Hanesaki stared blankly at the hand drawing closer and closer.
There was a reason mages who seemed more tenacious than cockroaches often died more easily than expected.
Sometimes, the shock of encountering a situation they could not comprehend overrode their survival instincts.
To those who could not use magic, all magic might look more or less the same.
But Hanesaki was a mage, so he understood perfectly well what the phenomenon Evan had displayed meant.
And because he understood it so well, he found it even harder to accept.
“This…… isn't a mage.”
He muttered that after running countless calculations. Even if what stood before him was magic, there was no way a phenomenon being manifested while disregarding every principle could have originated from the Mage Tower.
Whatever it is, this isn't magic.
Hanesaki stared blankly at the wall. A holographic chat window he had ostentatiously made public floated there.
Bet on No. 1: 41,212,311 credits
Bet on No. 2: 112,483,238 credits
Naturally, the viewers dumped every remaining credit into No. 2.
It was Hanesaki's fault for stupidly failing to close the betting before the match began.
In truth, it had been intentional. He did not care who won the money in the first place. All Hanesaki needed was to pocket the commission. The only ones who ever won or lost money were the viewers of this fucking dark web.
Those who had watched Hanesaki's content with interest were now eagerly awaiting his death.
After always coming out ahead at countless gambling tables, the moment had finally arrived when he would lose.
“……Bastards.”
Hanesaki muttered, then bared his teeth in another grin.
“You think I'm going to die like this? What a load of fucking bullshit.”
He cackled, then clenched his teeth.
He still had one final cybernetic part that had not been destroyed.
His right molar.
CRACK—
Something sounded as though it had shattered. Blue light flashed, and Hanesaki's body vanished.
Left holding only the dagger that had been embedded in Hanesaki's shoulder, Evan stared into empty space for a moment and blinked.
An emergency teleportation device.
“…….”
「What? You let him get away?」
The hamster, which had watched everything from inside the cloak's inner pocket, spoke.
「You actually let him get away? Seriously? Pffft……!」
“…….”
Meanwhile, Jurgens emerged from the sewer where he had been hiding.
“Is it over? Things went quiet.”
“……Looks like you found yourself a good hiding place.”
“If you can't manage at least that much, you won't survive in this business.”
“What did you go do?”
“My job.”
“Your job?”
Evan brushed the dust from his cloak.
“I was told you were supposed to act as my backup, but it seems like all you did in the end was drive.”
“I could've helped if you needed it.”
Jurgens pulled an object from his pocket and held it out.
It looked more like a radio-frequency device than a gun.
“It disrupts mana, though only for a very brief moment. It's disposable and fucking expensive, but there's no substitute for it as insurance when dealing with troublesome mages. If you're lucky, it can buy you enough time to put a bullet into a careless mage.”
“Why didn't you use it?”
Jurgens shrugged.
“You'd already put several bullets into him before I could even pull this out.”
It was a simple statement carrying the meaning, ‘If you'd struggled, I would've helped you with this. But you didn't seem to need help in the first place.’
“I wasn't just sitting around either. Here.”
Something flew through the air as though he had flicked a coin, and Evan snatched it.
It was a small gilded chip.
He knew what it was without needing to ask.
Back when this world had been a game, this item had been the very reason to explore and clear quests.
“It's a Skill Chip, brother. Anyway, it can easily fetch tens of millions, and if you're lucky, hundreds of millions.”
It was a consumable similar to a skill book, containing a random skill, passive ability, or something of that sort.
Evan raised his head and looked at Jurgens.
“Why am I giving it to you? I'm not some sucker either. It was mage-exclusive in the first place. You might think I could simply sell it since I said it was expensive, but……. Selling something like that is a job in itself. If it's uncertified or illegally modified, merely getting caught with it is enough, huh? You know?”
Jurgens drew the edge of his hand back and forth across his throat.
“I accomplished my own objective too, so……. All things considered, it'd be better for you to keep this, brother. That's only proper, isn't it?”
Jurgens winked. When Evan casually ignored him, he cleared his throat and looked around.
“Where's Hanesaki? What, did you blow him away without leaving even dust?”
“He escaped.”
“……What?”
Jurgens went pale and dropped his jaw.
“Hey, brother. You haven't forgotten the objective of this mission, have you? Weren't you supposed to receive something pretty important from him?”
Jurgens made no attempt to hide his panic, and the hamster inside the cloak continued snickering and chattering obnoxiously, but Evan merely stared down at the dagger in his hand.
“…….”
It did not take long for Jurgens to fall silent.
Jurgens assumed Evan was lost in thought or trying to devise an alternative.
But Evan already had an alternative, and he was not lost in thought.
He was merely calculating what the condition of ‘the target's blood’ coating the blade, combined with the immense energy contained within these salt-pillar ruins, might accomplish.
“Shall I test it?”
“……What? What are you planning this time? Should I go back in there? Will you tell me when it's over?”
Evan drew a pistol from inside his cloak, chambered a round, and closed his eyes.
HISSS—
The blood the dagger had taken turned into a dark violet mist, then seeped into the chamber and beneath the slide.
Jurgens felt a powerful and inexplicable sense of unease. He backed away until he believed he had put enough distance between them.
Souls were not the only resources used in black magic.
Blood, lingering thoughts remaining in corpses, resentment soaked into the earth, and tragedies engraved into history were all elements that could influence black magic.
Then…….
“The tragedy engraved upon a city where every human became a pillar of salt.”
The lingering thoughts and resentment of the victims still remaining within all these pillars of salt.
What effect could they have on the results of black magic?
The potential black magic could display in the middle of these ruins.
That was why Evan had remained at ease throughout the fight.
In a place like this…… he did not feel as though he could lose.
He finished aiming and pulled the trigger.
A thunderous blast erupted, followed by a shockwave arriving one beat later.
Evan opened his eyes and looked at what he had created.
Somewhere in these ruins where Hanesaki now was, and the place where Evan stood.
A long hole five handspans wide connected the two locations, piercing through the entire ruins.
「……Even for a black mage, I don't think someone like this should exist? 」
“If we're deciding what shouldn't exist, wouldn't that be the talking hamster?”
「Seriously, one day I'll kill you with my own hands.」
“A talking hamster, and a rude one at that.”
Evan casually ignored the squawking coming from inside his cloak and looked at Jurgens.
“Let's go. We need to bring back the corpse so they can't argue.”
“……Instead of bringing back the corpse, how about doing what you just did one more time? Right in front of those bastards. Forget the mission—they'd hand you citizenship themselves. It seems like you're going through trouble you don't need to, brother.”
Evan ignored Jurgens and took the lead. Having said his piece, Jurgens followed without another complaint.
***
Click, click—
Only the sound of two dice rolling across a palm echoed through the basement.
The mess from the earlier commotion had not yet been fully cleaned up. The only thing illuminating the room was a tiny bulb barely hanging from a creaking, swaying pendant lamp.
The basement had a lighting system capable of making it brighter than broad daylight, but Net Runner Lara preferred this sort of atmosphere.
The headphones that had covered her long ears lay carelessly discarded on one side of the filthy table, while her left hand held a half-eaten hot dog.
It was the middle of the night, long past mealtime, yet she had left even the food she had been eating untouched for dozens of minutes as she stared only at the monitor.
“I did realize he was going after Hanesaki…….”
For the best Net Runner in Asle—and not merely by her own claim, but a genuinely skilled one who had ultimately managed to crack the security code protecting the Golden Cross—obtaining that much information was not particularly difficult.
She had already gathered information on every Hitman stationed here while making the implant-hacking EMP bomb Evan had commissioned.
Obtaining information on Hanesaki in particular had been nothing.
“He runs murder broadcasts? What a piece of shit…….”
How could she not know about a contract killer who used murdering people on the dark web as content?
On the other hand, Hanesaki was skilled enough to survive despite openly doing such things.
Unlike his ridiculous appearance, he was the real deal.
“His dark-web grade was…… B, right.”
That was Hanesaki's true grade, as uncovered by Lara. It was lower than she had expected, but in their world, a Grade B was never someone to be taken lightly.
After learning all of that—meaning immediately after Evan left—Lara had kept Hanesaki's stream fixed on her monitor.
Was she worried about Evan? No, of course not. She was only worried about losing a source of income she had created for the first time in ages. Spend my time worrying about someone else's life? As if.
Then a familiar figure appeared on Hanesaki's feed, and a gambling pool opened for their life-or-death duel…….
“…….”
After hesitating, Lara bet 100,000 credits on ‘Hanesaki wins.’
Then, forgetting even to breathe, she watched Evan fight with her own eyes.
Her green eyes never left the monitor throughout the battle.
Until now, she had thought Evan, who moved quietly through the city in a black cloak, might be the same kind of person as her.
Recluses.
Loners.
But she had been wrong. Evan was the exact opposite.
He knew perfectly well that to operate in the city, it was actually more advantageous to flaunt his existence.
“Seriously……. He's pretty damn good, isn't he? Damn it.”
Lara lost her money.
And she burst into louder laughter than she had when she once won one million credits at an illegal gambling house.