Chapter 38 - Upgrade
Jin is an honest person in most matters.
If he's in pain, he shows it.
If he's angry, he doesn't hide it.
He wears his emotions on his face without exaggeration or restraint.
But still, there are limits.
He absolutely could not allow himself to look giddy.
Shaking in place was already embarrassing enough, but having his eyes unfocused and drool pooling in his mouth?
Completely unacceptable.
So, Jin did his best to maintain his expression.
Even so, his dopamine-flooded brain was in utter chaos.
A stream of water nourishing a withered flower.
A breeze sweeping over a sweat-drenched nape.
The dawn breaking after a long and grueling night.
The overwhelming sense of achievement melted away in mere seconds, but its lingering aftertaste remained, subtly resonating within him.
Aside from a slight flicker of his eyelids, Jin managed to keep a poker face as he slowly opened his mouth.
"...Cold water."
"Hm? Oh, sure."
Khalifa nodded at his request.
She picked up a cookie that had fallen onto the table, placed it back on the plate, then turned around.
Once she handed him a glass of ice water, Jin gulped it down in one go before exhaling a shallow sigh.
What the hell was that just now?
Never in his wildest dreams did he expect two quests to be completed in rapid succession.
The gap between them had been so short that if the first had been a straight punch, the second was an uppercut.
Caught off guard, he had nearly been knocked out cold.
Then, he wondered—
Why was the process skipped?
Was it because Khalifa had already heard about Walter from someone else?
Maybe I was supposed to figure that out on my own?
This is why being perceptive is so damn important.
Retracing the chain of events, he pieced together the gaps in the story—the missing context.
People who can connect the dots quickly are often called sharp.
This has nothing to do with academic intelligence but rather a natural ability to grasp situations with minimal explanation.
They don't need to ask the same thing two or three times to understand—they just get it.
Jin was one of those people.
[Find Walter with the client.]
Instead of blinking in confusion at the sudden and unceremonious message from the status window, he simply continued chewing his cookie and asked—
"So, who is it?"
"...Who?"
"The person looking for Walter. Lover? Family? Enemy?"
Khalifa blinked at him with a peculiar expression, her crimson eyes locking onto his face.
Then, tilting her head slightly, she asked—
"You knew?"
Jin mirrored her motion, tilting his head to the same angle.
"Why wouldn't I?"
Khalifa was a linker.
Like solos, she never moved without compensation.
For someone like her to go as far as deploying a level 4 solo and hacking into CCTV feeds just to track down a broker's identity—there had to be a reason.
"You got a request, didn't you? No, wait. Since you reached out first, it'd be more accurate to say you proposed the request."
At Jin's words, Khalifa—who rarely displayed genuine surprise—momentarily widened her eyes.
Then, she chuckled in admiration.
"You're impressive. Sometimes, you really do seem like a veteran solo."
Wait a second.
What does that mean for the rest of the time?
Jin squinted at her, unsure whether to take it as a compliment or not.
Khalifa, in a teasing tone, added—
"You should be level 3 already."
And then, in a more serious tone, she continued—
"You're right. There's a client. And yes, I was the one who made first contact."
She then summed up her explanation in three points:
One:
By examining Nilson's corpse, Khalifa discovered the mercenary Walter was missing.
Two:
Now armed with information, she searched for someone who would find it valuable.
Three:
As expected, there was someone who had been searching for Walter for a long time.
Wait.
Three lines aren't enough.
Four:
So, she reached out first.
"Are you still looking for him?" she had asked the client.
If the answer was yes, then the next step would be discussing business.
And that brings us to the present.
A client still searching for Walter.
A linker who successfully monetized hard-earned information.
And a solo (Lv.2) who got dragged into the mess.
A rather odd trio.
With the situation in need of some clarification, Khalifa finally spoke.
"Anyway, Jin. Thanks to you, I was able to bring the broker here. I'll make sure to compensate you properly for that. I'm preparing your share equal to what I promised Eric."
Then, after a brief pause, she asked—
"You're planning to see this through to the end, right?"
Jin nodded as if it was an obvious statement.
Wasn't the whole point of starting this to take down the mastermind behind the terrorist attack that turned Rumpumpumpum into a sea of fire?
It wasn't as if his objective changed just because things got complicated.
"Yeah. We need to see it through. So, let me know immediately if something comes up. After all, it was me who caught that bald guy first, and it's me who brought him this far. I think that's enough to share, don't you think?"
"Yeah. I'll do that."
With Khalifa's calm consent, Jin wore a noticeably relieved expression.
In truth, this was far more convenient for Jin.
He had avoided the trouble of interrogating the bald guy with a lightning rod.
By the way, it was already midnight.
Looking at the darkened window, Khalifa spoke to the side of Jin's face.
"It's getting late. Why don't you stay here tonight? We have quite a few empty rooms."
***
Jin didn't refuse.
The familiar guest room.
It was the same place where he had fought with Fenrir a long time ago and broken his nose.
The place where he had spit blood after clutching a bucket and vomiting it all out.
Back then, it had been a chair, but now, Jin lay on a bed, his fingers clasped behind his head as he stared at the ceiling.
I wonder how Fenrir is doing.
That heartless bastard.
How did it turn out?
I haven't seen him once since then.
Jin, remembering the werewolf he fought along with, furrowed his brow.
That led him to recall the ominous figure.
A black leather long coat and a fedora.
A dull silver beak mask.
Crow Madeye.
People called him "That Madman," but to Jin, he was "The Plague Doctor."
Just thinking about the moment he faced him made his palms sweat.
The monster who had tormented both him and Fenrir with just a gesture flashed in his mind, making Jin gnaw at his lips for a while.
This time, his thoughts shifted to the face of a middle-aged beggar chained up.
Lokan.
A man from Zahad, yet for some unknown reason, he lived as a homeless person.
Jin had been shocked when Lokan, with his filthy, greasy face, closed the distance between them like lightning.
How much power would one need to reach that kind of speed?
He couldn't even begin to imagine.
While Crow was a suffocating terror,
Lokan was a flash beyond the unreachable sky.
And with that came a natural question.
So, who's stronger?
Some guy vs. some other guy.
It's the kind of idle musing one's had countless times in life if they were born with the right parts.
Anyone who thinks this is childish should seriously reflect.
Tony Ferguson at his peak vs. Khabib at his peak.
Damwon 20 vs. SKT 15.
New Gundam vs. Sazabi.
Isn't that interesting?
You think it's pointless because there's no conclusion?
That's nonsense.
It's fun precisely because there's no conclusion.
You could talk about it for hours.
Of course, Jin was alone, so he quietly tossed Crow and Lokan into his mental game while staring at the ceiling.
Alright, now kill each other.
After staring at the ceiling for a while, Jin's conclusion was...
Hmm.
I have no idea.
It sounds anticlimactic, but that's just how it is.
You need to know something to at least have a vague sense of which way is long or short.
What meaning would a guess have when you don't even understand the level of those two?
Realizing his own inadequacy, Jin wiped his nose.
Then, slowly, he closed his eyelids...
And when he opened his eyes again, he was staring at the night sky.
A small universe where countless stars twinkled.
"..."
Jin gazed at the enormous constellation shaped like a tree within his inner world.
Every time he looked at it, he wondered how to reveal all of it.
Here's a little tidbit of knowledge.
In Project Neo, revealing the constellation of [Mana Circuit] in the first run is extremely difficult.
It might be easier on the easiest difficulty, which has the highest experience rewards, but on other difficulties, it's completely out of reach.
To put it bluntly, if you could just commit crimes, why would you need builds?
Someone might shout, "Why make a constellation you can't even fully reveal?"
But, well, that's just how the game was made.
This issue isn't much different from other constellations, and later on, [Psychic] might turn into Pyrokinesis, Telekinesis, and even Gravikinesis.
Heh.
But that rarely happens.
Instead of a mishmash like that, a character whose abilities are developed to the extreme is far stronger.
And so, Jin's worries deepened.
If he haphazardly put points into random skills, it seemed like it would be a dead end.
The instincts of a gamer who had been trained since childhood told him so.
In situations like this, the safest approach is simple: just stick to the basics.
In other words, focus on the vertical stars of the constellation—the large ones that act as the spine of the tree (requiring a lot of experience to unlock) before anything else.
Although it may sacrifice some variety in the short term, maybe this can be compensated with hidden constellations later on?
Then again, when it comes to magic, if it's performed at a lower output than mine... what was it again?
Ah, the resistance to spells of the same attribute.
Even the bald guy in King's groom, while his subordinate was strangled to death, couldn't prevent the Lightning he'd prepared from being rendered useless by the slightest cough from the Polar Radiance.
Having personally experienced such a thing, how can I calmly pick up something like Fireball at this point?
Thus, Jin made up his mind.
Immediately, he poured the accumulated experience into his goal.
A beam of light started from one star, cutting through the empty nebulae and awakening a previously dormant star.
At the same time, the pain began.
The mana circuits stretched throughout his body, expanding and strengthening around his heart, creating a sensation too difficult to describe, like a storm raging through him, and Jin's mind was overwhelmed by the dizziness.
Again, it's starting!
Please take it easy!
Of course, there was no such mercy.
When his body, soaked in sweat, collapsed onto the bed like a slime, the deeper mana flowed smoothly through his body, and the expanded space inside his body satisfied the Polar Radiance, making sparks fly as it moved around.
[Mana Circuit (Lv.3)]
Before he even had time to check the upgraded circuit, Jin let out a groan, his head snapping back with a "Heh..." as he fell into a deep sleep—unaware that the growth plan he had chosen was a "royal path" build only available to irregulars.
***
Jin opened his eyes at the sound of a polite knock.
Since he wasn't planning to wake up, he pretended not to hear and continued lounging around, but through the slightly opening door, he heard Po's voice asking, "Would you like some breakfast?"
Breakfast?
Immediately, like a spring, Jin sprang up from his stupor and somehow managed to exit the room.
Then, he awkwardly plopped himself into the same spot he had sat the day before, and Eric, sitting on a nearby sofa, waved his hand as he looked over.
"Hey, you up for breakfast too?"
[Coffee. I'm coffee.]
"Damn it. I said just once."
Jin frowned and turned his head.
"Good morning, Jin."
Before he knew it, Po had placed a plate on the table.
The meal, consisting of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, and baked beans, was neatly arranged, resembling what was known as an English breakfast, which made Jin's eyes widen in surprise.
"I'll eat well."
He started with the sausage, and the juices that spilled out were incredibly satisfying right from the first bite.
Energized by the meal, Jin quickly finished a plate.
As expected, Po then presented a warm glass of milk.
Just like Kalifa always giving out cookies, maybe these guys should have opened a restaurant instead of a bar.
Jin thought this as he wrapped both hands around the warm cup.
Then, he casually asked.
"Did you get anything from that bald guy?"
"You mean the broker? Yes, I got something."
"Already? That's impressive."
"Well, about that…"
Just as Po was about to say something, the clear sound of a bell rang through the shop.
If someone visits a bar in the early morning, they're either a drunkard or, of course, a Solo, so Jin turned his head casually.
Then he froze.
Without realizing it, his hand had reached for the Gravis at his waist.
A woman, a stranger, slowly entered the tavern and glanced around before speaking.
"Is this the Anekdote…?"
In her eyes, white flames blazed, burning intensely.