Chapter [unchanged]
The revolver had a cylinder that held six bullets.
It looked like a plain, no-nonsense weapon.
Ransel turned it over in her hands, examining every inch.
There was nothing particularly special about it, no hidden features worth noting.
Her money wasn't enough to cover anything more elaborate.
In everyday terms it was a decent sum, but when it came to buying a gun it was barely enough.
Just glancing at it was enough to know that the firearms she could afford could be counted on one hand.
'A single decent revolver will do for now.'
If she needed anything else, she could decide then.
She had looked through the few guns she could buy and picked the best one.
A revolver engraved with a delta near the trigger.
It looked sturdy enough and wasn't unusually heavy, so she could carry it at all times.
Ransel scanned the display case before heading to the counter.
Behind the counter a man with thick, shaggy hair was tallying accounts.
She waited her turn and set the revolver on the counter.
"A Delta brand revolver… a decent friend, fighting smart and holding up well. Do you need ammunition too?"
"Yes. How much?"
"Matching ammo for this one… ah, here it is."
The shaggy-haired man turned and rummaged behind the counter for the right rounds.
He placed a handful of bullets on the counter.
"Three hundred and fifty credits per bullet. That brings the total to four hundred and fifty thousand credits. Want to buy?"
"Of course."
Ransel handed the man the cash from her pocket.
The man took the money with practiced hands and neatly wrapped the gun and ammunition before passing them back.
Ransel accepted the change and the packaged items, gave a brief nod, and stepped out of the shop.
She booked a room at a nearby hotel that looked reasonably secure and walked straight into her room.
The moment she stepped inside she collapsed onto the bed.
Her body ached in places she had been struck.
'She got swept away in an instant.'
When she faced Gibter, the original plan had not involved hand-to-hand combat.
She had meant to deliberately let him attack her head, check her mana level in this world, and deal with him by magic.
But Gibter's speed and strength had been far beyond her expectations.
The instant she was pushed back, the sudden surge of rage made her fight without thinking.
'I thought I was holding it back… but I wasn't at all.'
She felt it again.
Her own nature was unstable, a time bomb that could explode at any moment.
The more she recognized her situation, the more she realized she didn't have enough time.
But this was something she had to endure anyway.
Just wishing wasn't enough.
To overcome the emptiness, she would need to desire it, long for it, and at the same time surpass it.
She pulled her mana back up after a short rest.
The mana, noticeably stronger than before, flowed through her palms.
The mana concentrated at her center took on the shape of a spell and burst into blue light.
Crack!
The blue lightning flash lit up the entire room for a moment.
'Pushing it out by compression alone isn't enough.'
A revolver now gave her a way to strike from a distance.
She didn't need to focus on the act of firing anymore.
From now on she would look for ways to combine the revolver with her spells.
One fortunate thing was that after the last battle her mind was overflowing with inspiration.
Ransel steadied her breathing and pulled her mana up again.
The blue glow filling the room did not fade even as dawn broke.
The city's lights dimmed, and artificial lights began to flicker on one by one.
Flickering neon signs and sparking power lines.
She had seen this street countless times before. Nothing had changed, and neither had she.
Change always required an instrument of some kind.
Since there had been no instrument, staying the same made perfect sense.
While idly swirling her glass and staring out the office window, Darin found herself thinking of someone.
Silver-white hair mixed with blue.
Slanted eyes whose opened or closed state she couldn't tell.
An appearance that looked suspicious in every way, yet somehow turned even that suspicion into something attractive.
"Ransel, Ransel…"
The office had already gone bankrupt for some reason.
She had not felt passion for work even once since then, and the office itself had failed to regain its former glory.
Now it was just a dying firm with no clients left to contact, a ghost office that no one would bother visiting anymore.
But that thought had been shattered not long ago.
"How did she know I was here?"
The question popped up, but she quickly dismissed it as meaningless.
Someone must have heard a rumor and come looking.
For Darin, who was already thinking of shutting the office down, it didn't matter anymore.
Her thoughts wouldn't change even if a couple more people passed by.
She no longer had any obsession with money or affection for work.
The reason she had introduced Ransel to her was similar.
After all, there was no one to take it, so why not give it away?
Darin set her glass down and pulled over her laptop.
She clicked on an article with a suitable title and skimmed through the content.
She remembered what mattered and discarded what didn't.
She kept reading, going through trends like this.
She had lost interest in the job itself, but old habits remained.
Darin gave a wry smile while feeling a faint emotion about that fact and scrolled down.
—The Purists' violent protest… it's time regulation was needed…
—Frontia Tower's new artifact revealed… when will the demonstration be…
—Gang alliances…
While idly scrolling and reading the articles, Darin suddenly stretched her limbs and slumped in her chair by the window.
She still felt no particular interest in Ransel as a person.
She didn't think Ransel would become her new partner anytime soon.
This was nothing more than pure curiosity. Nothing more, nothing less.
After all, Darin hadn't expected Ransel to come back and had simply passed along the work.
Handing over the information was the bare minimum courtesy to a dying person.
"If she used a gun, she probably had no wounds on her face. It doesn't look like magic, just being knocked out by a punch…"
Even though her appearance didn't suggest it, her body seemed tough.
She had lifted a bag that an adult man would find heavy with one hand.
The more she thought about it, the more her curiosity grew.
Darin scratched her blue hair with a small sigh.
"Even if we can't be partners, she's still a customer, in a way."
After muttering that, Darin started typing on her laptop.
Finding videos or photos didn't take long.
She had heard a report from Ransel herself about where it was taken, and anyway, that was the kind of information collection she had always done.
Finding and cross-checking information was child's play for her.
Before long Darin had found a short video.
In the video two people appeared.
The image was grainy, probably because it had been taken from the internal network of some rat group, so faces were hard to make out.
But from the video it was barely possible to tell that the two people were Ransel and Gibter.
Darin's expression gradually hardened as she watched the video.
"This is…"
The moment Ransel's head was slammed into the floor and she stood up by twisting Gibter's wrist again.
The two were exchanging punches.
A scene that completely shattered Darin's assumption that they knew how to use guns or knives.
Darin doubted her eyes for a moment. She rewound the video. It played the same.
She punched, she was hit, she punched again.
No need to add anything, no need for extra explanation.
Just pure hand-to-hand combat.
Darin, who had thought there was something special, slumped her shoulders.
Even so, as the video played, it was quite impressive how Ransel kept dominating.
After the first few punches, she either figured out the pattern or something, because after that she didn't get hit even once.
'Still, she's decent at fighting.'
But that was as far as it went.
Darin, losing interest, was about to close the laptop when blue light suddenly burst from a corner of the video.
A current bundle shot straight from Ransel's hand pierced Gibter right through.
"…"
For a moment Darin froze with her hand on the laptop's power button.
It wasn't a world-shaking shock.
It wasn't a spell showing off massive destructive power.
It wasn't dropping a lightning bolt or exploding a huge bundle of current.
She had simply fired a current.
'The probability it's an artifact is high, but if it's not an artifact, then maybe—'
"A mage…?"
Level 4 at most.
Even if that were the case, its value probably wasn't that high.
She had used magic at the decisive moment, and the scale was small.
It couldn't be a magic user with truly extraordinary skill.
Maybe it was just a short-sighted mage who could only cast once.
'Then it makes sense that she's good at fighting.'
She would have had to be, after all.
But even considering all that, she still had value.
Just the fact that she could use magic made her evidence of being at least a level 3 talent.
How many humans had she seen who couldn't even cast a single spell?
Just one spell?
Even that had been enough to draw countless people who wanted to take her with them.
Being able to use magic had that much merit.
Considering that she was only a little better than a normal person trained in levels 1 and 2, it made sense.
But that wasn't her problem.
"After all, the office is already bankrupt."
Darin laughed self-mockingly and closed the laptop.