Episode 18
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 18
Elysia stared at the madwoman standing beside her, unable to hide her dumbfounded expression.
Look at this bunch of trash. Hilarious. Hey, you crawl too. She was dying to say it, but unfortunately, her level was a mere 1.
As if he was only now grasping the situation, fear began to creep onto Hertz's face.
Well, well, look who's finally catching on. Dumbfounded by the guy's sluggish reaction time, Elysia let out a dry laugh and watched the situation unfold. Right, let's see how far these lunatics will go.
The man, wearing a servile smile, begged.
“Ah, ah… Alma, it was all a joke. Just a joke, I just took it too far—”
‘Bang!’
Before he could finish his sentence, a bullet flew from the long rifle. Elysia's eyes shot wide open in shock, and forgetting she was in the heart of enemy territory, she shrieked.
“Can you stop shooting that thing? Are you crazy?!”
“I didn’t hit him, so calm down, will you?”
Alma replied calmly to her outburst, tidying the hair that had been mussed by the recoil. The bullet, having only grazed the hem of Hertz's clothes, was now embedded in the floor. To the trembling man, Alma said,
“Obey or die. Choose quickly…”
“Hh, hngh…”
“Young Master, as you said, do you really think I could harm a great noble like yourself and get away with it?”
Alma whispered in a bewitching voice into the ear of Hertz, who was frozen stiff with terror.
“Rather than just injuring you, it’s cleaner to kill you without a trace, so there’s no trouble later.”
Hertz, who had been holding his head high, hastily dropped it and scrambled onto all fours. Watching the man's pathetic rear end as he crawled, Elysia felt a sense of unease.
Ah, he's so pathetic and pitiful. So why did he even start this in the first place? Why get involved, at his age?
The man, his head bowed in humiliation, looked up at Alma with a dirty handkerchief in his mouth.
Taking the handkerchief, she let out a deep sigh and, as if praising an obedient dog, slowly stroked his hair and whispered.
“Young Master, I really don’t want to do this with you. But you know, don’t you? This is all about survival for poor people like me…”
Hearing such shameless bullshit from someone who had clearly made a fortune in the drug business, Elysia lost all will to fight.
Ah, fuck, how did I end up in the den of a madwoman like this…
The woman shamelessly painted herself as a victim, and it was so absurd Elysia almost burst out laughing.
Alma violently grabbed Hertz's hair and slammed his head to the floor. With an indifferent gaze, she looked down at him, trembling in shame, and said,
“I told you exactly how much to sell it for. You can’t even do that one simple thing?”
“…You, you…”
“Watch how you act. Understand?”
Alma handed the long rifle to the man standing beside her and gave Elysia a friendly smile. She then lifted the hem of her skirt slightly in a formal curtsy of thanks, leaving Elysia dumbfounded.
She really is a soft-spoken psycho.
♥ SYSTEM: Alma’s Favorability +20 ♥
Ah, I don’t need this fucking favorability! Shit!
“How should I repay you… Shall I buy you a drink?”
“I’d prefer it if you just let me walk out of here in one piece.”
“Not interested in a drink?”
“Nope.”
“A shame. I was thinking of spending the night with you.”
Elysia’s face crumpled at the sound of the woman’s cackling laughter.
A drug lord whose passive skill is sexual harassment?
If she had her way, she would have turned the whole place upside down to figure out the flow of this massive illegal trade, but she was far too low-level for that. With a look of utter exhaustion, she thought,
I’ll fuck them up somehow. I’ll definitely, absolutely fuck them up.
Her plan was to go back, chug all her experience potions, level up no matter what, and then return to wipe this place clean.
She followed the large men guiding her to the exit, heading back toward the stairs. On the landing between the third and second floors was a massive window. Pausing in front of it, Elysia felt an unpleasant chill crawl up her spine.
She instinctively took something out of her inventory and gripped it.
And at that moment, a cheerful voice drifted down from the floor above.
“But you know, something’s still a bit strange.”
The hem of Alma’s red dress fluttered in the wind as she stared intently at Elysia’s left cheek, bathed in the pale moonlight.
Noticing the long rifle was somehow back in Alma's hands, Elysia, with a blank expression, pressed something she was holding close to her chest.
“How could you possibly know so much about this business? A newcomer like you, even knowing enough to think there was something wrong with 6,000 Gold worth of Crea. I have a feeling I shouldn’t just let you go.”
“So I guess letting me go isn’t an option?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
With a deadpan expression, Alma raised the long rifle and aimed it at her. Elysia let out a low sigh mixed with a curse and leaped.
‘Bang!’
A spray of bright red blood splattered across the glass window where she had been standing.
*
A sudden, chilling sense of dread shot through the right side of his chest, and Evan shot up from his seat.
He had only been focused on reading a paper for a moment, but the clock already showed three in the morning. It was the first time he’d felt such an inexplicable anxiety since ‘that day’.
He pressed his tired eyes with his hand before letting go, tidied up his desk, and headed for the bathroom to end his day.
‘Clatter.’
Just as he unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt, he heard a strange noise. Realizing it was coming from beyond his door, Evan approached it with a puzzled look.
Clatter, clatter…
At slow intervals, he could feel a weak but persistent hand trying to open the door.
Who could it be at this hour?
“I think you have the wrong room—”
Assuming it was a drunk student who had mistaken the room and was causing a ruckus, Evan threw the door open, only to freeze as the woman standing there collapsed into his arms.
A cool fragrance mixed with the breeze that drifted in. He knew the owner of this scent at once, without even seeing her face.
The hand he’d extended to catch Elysia instantly grew warm, then slick with a damp sensation.
Evan hurriedly swept the woman into his arms before she could fall to the floor.
Slowly, he turned over his hand, which had slipped inside her jacket, to look at it.
His hand was covered in crimson blood, which was pouring out like a waterfall.
His heart sank. He tried to remain calm, remembering Elysia’s surprising strength, but then he recalled the time she had fainted right after rolling onto the floor, and he froze.
“You’re so frail, where on earth have you been, what were you doing—”
He laid the woman, who couldn't even stand on her own, onto his bed. After hastily pressing one hand against the gushing wound, he picked out some neatly arranged surgical tools from a shelf. Hearing the clatter, the woman coughed and whispered something.
Evan quickly brought his ear to her lips and said in a voice feigning composure,
“Again, please say it one more time.”
“It’s not a through-and-through, it just grazed… ah, dammit, it grazed me. Ugh, hngh… Just stitch it up, just stitch it.”
“You think stitches are a cure-all? I can’t do it while you’re still bleeding like this. Are you sure it didn’t go through?”
He didn’t quite trust the patient’s frantic nod; he needed to be more certain. Bright red blood was spreading across the bedsheets he kept as meticulously clean as his own temperament. He quickly uncapped an anesthetic with his teeth, injected it, and asked,
“I’m still going to check, just in case. The anesthetic hasn’t fully kicked in yet, so it’s going to hurt. Are you okay?”
“It’s not like you won’t do it if I say I’m not, ugh, okay. Oof, it hurts like hell…”
Further conversation was pointless. As he closely examined the wound, tears began to stream down Elysia’s face. When he pressed down on the area to stanch the bleeding, she stubbornly held back a scream, but her body trembled uncontrollably.
His heart clenched painfully at the feeling of her body convulsing under his hand. Afraid she might lose consciousness, he had to cling to her, speaking desperately.
“I know it hurts, but just hang in there a little longer, okay?”
“Ugh, hngh…”
The medicine must have started to work, as the furrow in her brow relaxed. Evan, busy injecting a coagulant around the wound and pressing down with his palm to stop the bleeding, suddenly noticed Elysia’s hand fumbling in the air.
Frowning, he lowered her hand and muttered,
“Don’t move. Relax your body. Rest. I’ll have everything finished by the time you wake up…”
“No, no… I have something to do… Ugh, I’m going to die at this rate. I’m really going to die… There has to be… something… Cough! There has to be…”
Gasping for breath, the woman muttered in a completely hoarse voice.
“…Found it.”
SYSTEM: Would you like to consume an ‘Experience Potion’? Y | N
Elysia, writhing in pain, almost failed to select ‘Y’ before the status window disappeared. Coughing as if she were about to draw her last breath, she cursed at the confirmation window that popped up again.
<Panic in the City> encourages leveling up by ‘resolving Main Story incidents.’
Therefore, a ‘Level-Up Potion Penalty Debuff’ will be applied for the next 24 hours.
Are you sure you wish to consume it? Y | N
“Hngh… I said I’ll fucking… consume it, so stop… asking…”
‘What on earth is she talking about…?’
Evan sighed at Elysia’s incoherent rambling. The moment he reached for a clean towel to continue applying pressure, he witnessed a bizarre sight.
A bottle filled with shimmering purple liquid materialized out of thin air. Before he could stop her, Elysia downed it in one gulp, then pulled another bottle from thin air.
His mind went blank at the impossible sight.
It was a good thing he was still pressing on the wound when he saw it. If his hand had been off for even a moment, he might have been so shocked that he’d have missed the chance to stanch the bleeding, just staring stupidly.
After downing several more bottles in a row, the woman fell into a deep sleep. As Evan stared blankly at Elysia’s lips, damp with the potion, he belatedly realized that the bleeding under his palm was subsiding.
He took a fresh white bandage from the bedside drawer and looked down at the woman who had soaked his bed in blood, his eyes filled with a strange yearning.
Slowly, he leaned down, bringing his lips to her ear, and whispered.
“…Wake up soon. Please.”
Of course, no answer came from the unconscious woman. A dampness seeped into his low voice. A hot tear fell onto the bloodstain on the sheet, which had hardened like a scab, dissolving the blood she had shed.
“There’s something… I want to ask you…”
Countless emotions welled up and trickled from his deep green eyes.
A drop of fear for the unfamiliar, a drop of relief as if finding something he’d been searching for.
♥ SYSTEM: Evan Sylvester’s Favorability +100 | Current Favorability 130 ♥
♥ SYSTEM: Evan Sylvester’s Favorability has reached LEVEL 3! (○⌒∇⌒○)♬ A ‘Route’ will now open. Entering ‘The Only Trusted Person’ Route! ♥
A drop of joy, like finding a ray of light after wandering in darkness.