A Warm Bowl of Soup
“Isn't that a prosthetic arm? Come to think of it... you're wearing one too, aren't you? Are you a soldier?”
I nodded silently.
“...They're in rough shape, but... how about it? Want to sell a few? I'll give you a decent price.”
They weren't in perfect condition.
Every single one of them was cracked, rusted, or broken in some way.
Even so, the outer armor of the prosthetic arms could fetch a pretty penny.
Currently, the strongest armor material humanity could get its hands on was the outer plating of the Machine Species.
In particular, the leg armor of the Multi-legged Tanks possessed unparalleled defensive power.
However, it was just as thick and heavy.
On the other hand, the armor used in prosthetic arms was light and thin. Yet, it possessed strength and tensile durability exceeding that of most metals, making it highly versatile and popular.
“But that's only when they're intact. With this many scratches, you won't get full price.”
“I'm sorry, but I can't sell them.”
“I'll give you two million in cash on the spot for two of them. What do you say?”
“I really can't sell them. They aren't mine.”
“Is that so? Then if you introduce me to the owner...”
“That's also impossible.”
“Why? I think I'm offering a pretty fair price here.”
I stroked the prosthetic arm inside the box and said,
“They're keepsakes. From my family.”
“Really? Then forget it.”
The pawnshop owner gave up surprisingly easily.
He chuckled and said,
“There's no need to rush with items that have a story. Where else would they end up? The grave, or right here at the pawnshop. But Maetan doesn't have graves, only cremation, right? In the end, everything is bound to gather here.”
The owner tossed over a burlap sack.
“Put them in there. On the house.”
“Thank you.”
I swept the prosthetic arms into the sack.
Since there were over ten of them, they felt quite heavy even for me.
“Anything else?”
“I'd like to exchange some points for cash.”
“How much? Under one million is a twenty percent fee. Under three million is fifteen percent.”
“Around four million.”
“I'll do a ten percent fee for that. Transfer 4.4 million.”
I took the USB cable from the owner and paid 4.4 million Maetan Points.
The owner counted the bills and tied them neatly with a string.
“You're taking it all? That's a lot of cash, it's dangerous. Why don't you leave some with me?”
In Maetan, pawnshops served as both loan sharks and banks.
It was common for people living in unsafe areas to pay a small fee to store their money or valuables at a pawnshop.
“It's fine. I'll be using it soon.”
It was the truth.
Ever since I started eating five meals a day, blowing through a million points a week was nothing.
I was exchanging this money specifically to pay in cash at private restaurants.
Because the corporate cafeterias in Maetan closed early...
Back when I had no money, I used to rush to sleep before the hunger hit, but lately, I often stayed up late to connect to the Internet after work.
I slung the sack of prosthetic arms over my shoulder.
Throb...
A sudden wave of dizziness washed over me, causing me to stumble.
The world spun.
It was definitely hypoglycemia.
A body like a furnace, converting everything I ate into energy instantly.
That also meant energy depleted just as quickly.
Your blood sugar is extremely low. You need to replenish your energy immediately.
It's because you took so long to show up. I missed mealtime because of you.
Fortunately, the restaurant was right in front of me.
I figured I'd be fine if I hurried over and ate.
Just as I stepped out of the pawnshop, carrying the sack of prosthetic arms...
“Oof.”
A man suddenly slammed into me, sending me tumbling backward.
Mister?
“Ah... what the...”
I looked up to see a man staring down at me with a bewildered expression, as if to say, Why are you the one who fell?
“Ouch! Argh! Oh, my goodness! Aaaaargh! My arm! My arm!”
Belatedly, the man clutched his right arm, sank to the ground, and let out an incredibly awkward, exaggerated scream.
“Junior!”
“Lord have mercy, did your arm go and snap?”
Several men appeared, making a huge fuss.
Though their words expressed concern for the fallen man, they had smirks plastered on their faces.
Ah.
I got the picture.
What did people call guys like this again?
“Pawnshop muggers?”
They were called pawnshop muggers, but they didn't actually rob the pawnshops.
To be precise, they targeted the pawnshop's customers.
After all, most people visiting a pawnshop were either pawning valuables for cash or bringing cash to retrieve their valuables.
Or, like me, exchanging currency.
Either way, they were lucrative prey.
The man who seemed to be the leader spoke.
“Hey, you just crippled our junior's left arm. I hope you're prepared for the consequences.”
The man who had been clutching his right arm and screaming quietly switched his grip to his left arm.
“Leave the medical fees and get lost. Otherwise, we'll make your right arm look just like our junior's.”
The junior switched back to his right arm.
He was doing his absolute best to play his part.
“I don't have any money.”
“You literally just walked out of the pawnshop!”
“I mean I don't have any money to give you.”
I set the sack down.
The prosthetic arms inside spilled out with a clatter.
A few of the men flinched in surprise, but the leader didn't seem to care.
“Whoa, you've got some seriously cool stuff there. Hey, we should attach one of those to our junior's left arm.”
“Boss, those are prosthetic arms.”
“I can see that, you idiot.”
“No, I mean, if he's carrying prosthetic arms... that means he's a soldier.”
“...A soldier?”
Tension flickered across the leader's face.
But he quickly steeled himself and raised his voice instead.
“...So what if he's a soldier! Hey, soldier boy! Leave the arms and get lost. If they can be attached, they can be detached too.”
“Boss, maybe we shouldn't mess with soldiers...”
“You bastard, are you saying we should just ignore our junior's crippled right arm?!”
“No, that's not what I meant...”
“Damn it, you've got no loyalty... Hey! Everyone, attack! He's just a soldier... Aren't they all just losers of the war anyway?”
As the leader drew a knife, the other men pulled out their own blades.
The junior, who had been sitting on the ground, sighed as if giving up on the act and gripped a pair of daggers.
I let out a sigh and said,
“I feel like I've beaten up every thug in this neighborhood at least once... Hurry up and come at me. I don't have time.”
“Get him!!”
The leader glided forward, his feet skimming the ground.
He was using erratic footwork, throwing feints to keep his movements unpredictable.
His left hand was extended forward, while his right hand held a reverse-grip dagger hidden in my blind spot to conceal its trajectory.
He seemed reasonably skilled.
Ah. The world was turning yellow.
I needed to take them down as quickly as possible.
I activated the prosthetic arm's function.
Neural Acceleration
Crackle!
High-frequency electrical impulses discharged from the prosthetic arm, surging through my spinal cord and peripheral nerves.
In an instant, all my senses sharpened to a razor's edge, and my reflexes began to respond beyond human limitations.
My neurons flared like awakened circuits, and my body moved before my thoughts could even form.
Thud.
Crack.
Crunch.
In the blink of an eye, three men collapsed.
They probably didn't even realize how they had been hit.
Neural Acceleration.
It was a unique ability of prosthetic arm users, utilizing the power stored within the cybernetic limb to enhance the reflexes of the entire body. It allowed for bursts of explosive movement.
“A-Argh! Please spare me! My arm is already broken, I can't fight...!”
The remaining junior threw away his twin daggers and fell to his knees.
I had no intention of letting him off easy.
With guys like this, you had to instill absolute terror to prevent any future trouble...
Wait.
Stumble.
Uh-oh. My vision was blurring.
“I-If you forgive me, I'll never...!”
“Get lost.”
“Huh?”
“I said, get lost!”
The junior scrambled to his feet and bolted.
Leaning against the wall, I slowly slid down to the ground.
As the ground drew closer, the spinning sensation only worsened.
Hypoglycemic shock.
I had missed mealtime by too much.
Mister! Mister!
Even CC's messages were flickering and shaking.
*Be quiet for a second. Once I stabilize a bit, I'll...*
Just then, a pair of small, dirty sneakers entered the edge of my vision.
A young girl was standing in front of me.
“Mister, you're a Player, right?”
“Phew...”
The sensation of hot soup sliding down my esophagus.
Though the meat in the soup was of questionable origin, the taste was excellent.
My blood sugar surged rapidly.
“I feel alive again...”
During the last war, humanity had all of its advanced weaponry hacked and seized by the AIs, leaving them with no choice but to fight practically naked.
So, humanity decided to enhance the physical bodies of the soldiers standing on the front lines.
The subjects required for the enhancement surgeries were children around ten years old who had not yet reached puberty.
This was to take advantage of the human growth spurt, using elixirs and simple implants to achieve highly efficient, natural physical enhancement.
At the time, I, having lost my parents and growing up in a military orphanage, along with other children in similar situations, became the targets.
Thanks to that, I became a literal superhuman, possessing a muscle density over three times that of an average person and highly dense bones.
But it wasn't all good.
The side effect I received in exchange was atrocious fuel efficiency.
Just breathing consumed nearly three times the calories of an ordinary human.
I burned at least 8,000 to 12,000 calories a day, and under maximum physical exertion, I could burn up to 100 calories per minute.
Using the prosthetic arm made the calorie consumption even faster.
This was a manageable side effect back when humanity still had plenty to eat, but now, in a world plagued by chronic food shortages, it was a fatal penalty.
If I didn't eat on time, I would fall into hypoglycemic shock, just like I had moments ago.
Even during the war, what took down our allies was far more often delayed supply drops than attacks from the Machine Species.
“You're done already? You eat really fast.”
The girl sat across from me, holding her own bowl of soup.
She looked barely over ten years old.
A grimy appearance with deep dark circles under her eyes.
It wasn't an uncommon sight in this city.
Thankfully, she was the savior who had dragged me to the restaurant and fed me a warm bowl of soup.
She even carried your burlap sack. It must have been really heavy for her.
CC's message felt unusually gentle.
“Mister, you're a Player, right?”
the girl asked.
“What?”
“You're a Player. I saw it. Your arm flashed when you fought. Right?”
≧▽≦ I think she's talking about the prosthetic arm's Neural Acceleration. How cute.
“That ability has nothing to do with being a Player.”
“Is it a secret? Okay. I'll keep it a secret.”
She's at that age where she wants to have secrets.
The girl stirred her soup with a spoon to cool it down.
“Since I'm keeping your secret, please do me a favor instead.”
I stared at her blankly.
As I watched her without saying a word, she spoke up.
“No, a commission. Not a favor, a commission. Players are people who take commissions, right?”
The girl pushed her bowl of soup toward me.
“This is the down payment.”
“A down payment?”
“Of course, this isn't all of it. I have money. I work too.”
Looks like she can take care of herself. How admirable.
Maetan complied with labor standards laws, meaning it did not employ children under the age of fifteen.
And the child in front of me certainly didn't look over fifteen.
The proof was the lack of a Neck-Hub on the back of her neck.
Because anyone over fifteen without a Neck-Hub wasn't allowed to remain inside the walls surrounding Maetan.
In other words, whatever work she was doing was illegal labor.
And CC had been a bit too talkative for a while now.
“I can afford to pay the commission fee.”
There was no way an illegal child laborer was receiving proper wages.
She probably earned just enough to buy a single bowl of soup after working all day.
Earning just enough to survive one more day.
And this child had just fed her entire day's worth of survival to me.
And now, she was pushing another day's worth of survival in front of me.
The girl spoke.
“Please save my dad.”