Asle District A.
At the center of that enormous fortress was a vast open space with nothing but open sky above it.
Standing squarely there was the unfinished concrete skeleton of a high-rise building—the Gray Ribs.
Somewhere within its dust-covered interior was a space furnished with an incongruous solid-wood liquor cabinet, sofas, tables, and expensive whiskey.
The most incongruous sight of all was a child who looked no older than ten pouring whiskey into a rocks glass and drinking it.
THUD—!
A massive bundle had just been thrown down in front of the child.
“Whew, fuck. I nearly blew out my back.”
Jurgens stretched as he straightened his creaking back. Beads of sweat dotted his perfectly smooth scalp, which did not have so much as a single strand of hair.
The ‘kid’ watched him, blinking.
“Your spine is still organic, I take it?”
“Do you have any idea how much a spinal implant costs? If I sold my entire body right now, I might barely be able to afford one spine.”
A second voice emerged from the darkness a beat later. The city light seeping through a gaping window opening first revealed the legs of a mage in a black hood before the rest of him emerged into view.
The kid stared at the two of them. When the melting ice in the rocks glass gave a clink, the kid took it as a cue to speak.
“Already?”
“Why? Is it outside your working hours?”
“Didn't you leave only a little while ago? ……This bastard wasn't supposed to be that easy.”
“We brought him here ourselves in case you didn't believe us. He isn't in any condition to speak, but you should at least be able to identify him.”
The kid slowly set the glass down. Without taking their gaze off Jurgens and Evan, the kid raised one hand and crooked a finger.
A burly gang member approached, cracked open the bundle, and glanced back at the kid with a startled expression.
“……We'll compare it against the DNA samples in our possession.”
That statement alone was enough to guess the current condition of the ‘evidence.’
A short while later, all doubt disappeared.
Evan had completed the request perfectly.
Not even a full day had passed.
Only after the kid finally looked satisfied did Jurgens speak.
“Then there's nothing more to discuss, right? I'm busy.”
“Do you need to head back?”
Jurgens nodded.
“I've still got work to do.”
“Did you get what you wanted?”
Jurgens bared his teeth in a grin and pulled something out.
It was a golden coin, slightly larger than a 500-won coin by Evan's estimation.
TING—!
Jurgens flicked it into the air, caught it again, and turned toward the stairs with a wave.
“Brother, call me when you get to the city. I'll go on ahead and get a table ready.”
Evan watched him leave before speaking.
“What was that?”
“A soul.”
Evan turned his head toward the kid. The kid raised the glass again and continued.
“That bastard's daughter's soul.”
“Be more specific.”
“It's local intelligence model data reconstructed as an AI from a scan of his daughter's brain. It can only be transferred onto a special storage device made by black-market junk engineers, and the hardware binding means it can't be duplicated.”
Evan thought he understood.
“So it's one-of-a-kind brain-scan data and an AI made from it. Calling it a soul isn't exactly wrong, is it?”
“I suppose not. But why did Hanesaki have it?”
It was not difficult to infer from the circumstances that Hanesaki had murdered Jurgens's daughter.
However, Evan had not expected him to possess something like that as well.
“Because it sells for an absurd amount of money? Usually, those Purplelight bastards…… The brothels, I mean, buy them in bulk. The ones that run their businesses through VR systems.”
Evan merely looked back and forth between the kid and the staircase where Jurgens had disappeared.
“Let's finish our business. I still have something left to receive.”
The kid crooked a finger. One of the gang members waiting behind them carefully carried over a wooden box and placed it on the table.
Evan sat on the sofa and opened the box.
Inside was a translucent holographic card the size of a business card.
Although it looked like a mere toy, it was a crystallization of back-alley technology so valuable that listings were difficult to find even in the deepest markets of the dark web.
A Blank Citizenship Card.
“Would you like me to explain again just how valuable that is? Listening to someone explain something I've gotten my hands on is enjoyable even if it takes hours, isn't it?”
“No need.”
Evan left the box where it was, picked up only the citizenship card, and shoved it into his inner pocket.
The kid stared at him with a slightly dumbfounded expression before bursting into laughter.
“……Are you sure you don't need an explanation? Is that how you handle something valuable? You must not be popular with women.”
Evan did not respond. He had little desire to exchange idle chatter with a child who looked less than ten years old.
Instead, he opened a holographic checklist and organized his remaining tasks.
【Things to Remember:
ν Ask around for MedTech (Completed)
ν Find a way into the city (Completed)
□ Why did the leader of the Bones Clan change?
□ Find Yender's Amulet and return home】
Now, he truly could set foot inside the city.
Literally all that remained was to pack his belongings.
“You're far too valuable to let go. Do you really have no intention of working with me?”
“I've already answered that offer.”
“I won't ask you to work under me. We could establish an equal partnership, couldn't we?”
The kid pointed at the box that had contained the Blank Citizenship Card.
“If you know what was inside this, it should be easy to understand that working with me would leave you sitting on a pile of money.”
Evan, who had been getting to his feet, stopped and stared at the kid.
The Bones Clan.
The ten-year-old child who led it.
The leader of the Bones Clan Evan knew had not been some little kid like this.
He knew a fair amount about the clan's original leader.
That name was…….
“You have too many enemies. Keeping you close would obviously drag me into troublesome matters, so no. Martina Bonucci.”
SHATTER—!
The kid's expression did not change, but the glass that fell to the floor and shattered spoke for the emotion within.
Evan did not even need to read the color of the kid's soul to discern those feelings.
The kid's expression remained unchanged. After jerking their chin toward the murmuring gang members nearby, the kid made everyone clear the room.
Then the kid slowly rose and took a new glass from the shelf.
“How did you know?”
The manner of speaking had subtly changed.
How should he describe it?
It felt as though the kid had begun speaking like the original leader of this gang—the one Evan remembered.
Evan smiled, quietly enjoying the subtle change.
There had been plenty of evidence supporting his conclusion.
Habits, manner of speaking, tastes, and the alien shape of the soul.
But there was no need to explain all of it.
“That whiskey. Forest Moose. It's still distributed in the city, but the old-style bottles have already been discontinued. I don't know many people who own that much of it.”
“What do you mean, not many?”
“It tastes fucking awful.”
“People have no taste for whiskey. The stuff made these days tastes like water boiled with barley and spiked with neutral spirits, not whiskey.”
The kid—or rather, Martina Bonucci, the young woman who led the Bones Clan—took out a new glass and poured the remaining whiskey from the old bottle of Forest Moose.
Evan watched her for a moment before quietly speaking.
“A drug?”
“That's right. Recently, when things went wrong in the city and I had to flee, I was given three choices. Die, be sold off as premium merchandise, or…… conceal my identity. I chose the last one. There are plenty of ways to make that possible.”
There might be plenty of ways, but drugs capable of completely changing a person's appearance could not possibly be common.
They would not be easy to obtain either, and anyone who used one would have to be prepared to die.
“Well, my appearance changing a little isn't much of a problem, is it? This clan is still mine. My money is still mine. And the fact that I can put money in your hands hasn't changed either. Right?”
Her confusion lasted only a moment. She quickly returned to her relaxed expression and manner of speaking.
The leader of the Bones Clan had not been replaced by someone Evan did not know.
Only her appearance had changed a little.
But…….
“Why a little boy, of all things?”
“…….”
“Your taste is…… pretty bad.”
「Seriously bad.」
“What do you know about my tastes?? Are you kidding me? And why am I suddenly hearing some rat bastard squeaking?”
「A rat bastard? Did that pervert just call me a rat bastard…….」
“I'm leaving.”
Evan rose from his seat. He had no desire to listen to Bonucci and the ‘rat’ inside his cloak spout nonsense at empty air.
Bonucci continued fuming, but tried her best not to forget the dignity of her position.
“Anyway, if you already knew my identity, you should understand even better what working with me would mean. Give it some thought. I'm not going anywhere.”
“I'll think about it.”
Evan had never intended to discard the card called Bonucci in the first place.
He knew that the leader of a massive clan ruling the slums was a useful tool.
If anything, he intended to keep her reigning as the king of Asle.
Holding a king in one's hand had always been useful, regardless of the era. Being the king of a garbage dump did not make that king any less valuable.
「What are you going to do now? Are you heading straight into the city?」
After leaving the Gray Ribs, Evan looked up at the faintly brightening sky for a moment before moving on.
He briefly took out the Blank Citizenship Card from his inner pocket and looked at it.
It was the way into the city he had wanted so desperately, yet now that it was finally in his hands, it somehow felt less momentous than he had expected.
Regardless, he had taken another step forward.
He had enough composure to savor the satisfaction that came with it.
“First, I'll get some rest.”
His steps carried him toward the Rosegold Pub in Asle District C.