscent of a bull’s nose ring, he glared murderously in the direction where the camera lens must have been.

“Edmund Nielsen. He had mana circuits illegally implanted into his body. He was already notorious on the Blacknet for installing all kinds of cheap, publicly available spells. As a result, his personality became warped, and he turned into a lunatic who commits murder at the slightest provocation.”

Mana circuits?

The term itself sounded thoroughly fantastical, but the fact that they could be created through a medical procedure left Jin with a strange impression as he continued reading.

“He even left his gang, despite being their third-in-command.”

“This involves a Family. They can’t protect him while spouting ridiculous nonsense about loyalty or being family. Thanks to that, we no longer have anything holding us back.”

“In other words, you just need to retrieve the data chip from inside his head, no matter how you do it,” Khalifa added.

At some point, she had picked up a glass of liquor and was now slowly swirling it in her hand.

“The payment upon completion is two million credits. That’s after deducting the brokerage fee. What do you think?”

Two million.

It was the same amount Jackie had once offered Jin to save his younger sister.

Enough money to eat meatball spaghetti three meals a day for 333 days and still have enough left over to buy waffles.

That alone made the terms more than attractive enough for Jin.

On top of that, eliminating a fake magician like Nielsen would probably earn him a generous amount of experience.

Jin was already short on the XP required to unlock a new perk, so the answer was obvious.

“Sounds good. I’ll do it.”

***

Edmund Nielsen.

According to Khalifa, Nielsen had embedded the data chip inside his head and had been holed up in his hideout for several days.

That hideout was an old corridor-style apartment building.

The place was practically an eyesore, its walls chaotically plastered with every variety of graffiti. Up close, piles of uncollected garbage were also stacked everywhere, and the stench stabbed at Jin’s nose.

Jin climbed the stairs, which had been crudely welded together from steel bars.

Apartment 402.

When Jin reached Nielsen’s door, he scratched his head.

Should I just break in?

With his current strength, destroying a single door lock would be effortless.

At first, he had considered pretending to be a deliveryman who had mistaken the address, but if his amateur acting made the target suspicious, it would only cause trouble.

So he decided to finish things quickly.

Just as Jin gripped the door lock—

“...Who the hell are you?”

Jin turned toward the wary voice.

A man carrying black plastic bags in both hands stood frozen in an awkward posture, staring at him.

A bald man whose entire right side of the face was covered in tattoos.

For a single instant, Jin’s eyes met his in midair.

A brief silence followed.

The next moment, both men moved simultaneously.

“Fuck!”

Nielsen hurled the plastic bags at the charging Jin and thrust out his hand.

“Boom Light—!”

In the next instant, Jin reflexively shut his eyes as a violent burst of light exploded before him.

“Augh!”

Was this what it felt like to have a flashbang detonate right in front of your face?

In games, your vision merely turned white.

Experiencing it in real life meant tears and saliva streamed uncontrollably from his face, and his body staggered so severely that it was difficult to maintain his balance.

But this, too, lasted only a moment.

As his abnormal recovery stabilized his autonomic nervous system, which had been thrown into chaos, Jin snapped open his bloodshot eyes.

Canned food, toilet paper, razors, and various other daily necessities had spilled from the bags and rolled messily across the floor.

Far ahead, Nielsen was already sprinting down the stairs.

Jin immediately stepped onto the corridor railing and launched himself into the air.

His jumping ability easily surpassed that of an Olympic medalist.

He seemed to hang in the air as though flying, yet never lost sight of his target.

Nielsen’s eyes widened as he hurried down the stairs.

Boom!

A cloud of pale dust erupted from the landing between the second and third floors.

It was an utterly brutal landing.

“What the fuck?!”

Nielsen recoiled in horror when Jin blocked his path downward.

Jin rapidly closed the distance.

His fist tore through the air.

Nielsen screamed almost convulsively.

“Shield!”

A force field resembling magnified fish scales packed tightly together blocked Jin’s fist.

The impact alone made the barrier tremble violently.

Unable to withstand the flurry of blows that followed, it eventually shattered.

But Nielsen had already used that time to slip away.

Now fleeing toward the upper floors, the magician was pursued closely by Jin.

“You fucking bastard! Stop chasing me!”

Perhaps realizing that Jin would catch him at this rate, Nielsen suddenly pulled a gun from inside his clothes and fired blindly behind him.

Ping! Ping! Ping!

Stray bullets struck the steel bars, spraying sparks through the air. Jin frowned.

And this is supposed to be a magician?

But Nielsen was no purist. He had learned magic through illegal procedures, so to him, a firearm was simply another weapon.

He kept firing until the magazine was empty.

One of the ricocheting bullets struck Jin in the shoulder.

It had hit a steel bar and abruptly changed direction, making it difficult to react in time. Even then, it had originally been flying toward his heart, and Jin had hurriedly twisted his upper body so it struck his shoulder instead.

Nielsen had gotten lucky enough to pull off a bank shot with a bullet, but he could not celebrate for long.

Jin, who had seemed to falter for a moment, began accelerating again.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! What the hell are you?!”

Nielsen spat curses irritably and clenched his teeth.

They had just reached the rooftop.

With nowhere left to run, Nielsen desperately turned around and began preparing a spell.

It was genuine magic, fundamentally different from the cheap public spells circulating through the surface layers of the Blacknet.

When Nielsen had first learned that it was only beginner-level magic, he had fallen into despair.

At his level, even casting it once was almost beyond him, and merely using it placed an enormous burden on his body.

The moment he cast it, he would unquestionably become incapable of continuing the fight.

But now that he had been cornered this far, he had no other choice.

“I’ll roast you alive, you little fucker.”

Blood began streaming from Nielsen’s nose as he muttered those words.

At that moment, Jin sensed a change.

Something impossible to describe in words was gathering in one place.

The shapeless energy converged until it became a blazing sphere of fire, spinning above Nielsen’s palm.

Even from a distance, Jin could clearly feel the heat radiating from it.

The entire process took less than two seconds.

“Dieeeee!”

Nielsen hurled the fireball like a baseball.

At the same time, Jin drove strength into his thighs.

His fast-twitch muscles, developed beyond normal limits, contracted with tremendous force. With his final step, they generated an explosive burst of forward momentum.

Jin closed the distance in an instant, crossed both arms into an X, and lowered his head.

At that exact moment, the heavy fireball slammed into him.

KABOOM!

The shock wave from the explosion knocked Nielsen backward, sending him crashing onto his backside.

He had been standing close enough to be caught in the blast as well.

Even as he crawled along the ground to escape the suffocating heat, he rejoiced inwardly.

After taking that attack head-on, there was no way Jin could have survived with even his bones intact.

“...Did I get him?”

The moment Nielsen uttered those forbidden words, a hoarse voice answered from within the black smoke.

“Those words can bring even the dead back to life.”

“...?!”

In the next instant, a leg burst through the smoke and kicked Nielsen in the side.

His body flew into the air as though he had been struck by a dump truck, slammed back onto the rooftop, rolled uncontrollably, and crashed into a water tank.

Jin then emerged from the smoke.

His face had been cooked bright red, and he patted out the flames clinging to his shoulder with his palm.

“Magic is ridiculously overpowered.”

Jin frowned at the searing pain surging across his body.

Burns were most painful at the stage just before the nerves became damaged—a superficial second-degree burn.

That was exactly the state Jin was currently in.

Before long, blisters and leaking fluid would turn the injury into a complete mess.

But as always, Jin simply endured it.

There was something he needed to deal with first.

“C-Cough... D-Don’t come any closer.”

Even while gasping for breath, Nielsen pushed himself backward with his heels, desperate to increase the distance between himself and Jin.

It was as though he had already foreseen what was about to happen.

“This... This is mine. It belongs to me.”

Nielsen curled up like a pill bug, clutching the area around his temple.

Jin looked down at him and sighed.

“You still haven’t come to your senses.”

He forcibly tore Nielsen’s resisting arm away, then examined the access port of his cyberbrain socket.

Among the densely embedded chips, one gave off a faint red glow.

“A flame emblem... This is it.”

“Hey! Hey, you fucking bastard! Don’t pull it out, please! The download isn’t finished yet! If you remove it now, I’m fucked! You son of a bitch!”

“Damn it. You’re noisy.”

Crack!

Jin drove his fist into Nielsen’s hysterical face.

Once Nielsen finally fell silent, Jin struggled to remove the chip from his temple.

By chance, he discovered that pressing firmly against its edge caused the entire chip to pop outward.

Jin scratched the back of his head.

“...It’s kind of like a floppy disk. Then again, how was I supposed to know without ever using one?”

After considerable difficulty, Jin finally retrieved the target and rose to his feet.

That was when Nielsen, who had been lying limp like a corpse, suddenly stretched out one hand and seized Jin’s ankle.

Jin’s brow twitched.

The fact that Nielsen had regained consciousness so quickly was one thing.

More troubling was the unnatural strength crushing his ankle.

Sensing danger, Jin’s body moved instinctively.

He stomped on Nielsen’s wrist with his other foot.

The moment Nielsen’s grip loosened, Jin pulled his trapped leg free and kicked Nielsen in the face just as the man managed to lift his upper body halfway off the ground.

The sensation transmitted through the top of Jin’s foot told him everything.

He had completely crushed Nielsen’s face.

He was certain of it.

“AAAGHHH!”

Nielsen’s head, thrown backward by the kick, snapped back into place with an inhuman shriek.

His eyes, now stained black as though ink had been poured into them, locked onto Jin.

“AAAAAGHHHH!”

Nielsen screamed again and charged like a wild animal, all trace of his earlier desperation to flee completely gone.

Even while startled, Jin responded calmly.

He created distance, evaded Nielsen’s lunging upper body, and smoothly hooked his ankle.

Nielsen crashed headfirst into the rooftop without losing any of his momentum.

Jin then repeatedly drove his foot into the back of Nielsen’s skull like a hammer.

At some point, a sharp, exhilarating surge shot through Jin’s mind.

Having gained a satisfying amount of XP, Jin wiped the sweat running beneath his chin and dropped heavily onto the ground.

He pulled out the red data chip and alternated his gaze between it and the fallen Nielsen.

Then he slowly spoke.

“What the hell is this thing?”