The metal parts that expressed Tall Man's emotions moved in confusion.
Shock, surprise, suspicion, surely-not-really?
Several emotions mixed together in a short span of time.
“WAIT! WAIT! Hold on a second. You want to borrow martial arts implants for exactly one day?”
“That's right.”
Woojin nodded lightly.
“But WHY? I'll need to hear your reason.”
“Because one day is all I need to learn a martial art.”
At those words, Tall Man's trembling expression parts converged on a single emotion.
Seriousness.
Tall Man lowered his voice and spoke.
“YO. BRO. Is that true? You can even do implant cracking?”
Implant cracking.
It meant breaking through the encryption barrier of a martial arts/magic implant, extracting the information, and producing illegal copy implants.
An extremely high-difficulty technique that, even in Lemming City, only a handful could manage.
Of course, the illegal copy martial arts/magic implants already circulating on the black market were comparatively easy to duplicate.
Because their encryption barriers had already been broken.
“I don't have the ability to produce copy implants. I can just duplicate the martial arts information and use it myself. Call it a workaround.”
“Duplicate the information alone without the implant? You're saying you use a martial art with nothing but a neural interface? SHIT! I've never even heard of a method like that.”
Tall Man shook his head as though he couldn't believe it.
It was a startling thing.
A martial arts/magic implant did more than transmit martial arts/magic information to the nervous system.
As a computation-support device, it helped the user feel and handle qi/mana.
It was why using martial arts/magic was difficult without an implant.
The megacorps had deliberately left that function out of the neural interface's standard build.
After thinking for a moment, Tall Man let out a long sigh.
To be precise, he produced the sound of a sigh.
“Hoooo. If I'd known, I'd have stocked a lot more martial arts implants.”
Woojin, who had been watching Tall Man's reaction closely, grinned.
“You really are my brother. I knew I could trust you.”
“BRO. The thing I consider most important in business is trust. Without trust you can never make a living in the back alleys for long. YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING?”
“Yeah. I know.”
Tall Man was the broker who followed the player from [Steel Sweeper]'s first stage to its last.
A dependable ally who never betrayed the player.
‘And even setting that aside, he'd have no reason to betray me.’
The game had become reality.
Woojin hadn't completely ruled out the possibility of Tall Man betraying him.
But Woojin believed Tall Man would keep the secret.
Tall Man had to recover his lost memories.
Those lost memories were a source of pain that endlessly generated the suspicion that he had no soul-GHOST.
And to recover those lost memories he needed a companion who would dig down into the deepest darkness of Lemming City.
A companion he could trust.
That was why Tall Man handed out business cards to newbies like Woojin and raised them up.
Even though with his ability he could be making far more money.
“If BRO has an ability like that, we should make the most of it. The stronger BRO gets, the stronger I get too, being on BRO's side.”
“Thanks. In that spirit, for free…….”
“Whoa whoa whoa! Even so, that's highway robbery thinking, BRO!”
“It's not like they wear out from a day's loan.”
“NO! NO! NO! This is business! Even if they don't wear out, money matters have to be settled properly!”
“So how much will you make it?”
“HMM……. Hold on a moment. This is a first, so I'll have to think about the price.”
A moment later Tall Man raised an index finger.
“Ten percent of the sale price to borrow an implant for a day! Let's go with that.”
“So all five together comes to 9,100,000?”
“YES.”
A little cheaper than the 10,000,000 credits Woojin had proposed at first.
“Thanks, brother!”
“WELL. I just set a firm pricing policy, that's all.”
Tall Man shrugged and pretended otherwise.
To have known a broker this good to him from the very start — what luck.
“When's the next martial arts implant shipment? Can you do it right away?”
“Right away is hard. I'll contact you when I'm ready. In the meantime, get plenty of credits together, BRO.”
“Okay.”
Woojin shook hands with Tall Man in good spirits.
First a fist bump, then a handshake, then sliding the palms apart with a snap.
“Shame we can't bump shoulders. I've got my stall open, you see.”
Tall Man said it with a hearty laugh.
Apparently all the young people on the street where he was born greeted each other this way.
Woojin imitated Tall Man and thumped his chest with a fist.
“It came through well enough, brother.”
“OK. OK. Ah, and one more thing. A commission came in that BRO could handle.”
“A commission?”
“That's right. You asked me to broker one before. DELIVERY. A courier commission.”
Tall Man explained the details of the commission.
***
Woojin decided to take the courier commission.
He bought a few pieces of combat equipment in addition to the martial arts implants and parted from Tall Man.
Woojin got inside the garbage truck and locked the door.
The garbage truck had tank-level protection.
Inside the truck, even exposing his neural interface's main unit was safe enough under most circumstances.
And learning skills only meant slotting a martial arts implant in and pulling it out, so it would be over quickly.
Just as Woojin was about to open his neural interface's cover.
A strange message rose up before Woojin's eyes.
―An information lifeform is attempting to understand you.
―But you are an [Incomprehensible] existence.
―The [Incomprehensible] power distorts observation and understanding of you.
―Erosion rate : 2.327%
‘An information lifeform? Erosion rate? What does this mean?’
Woojin stared hard at the status window message.
He looked around to see whether someone was watching him.
But there was no one, and nothing happened.
Daphne was quiet as usual too…….
‘…Let's learn the martial arts first.’
After checking his safety two and three times over, Woojin opened his neural interface's cover.
<Warning. When opening your neural interface's protective cover, it is recommended that you do so in a safe location.>
<Do you wish to open your neural interface's protective cover?>
“Yes.”
<Opening the neural interface's protective cover.>
Neural interface protective cover, open.
The first martial art he would learn was [Fierce Tiger Heart Method].
A martial arts implant that granted internal arts as rough and wild as a tiger's.
<Security Warning>
<Contact with an unauthorized device has been confirmed.>
<This device may cause instability in the user's…….>
What danger could there be in a martial arts implant Tall Man had brought?
And he had [Absolute Mind].
Woojin ran through the installation process quickly.
<Combat program Fierce Tiger Heart Method installation complete>
―You have acquired [Fierce Tiger Heart Method (Level 5)].
‘So this is internal arts……!’
When Fierce Tiger Heart Method installed, Woojin felt a certain energy gathering into his dantian.
The martial arts implant gathered mana from the atmosphere and injected it into Woojin, creating the vessel for qi, the dantian.
And then it filled that dantian with qi.
Next the martial arts implant pulled the qi in the dantian and began moving it along the meridians.
True qi conduction.
The procedure a master originally performs when teaching a martial art to a disciple was now being carried out by a machine called a martial arts implant.
And at a considerable speed, at that.
Before he knew it the qi had made a full circuit of the meridians.
The energy of [Fierce Tiger Heart Method] put down roots in Woojin's body and dantian.
It had an artificial feel that left something unsettled.
As if someone had forced a finished product called a martial art onto him, you might say.
Since a martial arts implant was by definition an item that let anyone use a martial art simply by equipping it, that impression could be called only natural.
“Hoooo.”
Woojin raised his internal energy and gathered it into his fist.
A heat shimmer rose over the fist and a thin membrane layered itself on top.
It was fist qi, which greatly improved the fist's hardness and destructive power.
“Good. Let's keep going.”
Woojin pulled out the [Fierce Tiger Heart Method] implant and mounted [Severing Sword Art].
He ran the installation process immediately.
<Combat program Severing Sword Art installation complete>
―You have acquired [Severing Sword Art (Level 5)].
Then from Willow Leaf Body Art through to Small Stream Heart Method.
<Combat program Willow Leaf Body Art installation complete>
―You have acquired [Willow Leaf Body Art (Level 5)].
<Combat program Shadow-Cutting Leg installation complete>
―You have acquired [Shadow-Cutting Leg (Level 5)].
<Combat program Small Stream Heart Method installation complete>
―You have acquired [Small Stream Heart Method (Level 5)].
CLACK.
Woojin pulled the Small Stream Heart Method implant out of his neural interface socket.
He set the cylindrical implant on the seat beside him, closed his eyes, and steadied his breathing.
Inside Woojin's head, realizations were whirling like a storm.
Realizations he could grasp clearly precisely because he had now fitted several martial arts implants.
‘Martial arts implants and skills are different.’
In the combat programs a martial arts implant granted, there was no “understanding.”
The user simply used the martial art, with no comprehension of it.
Similar to how a martial art shoots out when you click a button in a game.
There was no middle process.
But skills were different.
The principles and the accumulated experience of the martial art were carved into his head.
Why the qi moves this way, why the body moves that way — clear links formed in his head.
‘With this, maybe……!’
Woojin closed his neural interface's protective cover and got out of the garbage truck.
He gripped the dagger in his right hand and took an opening stance as if it were a longsword.
The opening stance of Severing Sword Art.
FWIP. FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
Merciless, clean sword forms that cut off arms and legs.
At the same time Woojin's body moved like a willow leaf swaying in the wind.
And then, out of nowhere, an irregular roundhouse kick shot out.
FWIP-FWIP!
The momentum was like a tiger's, and from some moment on it also flowed as calmly as a mountain stream.
Woojin's single step came down heavily.
THUD!
The momentum shifted once more.
Powerful movement issuing from a body like a Vajra guardian who protects the Dharma.
A snake-like fist struck empty air, and a phantom longsword severed phantom limbs.
Every martial art Woojin had learned unfolded in that narrow alley.
FWIP-FWIP! FWIP! FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
And Woojin added variations to them.
He broke down each martial art's form a little at a time and attempted to combine it with another.
If you can understand a thing, you can take it apart.
And if you can take it apart, might it not be possible to create something new?
Woojin had been seized by that thought for a while now.
FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
He took the Tier 4 external art Diamond Qigong and the Tier 2 heart method Fierce Tiger Heart Method as his foundation.
To Willow Leaf Body Art's soft movement he added the bare-handed combat of Black Snake Fist and Shadow-Cutting Leg.
He neutralized the crookedness of Black Snake Fist.
What to do about Severing Sword Art?
It wasn't a martial art that harmonized well with the others.
Let's not force it in.
This time it's fist arts and leg arts.
And so a new martial art was created.
It unfolded through Woojin's hands and feet.
FWIP-FWIP-FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
Fists struck empty air and legs split the wind.
As he swept through the alley like a wind, the plastic trash scattered filthily about floated up and gathered in one place.
A momentum like a fierce tiger, and a body more powerful still, sent a 50-liter garbage bag flying.
CLUNK.
‘What would happen if I used this martial art on an enemy?’
Woojin stood still for a moment and gazed up blankly.
Above buildings blackened with dust, a gloomy sky was visible.
But Woojin wasn't looking at the sky.
He was tracing the martial way in empty air.
And a fluorescent message rose up before his eyes.
―You have created the Tier 2 martial art [????(Level 1)].
―Please decide the name of the new martial art.