The Spear Girl of TK-07
Before I knew it, I had reached the age to enter middle school.
“Haa… It’s already the new year…”
To drive off the cold that bit into my skin, I accelerated the blood flowing through my veins. Warmth bloomed from my heart and spread through my entire body, and the chill that had been tormenting me seemed to retreat a little.
“Ugh… Just thinking about starting middle school makes everything go dark in front of my eyes…”
Elementary school had been handled mostly through home education after simple registration, but once Julia enrolled in middle school, I would have to follow her there as well.
“But this makes the time feel so vague…”
As Julia grew, my existing duties had been limited to housework and secretarial work. One might think the intensity of labor had increased, yet the actual working hours never exceeded three or four a day, so I could pour most of the remaining time into studying and fulfilling hacking commissions.
Once I started attending middle school, however, I would spend roughly eight hours a day at school, and the usable time itself would shrink dramatically.
“…”
In truth, there was one simple way to solve this.
I used my phone to check the fortune I had accumulated over the years in a borrowed-name account.
8,091,632,000
Nine zeros. My entire fortune alone was eight billion.
I had managed to clear every last debt within a year of starting the hacking commissions, and the reputation I had built from that point onward had brought me truly overwhelming wealth. What made it even more meaningful was that the fortune I held now was not everything—I had aggressively acquired countless companies and items that would help improve my abilities, steadily building assets along the way.
On top of that, after years of service to the Wittelsbach family, the debt remaining on me was a mere two or three hundred million. I could pay it off whenever I wished, yet the reason I still remained in this mansion was surely the affection I had come to feel over the years.
“Haa…”
I was sunk deep in thought over what to do when I felt a chill wind swirl up from behind me.
“Seo-hyun! What are you doing here!”
“Young Miss? Shouldn’t you be practicing your unique ability right now? Why are you here…?”
“Nooo~ I just can’t get any practice done when I’m by myself~”
“Then please request that Father invite a new instructor.”
“Hm? Why bother when you’re right here? Honestly, you’re better than most of the ordinary assists, you know?”
“Well… I’ve been studying that field as my major since I was little, after all.”
“Heeh~ Be honest. You think you’re better than the assists belonging to big corporations right now, don’t you?”
“That’s a misunderstanding.”
“Most of the techniques I use right now are ones you made for me, aren’t they? And didn’t you get a rank 9 or something on the assist mock certification exam?”
“It was rank 1. Rank 9 is the lowest grade. And theory and practice are different. Ah, speaking of which—have you finished all the training I told you to do?”
Caught off guard by the sudden question, Julia wiped at the sweat beading on her forehead and forced a reply.
“U-uh? Ahaha, of course I did!”
“Yet your remaining mana is overflowing. Did you happen to take some kind of elixir?”
“…”
“Even with a body that can’t sense mana, I can still borrow the power of machines. Trying to deceive me like that will show somehow no matter what…”
“Argh! How am I supposed to set off Shockwave thirty times in a row, common sense! It’d be better to just throw tear gas in that time…!”
“I already told you. Tear gas doesn’t work on people who have built up resistance.”
“Urgh… Then just reduce the amount a little…”
“In that case, instead we’ll do high-speed movement training…”
“W-wait a second! Fine! I’ll just do it, okay!”
Watching Julia stomp off toward the training grounds while still grumbling, I quietly thought to myself that it might be all right to stay here a little longer.
[Welcome, Master. Did you enjoy your day today?]
-Well… so-so. By the way, how are the commissions that came in this time?
[Posts requesting personal information hacks or the theft of confidential data make up the majority of newly registered commissions.]
-Haa~ I feel like I should put up a notice or something. I’ve said I don’t steal personal information how many times now?
Even though I had made money through hacking work, I had once been the kind of person who hunted down those very people as an agent of the National Intelligence Service. I still wanted to keep a certain line. It might have been hypocrisy, but at the very least I had decided not to take commissions that posed a major threat to ordinary citizens or national security.
‘Maybe it’s about time I closed up shop.’
I had earned enough money; perhaps I could turn my attention to expanding the business instead.
That was when a rather interesting commission caught my eye.
-What’s this?
[It is a commission to locate a child.]
-Why didn’t you flag this one?
[I judged the reward to be far too low compared to other commissions. Even if you accepted it, the efficiency of the work would not be particularly high.]
Just as Laplace said, the reward for the commission was not high at all. A mere five hundred dollars to find one person. Considering that carrying it out would require touching an extremely broad range of things—nearby CCTV footage, resident registration records, and more—it simply did not make financial sense.
What caught my interest, however, was the information on the person they wanted found.
“A girl around thirteen who wields a spear… yellow eyes, hair the same color, and a body-enhancement type unique ability that wraps her in pure white energy every time she activates it?”
Despite a description that conjured images of an angel, her place of residence was listed as the US-TK-07 district—commonly known as a slum.
TK-07 was a famous high-crime area in America that appeared often in the media. It had not existed in my previous life; a hero who had overused their power while stopping a villain’s attack had left the surrounding region in a state beyond recovery, and various criminal organizations had settled on top of the ruins, giving birth to the slum.
It was one of the districts suspected of housing Behemoth’s headquarters, and even within Leviathan it was a place that frequently came up in rumors.
‘Not exactly a district where a child should be living.’
Clashes between criminal factions were common, and American public authority had more or less given up on the place, so even the protection of the law was hard to come by.
-Who’s the client?
[A member granted the C-Serpent rank. Judging by related posts and sales history, I estimate it to be a shared account belonging to a criminal organization. Shall I dig deeper?]
-Please do. While you’re at it, find out who that girl is and what connection she has to the client.
It might have been nothing more than a feeling, but somehow I had the sense that this commission might become an important branching point that would decide the course of my life.
“Haa… haa…”
Her breath came short and ragged. Every time blood flowed from the wounds scattered across her body, she felt the strength draining out of her.
“Hngh… ugh!”
Slash—!
“You fucking bitch! My arm…!”
The man’s right arm, pierced through by a pure white spear, dropped to the ground. Thinking she might buy a moment’s respite from the pursuit, she tried to catch her breath—only for a mana snare to fly in from somewhere and coil tightly around her body.
“Kh! Got…!”
⟨ Judgment ⟩
Crunch—!
Pure white mana surged up from the earth, forming dozens of spears that shot skyward all at once. Caught by the sudden attack that had slipped into her blind spot, the woman who had thrown the snare hastily retreated several steps. Yet even though the spears had clearly missed, the wounds began to burn and slowly consume her left ankle completely.
“Gyaaaaah…!”
“Ignore it and keep pushing! She’s just a bitch with no backing anyway!”
“Haa, haa…”
‘How did things end up like this?’
Iris dragged her leaden body along and thought. Was it because she had stayed behind to help the children and failed to leave on time? Because she could not stand injustice and had charged at a criminal organization? Or perhaps the more fundamental cause was that she had fallen into this world in the first place.
Clang—!
“Kh…!”
The massive greatsword that met her reflexively swung spear could not withstand the impact and went flying far away. Yet Iris herself failed to properly absorb the shock and was driven back a great distance.
‘Dislocated…?’
An alien sensation different from usual, accompanied by a tingling pain, ran along her shoulder. She wanted to at least reset the bone for now, but there was no time.
“You won’t be able to run any farther. Your stamina looks like it’s already at its limit—if you don’t resist, I’ll kill you in a relatively gentle way.”
“…”
“Put that spear down first. You’ve already used up all your strength, haven’t you?”
“Haa…!”
The girl did not even answer the man; she simply tightened her grip on the spear. Yet her figure looked so precarious that merely remaining upright seemed difficult.
Perhaps that was why. The man wore a half-pitying expression as he lowered his sword and approached her.
“Choosing the hard path for no reason. Well, if that’s how it is, then so be it. I’ll kill you slowly, in the most painful way I know…”
In that instant, white light began to radiate in every direction from the spear she held.
“W-what is this…!”
The man’s flustered face was transmitted through her visual organs into her mind. Iris took in that sight and whispered amid the storm of emotions raging inside her.
‘Yes… perhaps the greatest reason isn’t that I fell into this world, but…’
Because she had been chosen as the hero who would defeat the Demon King.
"[I beseech the Goddess…]"
"[Grant me the power to annihilate my enemies in a single stroke.]"
⟨ Holy Spear of Longinus ⟩
Clutching the sacred spear wreathed in pure white mana, Iris whispered softly. At the same time, the light that spread outward erased one-third of the US-TK-07 district from the map that day.