Evan read through the characters on the scroll spread across the air, while Jurgens, watching from a short distance behind him, struggled to conceal his agitation beneath a relaxed expression.
“……You might not know this because you’ve never been to the city, Brother.”
“Are you winding up to mock the country bumpkin?”
Evan replied dryly without taking his eyes off the pale, glowing characters.
“Listen. In a backwater like Asle, people look at mages as though they’re ghosts, but mages aren’t that rare in the city. Unless we’re talking about an elf or vampire mage.”
“The city has a Mage Tower. That makes sense.”
“What? You know about it? Then you also know what sort of people run the Mage Tower, right?”
The Mage Tower.
A kind of university, research institute, and archive divided into ten schools that operated under an apprenticeship system.
In the past, it had undoubtedly been a symbol of history that carried the traditions and glory of mages.
“They say they used to have their noses in the air, but now they’re just high-end hired thugs who know how to scatter glitter. And even that only applies to the ones who still have enough scraps of solidarity left to stick together. I’ve done quite a few jobs involving the Mage Tower.”
“Did you suddenly feel the need to advertise your career?”
“My point is…… I’ve met all kinds of people, but I’ve never even heard of anyone capable of doing anything like what you just did.”
Evan looked at Jurgens’s soul.
It had remained steady even throughout a chase filled with gunfire, yet now, as Jurgens looked at Evan, it trembled for the first time.
The emotion inside that soul was familiar to Evan.
Fear of the unknown.
It was the emotion most souls felt when facing him.
“Can’t you tell me even a little? Are you really a mage?”
“Pointless curiosity kills cats. If you plan to keep living as a stray, you should restrain yourself.”
“Surely you can at least tell me where you’re from.”
“I have no reason to answer.”
“When you make it into the city, I’ll buy you a drink to celebrate. Something not even your entire fortune could buy.”
Only then did Evan’s gaze leave the magical characters floating in the air.
Feeling his stare, Jurgens shamelessly smiled and continued.
“If you’re going to the city, you need at least one connection there, don’t you? You’ve probably guessed as much, but my network in the city isn’t bad. I’d say trading a little story about your past for that is a fairly cheap deal.”
Soon, the scroll of soul spread across the air vanished as though evaporating.
Evan brushed off his cloak and headed toward the car.
Just as Jurgens gave up, assuming he would receive no answer, Evan’s voice reached him.
“The north. Beyond the barrier.”
Jurgens looked at Evan, then snickered and muttered.
“You got a drink out of me for a single sentence. You really do make nothing but terrible deals.”
“That’s why I saved you as Sucker.”
“What? What did you save me as?”
“Get behind the wheel already. Stop wasting time. I don’t have a license.”
Jurgens shook his head, climbed into the driver’s seat, and started the car.
The starter coughed out a harsh noise before black exhaust began pouring from the vehicle.
As he shifted into gear, Jurgens spoke.
“You crossed a cold and barren place like that remarkably well. Asle must feel like a utopia by comparison. No wonder you never seemed dissatisfied.”
“The hot dogs were good, so it wasn’t bad. I didn’t like how fucking expensive everything was.”
Jurgens laughed and pressed the throttle.
Before he could even ask, Evan pointed out the direction with a finger.
There was no hesitation in the gesture.
Records engraved into a soul could not contain lies.
There was no reason to doubt the information he had obtained from them.
***
What distinguished black-magic rituals from Nature Magic was that their manifestation did not need to follow a fixed recipe.
Rather than serving a predetermined dish, anything was possible with the available ingredients as long as it did not violate the rules.
However, there were always easier paths to a destination.
Evan called black-magic rituals with fixed methods and results Ritual Formulas. Whenever he comprehended one, the ritual’s structure was engraved into his soul.
『Soulcraft·Polish, Adam’s Journal』
The Ritual Formula is engraved this time.
It was a technique for reading data recorded in a target’s soul.
In other words, it allowed him to look through memories.
Hammy possessed the very ability Evan had wished for.
Of course, selecting and extracting exactly the information he wanted was not easy.
It was like searching for a single line of text inside an unorganized folder containing hundreds of terabytes of data.
Still, after doing it once, Evan felt as though he had grasped the trick.
Time would take care of the rest.
‘Next time, I’ll be able to obtain more information more quickly.’
In any case, this was the first Ritual Formula someone else had passed on to him.
The sensation of sharing black magic, which had always been a world belonging to him alone, with someone else was quite striking.
It was difficult to put the feeling into words, but it was not unpleasant. For the first time in a long while, he felt satisfied.
「How does it feel to have a master?」
Hammy’s snickering voice came from inside his cloak, as though it had noticed Evan’s emotions.
“A wiki would be a more accurate description.”
「What? What key?」
“It’s a thing that’s more useful than a rodent.”
「I don’t know what it is, but if it came out of your mouth, it must be an insult, right? You ungrateful goddamn bastard. This great archdemon went out of its way to…….」
At that point, Evan stopped responding and turned his head.
Jurgens seemed to think Evan was talking in his sleep. He glanced sideways at him, then focused on driving.
Soon, concrete protruding between the heaps of garbage came into view.
The moment they crossed a massive hill of plastic, a gray city abruptly greeted them in the distance.
“……Fuck. I’ve never been here before. It looks like ghosts might actually show up.”
「Ghosts? My kind would enjoy living here.」
While the hamster that had once been a ghost snickered in response, Evan silently watched the road ahead.
“Asle District D.”
“That’s what the administrative government calls it. Nobody calls this place Asle.”
Jurgens’s voice was filled with tension.
A city barely visible beneath the faint moonlight.
A place that seemed like nothing more than ruins stripped of every trace of human life.
“……At least people can live in Asle.”
Inside collapsed gray buildings, in front of cars reduced to scrap, beside roads and structures whose purposes could no longer be identified.
No matter where one looked in the city, human-sized pillars of salt stood in view.
The sight robbed Jurgens of his composure.
“Los Panu.”
“Yeah. Even the people living in Asle’s garbage dump gave up on this place. You know about it?”
Evan felt no need to answer.
Of course he knew.
It was an area that appeared in every run of the game.
A place that even the residents of Asle District C, where the terrain itself was made of garbage, refused to recognize as part of Asle.
An enormous stretch of land abandoned even by a city suffering from a shortage of living space.
“You’re saying Hanesaki is here?”
Evan nodded.
Jurgens did not know the basis for that claim, but he had no choice but to believe it. He spat out the window.
“Then we could’ve saved ourselves the trouble and stayed planted at the redhead’s bar.”
“Why?”
Without taking his eyes off the road ahead, Jurgens quietly muttered.
“Because if we left him alone, he would’ve died on his own.”
***
They did not travel comfortably by car for long.
The roads were nothing more than decoration. Rubble and pillars of salt blocked the way.
The two left the car and continued on foot.
Evan moved forward with the practiced ease of someone following a familiar path.
Watching him cut through the ruins like a wild beast traversing a mountain trail, Jurgens’s imagination began to run wild.
What exactly was he?
A mage?
The mysteries blooming from his fingertips were far too unfamiliar for that.
A former slum vagrant?
It was a predictable story, but Evan lacked the vulgarity that would have suited such an origin.
There was absolutely no chance he was a descendant of some unknown frontier vampire or elf family.
Such things were far too romantic to exist in this age.
‘And there’s no way he’s a dragon…….’
Yet even those celestial bloodlines avoided this place.
Los Panu, where people said that if two entered, three corpses would be found.
Evan walked through it as though it were his own home, without showing even the slightest sign of fear.
‘Has he become numb to fear? Or does he have no reason to be afraid?’
Jurgens could not know.
The truth was that Jurgens had been the one to lead Evan to this commission.
Even without knowing much about Evan’s actions, he had continued to strongly emphasize Evan’s usefulness ever since their first meeting.
The gang leader who did not want to die possessed the power and authority to get Evan into the city.
Evan appeared to possess the strength to fulfill the gang leader’s needs.
The moment Jurgens met Evan, he concluded that connecting the two would also benefit him.
It was not goodwill toward this mysterious mage.
Nor was it some grand cause.
He had not dared to scheme to stab Evan in the back either.
Jurgens was not foolish enough to miss that such a plan would likely backfire.
He understood that cooperating with the capable led to his own profit.
It was the way of this age, and Jurgens was accustomed to its rules.
As they moved, both men organized their thoughts in their own ways.
While Jurgens thought about Evan, Evan considered the enemy he would soon face.
Before long, they reached their destination.
Jurgens silently stared at an enormous black tunnel.
It gaped open inside a massive concrete structure.
Pedestrian walkways extended along both sides, with a shallow stream of murky water flowing through the middle.
“A sewer?”
Evan nodded, and Jurgens spat onto the ground.
“A fitting place for assassin bastards to hide.”
The 1.7-meter pillars of salt found throughout these ruins stood here as well.
Evan stopped walking and merely stared into the black depths of the tunnel.
“Why aren’t you going in? Praying before the job?”
Jurgens grew curious and moved closer behind Evan, fixing his gaze inside the tunnel.
He still could not see anything.
However, he quickly realized that Evan’s eyes were already seeing something invisible to him.
When Jurgens turned his head, he saw a faint red glow tracing the edge of Evan’s black irises.
It always appeared whenever Evan was about to do something.
That meant…….
Jurgens looked inside again.
He still saw nothing, but—
“Well, I was wondering whether even the salt pillars had started moving.”
It was a voice Jurgens knew.
“And here I see a familiar face. This has become truly entertaining.”
Jurgens raised a hand and pressed near his temple.
A powerful light switched on inside a tiny opening at the edge of his eyebrow and illuminated the space ahead.
The person who had been hiding in the darkness of the sewer revealed himself.
A white blindfold covered his eyes. The skin visible beneath it was pale, and his cheekbones jutted sharply outward.
His cloak appeared to be made of metal and reflected the light like a mirror.
Behind his head floated a golden metal halo shaped like the sun.
“Hanesaki.”
Jurgens muttered.
Hanesaki smiled, revealing a mouthful of crooked teeth.
“Come to avenge your daughter? Revenge, you say? Wasn’t the one who broke the contract the one at fault?”
After saying that, he looked into empty space and muttered in a strange voice.
“A former customer has returned. Looks like we might have a decent event today, don’t you think? Put up some missions, everyone. Or place your bets.”
He was speaking into empty air.
Evan wondered what he was doing, but only for a moment.
Hanesaki gestured, and a massive holographic screen appeared in the air.
Countless lines of text streamed across it.
Anonymous: Who the hell is that bastard?
Anonymous: Isn’t he from the city? Why is he doing that out there?
Anonymous: Did he seriously come for revenge? Fucking LOL.
Anonymous: Slum dwellers are fucking filthy. Look at those clothes. Ugh, fuck, LOL.
<Prediction Game Created!>
Both die within ten minutes
Hanesaki runs away pathetically
<Betting has begun! >
Option 1 Bets: 23,302,000 credits
Option 2 Bets: 3,020,000 credits
An internet livestream.
It was not unfamiliar.
A livestream that used hunting people as content.
“Hah.”
Evan burst out laughing.
Jurgens and Hanesaki each interpreted that laugh differently.
“Nervous because you know people are watching?”
“Be careful, Brother. Before I explain that bastard’s ability, you need to understand that you must never take your eyes off him under any circumstances…….”
Jurgens tried to offer advice, but Evan did not listen.
He merely swept his cloak aside and prepared to move.
He did not think the warning was necessary in the first place.
He lowered his upper body slightly, fixed his head straight ahead, and brought a hand to his waist.
His hand gripped the handgun behind his belt, while his left hand formed a seal beneath his cloak.
“Do whatever you can on your own. But I recommend backing off and making sure you don’t die.”
The red glow in Evan’s irises intensified.
“It’d be a problem if the wallet paying for my drinks in the city broke in a place like this.”