Lee Sena's Cute Tool Shop
“Hey! The boss is here! Come out and greet him!”
“Leave it, leave it. Give those to the guards later.”
“What about having a drink? You know that the liquor made in the prison is the real deal, right?”
H-088 was teeming with hawkers, merchants, and the prison’s own organized members tightly intertwined with them.
In a real-world prison, it might be possible for criminals to form organizations by gathering together, but such a scene would never be seen.
Surprisingly, though, in EFD, scenes similar to this could be found without much difficulty.
In EFD, since all prisoners were basically set as death row inmates, some level of entertainment and leisure was guaranteed to manage their stress.
Through the auction system and broker trading system, selling off items farmed for big money, and then using that money to self-modify, upgrade equipment, or buy necessary goods was the basic economic structure of EFD — a natural progression.
The remaining money wasn’t to be carried as grave goods to the afterlife, and if there was extra cash, humans would naturally want to spend it on leisure.
Still, this is a bit extreme. Is the prison really tolerating this?
They weren’t openly selling illegal drugs, but liquor that shouldn’t be allowed to prisoners was being sold openly. On top of that, female prisoners had joined this chaotic scene.
I approached the deep part of the H-088 zone with my nerves on high alert, avoiding contact with this messy group.
I wasn’t particularly interested in entertainment. It was just that this kind of place was the optimal space because it housed prisoners of types that were hard to manage even in the prison.
For example, prisoners with unusual ‘talents’.
When the prisoners’ self-made modification workshops and stalls were decreasing, and I stepped into an area where even mobile population was almost invisible.
In the darkness, a bulky guy emerged and extended his hand to stop me.
“Hey, there, orange. This is a place only authorized VIPs can enter. You short-lived guys play nicely in the outer area.”
“Even among prisoners, you discriminate against customers?”
“It’s better to just leave if you want to talk nicely. Or do you want to end your pathetic short life today?”
“That short life just returned from a special duty, so I want to spend money freely. Can’t you just let me in if you’re being nice?”
“This trash...”
Click.
The guy pulled out not a cheap knife for low-level convicts, but a proper one.
The blade was so sharp that it looked like it could peel human skin like an onion skin with just a touch.
But strangely, I wasn’t afraid.
Since entering this body, I’ve found that such threats don’t scare me anymore.
Compared to the terror the Primordials I met in the Darkzone had instilled, pushing me to my limits, the knife the bulky guy held felt like a toy.
If it were my old self, I’d have immediately prostrated myself and begged for my life, but this is strange in many ways.
Perhaps the original owner of this body was a human butcher or serial killer who had experience with multiple people, making it familiar.
Actually, I still don’t know why this body received a death sentence.
Well, I’ll figure out about this body later.
More pressing was the bulky guy flexing in front of me.
The bulky guy is always a problem.
“Think it over, my shiny bald friend. If the death row inmate me here is causing trouble, who loses? The underlings who can’t properly manage the shop here? Or you, who let me cause chaos here? Or your superiors who have to make sure the guards don’t pay attention to this place?”
My prison mischief history was about 10 years.
At least, I thought I knew the internal ecology of the prison better than some guy waving a knife in my face.
Did my sincere advice help? The bulky guy showed a look of hesitation while holding the knife.
Of course, I didn’t miss the opening and immediately lunged.
“Wait, hold on!”
“Too late.”
Startled, the guy tried to quickly adjust his stance, but I ran in and stomped hard on his shin with my foot, causing his posture to collapse.
While he flailed in pain and couldn’t swing the knife properly, I grabbed his shiny head like a basketball with one hand and used my waist to knee him in the side.
The kick to his temple cleanly knocked him out without a hitch.
Slamming a straight kick to the face would just break his nose and make him scream in pain, so hitting the temple was better in many ways.
I searched the pockets of the foaming bulky guy and found a bunch of coupons, apparently for distributing to VIP customers.
This guy had just been boasting, but in reality, he wasn’t much different from other hawkers. The higher-ups seemed to manage the shops comprehensively.
“More than that, it was here.”
I selected some memorable names from the many coupon bundles: free implant correction diagnosis voucher from Ted Chan, free consultation voucher from Lee Sena’s Cute Tool Shop, and discount voucher from Vladimir Borshch’s General Store (5% fixed discount for purchases over 1 million won).
I hadn’t actually met any of them, but I remembered their names properly.
After all, the above three were very important merchants and broker NPCs in EFD. I owed them a lot.
Especially Ted Chan was a KAIST graduate, the pinnacle of the engineering corps in South Korea in the 2040s, even a weirdo who majored in both biotechnology and materials engineering.
Why a weirdo? Because despite having such great knowledge and skills, he chose to become a black-market implant surgeon instead of joining a big corporation (of course, illegal).
His skill was truly exceptional, to the point that he was considered the top in the country among black-market implant surgeons, but the corporate alliance feared losing customers and cooperated with the government to put Ted Chan in prison.
Additionally, the sentence was life imprisonment.
But with Ted Chan’s level of skill, he was already sucking money from countless prisoners and receiving protection from guards, so there was no worry about the Human Rights Guarantee Period expiring. Who would dare touch him?
Of course, Ted Chan is amazing, but the latter two aren’t lagging behind either.
The owner of the tool shop with the pure and pretty name Lee Sena was, of course, female, and within this world view, she was a skilled hacker with outstanding electronic engineering skills.
However, she was a different type of technician from Ted Chan. First, rather than money being the goal, she was a weirdo who purely wanted people to use her made pretties as much as possible.
She seriously believed she had the qualification to receive a Nobel Prize in Korea first, and that she could transform this harsh and cruel world beautifully with the many pretties she made.
Of course, she also received a life sentence here due to the corporate-government collaboration in the investigation.
Vladimir Borshch... Okay. This guy would just rip me off if I met him now.
He wouldn’t sell anything to people he didn’t recognize, but once he recognized someone, he wouldn’t hesitate to get the customer what they wanted using any means.
As the name suggests, this weird old man from Russia was already a master who controlled the Russian-origin criminals in the prison, and getting recognized was extremely difficult.
Until he achieved a fairly high level of favorability in EFD, he would haggle every time and raise prices to take money, with a notorious reputation.
I picked up the bulky guy and threw him into the corner, then followed the direction indicated by the cheap neon sign to the inner area.
The first NPC merchant I would meet was Lee Sena.
I’d rather go find Ted Chan first, but Ted Chan is a guy the guards are keeping an eye on. If I, who just arrived two days ago, approached him rashly, I might attract unnecessary suspicion.
It’s already suspicious that a two-day arrival prisoner has earned a decent amount of money from the Darkzone, and then how would he know to go find Ted Chan for implant consultation?
Even if he got info from other prisoners, it was too suspicious a move.
So, it was better to find Lee Sena first, who the guards had given up on and lost interest in.
Lee Sena’s Cute Tool Shop, where she had knocked down walls of 3-4 cells and converted the whole thing into a shop.
As soon as I opened the door, a clear ringing bell oddly tickled my ears.
“Welcome!”
The one who suddenly appeared from inside was a woman in work clothes sucking in jjajangmyeon with cheeks puffed out behind the counter.
She had a place where she was sharp in some corner but had eyes that were unnaturally clear and sparkling, exuding the scent of a mad genius.
Her hands had black grease and calluses that had been there for a long time, but aside from that, her hair and skin were quite clean and smooth.
Her height was about one head shorter than me, average for a woman. However, she had some muscle attached here and there compared to other women her age, so she seemed quite familiar with hard work.
Overall evaluation of her first impression: She looked like an innocent person who hadn’t killed anyone, but I got the feeling she shouldn’t be let loose in society.
“Oh, let me see. I’m a VIP member from another shop, and that friend of yours, the bulky guy, gave me this coupon.”
“Munch munch! Ah, free consultation voucher. What do you need? What should I introduce first? No. Should I just make it myself? I pride myself on being able to read people. So I know better than anyone what pretties that person needs!”
She gulped down the jjajangmyeon she didn’t know where she got it or what materials it was made of, and suddenly started spewing words like a machine gun.
Look at those round eyes. The customer hadn’t even said they were buying anything yet, but she was already excited to introduce her masterpieces.
If I took an MBTI test, wouldn’t it be revealed as extreme E? It’s only been over 10 seconds since I entered here, and I already feel my soul being sucked away.
“Look at this! It’s a tingly pretty!”
“What is this used for?”
“If you stick it into the body of a mean prison buddy who is eyeing your pretty butt and press the button, electricity flows out!”
It’s just an electric shock device.
“Hmm, there might be concerns about it being abused among prisoners.”
“But you won’t abuse it, right?”
“Me? Of course. Just hit with a fist.”
Electric shock devices are too barbaric. And I have precious limbs inherited from my parents, so why should I walk the path of a heretic?
“So, I’ll specially sell it to you!”
“It’s an attractive proposal, but it doesn’t seem very useful to me.”
“No, it seems very useful...”
“I do get threatened from all over because of my status, but it’s not to the point where I have to hide an electric shock device in my pocket. Rather, I came here because I need to order custom-made equipment.”
She stared at me silently, then rolled her eyes to the side and looked at her workbench.
“Because of the special duty?”
“You’re quick on the uptake.”
“As I said earlier, I have good eyes. So I can tell what a person needs just by looking at them, what pretties suit them, and what they’re trying to do.”
“If that’s the case, you should have majored in shamanism instead of science. Did you choose the wrong career?”
“I heard that a lot since I was young.”
Even in this era running on cutting-edge tech, politicians and businesspeople still consult shamans or request gut rituals.
Actually, if Lee Sena had gone that way, she might not have become a cyber shaman ruling the country.
But she seemed uninterested in shaman work, and looked at the shelves full of her pretties with loving eyes.
For me, her excessive professionalism was rather pleasing. At least she wouldn’t mess with the goods I bought with money.
“So, will you take the order?”
“Let me see first. Come inside.”
“But you were in the middle of eating dinner, I hope I didn’t disturb you.”
“Can I order jjajangmyeon? This place is good.”
“No thanks. I like the prison gruel here.”
After that, I have to go eat bulgogi or something.