It was not merely a voice echoing inside his head. When he listened closely, he could faintly hear what sounded like something gulping down a drink as well.
“What the hell is this…….”
There was no need to wonder what the sound was.
The dagger before him was drinking up all the blood around it.
‘It’ scraped up every last trace of blood spread around it.
The way it spoke sounded as though text had been converted directly into sound.
“……Is that an artifact, by any chance?”
Lara asked.
When it came to artifacts, Evan already knew virtually all of them.
However.
‘Was there a dagger like that?’
Even Evan found it unfamiliar.
He searched his memories as thoroughly as he could. He tried to imagine the pixel-art items from the game in his memories overlaid onto reality.
Come to think of it, there might have been a similar artifact.
Black Ritual Dagger
Grade: Artifact
Effect: Restores 1% Health on melee attack
Description: A black dagger covered in ritual engravings.
An intelligent being from another dimension was needed to overcome a tragic fate.
The ritual required for that purpose has not been passed down.
That was the artifact whose appearance most closely resembled this one.
It was not difficult to obtain, so it had always served as something close to a temporary weapon for the early stages of the game.
However, he had never once seen this artifact drink blood.
Evan carefully picked up the dagger. The black blade, which had cleanly absorbed all the surrounding blood, now held a faint tinge of red. He could feel some kind of power dwelling within it.
It felt similar to the power Evan himself possessed.
“That dagger belonged to those mages, right?”
“The lowlifes upstairs had it.”
“Those bastards had something like this? They must’ve picked it up somewhere. It looks expensive, doesn’t it? Though it gives me a bad feeling.”
Lara muttered as she looked at the floor, which had somehow become clean and dry.
“……At least it looks like I won’t have to mop. Tell that robot vacuum I said thanks.”
“Didn’t you hear anything?”
Lara tilted her head as though she had no idea what he meant.
“A sound? Uh…… It’s pretty quiet for a vacuum. I guess expensive ones really are different.”
Apparently, she could not hear the voice after all.
Evan stared quietly down at the object, then suddenly sensed something strange and raised his head.
“I think I just heard something upstairs.”
“A sound? Again? What, is it rats running around this time…….”
Then, just as Lara raised her head as well.
“Aaaaaaargh!”
A scream came from outside. The voice was familiar. Lara heard only the sound, but Evan saw the soul as well.
A familiar soul was being attacked by another soul.
He could not identify the other soul, but the familiar one belonged to Sam.
Sam was still up there? He had thought the man fled when the fighting began…….
“Sam!”
Lara was the first to bolt toward the stairs leading out of the basement, and Evan followed behind her.
The moment they reached the top, they saw Sam being threatened by a thug.
Sam had already been beaten several times. He had been covered in injuries to begin with, and now he was a bloody mess.
“You fat bastard…… You really want to die, don’t you? Fine. I’ll grant your wish.”
The thug, who wore a green mohawk and a yellow tank top, pulled a cheap pipe pistol from inside his clothes.
It was an electrically powered weapon that fired a single length of rebar. It was inferior even to an old-fashioned gunpowder revolver, but it could still easily punch a hole through a human body.
The loaded tip of the pipe pistol pointed at Sam.
“Sam!”
The instant Lara shouted, Evan ran.
The mohawked thug glanced in their direction, but he did not seem to have any intention of turning the muzzle away.
The trigger was slowly being pulled.
‘Too far.’
If he could only make contact, neutralizing a single lowlife would have been nothing for Evan.
But the distance was too great.
Still, Sam was useful enough that Evan did not want to simply let him die.
‘Should I use a soul?’
Black magic was inconvenient at times like this.
No matter what form a ritual took, it always required the use of at least one soul.
But what else could he do? He had acquired plenty of souls this time, so using one should be fine.
‘Sacrificial Rite…….’
The moment he tried to summon a soul, his vision turned red.
SPLASH—!
A haze lingered in the air, filling the space between Evan and the thug.
It was a red haze, made of blood.
Evan stopped dead in his tracks.
A long blade of blood shot downward from above in an instant. It carved a long mark into the worn concrete floor before disappearing.
Without realizing it, Evan looked at the dagger in his hand.
A translucent blade that seemed to cover the dagger shimmered with red light as it faded away.
“M-my hand…….”
The arm holding the pistol fell to the ground.
BZZT- BZZZT-
Sparks from a short circuit sprayed from the severed surface.
High-end cybernetic parts had self-repair functions to prevent neural damage caused by short circuits.
However, there was no chance that a mechanical arm illegally installed by a street thug would have such a function.
“Aaargh! What the fuck, my hand! My expensive arm!”
Clutching the sparking stump of his mechanical arm, the thug howled as though his real hand had been severed.
The moment his will and resistance collapsed, Evan did not miss the instant his soul loosened.
『Spirit-Sealing Bead』
“Keeeegh…….”
With that, the disturbance was over. From Evan’s perspective, he had merely gained another soul for free. A modest profit.
Meanwhile, Lara approached from behind and cautiously asked him a question.
“You…… What are you?”
Even when she had been tied up, Lara had never lost her composure. Now, however, her gaze was visibly agitated.
“Was that Blood Magic? Were you Royal Blood?”
Royal Blood.
The specially chosen nobles among vampires.
“If I were Royal Blood, I wouldn’t be rolling around in a slum like this.”
“That’s…… true. You’d be in a penthouse in the city, drinking expensive wine mixed with blood. Then what the hell was that? I’ve…… never even heard of a blade like that.”
Evan looked down at the dagger in his hand.
The blade, which had held a faint red glow, had returned to pitch black as though nothing had happened.
It absorbed blood, then released it at the appropriate moment.
He did not need an explanation to understand how it worked.
‘The problem is that this artifact never originally had an ability like that.’
That bastard Hammy, who had been watching silently from inside his cloak, snickered.
「Interesting. This is entertaining to watch .」
The bastard clearly knew something.
In that case, Evan could ask it later. For now, he decided to deal with the reason he had come here.
In the meantime, Sam staggered to his feet and bowed his head.
“Ugh, you saved my life. Thank you very much.”
“What were you doing here?”
Evan had assumed Sam fled.
His role had been to guide Evan here, so Evan would not have minded even if he had. That was why he had forgotten about him.
Instead of answering, Sam abruptly held something out to Evan.
It was city-certified currency, roughly 200,000 credits.
Evan raised his head and looked at Sam. Sam smiled awkwardly as he spoke.
“I gathered up everything from the pockets of the men you dealt with upstairs, Mr. Evan. I was going to head down to the basement and figured I might as well…… but then this bastard tried to sneak downstairs with a weapon. Looks like he was one of the stragglers.”
“So you stopped him?”
“I couldn’t stop him. I tried. I thought I could handle one of them…… but as expected, things went exactly as expected. I would’ve gotten myself killed for nothing if you hadn’t arrived in time.”
There was no chance Evan would have been taken down by a single thug in the first place, and no one would have blamed Sam even if he had simply pretended not to notice and fled.
“My friend was down there. I couldn’t run away like a coward. I’ve done so many shameful things in my life that I don’t know whether doing this now means anything, though.”
Evan looked at Sam for a moment, then turned his head toward Lara.
“Let’s discuss the job.”
“……Oh, right. Yeah. We should deal with that first. Come downstairs. I’ll show you myself.”
Still looking unable to shake off her confusion, Lara awkwardly headed toward the stairs.
“Um, Mr. Evan. You need to take this.”
Sam held the money out to Evan again, and Evan spoke as he followed Lara.
“It’s yours.”
“What? But this came from the pockets of the men you dealt with…….”
“It’s your fee. You brought me all the way here.”
Sam stared at Evan, then smiled.
“Then, shameless as it may be, I’ll gratefully accept it.”
Sam stuffed the money into his pocket and followed behind Evan.
Evan had previously asked Lara to handle two jobs.
One was to decrypt the encrypted data inside the Golden Cross.
The other was to unlock the password on a corporate employee’s laptop. He wanted to use it to access the city network.
“I think I’ll need more time with the Golden Cross’s data chip. I hate to say this, but it might even be impossible…….”
“You said you were confident in your skills. It must be harder than you expected.”
“If you’d taken something like this to any Net Runner other than me, they would’ve thrown salt after you and refused to touch it.”
Lara pulled the chip out of the computer and held it up as she spoke.
“This thing’s firewall is vicious as hell. I let my guard down for a second and it destroyed one of my computers. If I’d connected it directly to my head, my whole brain might’ve been fried.”
Lara shook her head and looked at Evan.
“What the hell is this thing? Does it contain a sex video of the federal prime minister or something? Why would a random data chip lying around Asle have a retaliatory firewall?”
Lara inserted the chip back into the computer, then picked up the laptop.
“On the other hand, I cracked the laptop immediately. I actually finished it that same day.”
“It was a personal laptop, so I expected that to some extent. Was it really that simple?”
“The password was 1111.”
“…….”
Damn it. I should’ve at least tried that.
When Evan stood there dumbfounded, Lara burst out laughing.
“Well, I got paid for doing practically nothing, so I can at least explain the data as a complimentary service.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“This corporate bastard’s laptop contained a truly astonishing secret.”
Lara brought up some data on the monitor.
Sam, who was looking over her shoulder, opened his mouth slightly, while Lara wore a contemptuous smile.
“There was a three-terabyte encrypted compressed file in the secure folder. It was all pornography. Mostly elves. This bastard has an elf fetish.”
“That’s the astonishing secret?”
“Of course it is! What the hell do you Terrans (humans) think elves are? We’re a different species to begin with. How can that possibly turn you on?”
Her long ears twitched as she shuddered.
“Well, speaking practically…… I heard the entire board of directors at Vertex Corporation is made up of elves. I guarantee that if you used this against him, the owner of this laptop would end up pickled in a drum. Weaknesses like this are perfect for blackmailing corporate bastards.”
It was a good idea, but the owner of the laptop had already been pickled by Evan’s own hands. Besides, Evan had always intended to use the laptop to access the city network, so he had little interest in what files it contained.
“Was there anything else?”
Even if the owner had only been a low-level employee, he had still worked for Vertex Corporation, a megacorporation. Evan held on to the faint hope that he might obtain something worthwhile.
“Come to think of it…… there were a few project folders in the cloud. He was a low-level employee, so access to most of them was restricted, but I could at least view their names. What were they again…….”
Lara clicked through the computer a few times, then brought up a data table.
“Here it is.”
Even before Lara opened her mouth, Evan realized what she was about to say.
【In Progress: Yender Project】
“Yender…….”
Evan muttered, while Lara, unaware of what he was thinking, snickered.
“Don’t tell me these people are actually trying to find the Yender Amulet. Seriously, in this day and age?”
“…….”
“Right?”
Of course, anyone living in this world could think that way.
However, Evan was one of the people genuinely trying to find it.