WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 48: Big Brother
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1.
Yiming radiated an overwhelming presence just by showing up.
Six feet three inches tall.
Weighing 230 geun, nearly 300 pounds.
Thick forearms exposed beneath rolled-up sleeves.
Bluish veins writhed over muscles as hard as rock, like enraged snakes.
A back like a mountain range, flexing glutes.
He was the very image of a Vajra guardian ripping evil spirits apart with his bare hands.
Only with a slightly high BMI.
“Sit down and smoke a cigarette. I’ll fillet those carp bastards first.”
Yiming’s unexpected arrival did not let me relax.
I had plenty to feel guilty about with Yiming too, not just Ceres Mama.
Wow. I really had lived like a complete asshole this iteration.
“Incense Master Yiming! There seems to be a misunderstanding here!”
“A misunderstanding?”
“We are not persecuting that bastard without cause. That opportunistic bastard stole a Gold Carp Family treasure. The Doll of the True Progenitor, which was stored in the E Sector warehouse.”
One of the Gold Carp Family assassins shouted himself hoarse.
“The Doll of the True Progenitor?”
Yiming’s back stiffened.
“That is clearly crossing the line! Surely the Incense Master knows Overnus Pharmaceuticals’ regulations!”
He was not wrong.
There was something I had learned while handling all kinds of jobs as Yiming’s underling.
In this city without laws or rules, the thing Overnus Pharmaceuticals valued most was justification.
Yiming had no justification now.
No matter the circumstances, his underling had laid hands on a treasure strictly guarded by the Gold Carp Family.
But the Gold Carp Family was not comfortable picking a fight with Yiming over this either.
“Incense Master Yiming didn’t know that item was a doll, did you? If you step back now, our Gold Carp Family will consider your dignity and let this matter end here. If you hand over that opportunistic bastard, everything is settled cleanly, isn’t it?”
They were offering a compromise. Hand over me, the one who carried it out, and both sides could save face.
“Or do you intend to take this to the end?”
Protecting me here meant rejecting even that concession.
It meant breaking the organization’s regulations and declaring all-out war against the Gold Carp Family.
Even the Xuan Family would have no way to protect Yiming.
And what had I done? Failure to report, embezzlement, breach of trust.
Yiming had no reason to protect me.
“Rowan.”
“...Yes, Brother.”
“Is what he said true?”
Yiming asked without turning around.
Ha...
I really had nothing to say.
“I’m sorry, Brother. There were circumstances I couldn’t tell you about.”
The Gold Carp Family hitmen rose and gripped their weapons.
They sensed that the matter had been settled.
“Just step aside. We’ll handle this quickly.”
“Do you have to kill him?”
“Incense Master Yiming, you know how it is. Someone has to take responsibility. Or will you do it yourself? It looks like that fixer bastard stabbed you in the back too.”
Yiming would step aside.
Ah, this iteration was over.
The only regret was that I wouldn’t get to deep-kiss Arbel now that my starting point had been updated.
Then...
“Rowan, a dog barks for the person who fills its bowl. That is the instinct of a beast.”
Yiming clenched his fist.
Creeeak, creeeak.
His forearm, thick as a log, flexed with the sound of a massive bridge bending.
Steam rising from the cracked ground scattered uselessly before the fierce heat pouring from him.
His hostility was aimed not at me, but at the Gold Carp Family assassins.
“I-Incense Master Yiming...! Have you lost your mind?”
As the horrified assassins raised their weapons...
“Then what does a man bleed for! Answer me, Rowan!”
A man’s bold shout, touched with laughter, thundered through the street.
“A real man dies for the one person who recognized him!!!”
The moment Yiming lowered his center of gravity and kicked off with his rear foot...
BOOM!
The 130-kilogram giant shot forward at nearly subsonic speed.
A pale shockwave burst from where he had kicked off the ground.
Amazingly, the Gold Carp Family assassin reacted.
The assassin swung his blade fiercely at Yiming’s temple.
Clang!
But a clear metallic ring sounded instead.
The blade struck Yiming’s skin, threw sparks, and bounced away without leaving even a scratch.
“Is that all?”
“Wai...”
Yiming’s vertical fist drove into the assassin’s broken stance.
DONG!!!
The assassin’s body burst like a water balloon with the sound of a temple bell being struck.
Chunks of flesh and bone scattered like shotgun pellets.
Only a blood-red mist remained in the air.
“Y-you crazy bastard...!!!”
The other assassin finally grasped the situation and swung a crescent blade at Yiming.
A true Gold Carp Family hitman.
Even in that chaos, the response was incredibly fast.
Just before the blade could touch Yiming’s back...
Yiming’s log-like leg caught the assassin under the chin first.
Clang!
A clean impact, like an aluminum bat striking a ball.
The assassin’s head spun high into the air like a flying cola bottle cap.
Home run.
The headless body, which had stood there blankly, staggered for a while before collapsing.
“You worthless punks think you can threaten me?”
Yiming brushed off the folds of his rumpled long robe as though he had just returned from a light stroll.
No, seriously, this made no sense.
Big Brother Yiming, you were this strong?
Was this a Rank 2 mage, physically speaking...?
Knowing something and seeing it with my own eyes were worlds apart.
Yiming met my open-mouthed stare and scratched his head awkwardly.
“Hey, why are you making that face, asshole? You didn’t know I was fucking strong?”
Yiming did not scold me or show any resentment that I had dragged him into this.
He just grinned.
Fuck, this was really getting to me.
I was the idiot for thinking he was an idiot!
“No, Brother, what are you going to do? You’d go this far for such a useless little brother?”
“I’ll hear the details later. For now, we need to get out before they find...”
At that moment.
From muddy water pooled on the street, from gutters full of black rainwater...
Golden phantom carp poked their heads out.
Their creepy fish eyes watched us as if spying on us.
“...Too late already. Fuck.”
Yiming swept his gaze over them and spat.
“What are those, Brother?”
“The Gold Carp Family House Head’s technique, Turbid Water Eye. They use it to watch all over the city. We have even less time now. Can you run?”
“Of course, Brother!”
We ran through the tangled alleys.
Everywhere water had pooled, carp heads popped up and tracked our movements.
“The Gold Carp Family strike team will be here soon.”
“I’m sorry, Brother. Because of me...”
Yiming’s thick palm smacked the back of my head.
“Don’t get all sappy, you bastard. Let’s think about how we survive together.”
::: Challenges (NEW!) :::
- Become a target for elimination by the Gold Carp Family. +5 pt
2.
This iteration was very close to being a failure.
I had lost the fake Progenitor.
I had moved around like some shadowy mastermind, and because of the Status Window, I couldn’t even explain myself properly to Ceres Mama. She had dumped me.
On top of that, the Gold Carp Family had marked me hard...
Clearing the Route within the few remaining days was almost impossible.
Normally, even Cedric would have aimed for the second iteration.
But I couldn’t die pointlessly like this.
“Rowan, we’re leaving Necropolis. Let’s grab a whole pile of Universal Coins and cross over to Aden!”
“Yes, Brother!”
Big Brother Yiming had risked everything to save me.
How could I, as his little brother, give up so weakly?
And who knew?
If I twisted myself into the right shape, I might still clear it.
Powering up was important, but if fortune smiled on me and I got the chance to clear a Premium Route, I would clear it without hesitation.
This premium iteration looked like the kind where I would get completely fucked if I kept rerolling to squeeze every last drop out of it.
The moment we left the meatpacking district under the relentless watch of those goldfish...
“Wow, fuck...”
A chill ran down my spine.
The street, which always resembled rush hour, was as silent as a grave.
Every citizen had vanished.
Filling that empty space were...
Dark-skinned human figures standing stiffly with talismans stuck to their foreheads.
I did not know everything about the Gold Carp Family, but I recognized those things at a glance.
You know, that thing from martial arts novels.
Jiangshi.
There were several hundred of them.
The moment they spotted us, they charged.
Jingle, jingle, jingle.
The bells attached to their bodies rang cheerfully in unison.
Their speed matched that of an eighth-grade fixer with level-one augmentation.
Not Sandevistan speed, but still fast enough to surpass human limits.
Hundreds of human-shaped things charging without a shout, their bells ringing...
Calling it strange did not begin to cover how unsettling it was.
Yiming ran in front of me without the slightest hesitation.
“We’ll break through the front, Rowan! Stay behind me!”
“I’ll support you too!”
I pulled myself together.
I formed hand seals and fired Death Sentence wildly.
I did not need to aim precisely.
There were so many of them, and they were mindlessly charging. If I fired anywhere, I would hit one.
Their physical power was similar to that of an eighth-grade fixer with level-one augmentation.
Their movements were simple too.
“Ugh! Why are they so tough!”
But they were fucking hard.
Even after taking Death Sentence, they did not get cleanly sliced apart. It felt like they could withstand several hits.
And unless I blew off their heads, they kept crawling even after being cut at the waist.
They were the very definition of meat shields.
If I had been alone, their numbers would have overwhelmed and killed me in an instant.
::: Challenges (NEW!) :::
- Kill a jiangshi. +1 pt
While I barely managed to cut down the jiangshi...
“Wow.”
Yiming was fighting an entirely different battle.
The moment he threw himself into the jiangshi, five or six of them exploded, spraying chunks of flesh everywhere.
Dozens of jiangshi caught in the aftermath staggered backward all at once.
He had not even used a special technique.
It was just a body slam.
Bang! Boom! Boom!
Yiming’s slaughter show continued.
Against the jiangshi flooding in without pause...
One gesture burst their heads like watermelons.
One kick separated their upper and lower bodies.
That was not all. He grabbed their limbs, swung them around like nunchucks, and threw them.
I could not believe he could do that through sheer physical size.
I had seen it earlier, but he really was built differently.
“You’re incredible, Brother!”
Was this why he was not afraid of the extermination order?
Even if he had made enemies of the Gold Carp Family, even if the Xuan Family did not give him proper help...
With Big Brother Yiming, perhaps this iteration was not over yet.
Just as I thought that...
Jingle, jingle.
Bells began ringing from every direction.
Jingle, jingle, jingle.
Beneath the eerily glowing red lanterns.
Jingle, jingle, jingle, jingle.
From the dark alleys beyond the light, from narrow gaps between buildings.
The dead appeared, bells ringing.
There was no point counting their numbers anymore.
“Can’t there be one easy day...?”
Were they unlimited refills?
I didn’t need unlimited refills like this!
“Rowan, are you trembling?”
Yiming had come up beside me at some point. He wiped blood from his cheek as he spoke.
“Yes, I’m trembling, Brother.”
“You little...”
“My heart is already pounding at the thought of overcoming this crisis with you, Brother, and making the Gold Carp Family eat shit.”
Yiming paused for a moment, then burst into hearty laughter.
“Khahaha! That’s right! A man should have ambition like that! Shall we go for round two?”
“Let’s go, Brother! I’ll buy the next round!”
“Bwahahaha!”
Yeah, fuck it.
Let’s take this all the way!
The laughter of the two men rang louder than the bells.
Footnotes:
Jiangshi are Chinese reanimated corpses, often depicted with talismans on their foreheads.
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