The crazy barbarian mercenary didn't stay long.
The moment Tall Man actually drew a gun, he backed away going “whoa, whoa” and collected the Tech Junkie's corpse.
Then, much as he had arrived, he leapt onto a rooftop and vanished somewhere like a ninja.
“See you next time, fellow naturalist!”
See you next time, when he hadn't even asked his name.
Like the lunatic he was, he talked nothing but nonsense even on his exit.
After sending the mercenary off, Woojin turned his head.
A full cyborg in a trench coat, Tall Man, stood with his arms folded, looking down at Woojin.
“So you're the NEWBIE client who arranged to meet me?”
“That's right. Jinwoo Martinez. Call me Woojin.”
“WOOJIN? Newbies these days all want to be called by a nickname right from the start. Trying to look stylish, is that it? Fuck, WHO CARES if you do? The number of bullets that end up in your ass doesn't change.”
Tall Man seemed to be in a very bad mood because of that junkie mercenary.
In the game he had never used a tone this foul with the player.
“You seem to be in a foul mood. What was that mercenary?”
“I want to tell you there's no need to know the name of a JACKASS who's going to drop dead soon anyway……! Cole Graves. A mercenary bastard who stubbornly refuses to die. If he weren't with the Good Dream Mercenary Company he'd have died by my hand already.”
“What kind of guys are the Good Dream Mercenary Company?”
Probably a randomly generated mercenary company name, he guessed.
Speaking in game terms.
“What kind of guys are the Good Dream Mercenary Company? FUCK! Am I your teacher? Fuck, if you want to know, hand over an information fee!”
“Hmm…….”
Tall Man wasn't normally this kind of person.
Being called a “tin can” by Cole Graves seemed to have soured his mood badly.
Tall Man was a full cyborg who wanted to remain human, after all.
“Wait a moment.”
“WHAT! I'm a busy man!”
“I brought a gift.”
“PRESENT……?”
Woojin went to the garbage truck's passenger seat and came back with a small flowerpot.
A purplish-blue flower sat surrounded by round leaves.
“I heard you like flowers.”
“HA! I like flowers? Me, with my whole body swapped out for cold metal prosthetics? Just who said that?”
“Who knows? I felt like I'd heard it somewhere so I brought it along, but you don't need it? If you don't need it I'll throw it out.”
“Good grief. Unbelievable.”
Tall Man came striding over toward Woojin.
The shadow of the 2.5-meter full cyborg covered Woojin.
Tall Man, wearing a fedora, looked down at Woojin for a long moment.
Then he curved one long arm into a circle and took the flowerpot out of Woojin's hands.
“No need to throw it out. Stuffing a flower that grew up this pretty into a garbage bin. The poor flower. MY FRIEND?”
My friend?
When did we become friends?
“And how did you know I like flowers…….Anyway, an excellent choice. To think you'd prepare a gift. You're the first newbie like this. Let's do good business from here on. BRO.”
Bro?
Past friend, all the way up to brother?
“So what did my BROTHER call me here for? Say anything! If it's something I can help with, I'll help with anything! I'll be taking credits for it, of course! HAHAHAHAHA!”
Tall Man spoke with a hearty laugh.
He really was the Tall Man that Woojin knew.
***
“Do you know why a modest gift is a good thing, BRO? A gift that isn't expensive, a modest one.”
“No idea.”
“A modest gift carries the heart of the person giving it.”
“An expensive gift carries a heart too, doesn't it.”
“NO. NO. NO. Too expensive and the gift's value overwhelms the heart. The heart stops being visible. HEART TO HEART? YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING?”
Tall Man seemed to like the flowerpot gift even more than Woojin had anticipated.
He had slung an arm over Woojin's shoulder and was expounding at length on a theory of gifts Woojin had no particular interest in.
‘I only prepared it to get a discount.’
The reaction was so much more fervent than expected that Woojin was the one thrown off.
“And the choice of flower was good too. African violet. Its flower language is eternal friendship!”
“I just bought it because the shop owner recommended it.”
“Then that is a truly MARVELOUS coincidence! HAHAHA!”
“Let me say this in advance, but I don't swing that way.”
“WHAT?! OH SHIT! Did that come out strange? Damn it. This is exactly why liking flowers is a secret.”
Secret or not, Woojin decided it was time to get to the main business.
Thanks to the Tech Junkie, a garbage festival was underway in the alley.
Thinking about how much time it would eat to clean it all up made his vision go dark.
“That aside, I don't have time. I have to finish this deal fast and get back to work.”
Saying that, Woojin laid out the goods he was selling.
The green items he had gathered while working.
The SC―6 revolver, two broken prosthetic parts, and the gold ring.
“Give me a good price. I don't have a single piece of gear, so I need to outfit myself from scratch.”
“Let's have a look.”
Tall Man examined the goods Woojin had laid out one by one.
The revolver and the gold ring quickly.
And the two broken prosthetic parts he inspected carefully, taking his time.
“HMM…….”
“Well? Not bad, right?”
“Where did you get these?”
“Found them while clearing garbage. They aren't dangerous goods.”
“Is that so? Surprising.”
Tall Man looked at Woojin.
The tiny metal fragments attached to his face shifted to express the emotion of “surprise.”
“Woojin. Are you a former engineer? Or did you go to university?”
“No. I'm from the C3 class.”
“OF COURSE. Naturally. No engineer or university graduate would be doing city cleaner work. Still, quite surprising.”
“What's so surprising?”
Tall Man set down the broken prosthetic parts and wriggled his arthropod-like fingers.
“Newbies can't recognize the value of goods like these. Neither can most mercenaries. Most of what clients bring in asking whether it's expensive is worthless JUNK trash. You have to be at least one of those back-alley YAME engineers drifting around the black market to recognize the value.”
Tall Man raised a finger and pointed it at Woojin.
“BUT Woojin. You brought in exactly and only the goods that can be repaired and sold on. Just how were you able to do that?”
“That's my competence. And I can keep doing it.”
Woojin shrugged as if it were nothing.
Seeing that, Tall Man stared at him blankly for a moment, then burst into laughter as though he had been struck.
“Ooh! Hohohoo! What is this! Woojin! Overflowing with confidence!”
“Of course. So give me a good price. I'll be trading with you from now on, after all.”
“MY BRO! Naturally I should! We only met today, but I got a feeling right away. Fuck, you're going to make it big!”
“So can I get my hopes up a little?”
“Of course! I'll call it 2,000,000 credits!”
Woojin's eyebrow twitched.
“2,000,000? Isn't that giving me too much? This lot should come to a little over 1,000,000.”
“Ohh. An accurate eye for goods, aren't you? Correct. Normally I would have bought it for about 1,000,000. Just for today it's a FRIEND PRICE! The friend price!”
“So will it be the friend price from now on too?”
“It is a special event for today only, dear customer.”
“What's with the voice suddenly turning into a salesman's?”
“HAHAHA!”
“Anyway, nothing to be done. Show me the goods.”
“WELCOME! Dear customer! Business is open!”
Tall Man threw his trench coat wide open on both sides.
A gesture that could, from a certain angle, be called obscene.
But look inside Tall Man's coat and that thought vanished in an instant.
The inside of Tall Man's coat was like an iron maiden, the torture device, thrown open.
The outside of the trench coat was beige cloth, but the interior was clad in steel and hung with all manner of weapons.
Handguns, submachine guns, rifles.
Grenades, smoke grenades.
Body armor and military kits.
Prosthetic arms with weapons mounted.
Ammunition boxes of every kind.
Tall Man's body was hidden among the weapons.
A structure divided into segments like a centipede's trunk, with arms, legs, and a steel trench coat attached to it.
A full cyborg who had turned his own body into a mobile pop-up gun shop.
That was Tall Man.
“I'll go cheap for you, so pick whatever you like!”
“No martial arts or magic implants, I take it?”
“Sorry to say, BRO. I don't bring goods as expensive as implants to a first deal with a client. I can get you one if you pay in advance, though.”
“Figures. I have no money anyway, so it doesn't matter.”
Even a Tier 1 martial arts implant floating around the black market started at 10,000,000 minimum.
Magic implants were more expensive.
20,000,000 minimum.
A price he couldn't touch right now.
Implants could wait until he had the 15,000,000 credits from Victor.
“Then I'll take this, and…….”
Woojin picked out a secondhand submachine gun, 300 rounds of 9mm ammunition, body armor, and one grenade.
With the body armor on under his fluorescent cleaner's coat and the submachine gun's shoulder strap slung on, Woojin's heart felt considerably steadier.
And as he was checking the submachine gun's magazine, Tall Man held out an entire ammunition can of 9mm rounds.
“A gift. BRO. Take every 9mm round I have left in stock.”
“A gift? You're really giving me these?”
“I don't want to hear that a talented BRO died for lack of bullets. Counting what you bought, it should come to about 600 rounds.”
“Oh. Then I won't refuse.”
The more bullets the better.
Not because Woojin was some firepower-crazed psychopath soldier.
He needed bullets to practice skills.
“Feels solid.”
His level had risen to 5 and he had basic gear.
Thanks to the level increases he had three skill points as well.
He intended to use the skill points later.
First he would raise [Diamond Qigong]'s level as far as he could through training, and spend the points when he hit a wall.
What remained was a side job to earn money. Commissions.
“Tall Man. If there's a commission I can handle, introduce me to it.”
“HAHAHA! You know the proper order, unlike a newbie!”
That's because I'm not a newbie.
“Sorry to say, BRO. Right now there's no commission. Woojin, you're going to keep on with the sanitation civil servant work, aren't you?”
“That's right.”
Woojin had no intention whatsoever of quitting as a sanitation civil servant.
A sanitation civil servant was a hellish job with lousy pay where you never knew when you'd die, but if you were good at the work it was decent enough.
The civil servant dormitory in District 251, considerably safe and livable among the districts where the underclass lived.
Daphne, the City Public Service AI who even helped with Woojin's private affairs.
C1-grade citizen class, and the chance at promotion and a rise in status.
Give up all of that, go back to the wild back alleys, and take up mercenary work?
However special the power Woojin possessed, that would be a foolish decision.
“In that case you'll mainly be getting courier commissions, BRO. We leave goods along the garbage truck's route, you collect them and deliver them to the destination.”
Woojin nodded.
It was a commission he had done plenty of times in the game.
“But there's nothing like that at the moment. I'll contact you if something comes up.”
“Okay.”
Everything he had to do was finished now.
He had to collect the garbage here and clean up, fast.
The Tech Junkie showing up had dragged things out more than expected.
“Thanks for today, Tall Man. But my shift schedule is tight. Looks like I should say goodbye here.”
“OH. Of course, BRO. But let me tell you one last thing. It's a story worth money.”
“A story worth money?”
Woojin, who had already picked up a garbage bag, came to a dead stop and looked at Tall Man.
“Have you ever heard of a Tech Junkie that uses Shaolin martial arts?”
A Tech Junkie that used Shaolin martial arts?
“Can't say I have.”
“There's a rumor that a Tech Junkie using Shaolin Palm Fist is wandering the back alleys. And it was sighted in District 297, the one you're in charge of, as it happens.”
“It became a Tech Junkie while it had a martial arts implant equipped?”
“Probably. If you could catch it, it would be pretty tasty.”
Tasty was putting it mildly.
If Woojin could obtain the implant mounted in that Tech Junkie, he could learn Shaolin Palm Fist himself.