The Black Market (2)

Floor 0.

District 13.

Boolliu Street, the black market.

Tap. Tap.

The street I stepped onto was old and dilapidated beyond ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠belief. The pavement blocks were cracked everywhere, as if no one had bothered to maintain them for years, filth seeped out from the garbage heaped on all sides, and there was even the carcass of an animal that nobody had bothered to clear away.

The kind of place that felt like it should be lined with bars, auto shops, and loan sharks.

I kept my hood pulled low and made my way along the street.

"...It's cleaner than I expected."

The scenery wasn't entirely unfamiliar to me. After all, District 13 was practically a next-door neighbor to District 12, where I currently lived.

Honestly, if I was being generous, the streets looked almost identical. The only real difference was that District 12 sat a little closer to the Association.

"There's still a ways to go before I hit the place the Archmage mentioned..."

With his hand-drawn map floating in front of me, I scanned the surrounding buildings. Apparently, this 'pawnshop' of his was buried deep in the back alleys. The main street already felt criminal enough, and now I was supposed to go deeper into the alleys? Yeah, that was a little suspicious.

"Eh, nothing's going to happen."

My body, tempered by an addiction rate of roughly 1,400%, was worth at least a B-rank Awakener. And a B-rank Awakener's body could shrug off a few bullets without breaking a sweat. Thanks to my genuinely broken Drug Immunity trait, poison and thrown blades wouldn't work on me either. And if anyone tried magic, I could just ask Al to block it.

"Right, Al?"

Clatter.

"Good, good."

Talking to the energy drink can I was currently chugging, I strode deeper into the alley. If anyone else had witnessed this scene, they would have screamed AAAAGH, absolute lunatic and bolted on the spot.

Unfortunately, no one seemed to have seen it. Or maybe they simply lacked the cognitive capacity to judge it at all.

Barely a minute after I entered the alley, a hulking man with an enormous frame blocked my path and slammed into me.

Thud!

"Ugh."

The damp touch of a sweat-soaked t-shirt. My mood plummeted instantly.

The moment I lifted my head and looked the man in the eye, he peered down at me and muttered in a bored drawl.

"...The hell? What's a shrimp like you doing here?"

A childlike voice that completely contradicted his appearance. A tattooed pig in sportswear, with the proportions of someone whose software had been installed wrong.

"Can I help you, mister. ...Sir?"

"What's a girl doing in a place like this..."

"She's actually kinda cute, isn't she... Should we sell her off? Heh heh."

More men spilled out of the alley and surrounded me, spitting out lines so clichéd they might as well have been printed on a script. Every one of them puffing themselves up with all the bravado they didn't actually have, blowing smoke from half-crushed cigarettes.

On the surface, it was a shocking visual. In practice, I just stared at the men with a blank, deadpan expression.

"......"

"What? Why's she not reacting?"

"Uh... well..."

Had I just seen too many genuinely shocking things lately? For some reason, the sight of tattooed pigs sucking on cigarettes did absolutely nothing for me. If anything, they seemed so normal that I almost felt relieved. At least compared to elves baring their cleavage while hotboxing weed.

...Anyway.

I could feel a faint trace of mana off the men, so despite appearances, they were all Awakeners. But compared to what radiated off Hong Yeon-hwa, Iris, or the Elf Queen, their amounts were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nothing short of pathetic. At absolute best, B-rank. Realistically, C-rank for safety's sake.

'Time to do the thing.'

Situations this clichéd didn't come around often. If anything, following genre conventions here was just good manners.

"Let's do this easy, yeah? You look young. Hand over everything you've got on you and..."

The man in front of me began his intimidation routine with a template I could've sworn I'd seen somewhere before. But before he could even finish the sentence, I let out a piercing shriek and wailed in theatrical despair.

"KYAAAAH!! Somebody help me~!! I'm being chased by sexual predators~!!"

"Wh-what??"

"Don't play innocent with me!! I know you're planning to rough me up!! Like in a doujin!!"

"Quit spouting cra— I wouldn't touch a brat like y—"

"LIKE IN A DOUJIN!!!!"

"......"

"...Sorry. I've always wanted to say that line."

At my follow-up, the man's face flushed scarlet.

"You...!! You think this kind of childish prank is funny...!!"

Shrrrang!

"Well, actually, this works out great. I've been kind of curious myself."

Everyone in the gallery made such a fuss about Lunatic this, Lunatic that, but being the one who actually lived it, I honestly wasn't sure what the big deal was. No, that's not me being a flex-troll or anything.

My whole life has been home-Tower-home-Tower on loop, meeting nothing but monster after monster. And the only Awakener I'd ever met was Hong Yeon-hwa, who sits at the very top of A-rank besides.

Resting the sword I'd forged from aluminum on my shoulder, I went on.

"So I've been wondering for a while now exactly where my skills stand..."

"E-everyone, combat positions!! This freak's an Awakener!!"

"How convenient — the sandbags came crawling out all on their own?"

Fights between Awakeners weren't heavily punished by the Association. And when the other party was a pack of criminals like these, punishment was off the table — I'd probably get a reward if anything.

Living, breathing sandbags I could beat to my heart's content with zero consequences.

Now THIS is consequence-free pleasure.

Whoosh.

I twirled the sword in my hand and started forward. Oh, by the way — I hadn't sharpened the blade. Gore isn't really my thing.

"Alright, then..."

Time for a little demonstration, no?

About five minutes later.

"I-I'm s-s-s-s-sorry!!!! I'll give you e-everything we have, so please, I'm begging you, just spare our li-lives!!!!"

The tattooed pigs, reduced to rags, groveled and apologized over and over in front of me. Sitting on one of them as if he were a chair, I was busy lighting one of the cigarettes I'd confiscated from the lot.

"Is this... how you're supposed to do it...?"

"...Filter goes on the other end..."

Slurp─

"HCK?! Hk—hkkgg... what IS this..."

But the instant I took a drag, the thick, acrid smoke flooding my lungs sent me into a coughing fit like the aunties at my hometown dumpling shop, and I had no choice but to spit the thing out.

"Uuugh..."

But the system had registered it as a substance all the same, because my addiction rate climbed right on schedule.

Using the pig I was sitting on as a backrest, I stubbed the cigarette out on him and opened my trait window for Drug Addiction.

Since breaking 1,400, my addiction rate hadn't risen much — I hadn't had a chance to grind it lately. If I farmed my trait off the stash I'd shaken loose from these punks, I figured I could push it to around 1,500.

But wow, this stuff is pathetic. Why do people smoke this, seriously? The smoke smells weird, it's scorching hot and burns your throat going down...

Are smokers all just perverts who enjoy roasting their own lungs? If it's a choice between this and eating it, eating wins every time.

...Wait, if you eat a cigarette, does it still count as a drug?

Crunch.

"Oh, it works."

Thankfully, eating them counted too — the moment I chewed up the cigarette butt, my addiction rate began creeping up bit by bit. I casually brushed the status window aside and, still chewing on the cigarette, walked over to the tattooed pig face-down on the ground in front of me.

Crunch, crunch.

"HIIIK!!"

"A m-monster...!!"

The punks went white as sheets, staring up at my approach like I was some horror straight out of a creature feature.

Uh... come on, seriously. Calling a person a monster? Isn't that a bit much?

I got the exact same line in the gallery earlier, too. I'll have you know I'm actually quite a sensitive person. Hearing "monster" hurts my feelings, you know.

That said, I knew that telling these idiots as much would only get me branded even more of a lunatic, so without further ado, I began a delightful little Q&A session with the tattooed pig in front of me.

"Hey. You."

"...You mean me, sir?"

"Yeah. You the boss?"

"Th-that would be me..."

The one who answered was the same guy who'd blocked my path earlier. While his underlings had all dropped with a single flat-of-the-blade strike, he was the only one who'd held out and fought me to the very end. Thanks to him, I'd only barely managed to win after blasting a metal pillar at him with my Transmutation skill.

Turning back to Boss Pig, I continued.

"Forget the rest. I've got one question."

"Of course, of course...!! Ask me anything at all...!!"

Apparently the crash course in manners I'd given him moments ago had sunk in, because he answered politely despite his twitching, terrified expression.

"You guys have any of 'that stuff'?"

"...I'm sorry?"

"Y'know... that stuff. You know what I'm talking about. This, here."

Instead of explaining in detail, I made a pinching gesture with my index finger and thumb. To any observer, it looked like nothing more than the ordinary gesture of someone smoking a cigarette.

But apparently not to him. Boss Pig panicked visibly and began stammering.

"Wh-wh-wh-wh-what are you talking about...!! We're not that kind of organization...!!"

"Oh really?"

"Of course not!! Nobody can even trade that stuff these days anyway!! The Association is hunting it down with their eyes on fire — if worms like us so much as touched it..."

For a guy claiming he didn't have any, his face wasn't exactly selling it. I pressed a little harder.

"You don't have any?"

"N-no, sir! None!!"

"Really?"

"Really!!"

"Not a single one?"

"Not a single one!!"

"Hm... So every time I dig any up from here on out, ten of them at a time..."

"...We'll provide them!!"

The moment I slowly drew out my aluminum sword, his head hit the floor. Before long, he'd rounded up his underlings and gathered three pouches of white powder, which he handed over to me.

"This is everything we've got on hand right now..."

"Huh? There's no more?"

"Th-this is a lot!! Carrying around too much, if the Association catches us..."

"Got it."

Good grief, what a mouth on this guy. Open it a crack and words come pouring out like a breached dam. Forget being a thug — he could've made it as an esports commentator or something.

He kept right on talking.

"But you have to understand... we're just ordinary bottom-feeders!! We've got nothing to do with the horse!!"

"Uh-huh, sure."

"Even this stuff, my underlings got it on their own from the 'Heuksan Gang' guys—"

"Yeah, yeah, got it."

C-grade on the drug scale. Worse than even the raw nectar of a Ferum Flower — the same tier as plain alcohol. Even eating all three pouches would probably only push my rate up by 15% or so? Still better efficiency than chewing through fifteen cigarettes, though.

"Understand? It wasn't us, it was the 'Heuksan Gang' guys who—"

"I said I get it."

Letting the rest of Boss Pig's babbling wash over me with one ear and out the other, I headed back toward the pawnshop the Archmage had recommended.

Trait-grinding could wait until I got home.

"Hee hee hee."

Around that same time.

The entrance to District 13.

"...Still as dreary a place as ever," Hong Yeon-hwa muttered, taking in the filthy streetscape as she arrived at the black market.

"......"

Right beside her, Baek So-hee — Guild Leader of Baekhwa Guild — fell into step with a furrowed brow. Sensing her presence, Hong Yeon-hwa clicked her tongue in open displeasure.

"...Tch."

Under normal circumstances, this mission wouldn't have been enough even if her entire Special Response Team had been deployed. But the person standing beside her now was the Guild Leader of Baekhwa. An S-rank Awakener, and the daughter of the Ice Emperor, once the strongest in the Tower. Throwing more manpower than this at the job would have been straight-up waste, so even the Association President probably had no choice but to settle on this arrangement.

Hong Yeon-hwa heaved sigh after sigh as she vented.

"I can't believe I have to crawl into this shit-hole of a place with this shit-hole of a woman."

"...Not what I expected to hear from someone who just lost on Floor 20."

"Eat shit."

"Likewise."

The displeasure ran both ways — Baek So-hee had never gotten along with BurntCowIsCarbon, better known as Hong Yeon-hwa, going way back.

But still.

"As long as this case counts as a 'narcotics crime,' Baekhwa has no choice but to cooperate."

"Right. Which is exactly why I'm resisting the urge to tell you to eat shit."

The meaning that narcotics crimes carried inside the Tower was heavy. It was the one rare situation where the Association and the Guilds — who fought like cats and dogs every other day of the week — actually cooperated. And for Baekhwa Guild, which held a monopoly on the potion market, that cooperation bordered on an obligation.

Pharmaceuticals and narcotics were two threads that could never be fully untangled. What the Association would do if they refused was plain as day. Precisely because both sides understood ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this, the Association likewise tolerated Baekhwa's potion monopoly to a certain degree.

"The name of the scum we're taking down this time... was it the Black Bear Gang? Or the Black Panthers?"

"It's the Heuksan Gang. If you can't even remember a name that's written right there in the report, what exactly are you planning to do?"

"My bad. Stuff like this was never my strong suit."

Especially this time — the 'Heuksan Gang' had crossed the line, then kept right on going. An organized narcotics operation run by A-rank Awakeners. A serious felony, filthier in quality than anything that had happened recently.

Worse, they operated as a cellular organization, so even the Association couldn't easily step on their tail. That was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠why this mission's objective wasn't the gang's headquarters but a low-level branch — because they didn't know where the headquarters was in the first place, the plan was to interrogate the exposed foot soldiers and track the trail upward.

'...This is going to take longer than I thought.'

That was probably why Baekhwa had dispatched its Guild Leader directly. Rather than sending a mob of nobodies to bleed the guild's resources on a slow grind, they'd sent Baek So-hee herself to wrap things up quickly.

"......"

"......"

The two of them walked the black market's streets in mutual silence — until they stopped at the mouth of one particularly deep alley.

"This is it?"

"Yes. The only location the Association has confirmed."

Right on cue, the moment Baek So-hee finished speaking, movement began stirring from every direction. Judging by how hurried it sounded, they were less inclined to fight and more inclined to erase their traces and run.

Baek So-hee raised ice across her palm.

"Let's finish this quickly. I'm not a woman with time to spare."

"Look at her, acting like anyone else isn't busy."

Hong Yeon-hwa grumbled as she pulled out a Caffeine Candy, popped it into her mouth, and summoned her mana.

Crunch.

"...What is that."

"Candy. Want one?"

"Snacking mid-battle... Haah. Tell me later."

Baek So-hee barely held onto her composure, grinding her lips together as she murmured,

"Right now isn't the time for allies to be fighting each other."

"Agreed. So quit grabbing my ankle."

"...Takes one to know one."

After far too long, it was a temporary alliance between the Association and the Guilds.

Meanwhile.

Having met the broker the Archmage had introduced, I found myself facing a very familiar situation.

"Well, well. What brings a kid to a place like this?"

"......"

The grandfather guarding the pawnshop, his face carved deep with liver spots, peered at me through narrowed eyes and asked,

"Where's your mother?"

"...Don't have one."

"Ah, right, she was with you last time?"

"......"

Seriously, this old man.