This World is Steampunk!
This world is steampunk! After cracking the Nostra family's code, I immediately asked the shop owner where I'd just bought the cocktail ingredients about this address.
It was called coordinates, but more accurately, it was an address.
44-3 turned out to be quite a ways from the bustling streets.
A row of shops with crumbling signs—what you'd call a dead mall.
The place in the middle of that strip was the address from the code.
"So this is 44-3 on the map?"
[Noah's Bakery]
A utterly ordinary neighborhood bakery, the kind you could find anywhere in the city. The only unusual thing? Every shop around it was dead, but this one was still kicking.
"Where is it."
I lifted the sheet by the shop's entrance door, just like the code said.
There was a small wooden box.
Without hesitation, I grabbed it and opened it.
"This is..."
Bang.
"Welcome back, Master Abel."
As I entered my room in the duke's estate, Mist greeted me politely as always.
I acknowledged her and headed straight to the cathode-ray tube TV in the corner of my room.
"Master Abel?"
With her puzzled voice as background noise to my hurried steps,
I stood in front of the tube, pulled a cigar from my pocket, clipped the end, lit it with my lighter, and started smoking.
Using the smoke that began to spread, I slowly disassembled the mana screen.
Click. Click.
I called it a cathode-ray tube for simplicity, but its real name was a magic display panel.
Normally, it was fused so tightly that only specialized equipment could open it—a product of magitech.
Click.
But that magitech was useless against my smoke.
No matter how tightly sealed, if it didn't completely block air, my smoke could slip in anywhere.
Once I took apart the magic display panel, a mess of mechanical parts assaulted my eyes.
Gears upon gears, with magic circles embedded between them.
But right now, I only cared about one thing.
In the center of that chaos: a brightly glowing orb.
Click.
I carefully separated the orb with my smoke, then pulled the wooden box from the Nostra code out of my pocket.
Click.
"A Mana Core?"
Mist muttered as she saw the orb revealed inside the wooden box.
I immediately fused it with the glowing orb I'd just removed. A perfect match.
Mana Core.
In my past life's terms, think of it like a semiconductor—the crucial component in high-tech gear.
"..."
My cigar smoke enveloped the Mana Core, slowly integrating it back into the magic display panel.
Tzzzzzt.
Fuu, perfect.
Once the Mana Core clicked in, the panel let out an irritating noise as static filled the screen.
"Should be about five minutes now."
"...So what is all this about, Master Abel?"
Mist was impassively glancing between me and the noisy screen.
I gave her a rough rundown of the situation.
Went to town, cracked the Nostra family's code, got this Mana Core. To activate it, I needed something magitech like this panel in my room, so I used it.
"I see..."
She nodded as if it all made sense now.
"I knew the underworld's contact methods, but this one's new. I was caught off guard for a second. Never knew they did it like this."
"What? Haha, no way."
I waved it off lightly at her impressed tone.
A contact method like this? Sure, codes are common, but using a Mana Core to request a job?
"They don't do this often. Bad cost-benefit."
Especially since this wasn't just any Mana Core—it was special.
The moment it linked with a machine, it hacked it to broadcast on a specific frequency.
In short, this orb doubled as a Mana Core and a hacking device.
Waste something like that just to make contact for a job?
If the guy bailed without taking the job and ran off with the core? Total loss. Risky as hell.
"I was gonna turn it down at first, but he went and used this to ask me personally. So here I am."
"I see... But even so, is it alright for me to be here?"
"Huh?"
"Strictly speaking, I'm not truly your person, Master Abel. Is it okay for me to hear the details of a deal?"
Not my person.
Meaning, yeah, we have a one-year loyalty contract, but that's it, right?
I chuckled lightly, like it was no big deal.
"Eh, nothing major. I just don't like suspecting someone I've contracted with, even if it's just for a year."
More precisely, I'd done this song and dance endlessly in my past life and was sick of it.
Temp contract or not, once I decide to trust, I trust fully. That was my rule.
"So just listen in..."
As I turned to her, she was staring at me with that hard-to-describe expression again.
What do you even call it? Her slightly unfocused gaze sent an instinctive chill down my spine.
"..."
"..."
Tzzzzzt.
While we shared that awkward moment, the static cleared, and a figure appeared.
A middle-aged man with a scar across one eye and a bullet wound scar near his left temple.
Once the screen stabilized, I ended the staring contest with Mist and greeted the man.
"Long time no see."
The head of the Nostra family's capital branch.
Breck.
"Yeah, really been a while, Breck. But hey."
I tapped near my left eye with my finger and continued.
"Looks like that scar I gave you healed up nice?"
No big deal.
These guys trade info. They sold mine, I got ambushed—everyday stuff.
I wasn't mad about the ambush itself.
Wasn't a fight I lost, after all. Problem was, while prepping for the hit on me at home, they torched my precious cigar stash.
They figured my ability, targeted the source: prevent me from smoking.
Logical precaution. I get it.
But among those burned cigars? My ultra-rare ones I'd been saving.
After wiping out the attackers, I was still pissed, so I stormed the Nostra family—source of the leak—and threw down with Breck.
That long scar over his eye? Souvenir from then.
Breck unconsciously rubbed the scar across his eye at my words.
But he quickly regained his composure.
"Hm? A job, huh..."
He probably knew I was with the Nebla Duke family.
Otherwise, that code contact method made no sense.
Still offering a job knowing my situation?
"What, that's just routine stuff?"
The Nebla Duke family had long ruled the underworld, birthing one key rule:
No dealing drugs with excessive addictiveness.
Families didn't want to grow that crap and get Nebla'd into oblivion.
Of course, some always slipped through.
Hence, drug busts were surprisingly common, routine jobs.
Yet he went through all this hassle for a standard drug purge?
Didn't add up. I started smoking my cigar—lit it for the panel anyway, waste not.
"Hm?"
Breck on screen grimaced slightly, his voice dropping low.
"Spit it out already. Why the buildup?"
Frustrating guy.
At my pointed look, Breck smirked his signature grin.
"What...?"
A drug that awakens normals into Awakened?
Breck nodded at my involuntary reaction.
Awakened.
Like me with my smoke manipulation—people who naturally manifest abilities upon mana awakening.
No tedious calculations or chants like mages; just stir mana, and boom—power activates.
Rare as hell, of course.
Underworld full of crooks, but Awakened? Only top brass in families had 'em.
A drug that artificially creates Awakened?
I glanced at Mist beside me.
Shocking info even for her, but she stood statue-still, unmoved.
She knew.
One look confirmed the Nebla Duke family was already onto this Miraz.
"Ah, sorry. Got the drug rundown. But why should I take this job?"
I leaned back in my chair, casually watching my cigar smoke.
"Money? Not much incentive for me."
I froze mid-puff.
"..."
The air... it's heavy.
Behind Abel, Mist—who'd been quietly listening to him and this Breck guy—felt the atmosphere thicken on her skin.
Like diving into the deep sea naked.
He's furious.
She glanced cautiously at Abel.
"Fine... fuu... I'll take it. Pay?"
As someone in the Nebla Duke family, Mist knew of Nostra.
Info brokers straddling light and shadow.
Even Nebla's intel wing outsourced to them—unrivaled in their field. One freebie? Huge.
The 10 million was just a deposit. Real prize was the info.
"Hm... let's tweak it. No cash. Info three times instead. Sound good?"
Abel knew it too, hence his counter.
Breck shot it down simply.
Capital branch head.
Top brass access? Basically any non-top-secret info.
"Accepted."
Abel knew, so he took the deal quick.
Tzzzzzt.
Screen went back to static right after.
Abel smashed the box in his pocket.
"This is..."
◈ Destination: Imperial Capital
◈ Valid for: Immediate Boarding
A paper at the box's base. Abel checked it and smirked.
"Airship ticket? Haha, Nostra shelled out big time."
He dangled the ticket playfully at Mist.
"Oh, and I'm heading to the capital. Gonna stop me?"
Calm voice.
"I'd have to wipe you all out otherwise."
Vicious words.
"...No. I'll inform Sebastian. Nothing like what you fear will happen."
"Yeah?"
At her firm assurance, Abel smiled faintly and started packing.
She glanced at him, then signaled the duke's people gathering with massive mana output that all was well.
The day after taking Breck's job.
Mist and I, with light luggage in carriers, arrived at the airport to board the airship.
Intricate assembly of mechanical parts—the pinnacle of this world's high tech.
Humans can't fly? Bullshit.
A machine defying that absolute truth.
Science plus magic, crowned by the steam engine. Humanity's tech magnum opus.
Hiss.
That was the airship.