Woojin looked at the wounded mercenary with startled eyes.
‘A Shaolin Palm Fist Tech Junkie?’
The rumor he had heard from Tall Man before came back to him.
The rumor that a Tech Junkie using Shaolin Palm Fist was appearing in District 297, Woojin's assigned district.
[Shaolin Palm Fist] was a Tier 2 martial art of Shaolin Prosthetic Science.
It was the most basic of the Shaolin martial arts, but among Tier 2 martial arts it boasted top-class power.
Combined with [Diamond Qigong], the Shaolin martial art Woojin had already learned, a synergy effect would occur and Shaolin Palm Fist's power would grow more formidable still.
The combination of [Diamond Qigong] and [Shaolin Palm Fist] would be far stronger than the [Snake Shadow Fist Art] Woojin had created.
‘But I have to be careful.’
What reason would the mercenary have for bringing up the words “Shaolin Palm Fist Tech Junkie”?
It could only be to draw Woojin's interest somehow.
Whether he did it because he wanted to live, or because he had some other purpose…….
Woojin went over to the mercenary and examined the wound.
“How's the wound? I'll give you first aid right now.”
“Mmmm…….”
The mercenary tipped his head side to side.
He seemed already to have sensed his own death.
“Death, report…….”
“You want me to file your death report?”
The mercenary nodded with effort.
“Insurance money… daughter…….”
“So your daughter can collect the insurance money? Hah! Don't tell me you took out life insurance?”
Woojin asked as though exasperated.
At that, the mercenary gave a self-mocking laugh.
Lemming City's life insurance wasn't much good for a mercenary to take out.
Because insurers only paid out once the policyholder's death had been definitively confirmed.
If a policyholder went missing, they put off paying the money for years, and there were even cases where they never paid at all.
And when a mercenary died in a back alley, nobody cared.
When a mercenary died, back-alley punks stole anything worth money off the body, and cannibal vagrants carried the corpse away and turned it into human-flesh dumplings.
Report it to the police and all they did was send a single drone, belatedly.
Every trace of a dead mercenary vanished completely from the world.
Which was why it was hard for the bereaved to collect insurance money.
And yet this mercenary seemed to have taken out life insurance.
He had probably been conned by an insurance agent.
Or the mercenary's confidence had run far too high.
Either way, Woojin nodded.
“Understood. A death report, at least, I'll gladly file.”
The man smiled at Woojin with effort.
Then, lips trembling, he barely forced out a voice.
“Transmitter… Tech Junkie…….”
“A transmitter? You planted a transmitter on the Tech Junkie?”
Woojin asked, startled.
But the mercenary gave no answer.
The mercenary had squeezed out his last strength to leave Woojin, instead of a word of thanks, information that would actually help him.
Woojin closed the mercenary's eyes.
When he searched the mercenary's clothes, a small device came out.
“Daphne. Could you search what this device is?”
<Searching. The product's model name is "Hound T―4." It is a device that attaches a transmitter to something and then tracks that transmitter's signal. It appears to be the signal tracker the deceased mercenary mentioned.>
“Okay.”
Woojin put the tracker away and took the mercenary's weapons and cash as well.
‘Farming the corpse of a man I promised to help does feel a bit unpleasant……. But what has to be done has to be done.’
Woojin gently removed the neural interface's cover so as not to damage it.
Two implants were mounted in the neural interface.
Woojin took those implants too, then closed the neural interface's cover.
After brushing the dirt and garbage off the corpse, he brought over the tarp he had used for camouflage and carefully wrapped the body in it.
He tied the tarp securely and moved it to the garbage truck's passenger seat.
Woojin sat in the truck's driver's seat, locked the door, and mounted the mercenary's implants, which he had just picked up, in his own neural interface.
<Combat program Iron Skin Art installation complete>
―You have acquired [Iron Skin Art (Level 5)].
<Combat program Autumn Wind Flying Blade installation complete>
―You have acquired [Autumn Wind Flying Blade (Level 5)].
Iron Skin Art was a Tier 2 external art.
An external-school qigong that strengthened the muscles and toughened the skin.
Autumn Wind Flying Blade was likewise a Tier 2 martial art.
A throwing-blade art that sent daggers flying like leaves scattering on an autumn wind.
Naturally Diamond Qigong was superior to Iron Skin Art, so it looked useless.
But Autumn Wind Flying Blade was good.
A throwing-blade art was a martial art Woojin didn't yet have.
<Deletion of the combat program is complete.>
Having acquired two skills, Woojin removed the martial arts implants.
Being Tier 2 implants, they would sell for a fairly high price.
Woojin's attempt to save the mercenary had, as it turned out, brought good fortune.
He had gained two Tier 2 martial arts implants, and a lead on the Tech Junkie that used Shaolin Palm Fist as well.
If Woojin hadn't helped the mercenary and had simply waited for him to die, it would have been hard to know what the signal tracker the mercenary carried even meant.
Woojin felt a modest satisfaction at that as he got out of the truck and began hauling garbage bags.
***
<Today's work time is 10 hours 46 minutes! Today as well you have finished a full 1 hour and 14 minutes ahead of the standard working hours! For the excellent performance you have shown, Mr. Woojin, I award you 2 rating points!>
2:46 p.m. that afternoon. The incinerator.
Daphne spoke to Woojin, who was sitting in the garbage truck's driver's seat.
Her voice was as bright as a fanfare, the kind that left you feeling proud to hear it after finishing work.
“What's my performance rating now?”
<Your current performance rating is 55.9 points, Officer Woojin! Raise it a little more and you'll get a performance bonus! Fighting!>
“How much was the performance bonus again?”
<Ten percent of base pay! You receive 2,000,000 credits as base pay, Officer Woojin, so you'd receive an additional 200,000 credits!>
Woojin gave a flat laugh.
200,000 wasn't all that much money.
<The higher the performance rating, the larger the bonus! The bonus starts at 60 performance rating points, and every 10 points it increases by 10 percent! Reach 100 performance rating points and you get a 50 percent bonus and a commendation as well!>
“A commendation. Is it good for anything?”
<It counts as an addition in promotion reviews!>
“Then I definitely have to get a commendation!”
<Of course!>
It was a shame a sanitation civil servant's performance bonus was small.
But without being a sanitation civil servant he couldn't even get a chance to raise his status.
To climb to A3-grade citizen, Lemming City's ruling class, he absolutely had to hold his sanitation civil servant position and get promoted.
“Daphne. Not the dormitory, let's go to the District 288 police station. To file the death report for the mercenary I picked up earlier.”
<Understood!>
Since he was filing a death report anyway, it would be better to do it at the police station of the neighborhood where the mercenary had lived.
He had learned the mercenary's home address from the ID in his wallet.
***
Two people walked into the District 288 police station.
One was a girl in her late teens, the other a middle-aged mercenary.
The mercenary must have taken an injury to the jaw in the past; from the lower part of his face down to his Adam's apple was covered in metal prosthetics.
“Safety confirmed.”
Having passed the police android's security screening, the two headed straight for the reception desk.
The reception area looked well cleaned and tidy, but at the same time it bore the traces of all sorts of incidents: knife marks, bullet holes, and more.
Police androids sat at the windows.
There was only a single human officer, seated at a desk behind the windows with several monitors mounted on it, his face hidden.
Lemming City's police organization was automated to the extreme.
AIs and androids processed civil complaints, and patrol was mostly the work of police drones and robots.
A human officer amounted to one managerial post per department.
“Please find my father!”
When her turn came, the girl hurried up to the window and burst out with it.
The police android answered in a dry voice.
“Is this a missing person report?”
“My father is in danger! He might even be dead! My father is a mercenary, and he used to call or text me every day! To let me know he was alive!”
“In other words, a missing person report. Fill out this form and the investigation will begin shortly.”
“When does it start?”
“The investigation will begin in approximately three months.”
“Three months? No! I'm telling you my father is in danger right now, how am I supposed to wait three months?”
“Our workload is backed up, so there is nothing to be done.”
“Workload backed up? Fuck! Don't give me that nonsense! What work do you people even do to be backed up! Is public safety in this city any good? Narcotics dealers are walking around in broad daylight!”
The girl rose from her seat and made a scene.
The android showed no reaction at all, and the lone human officer only glanced at the girl from behind his monitors.
The one who calmed the girl down was the middle-aged mercenary with the prosthetic jaw.
“Lena. That's enough. Raising your voice isn't going to solve the problem.”
“But Uncle Gilt!”
“Carry on like this in a police station and you could get hauled in. And then you'd have to pay bail on top of it.”
At that, the girl named Lena huffed and closed her mouth.
Then she began filling out the form the police android had handed her.
As she moved the pen, Lena asked the mercenary called Gilt in a small voice.
“Couldn't we ask the insurance company to find Dad? Dad has life insurance. If Dad is dead, the money should pay out.”
“Ask the insurance company? That's like leaving fish in a cat's care. Even if the insurer found your father, those bastards would pretend not to know. That's the only way they can put off paying out.”
“Then couldn't you find him for me, Uncle Gilt? I can pay you plenty! Once I get the death benefit!”
“Well now…….”
Gilt made a vague face and looked away.
As a mercenary, it wasn't a commission he much cared for.
Find a mercenary's corpse in Lemming City?
It was a commission much like being asked to find a pet hamster that had escaped into the sewers.
The chance of finding the body of Lena's father, Gileon, converged on zero.
And yet Lena could only receive the death benefit and pay him if Gileon's body was found.
Which meant that failing to find Gileon's body would leave him with no payment and nothing but wasted effort.
“I'm sorry, but I think that would be difficult.”
“I see…….”
Lena sighed and nodded.
Feeling once again that it really is hard to fool a mercenary.
‘He won't move even when I bring up the death benefit. The more time passes, the lower the odds of finding Dad's body get.’
Lena was a mercenary's daughter.
She had inherited her father's boldness and his realistic calculation.
Her bringing up the death benefit had been to sound Gilt out, too.
Why else would she bring up money that large?
It wasn't as if she were some idiot who knew nothing of the world.
‘Or should I go looking for Dad myself? I'm using the power of the bloodline fairly well these days.’
A fire flared up in Lena's heart.
Grief and anger at having lost her father reddened her eyes and brought tears to them.
She was one of the few in the world belonging to the Wind Clan.
The Wind Clan were said to be descendants of wind spirits, and some among them could use wind magic from birth.
Gileon had been able to use wind magic too, and though she wasn't at her father's level, she had been told she had talent.
But she knew that wasn't a realistic idea.
However well she could use wind magic, Lemming City's back alleys were far too dangerous for a teenage girl who hadn't even become a mercenary to walk around in.
Gileon had been a veteran mercenary who freely wielded not only wind magic but martial arts implants and weapons as well.
“I'm done…….”
Lena handed the form to the police android in a gloomy voice.
After hearing the android's perfunctory explanation, Lena rose from her seat.
Step.
Just then a man in a fluorescent sanitation civil servant uniform came into the police station.
He drew people's eyes because he was carrying something large and long, wrapped in a blue tarp, on his shoulder.
Lena, on her way out of the station, met that man's eyes exactly.
A handsome young man who looked worn down by the world's rough weather.
He passed by Lena with an indifferent face.
Lena stopped dead where she stood and turned to look back at him.
The mercenary Gilt called to her.
“Lena?”
To be precise, Lena was looking at the blue tarp the man was carrying.
That tarp, with a single drop of blood that had run and then dried on it, looking like it had a corpse wrapped inside.
“One moment. I'll go in a little while.”
Lena went back into the police station and sat in a chair with a good view of the cleaner.