‘Diamond Qigong!’
Woojin nearly leapt into the air on the spot when he saw the status window message.
That was how formidable a martial art Diamond Qigong was.
‘It's a Tier 4 peak-class martial art!’
In the world of [Steel Sweeper], martial arts and magic were divided into six tiers.
From Tier 1 third-rate martial arts to Tier 6 peerless divine arts.
Diamond Qigong fell under Tier 4, peak-class martial arts.
On top of that, Diamond Qigong was a set item.
Equip the Indestructible Qigong implant as well, and it became Tier 5 Diamond Indestructible Qigong, displaying far more powerful force.
This was deliberate design.
Diamond Indestructible Qigong had been split down the middle into two martial arts, Diamond Qigong and Indestructible Qigong, and the reason was simple.
Profit maximization.
If you wanted to use proper Diamond Indestructible Qigong, buy both implants; such was the grand intent of the megacorp Shaolin Prosthetic Science.
And it wasn't only Shaolin Prosthetic Science.
Other martial arts implant companies split original martial arts and sold them off this way too.
‘Getting Diamond Qigong is lucky.’
And not simply because it was a powerful martial art.
Diamond Qigong was exactly the martial art Woojin needed.
‘If I'm going to fight without prosthetics, external arts are essential.’
It was a world where bullets flew everywhere, bombs went off, and enemies were smashed apart with steel prosthetics.
To survive in a world like this, your body had to be tough.
Most mercenaries and soldiers replaced their bodies with machinery to gain the defense that let them endure the harsh combat environment.
But Woojin didn't want to swap his body out for prosthetics.
Cut off perfectly good arms and legs and replace them with prosthetics?
For Woojin's common sense, built from an ordinary life on Earth, that was hard to accept.
‘Your body, hair, and skin are received from your parents! Not that I'm a Confucian man.’
On top of that, prosthetics were expensive and cost a lot to maintain.
For Woojin, who ran a deficit of 1,810,000 credits every month, they were a daunting thing to touch.
‘But external arts can make up for that.’
External arts, in other words external-school qigong, were martial arts that focused on tempering the body.
External arts basically grew the muscles and the motor nerves, and once your level rose, qi seeped into muscle, bone, and skin, raising the durability of the body itself.
And the representative martial art of those external arts was precisely Diamond Indestructible Qigong.
A character equipped with the Diamond Indestructible Qigong implant gained a body so hard that ordinary bullets couldn't leave so much as a scratch.
Diamond Qigong fell short of Diamond Indestructible Qigong, but it still had the power to make skin and muscle as hard as steel.
‘Hmm……. But I'm not feeling much change.’
Woojin clenched and unclenched both fists and examined his forearms.
His muscles might have gotten thicker than before, or maybe not.
‘Is it because Diamond Qigong is incomplete?’
The skill Woojin had just acquired was [Incomplete Diamond Qigong (Level 0)].
It carried the modifier “Incomplete,” and its level was 0 on top of that.
‘What do I have to do to turn this into a normal skill?’
Woojin tried out a few training methods that surfaced in his head.
Calling them training methods was generous.
Push-ups, handstands, squats.
Basic physical conditioning.
‘Hmm……. This doesn't seem right.’
He did feel as if Diamond Qigong had changed his body.
His body moved more lightly than before, you might say.
His strength seemed to have increased, you might say.
The effect was slight because the skill was incomplete, but Diamond Qigong was definitely being applied.
But if you asked, “Is Diamond Qigong being trained?” then the answer seemed to be no.
The Diamond Qigong information that surfaced in his head was incomplete.
And that was why the training wasn't working properly either.
“Daphne. Can you gather information on Diamond Qigong?”
<Impossible. Diamond Qigong is powerfully protected by copyright and patent.>
“I know that. Still, isn't there some video footage that got caught by accident or something? Wouldn't something turn up if you looked?”
<There is none. All martial arts footage is deleted from the net. Because if martial arts footage existed, the martial art could be analyzed through it.>
“Hah. They really are thorough.”
Valuable information was never released to the public.
They had institutionalized it thoroughly so that it worked that way, and in practice they managed it fiercely so the information never leaked.
They had the ability to do it.
It was a passage that showed just how powerful this world's megacorps were.
‘What am I supposed to do to train Diamond Qigong?’
Woojin sat in his chair and sank into thought.
Then, at some point, a thought suddenly struck him.
‘Come to think of it……. A status window?’
When he spoke the keyword in his head, fluorescent text spread out before Woojin's eyes.
[Status Window]
Name : Jinwoo Martinez
Level : 2
Traits : Inexplicable, Absolute Mind, Incomprehensible, Gold-Seeking Eye
Skills : Silent Movement (Level 1), Stone Throwing (Level 1), Dagger Technique (Level 1), Dirty Brawling (Level 1), Observation (Level 2), Hauling (Level 4), Sweeping (Level 3), Butchering (Level 1), Machine Repair (Level 2), Incomplete Diamond Qigong (Level 0)
Skill Points : 1
‘There was a status window all along?’
With text coming up about levels rising and skills growing, he had thought there might be.
And he was only checking it now.
Woojin opened his eyes wide and read the status window.
The traits he had received before falling into this world, and all the skills he had gained and grown so far, were laid out in a row.
‘Skill points? So I get skill points when my level rises?’
Apparently investing skill points raised a skill's level.
Though you could also raise a skill's level by using it often and becoming proficient at the work.
Two methods for raising skill levels.
‘Then what happens if I invest a skill point into Incomplete Diamond Qigong?’
It was more than worth trying.
All his other skills combined couldn't surpass the value of Diamond Qigong.
‘Invest skill point.’
The moment Woojin thought it, a status window message rose up at once and the point was invested.
―Investing a skill point into [Incomplete Diamond Qigong (Level 0)].
―The empty holes in [Incomplete Diamond Qigong] are filled in and it regains completeness.
―You have acquired [Diamond Qigong (Level 1)].
“Whoa!”
Woojin let out a cry of delight.
In truth, Woojin hadn't been certain of the outcome either.
Diamond Qigong might have stayed incomplete with only its level rising, after all.
Something like [Incomplete Diamond Qigong (Level 1)].
But the skill point had made the defective Diamond Qigong complete and handed it to Woojin.
It was an enormous thing.
The Diamond Qigong martial arts implant was something you couldn't get before the middle of the game at the very earliest.
And even then only if your luck was very good.
And he could carry that Diamond Qigong from the very start!
‘I can feel something changing in my body.’
His muscles grew steadily thicker and strength surged up out of his body.
It was a far more powerful and drastic change than the one he had felt when he gained [Incomplete Diamond Qigong].
GRUMBLE.
“I'm hungry.”
It seemed [Diamond Qigong] had used up every bit of nutrition stored in his body while transforming it so rapidly.
And that wasn't enough; Woojin's digestive system was clamoring that it needed far more nutrition.
Woojin immediately started up the food processor and made the green pig slop (official name: NutriBlock).
Then he polished off three whole bowls of NutriBlock in an instant.
“Good grief. Three bowls of something this awful.”
The situation was startling enough to draw a hollow laugh out of Woojin.
Still, he couldn't deny the pleasant fullness spreading out from his stuffed stomach.
According to Jinwoo Martinez's memories, NutriBlock might taste bad but the nutrients were properly in there.
‘I'm starting to get a rough picture of how to live in this world.’
Skill points held power strong enough to make even an incomplete skill complete.
Skill points would surely be a great help to Woojin in surviving this world.
And to earn those skill points, he had to raise his level.
To raise his level he had to gain experience, and to gain experience he had to kill enemies.
Skill training alone couldn't earn level experience.
In other words, combat was the most important thing.
He could develop abilities like hacking and machine repair, but those were strictly supporting roles.
Only if Woojin himself grew stronger could he create the virtuous cycle of “combat → level up → invest skill points → grow stronger.”
‘In the end it isn't much different from how you play [Steel Sweeper].’
Even with the game having become reality, what he had to do was similar to the game.
That fact was absurd enough to draw a hollow laugh out of him for a moment, but Woojin soon corrected the thought.
‘It isn't a game. This is reality now.’
A way to return home?
He couldn't begin to gauge it.
Would clearing this game let him go home?
But clearing it was a story for the very distant future.
He might not be able to clear it at all.
This damn game had a difficulty high enough that even Woojin hit game over now and then.
‘For now I have to focus on securing a stable position in this city.’
Beyond surviving, obtain a stable position.
In other words, become an A3-grade citizen of the ruling class.
That too was an absurdly large goal for a common member of Lemming City's underclass to hold, but it had more reality to it than the vague goal of going home.
Because no one else in this world would possess potential like Woojin's.
“Delete the combat program I just installed.”
<Deleting the ■■■■ combat program.>
<Deleting…….>
Woojin gave the neural interface the command with the status window still open.
Electricity extending from the neural interface spread through Woojin's brain once more.
The deletion process finished far more easily and quickly than the installation.
<Deletion of the combat program is complete.>
Woojin glanced over that message and turned his gaze to the status window.
And then he smiled in relief.
‘Just as I thought.’
―[Diamond Qigong (Level 1)]
The martial art that should have been deleted from the neural interface and forgotten remained in the status window, clear and unmoved.
***
Dawn the next day.
Woojin made do with dry bread and cheap coffee for a meal.
Washing up amounted to wiping the crust from his eyes.
He threw on the fluorescent sanitation civil servant's half-coat, tucked the specially built computer under his arm, and left the dormitory.
Clack.
At the edge of the dormitory grounds.
As he headed for the garage reserved for the garbage trucks, sanitation civil servants in much the same position as Woojin began to come into view.
Middle-aged men who hadn't even shaved.
Hair sticking out, heavy dark circles under their eyes.
Among them were men who had replaced one limb, or several, with prosthetics.
All of them carried a handgun or a submachine gun.
There was no one who remained in Jinwoo Martinez's memories.
Jinwoo Martinez was a new hire.
Being a probationary crew member, the only person he knew was Paul Ford, the junkie senior who had died yesterday.
None of the recruits taken on around the same time had been assigned here.
Only Jinwoo Martinez.
But the senior sanitation civil servants were a different matter, it seemed.
Several of them were smoking in a corner and watching Woojin.
The two sanitation civil servants parked right beside him also acknowledged him and struck up a conversation.
“Sleep well, probationary crew member? So where's Paul? Doped up and late again? If he's going to clock in on time somebody has to go drag him out of his room.”
“He died yesterday.”
“Ah.”
“Well now.”
The men, who had been greeting him with easy smiles, pulled out cigarettes and put them between their lips.
They drew the smoke in deep and blew it out hard.
“Well, he had it coming. He leaned on the drugs way too hard.”
“That's how a junkie ends up. They never last.”
“Shame about the prosthetics. He hadn't had them swapped in that long.”
“Hey, new guy, did you watch them recover the prosthetics?”
With hardly a trace of grief, the sanitation civil servants calmly appraised Paul Ford's everyday conduct.
Was it that they had grown used to it because it happened so often?
Or was it that they had no room to spare that much interest and affection for another person?
Those indifferent eyes turned toward Woojin.
“So what are you going to do? You've barely been on the job and your trainer went and died. Did you even learn the work?”
“You're in trouble. Even if you somehow survive, eating into your rating is hell.”
Rather than giving advice to a junior facing a serious problem, they drew a line and watched the fire from across the river.
Woojin quickly grasped that these were people he had no need to bother with.
Woojin smirked as he spoke.
“Do you think I'll die soon?”
“What the…….”
“What was that?”
The sanitation civil servants faltered at Woojin's audacious attitude.
A reaction completely different from what they had expected.
What they had wanted to see was this fresh-hatched junior trembling with fear and begging for help…….
Woojin spoke as if it were nothing at all, as if he found it funny, even.
“And if I won't? What will you do about it? Shall we make a bet?”