BOOM!
The black sedan smashed through the restaurant entrance like a bulldozer.
The mangled roll-up door and shattered glass burst inward as two blinding beams from the headlights flooded the restaurant, turning night into day.
Time seemed to slow down.
Nate could clearly see several shards of glass spinning through the air before burying themselves in his body.
The car hit him.
But he was fine!
The instant the sedan slammed into him, Nate felt as though his entire body had been wrapped in an invisible layer of plastic film.
The impact should have been strong enough to break ribs, but that unseen layer dispersed and absorbed the force in an instant.
A wave of warmth surged through his body, as though someone had lit a fire inside his veins.
It was scorching hot, but it didn’t burn.
The impact sent him flying, yet instead of tumbling helplessly through the air, his body seemed to hang there for a moment, almost as if he were gliding.
Nate turned halfway in midair, planted both feet against the wall, and landed lightly atop an overturned cabinet.
[Warning! Beginner Protection triggered. Fatal damage has been negated.]
The sedan continued plowing into the kitchen like a bulldozer until its front end crashed straight into the stove.
Water pipes burst.
Tap water sprayed everywhere, mixing with ground peppercorns and chili oil as it spread across the floor.
The sharp smell was strong enough to make anyone sneeze.
“An assassination?”
Nate crouched atop the kitchen cabinet, his heart hammering so hard from the sudden attack that it felt ready to leap out of his throat.
Yet some invisible force kept his hand perfectly steady.
He was still holding the kitchen knife.
It almost seemed to resonate with him, and when the headlights struck the blade, a cold gleam flashed across its edge.
[Accelerating Trait integration…]
[Trait Source: Bullseye… Current Progress: 83%… 100%]
[Trait Acquired]
[Iron Severing (Lv. 4): Blade weapon damage increased by 200%. Damage against metal objects doubled.]
[Flying Star (Lv. 3): Projectile speed increased by 90%. Accuracy corrected within 20 meters.]
Bullseye.
The assassin who could turn practically anything into a deadly projectile?
Nate looked at the knife in his hand.
Somehow, it felt as though an instinct for using blades had suddenly been etched into his body.
He quickly scanned the kitchen for something suitable to throw.
Then his eyes stopped.
Frowning, he reached up, pulled a palm-sized shard of glass from his arm, and rolled it between his fingers.
The car doors opened.
Two masked men stepped out.
The hitman from the passenger seat wore a tracksuit and held a pistol in a practiced grip.
His stance alone made it obvious he wasn’t some random street thug.
The man who emerged from the driver’s side was bigger and more heavily built.
He wore a black suit and carried a tapered blade roughly thirty centimeters long, with deep grooves running along all four sides.
“Whoa! Did you see that? This guy can fight!” the gunman exclaimed in a heavy West Coast accent.
“Shut up! Move!” the black-suited hitman snapped.
He charged Nate with the military dagger in hand.
At the same time, the tracksuit-clad gunman raised his pistol, aimed straight at Nate’s head, and started to pull the trigger.
Nate stared at the muzzle.
A fraction of a second before the gunshot, he tilted his head to the left and flicked his left hand forward.
The bullet skimmed past his ear and buried itself in the wall behind him with a dull thud, spraying plaster dust across his neck.
The gunman froze.
He had probably never seen anyone dodge a bullet at such close range.
But he never got the chance to fire again.
The palm-sized shard of glass curved through the air like a meteor.
It struck his wrist dead center.
The shard punched through the front of his wrist and burst out the back, slicing through tendons, nerves, and blood vessels in a single hit.
The gunman let out an inhuman scream.
Agony made his hand spasm, sending the pistol flying.
He doubled over instinctively and grabbed at his right wrist, but the hand was already useless.
Several fingers had curled into a cramped claw, and he couldn’t straighten them at all.
By then, the black-suited hitman was already on top of Nate.
Using the full momentum of his charge, he drove the military dagger straight toward Nate’s abdomen.
The thrust was fast, brutal, and powerful enough to punch through a car door.
Nate stepped forward with his left foot.
His right hand snapped upward.
CLANG!
The kitchen knife knocked the dagger aside.
Without breaking the motion, Nate raised the knife high above his head.
His right foot followed by half a step as he drove his hips forward, twisted at the waist, and brought the blade down with all his strength.
The suited hitman had already been knocked off balance by the upward strike.
Before he could regain his footing or retreat, he hurriedly raised the dagger in front of his left arm to block the descending kitchen knife.
CLANG!
“Fuck…”
The suited hitman’s eyes widened in disbelief.
The kitchen knife sliced straight through the military dagger.
Then through his left arm.
The severed arm dropped to the floor, while half of the broken dagger spun away across the room.
The kitchen knife kept going.
It buried itself deep in the hitman’s chest.
Blood erupted.
The cut was so deep that the knife lodged between the bones in his chest.
Nate had to pull hard before he managed to wrench it free.
Blood poured from the wound like water from an open faucet, mixing with the water covering the floor and quickly spreading into a dark red pool.
The suited hitman stared at Nate with bulging eyes.
His body swayed.
His head dropped.
Then he fell to his knees with a heavy thud.
Two men.
One had his chest split open and an arm severed.
The other’s right hand had been destroyed.
Within seconds, both had lost the ability to fight.
Nate wiped the blood from his cheek.
The metallic smell filled his nose.
With adrenaline surging through him, the hand gripping the kitchen knife finally began to tremble.
He had been an ordinary person in both lives.
This was the first time he had ever fought for his life, and seeing blood and flesh flying everywhere was far beyond anything he had experienced before.
Nate drew a breath and fixed his eyes on the tracksuit-clad hitman with the ruined hand.
Then, almost as an afterthought, he brought the kitchen knife down once more on the back of the kneeling hitman’s head.
The tracksuit-clad hitman slid down against the side of the car.
His eyes were filled with terror.
His ruined hand hung uselessly beside him, blood already spreading beneath it, while his other hand frantically searched around for anything he could use to defend himself.
The pistol.
It wasn’t far away.
“Don’t move,” Nate said.
The hitman ignored him.
He hooked the gun with the tip of his shoe and jerked it toward himself.
Nate frowned.
He crossed the distance in one step, planted his foot on the pistol, and pressed the bloodied kitchen knife against the man’s throat.
“I said don’t move.”
The hitman looked up.
His eyes beneath the mask were wide with terror as he stared at the blood dripping from the blade.
A strangled sound escaped his throat.
“Please… please don’t kill me…”
His voice shook so badly that even his West Coast accent had dissolved into a sob.
Nate ignored the plea.
He glanced at the cuts across his arm, then at the black sedan buried in the stove, before finally looking back at the hitman.
“Who sent you?”
The man opened his mouth.
Before he could answer, a faint electrical buzzing came from behind Nate.
Nate spun around.
A red light was flashing frantically beneath the back of the kneeling hitman’s suit.
“Beep… beep… beep…”
A cold electronic tone came from somewhere beneath his jacket.
Nate’s pupils contracted.
He didn’t hesitate.
He turned and sprinted for the restaurant entrance.
The sedan had already smashed the doorway apart, leaving nothing to block his path.
Three seconds.
The instant Nate cleared the entrance and threw himself into the alley, a muffled explosion erupted behind him.
The shockwave blasted through the doorway, carrying shattered glass and twisted pieces of metal with it.
Nate was thrown forward and hit the ground hard.
Several fragments cut across his back, leaving burning streaks of pain.
When the heat faded, he pushed himself up and looked back.
Half the restaurant had collapsed.
The remains of the black sedan were buried beneath bricks and debris.
As for the two hitmen, there wasn’t much left of them in one piece.
Nate crouched behind a trash can near the mouth of the alley and waited several more seconds.
Only after confirming there wasn’t going to be another explosion did he slowly stand.
He brushed the dust from his clothes.
The cuts across his body weren’t particularly deep, but they burned like hell.
Nate stared at the smoking ruins, his thoughts in complete chaos.
Who were they?
Why were they trying to kill me?
This is the world of John Wick.
Do I have a bounty on my head?
If I do…
who put it there?
Nate looked down at his hand.
The kitchen knife was still there.
Blood coated the blade, and two tiny chips, each about the size of a grain of rice, had been knocked out of its edge.
During the fight, he’d simply had an instinctive certainty that he could pull it off.
But that last strike had cut straight through a military dagger and a man’s arm.
No ordinary kitchen knife, no matter how sharp, should have been capable of that.
Everything had happened too quickly for him to examine what was going on.
System?
Nate called out silently.
“The System is now online.”
A cold mechanical voice answered inside his head.
A grin spread across Nate’s face.
Finally.
It actually worked.
With this thing, he at least had a fighting chance in this world.
A pale green interface appeared before his eyes.
It resembled a video game UI, except much of it was damaged and most of the icons were gray.
A large block of red text at the top immediately caught his attention.
[System Status: Severely Damaged.]
[Modules 2-1, 2-2: Missing.]
[Module 1: Operations Base. Insufficient Conditions! Cannot be deployed.]
[Module 3: System Store. Operational.]
Nate looked down at the character panel.
[Host: Nate Lin]
[Resource Points: 73/1000]
[Initial Trait Slots: 3]
[Currently Equipped: (Iron Severing), (Flying Star), (Empty)]
“Iron Severing (Lv. 4): Blade weapon damage increased by 200%. Damage against metal objects doubled.”
Nate read it again.
What exactly did a 200% increase mean?
A kitchen knife with three times the normal power, doubled again against metal.
That made it six times as effective.
Still, a normal kitchen knife cutting through steel like that sounded ridiculous.
Then again, he was a chef.
Years of working a wok had already made him considerably stronger than the average person.
So maybe it wasn’t quite as absurd as it sounded.
“Flying Star (Lv. 3): Projectile speed increased by 90%. Accuracy corrected within 20 meters.”
The ninety-percent speed increase was easy enough to understand.
The faster a projectile moved, the harder it hit.
But that part about “accuracy corrected” was ridiculous.
Nate had never trained with thrown weapons.
He had simply felt certain he could hit the gunman’s wrist, and once he threw the shard, its path had seemed almost guided as it flew straight into the target.
Wait.
A throwing knife still counted as a blade, didn’t it?
Wouldn’t that mean Iron Severing applied to it too?
If both Traits activated at the same time, then under ideal conditions, based purely on the numbers, that would be 3 times the power from Iron Severing multiplied by 1.9 from Flying Star.
Almost six times the normal power.
A throwing knife with nearly six times the force that could reliably hit within twenty meters?
Holy shit.
Police sirens sounded in the distance.
They were getting closer.
Nate quickly scanned the gray icons.
Aside from the System Store, almost everything was unusable.
At the top of the interface was a progress bar.
[Resource Points: 73/1000]
A smaller line of text appeared beneath it.
[Collect enough Resource Points to increase the Resource Point cap and unlock additional Trait Slots.]
[Sufficient Resource Points can be used to repair the system.]
[Resource Points can be obtained by locating high-value items, eliminating high-threat targets, and completing system quests.]
Nate understood.
The system was barely functional.
For now, all he could really do was collect Resource Points and spend them in the System Store.
He opened the Trait section of the store and looked through it carefully.
The sheer variety of Traits made his head spin.
He tapped on Steel Body Lv.
1.
A line of red text appeared.
[Insufficient Resource Points. Required: 600. Prerequisite Traits: None.]
He continued scrolling.
A few Traits were highlighted.
They were the two he had already unlocked.
[Iron Severing]
[Flying Star]
Under [Iron Severing], he noticed an upgrade arrow.
[Lv. 4 → Lv. 5]
[Required Resource Points: 700]
[Prerequisite: Kill 15 enemies with knife or sword weapons.]
[Current Progress: 1/15]
[Flying Star] had something similar.
[Lv. 3 → Lv. 4]
[Required Resource Points: 500]
[Prerequisite: Kill 10 enemies with thrown weapons.]
[Current Progress: 0/10]
So he could earn Resource Points and use them to purchase or upgrade Traits.
But those points were ridiculously hard to get.
Two dead hitmen hadn’t even pushed him past one hundred.
The police were almost there.
Nate took a deep breath.
The night air carried the smell of grease from Chinatown, mixed with the sound of approaching sirens as it swept through the alley.
Behind him, the ruins of Good Luck Restaurant were still smoking.
Ahead stretched the endless darkness of the city.
Nate tightened his grip on the knife and walked forward.