What the World Owes You, I'll Make a Bet With the World~

An unexpected situation arose in the underground pipes.

Ian and the others were surprised, but they decided to stand aside and watch. This was a fight between gangs and had nothing to do with them.

Still, they had only just paid.

They didn't want anything to happen to the man called Kazan.

The money wasn't important.

What mattered was that he clearly had the connections to get the job done.

They would do their best to keep him alive.

The group quickly followed, wanting to see what was happening.

The battle continued.

"Rat-a-tat-tat!"

Ahead of them, bursts of gunfire rang out from time to time in the enormous underground pipe.

Before long, they saw wounded people lying on the filthy, littered ground.

One middle-aged man still clutched a bloodstained cleaver, and blood kept flowing from a hole in his body.

Yet he showed no fear whatsoever.

Though he was gaunt and disheveled, he calmly lit a cigarette and took a drag, a look of satisfaction spreading across his face.

"Aren't you... afraid of dying?"

Chrollo was puzzled. As he walked over to the man, he asked in a calm voice.

The man was badly wounded.

Without treatment, he was certain to die in a place like this.

The disheveled middle-aged man struggled to look up at Chrollo, laughed in a way that was hard to interpret, and rasped,

"Die?"

"If I can kill every last one of those beasts from the Kalie Gang, forget dying. Even if you sent me to hell, I wouldn't bat an eye!"

As he spoke, a flash of pain crossed his eyes.

Clearly, the man hated the Kalie Gang deeply. Perhaps something extremely painful had happened to him because of them.

Ian fell somewhat silent at the sight.

He had always known that the world wasn't fair...

The world was neither black nor white, but a shade of gray.

And where there was gray, there were naturally dark places ordinary people could never reach.

From bullying, slander, humiliation, and torture to wars, riots, massacres, and the destruction of nations.

Every one of them was happening somewhere, every moment of every day.

Yet whether in his previous life or in this world, everyone seemed to turn a blind eye.

Did people pretend these things never happened just because they hadn't happened before their eyes?

Who could understand the pain of those who had been tortured, humiliated, had their families murdered, or their nations destroyed?

And who could give them fairness?

Could they rely on so-called heaven?

Objectively speaking, once a person died, they could no longer speak for themselves.

What had happened to them was then covered up.

A cowardly person was bullied... even to death.

And everyone would merely say, "That guy was so fragile..."

Everyone was busy with their own lives; no one would stand up and condemn the bully's cruelty!

But... did that mean these gray evils had never happened!?

He didn't know why, but seeing the despair in the man's eyes weighed on Ian.

It weighed on him far more than being suddenly attacked by Mizaistom for no reason!

Because he knew that Mizaistom was in the wrong in the former case, while in the latter, it was this world, brimming with malice, that was wrong!

What could he do, make the world apologize to him?

"What's your name?"

Ian slowly crouched down, looked the man in the eyes, and spoke calmly.

"I... my name is Dreyn..."

Hearing Ian's question, the middle-aged man was visibly taken aback before he answered with a bitter smile.

He didn't know what the boy before him wanted to do, but he was already dying. What did he have left to worry about?

"Dreyn, I want to know what grudge you have against the Kalie Gang. Maybe I can help you."

Ian spoke slowly, his voice serious and sincere.

He didn't need the world to apologize to him...

What he wanted was fairness!

If the world couldn't give the weak fairness, then fine. He was willing to give it to them!

He still had one check-in opportunity left today.

He wanted to take a gamble—a gamble with the world—and see whether the way things unfolded would bring him pleasure in body and mind.

Chrollo and the others beside him

could clearly hear the seriousness in Ian's voice. They didn't understand what he was thinking, so they all looked at the middle-aged man on the ground.

They seemed to be trying to see something in him.

"You... you can help me!?"

In that instant, a glimmer of hope seemed to flash through Dreyn's clouded eyes.

He didn't even stop to consider whether the boy's words were credible. As though afraid of missing this chance, he blurted out,

"My... my wife and daughter... they killed them... The Kalie Gang destroyed my family!"

"I... I... want to kill them! If you can, please help me! Help me!"

He spoke rapidly, stumbling over his words several times in his agitation. Tears and snot were already streaming down his disheveled face.

Who knew how it felt to be persecuted by a gang, lose one's family, and still somehow survive, as he had?

Just as the world never showed favor to the weak.

What could an ordinary middle-aged man like him do against the Kalie Gang, even if he gave his life?

He had been lucky enough to find shelter under Kazan and had lived on numbly, day after day.

But all he could do was scrape by...

Ian had seen the Kalie Gang's human traffickers before and had already guessed as much, so he wasn't surprised to hear the man's story.

But at some point, his small hands had clenched tightly into fists.

At that moment, his disgust for the Kalie Gang and for gangs as a whole reached its peak!

System, check in for today!

His young face was expressionless as he silently checked in.

The next moment,

his consciousness sank into a space of nothingness, where a bottle of red liquid floated quietly before him.

This is... [Performance-Enhancing Liquid]!

In that case, everything depends on you now, Dreyn. Don't disappoint me...

With that thought, Ian looked at the suffering middle-aged man before him.

Under the man's astonished gaze,

he slowly raised his hand, materializing a bottle of red liquid in the center of his palm, and said calmly,

"I can help you..."

"But when it comes to revenge, it ultimately depends on how much you hate the Kalie Gang..."

"An opportunity! I'll give you one!"

With that, Ian tossed the [Performance-Enhancing Liquid] to him, and the man caught it carefully, fumbling as he did.

"Here. Don't doubt it. This is a liquid that can explosively enhance every measure of your body's abilities for a short time. Spray it on yourself, and for the next hour, you'll become a superman. After that hour, you'll die..."

"As for what you should do, I think you've already made up your mind..."

The moment Ian finished speaking,

the disheveled middle-aged man before him pressed down on the bottle's nozzle without the slightest hesitation and sprayed the red mist thoroughly over his entire body.

Uvogin, Nobunaga, and the others watched the middle-aged man face death without fear, their expressions turning solemn.

Meanwhile, before Ian knew it, a faint smile had formed at the corners of his mouth.

The weight on his heart gradually lifted...

This was how he wanted things to unfold.

Today, he had won his bet with the world...

[Performance-Enhancing Liquid]: Primarily applied to objects or body parts as a spray, causing their performance to increase explosively for a short time! Its effects last for one hour after application. For example, spraying it on both legs can increase running speed to a level comparable to a rocket!

Since Dreyn was willing to give his life for revenge,

Ian was happy to give him a chance on behalf of this terrible world!

To let this weak middle-aged man take revenge for every injustice he wanted to avenge—that was what the world owed him!