Chapter 105
In Risk City, a secret was the sort of thing inferior even to the security software Abel Anderson used to install whenever he accessed banks and the like in South Korea.
This was a world where even a famous actress spending a night fooling around at a hotel with dozens of android male-prostitute sex toys wouldn’t become gossip for the owner of a local hot dog shop.
Only rumors like a megacorp chairman secretly sponsoring a cyber-web virtual idol group streamer could make the citizens of Risk City take an interest and say, “Is it for real??”
That was why.
The existence of the family’s ‘Vision Magic’ was more than enough to earn people’s awe and worship.
In other words, it could also be called jealousy and envy.
Vision Magic.
Unlike the interior and outskirts of Risk City, blanketed in sticky smog, the family’s estate lay in the city center, where one could fully enjoy the sight of blue skies and white clouds─.
Even now, malware containing hacking programs was a popular product in the back alleys of the black market, sold as supposedly leaked Vision Magic from the family.
In Risk City, Vision Magic could be called the only secret in the city that was almost perfectly protected.
Naturally, the family barely paid attention to crude magic-circuit surgeries, but they did not overlook Vision Magic so easily.
Therefore.
When the inside of the spacious boss’s office froze over in an instant like a freezer.
The two people beside Abel Anderson were the most surprised.
“…You’re saying you’re my older brother?”
Gr-rk, Aiden clenched his teeth.
It was nonsense.
His reason was speaking coldly, but he couldn’t bring himself to immediately voice a denial.
The mana conveyed by the cold was extraordinarily pure.
This was absolutely not an aura that could be produced by some crude illegal magic-circuit tattoo given to back-alley gangs.
Like the history of Risk City, the family’s history was also extremely long.
It was not entirely unheard of for a family knight to be granted Vision Magic, or for a distant collateral branch to suddenly awaken to Vision Magic one day.
But.
‘…This feeling is in a completely different league from theirs.’
And the results were on another level entirely.
When Aiden drew out his mana, the only thing that appeared around him was a handful of icicles made of ice.
Abel Anderson, however, froze this entire spacious room in an instant.
‘……Phew. Mr. Gandalf, are you watching?’
In reality, he was high on the feeling of being a great wizard and spouting nonsense inwardly.
Fortunately, there was no psychometry psyker here who could read people’s minds, so the heavy atmosphere remained intact.
Abel Anderson carefully composed his expression and looked at Aiden.
“How old are you?”
“…What?”
It was a question about something he had never expected, so a bewildered voice burst from Aiden’s mouth just as it had moments ago.
“I asked how old you are.”
Abel Anderson’s voice, by contrast, was extremely confident.
This was a crazy world where it was impossible to estimate someone’s age from their appearance, but since everyone in the family was a Purist, none of them would have replaced their bodies with cybernetic prostheses.
Abel’s thoughts grew twice as complicated as he watched that confident attitude.
‘Just a simple leak of Vision Magic? Or a collateral branch I didn’t know about? …Could he really be an illegitimate child of the family?’
In the end, he even came up with a speculation straight out of a story about love and war, but unfortunately, none of it contained the answer.
Abel Anderson looked at the troubled Aiden and added in a blunt tone.
“The brat’s big brother is asking him a question, and he doesn’t even answer. If you’re going to keep your mouth shut, I’ll leave first.”
Teaching a younger brother some manners was practically an older brother’s inborn duty.
Although he couldn’t bring himself to use violence against his younger sister, he had no hesitation about properly educating the younger brother who had punched his older sister in the face with all his might.
When Abel Anderson began slowly walking toward him, Aiden was pushed back by his momentum and unconsciously took a step backward.
“…!!”
And that was more than enough to scratch his firm pride.
“Shut up…!!”
Boom─!
Aiden stomped down hard once again.
In an instant, Aiden’s mana, drawn up until his blue hair looked pure white, gathered into one mass and surged toward Abel Anderson.
Every time he took a step, an icicle rose from the floor and settled there like a footprint.
“…Your speed is definitely fast, though.”
At this rate, was he faster than Marcus Vogel in his prime, whom I had met at the bridge?
Or was it worth comparing him to Bansho Takemaru after he had transformed into a Black Kellogg beastman?
However, Abel Anderson had already leveled up several times since then.
As was characteristic of RPGs, the amount of experience required increased with every level, and naturally, physical strength rose proportionally as well.
“Hmm… Is that all?”
Because of the family rumors that had been passed down as far as the grocery store in Sector 49, Abel Anderson had been inwardly tense despite running his mouth, but he was slightly disappointed as he assumed a stance to throw a counter.
‘The attack path is too straightforward─.’
At that moment.
A glacier nearly as large as Aiden himself burst from the ground, and countless ice fragments blocked Abel Anderson’s path.
“…Fuck, what a flashbang.”
He himself did not know it yet, but ever since he first fell into the game.
Abel Anderson had developed a degree of PTSD toward situations where his vision was blocked, so unlike usual, he tended to respond more sensitively, just as when he had pounded Bogus or awakened the telekinesis trait against Marcus Vogel.
When Abel Anderson lashed out with a kick without hesitation, the enormous ice shattered completely.
This was possible because people with the same 【Absolute Cold】 trait developed a certain resistance to ice created by others.
However, unaware of that fact, Abel Anderson was slightly surprised when the chunk of ice shattered as feebly as if it had been made of packed snow.
Catching that tiny opening, Aiden attacked Abel Anderson from behind.
After confirming that Aiden was no longer visible in front of him, Abel Anderson relied on his sixth sense and turned around in one swift motion.
An icicle jutted out from the wall of the boss’s office.
Using the wall as a solid foothold, Aiden thrust a kick toward Abel Anderson.
Clang!!
Abel Anderson looked at Aiden’s foot, which had been aimed precisely at his head.
He had caught it before it struck its target.
“How dare this brat raise his foot to his brother, who is as lofty as the heavens….”
“Who exactly is the older─.”
Aiden’s words did not reach the end.
Abel Anderson, who had grabbed his foot, immediately threw Aiden toward the opposite wall.
Kwaaang!!
Originally, Abel Anderson had intended to flatten the floor like Hulk playfully doing so to Loki, but when cold began seeping into his palm, he hurriedly threw him instead.
Abel Anderson slowly rotated his aching wrist as he looked at the wall Aiden had flown into.
“Ah.”
A hole precisely large enough for one person to pass through had newly appeared there.
‘I don’t think I threw him that hard…?’
Abel Anderson’s question was answered almost immediately.
There was not a single trace of rebar visible inside the collapsed concrete.
It seemed to have been a temporary partition wall.
He clicked his tongue softly in disappointment.
“I haven’t even landed a hit on him yet….”
“……”
“Why?”
Abel Anderson asked Eleanor Crossfell, who was looking at him cautiously.
She fidgeted with her fingers, then gazed up at him quietly.
“By any chance, when you called me your older sister….”
Then she quickly shook her head and took back her words.
“…No, never mind.”
“?”
Abel Anderson moved on from Eleanor Crossfell’s strange gaze as she stared at him.
He slowly stepped beyond the collapsed wall.
* * *
“…I smell blood.”
The moment I stepped through the wall.
A fishy scent of blood stabbed at the tip of my nose.
It was a smell that could not be sensed at all from outside, with the collapsed wall as its boundary.
Considering my superhuman sense of smell, which could detect a dropped hot dog several hundred meters away, this was absolutely impossible.
I instinctively realized that some kind of magical factor was involved here.
Something like this would be difficult to explain with science.
I couldn’t see the younger brother’s body among the chunks of collapsed concrete.
‘…Did he escape already?’
He had made a show of his pride, but he was certainly fast when it came to running away. Almost on Team Rocket’s level.
I still hadn’t managed to give the brat even one knuckle-rapping, so I hadn’t planned on simply going back anyway….
But judging by the surroundings, this seemed difficult to resolve with a mere knuckle-rapping.
“…This place.”
Eleanor also seemed to have noticed the strange atmosphere around us.
I checked the area around her feet and offered some advice.
“Wait, I don’t think you should step on that.”
“Step on wha─, eeeeeek!!”
At her feet, a crafted object lay rolling across the floor, its human face stretched out flat like a sheet of paper.
“Th-this is….”
“Your brother’s hobby is pretty nasty.”
There was no way he could have been unaware of the hidden room right beside the boss’s office.
Moreover, there was more than one or two pieces of skin rolling around.
No wonder the brat had been so obsessed with leather….
【Special Random Encounter occurrence probability increased!】
That alert came quickly.
It was unlikely that these were simply well-made decorations.
The smell of blood was so overpowering.
I watched Eleanor cover her mouth and asked her a question.
“What are you going to do now?”
“……”
She couldn’t have failed to understand the intent behind my question.
Her younger brother, Aiden.
As far as I could tell, this wasn’t something that could be solved by simply giving him a lesson in manners.
Eleanor Crossfell seemed to ponder for a moment, then glanced at me and muttered softly.
“…For now, if we can at least talk to each other, I’d like to try─.”
“Okay.”
Eleanor’s eyes went round.
Apparently, she hadn’t expected me to answer that way.
“…Are you sure that’s okay?”
“What’s the harm?”
I had a younger sibling too, so I understood how she felt.
When a younger sibling went astray, the rest of the family suffered.
‘I thought it was a perfectly normal PMC company, but now I see why people called it a gang.’
We followed the trail of ice fragments through the darkness.
The horrible decorations became more clearly visible in the light sources farther inside.
At the end of the room.
Tap. Tap-tap.
We discovered Aiden earnestly practicing his typing while staring at an ancient-looking old-fashioned monitor.
He seemed to have noticed our arrival as well, because he quietly turned around.
“You’re here.”
“It’s hilarious how you’re pretending you were waiting after running all the way here. Seriously.”
“……You.”
His voice calling out to me was filled with anger.
But before that, Eleanor took one step forward.
“…Aiden, did you really dabble in black magic?!”
Black magic?
There really was all sorts of strange stuff in this world.
While I had been looking at the human skin and thinking of it as a nasty hobbyist decoration, she seemed to have noticed something else.
Aiden’s face turned expressionless once again as he looked at Eleanor.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What do you mean, what’s wrong? That’s….”
“Sacrifice other people and become stronger. What magic could be more perfectly suited to the world we live in? Why can’t people understand that simple fact?”
This time, I couldn’t sneer at Aiden’s words.
Hearing them had naturally brought the game system to mind.
“When pursuing strength, what does the method matter? What’s justice, and what’s injustice? There’s no good or evil in the method.”
And then his gaze turned toward me once again.
“You. You know, don’t you? Yes, seeing you here, I think I understand…. You have an atmosphere similar to theirs. As if you’re carrying hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of souls….”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Or are you truly the head of the family’s illegitimate son…? That seemingly perfect father of ours….”
No answer came.
Apparently, he was simply an ordinary madman.
Perhaps because he had been subdued so easily by me, Aiden seemed to have lost his wits.
Well, fine.
People tended to come to their senses after getting hit.
I patted Eleanor on the shoulder and moved forward.
“From what I can see, your little brother still isn’t in any condition to talk. You can’t deal with a younger brother like that, I’m telling you.”
After I took a few steps, Aiden suddenly raised his head.
“You’re definitely strong. I admit it.”
“I don’t need your─.”
“To the point where I can’t fight you.”
Uh-oh.
That line sounded ominous.
Then I saw the screen on the old-fashioned monitor behind Aiden.
A loading screen.
One that had just changed from 99% to 100%.
The words ‘Complete!’ appeared above it.
“In that case…. It would be best to match the weight class.”
Immediately after Aiden said that.
Suddenly!!
“???”
Someone’s arm burst out of the old-fashioned monitor.
It was like watching a magic show.
The thin arm felt around for the desk outside, then slowly tried to emerge from the monitor with a limp, wavering motion─.
Kwaaang!!
I kicked the monitor without waiting.
The monitor with the arm hanging from it slammed into the wall, and the arm slipped neatly back inside.
Aiden stammered when he saw what I had done.
“W-what….”
“Who waits around for someone’s transformation and entrance these days?”
But my gaze remained fixed on the half-ruined monitor.
Tsk, I guess that won’t work.
From inside the monitor rolling across the floor, the same hand emerged once again.
The hand naturally pointed upward, raising its index finger,
then soon began swaying gently from side to side.
It was a gesture like an elementary school teacher telling a child that something was not allowed.
Next.
The hand gripping the monitor pulled its body forward.
A giant of a man, far too large to fit inside the monitor, emerged into the room.
He was not particularly broad, but he was tall.
Roughly one Mihail, perhaps.
His hands and feet were also bizarrely long, making him appear to be slightly hunched at the waist.
The man, dressed in a dark reddish-brown suit that looked old and scorched by fire, bowed his head with a gentle demeanor.
“Allow me to offer my respectful greetings. I am the adviser, companion, and final friend to all─.”
The smile hanging around his mouth seemed almost wide enough to reach his ears.
“Your Hell Service.”