WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈

Chapter 12: I'm an Experienced Hire

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1.

Second run through Necropolis.

About a week had passed.

In that time, I adapted to the city so quickly that I could pat myself on the back and say, "So this is why companies hire experienced workers."

So, what exactly had happened...?

2.

I added the money I shook down from the guys who attacked me to what I got for selling the corpse, then earned my Grade 9 fixer certification.

I registered under the name John Wick.

I tossed aside M-Pattern Baldness James and switched to a much more intimidating name.

It was a knockoff certificate that any asshole could get for 5,000 Bios, so it wasn't difficult at all.

But hadn't I learned this from the Big Dick Office?

Just having a fixer license didn't get you good jobs.

The really sweet gigs circulated through office networks as back-channel jobs or subcontracting work. Only minor chores went up on City Hall's notice board.

If I wanted to make money fast within a week, I needed my own office.

Bang!

"FBI! OPEN UP!"

I kicked in the door and made a stylish breach.

This was the Get Money Office in E-11 District.

From what I'd learned in advance, it was a small-time office run by two Grade 8 fixers.

"What, what the fuck?!"

The two men who had been playing cards scrambled to their feet.

Coins and cards that had been piled up on the table scattered everywhere.

If not for the circumstances, I might've joined them.

"Wow, two guys playing poker? When you get lonely, do you suck each other off too?"

"You crazy bastard, you barge in and start shit? Do you know where you are?"

Honestly, Grade 8 fixers weren't people to take lightly.

Some, like the Big Dick brothers, were Grade 9s who had gained experience and been promoted.

Others had useful gear, received augmentations, or used "magic."

At their core, they were ruthless bastards who could take a full swing at an unguarded person's head with a bat.

But that wasn't a problem.

Bang!

I didn't need the Sharingan, or rather, Laplace's Eye.

No Grade 8 fixer would be carrying anything as incredible as this revolver.

"F-fuck... Wh-what is that...?"

One shot into the ceiling was enough to crush their will to fight.

"I'm taking this place. Move out."

"Y-yes! We'll leave!"

The two men shrank their necks and pressed themselves against the wall as they cautiously headed for the exit.

"Hold it."

"Yes?"

"I'm the boss here now, right? I'll hire you two as temps. You get half the fee every time we finish a job. And in a week, I'll clear out of the office nice and clean."

I needed a proper handover, and I needed advice from people who knew the city inside out.

"But if you run off in the middle of it, I'll come back and wreck the place. What do you say?"

They blankly looked at each other, then nodded with confused expressions.

"Let's introduce ourselves first. Baldy, you go."

"Uh... I'm Akitt..."

"And the muscle next to you?"

"I'm, I'm Areng."

"I'm John Wick. Looking forward to working with you."

And that was how I became the temporary boss of the Get Money Office.

Along with Twilight Resource Development, Overnus Pharmaceuticals was one of the two corporations that ruled Necropolis. The Get Money Office was a subcontractor's subcontractor for Overnus Pharmaceuticals.

Ceres, the death variable from my last run, was a director at Twilight Resource Development.

The Big Dick Office also got most of its work from Twilight Resource Development.

So this was the option I chose to avoid crossing paths with Ceres as much as possible.

Anyway, the moment I became temporary boss, I started taking care of every request piled up at the Get Money Office.

Literally every request.

"Hey, hey, hey, guys. Isn't this leaking everywhere?"

"Aaargh! It is! It's leaking! Fuck, do we really have to do this just to dump a few barrels of shit water?"

"Let's not take jobs like this again, boss!"

"Temps don't get to pick their jobs. Shut up and move!"

"Fuck, I've known you for five minutes and you're already talking down to us. This is seriously bullshit..."

"Want a bullet in your head?"

"I'm moving! I'm moving!"

Illegal dumping of toxic waste.

"Mister, if you borrow money, you have to pay it back. Right?"

"P-please give me a little more time..."

"Sure, I should give you more time. But I looked into it, and your daughter is quite pretty. She'd make a real ace if I sold her to a brothel."

"Eek! H-here it is...!"

Debt collection.

"Areng, that's the bastard, right?"

"Yes, boss. He took triple the fee, didn't even wipe his ass properly, then ran off."

"He's got some nerve. Fine, I'll count to three and put a sack over his head. You beat him until he's dead. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Aaargh! You, you guys, who are you?!"

"Die! Die! Die!"

Contract killing.

"Hahaha! This stuff is really pure."

"It's a designer drug copied exactly from one made by Overnus Pharmaceuticals. It looks like bath salts, but when you burn it and inhale the vapor... Huh? Wh-who are you?"

"I'm a prosecutor from the Republic of Korea, you drugged-up bastards. Arrest every last one of them!"

Cracking down on illegal drug dealers.

"...What do you think is inside this box?"

"Akitt... Didn't you hear something from inside just now?"

"D-don't bullshit me... How could a person fit in such a small box...? B-boss? What is this?"

"There must be a little lamb inside."

"What nonsense are you suddenly talking about...?"

"Ha, you ignorant bastards. Haven't you read The Little Prince?"

Um... probably a delivery job.

"Boss, I've been wondering for a while. Why do you wear that fucking clown makeup?"

"Akitt, watch how you talk to the boss... It's obviously for intimidation, isn't it? Like tattoos, right?"

"......"

"Boss? Boss John Wick, you don't look so good today. You haven't said a word for a while."

"Why are your hands shaking like that?"

"I don't know, fuck. Stop talking to me. This is hard as hell."

The gambling den security job was the hardest.

Even though our first meeting had been bad, we worked together surprisingly well.

Akitt and Areng weren't bad fighters, but they were dumb as bricks.

On the other hand, I was a high-functioning genius who could be their brain.

With Laplace's Eye, which was useful for tracking jobs, added to the mix, our completion rate more than doubled in just a few days.

A week had passed since I started working with them.

"Guys, today I'm feeding you something seriously amazing."

"Oh! Boss, are you treating us?"

"Are we going to Hongshen Market?"

"Just wait, idiot."

After finishing the day's work, I pulled out the Chapagetti I had been saving.

It had cost me five points, precious as my own blood...

But this could be a celebration party of sorts.

It was a five-pack, so I still had two left for a hospital discharge party when Arbel recovered.

"Sniff, sniff. Wow, boss. That smell..."

"I told you to go wait over there."

"Aww, why do you have to say it so coyly? All right."

The pinnacle of chemical seasoning, created by Korea's finest master's and PhD holders putting their heads together.

In a city where they boiled scraps fished out of garbage bins and served it as food, even the smell was lethal.

My stomach rumbled.

This was driving me crazy.

Should I have just eaten it alone?

"All right, it's done!"

But when I saw Akitt and Areng lose their minds over it, that regret quickly faded.

"B-boss...! This is incredible! How can it taste like this? Wh-where did you even get something like this?"

"You guys have worked hard. Eat plenty."

"Sniff... How am I supposed to eat any other food after this? I'm seriously fucked..."

"It's precious. Eat slowly."

"Slurp! Sluuuurp!"

"Hey, hey, hey, you fucking bastard! Give it here! I said eat slowly! Spit it out!"

Their faces and tattoos were intimidating, but they turned out to be fun guys once I got closer to them.

Of course, that was because I was stronger than them.

If I hadn't displayed overwhelming strength at our first meeting, Akitt and Areng, who were now cackling beside me and smacking each other on the back of the head, might have turned me into minced meat.

Three servings of Chapagetti really weren't enough for three men.

We passed the pot around and licked it clean enough that it didn't need washing.

"Wow... That was seriously the best."

"I could die without regrets now."

For a long while, the two stared into space with blissful looks on their faces, cigarettes hanging from their lips.

"Let's call it a day."

Akitt looked like he'd seen a ghost.

"What? We're not going out for a night job today?"

"I have plans."

"You fed us something good, so I thought we were taking on some dangerous job tonight, sir."

Well, until now, the schedule had been getting up at dawn to work, lunchtime work, evening work, and night work.

But today was the day cockroach nutrition blocks were handed out, and the day Arbel would return half-dead.

My earnings for the week were...

======

:::Challenges (NEW!):::

- Open a fixer office +5pt

- Complete a contract killing request +1pt

- Complete a suspicious delivery +1pt

- Illegally dump trash into a river +1pt

.

.

[Points Held: 132pt]

======

Twenty-six points gathered through challenges.

I had earned 460,000 Bios in total, and half of that was mine. That made 230,000.

A miner's weekly wage, which I'd seen on City Hall's board before, was 15,000.

Considering that taking it up the ass at a prostitution joint called a steam bath earned 50,000 a week plus extras, it wasn't a small amount.

A standard unlicensed doctor's treatment fee was 20,000 Bios per visit, so 230,000 Bios should be more than enough, right?

"Clean up enough to wrap things up, then go home."

As I put on my coat, the muscular Areng awkwardly approached me.

"What?"

"Boss, it's been a week now... Couldn't you just keep working with us from now on?"

"You're buttering me up because I fed you something good?"

Akitt joined in too.

"That's right! Honestly, at first I thought some crazy bastard was throwing his weight around, but I've learned so much."

"I realized that if we're going to survive in this city, we need to be under someone like you! Please take us in!"

Fixer work certainly made money.

And working as a team made more money than moving alone.

"Well, let's meet tomorrow and talk about it."

"You're coming tomorrow? You have to come! You absolutely have to!"

3.

A delicate figure.

A young woman staggered through the nighttime streets of Necropolis.

She was small.

Her clothes were torn in places, and small wounds covered her body.

Her beautiful blond hair was soaked with blood and tangled, while her eyes were hazy as though drugged.

It was Arbel.

By then, half her consciousness had already slipped away.

Both her body and mana circuits had been left in tatters after facing the attackers.

The long journey from Aden to Necropolis, and then to the safe house, slowly gnawed away at her life like a slow hanging.

"Hey, look at that bitch. Think she's on drugs?"

"Hehe, a young lady who doesn't know how scary the world is. We should drag her somewhere quiet and teach her a lesson."

Her reason could no longer function properly.

Only the map to the safe house, which she had desperately repeated to herself until the very end, guided her steps while she was barely conscious.

But she had to go.

Why? Why did she have to go, even though it hurt this much?

Because it was safe? No. That wasn't it.

Because Cedric was there?

Cedric was trash. An asshole. But even so, she had to go. She had no choice.

Only fragments that never formed coherent sentences circled through Arbel's mind.

"Hey, miss! Where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"Come have some fun with us!"

Two men blocked Arbel's path.

"......"

Arbel blankly stared at them.

She had faced this situation countless times on her way here.

"What? Is she crazy? Her eyes aren't focused."

"Even better. Let's play with her, then sell her to a whorehouse."

What did she do in situations like this?

Right. This.

"Rabbits fall from the sky."

"What the hell are you saying? You crazy bitch... Agh!"

A snow-white shape brushed past the two men's necks.

Startled by the stinging pain, the would-be rapists instinctively reached for their throats.

Then...

"Aah, aaaah!"

"Uh... uh... uh...?!"

They recoiled in horror at the blood gushing out in violent streams.

The two men tried to react somehow, but sadly, when your carotid artery was torn open, you lost consciousness in seconds.

Unless a professional medical team happened to be standing by, there was no time to do anything.

Arbel passed the two men, now quiet.

A white rabbit cutely moved its blood-red mouth as it chewed, then vanished as though scattering apart.

"Here..."

At last, the safe house.

Arbel took out a key with trembling hands and unlocked the door.

Creeeak!

The door opened.

The end of this long journey was in sight.

Cedric.

My pathetic younger brother.

"Cedric..."

He wore an unfamiliar, stylish coat and ridiculous clown makeup.

"I've been waiting."

Yet somehow, he looked dependable rather than funny.

Arbel swayed.

Her small body fell into Cedric's broad embrace.

Warm and soft.

Like she could fall asleep just like this.

"Get some sleep. We're going to the doctor right away."

This had to be a dream.

Cedric couldn't possibly be dependable.

Arbel gave a bitter smile, nodded, and lost consciousness.

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