Then Jiang Hang saw a set of Hidden Blades with a metallic gleam appear before him.
Jiang Hang couldn't help but complain internally that the system had really gone all out with this compensation.
The hundred million yen aside, that Legendary Hidden Blade definitely wasn't some ordinary item. There was also a skill that could instantly max out his Hidden Blade proficiency, along with Virtual Space training. The system was clearly trying to shut him up, but it had done a pretty damn good job.
Thinking that, Jiang Hang even began wondering if he could find another system bug to exploit and scam—cough, cough—obtain some advanced skills.
The system really had gone all out, but... when he thought about it carefully, Hidden Blades were a complete trap.
Never mind the overused joke of an assassin being a detective. What use was a Hidden Blade in Tokyo, Japan, in the twenty-first century?
Even with "Legendary" slapped in front of it, it was still an assassination weapon. Was he supposed to wipe out the entire Black Organization with one Hidden Blade?
System, the ti(me)mes have chan(ged)!
He was just an ordinary detective and assassin, not Shimada Genji shouting, "A gay man is unzipping my pants!"
Considering that ninjas in Japan were basically equivalent to assassins, if the system was going to give him the ability to deflect even rockets, it might as well give him a Rinnegan. He could use Planetary Devastation to pack up the entire Black Organization and launch them into outer space, then declare, "Detectives have their limits. I quit being a detective," before transitioning into a behind-the-scenes path of "displaying holiness before others, with only myself knowing the law." Wouldn't that be wonderful?
He had gone off on a tangent. Back to the Hidden Blade—two hundred years ago, it would have been an extremely useful tool. Now, it could probably only be used as a cosplay prop.
And even as a cosplay prop, it was too dangerous. Back in the game, Bayek had accidentally cut off his own ring finger through improper handling, which led to the Assassin Brotherhood using the removal of the ring finger as an initiation ritual for more than a thousand years afterward.
Though it had been improved later, Jiang Hang was still afraid it might malfunction while strapped to his arm. Even if the earliest Hidden Blades were attached to the back of the hand rather than the wrist, they were still dangerous.
For example, while scratching his head, the switch might suddenly malfunction and make the Hidden Blade shoot out. Then Jiang Hang would become the first assassin to successfully commit suicide with a Hidden Blade.
For some reason, Jiang Hang always developed paranoid delusions in situations like these.
In that regard, the Ezio's Outfit he had received earlier was not only exquisitely made and several grades above ordinary cosplay costumes, but it also possessed a certain degree of defensive capability. Ordinary cold weapons might not even be able to pierce it.
Even though this world had no Assassin's Creed games, if he wore that outfit to a convention, he would definitely be the coolest guy there.
The outfit was now hanging on a coat rack in the agency lobby as part of the office's image. Sometimes, when Jiang Hang's chuunibyou flared up, he would wear it at night and go to the rooftop to do some parkour.
As for the Hidden Blade, it could probably only be stored in the agency as a collectible. If he casually took it outside, the police might treat it as a weapon. It probably wouldn't even get through convention security.
Perhaps even the system couldn't stand Jiang Hang's complaints anymore, because it issued a prompt.
"Items awarded by the system are automatically bound to the host. Once equipped, the Hidden Blade may be extended or retracted freely according to the host's will and will not endanger the host. The host may also independently choose whether the Hidden Blade is sharpened. Please use it without concern."
After hearing the system's explanation, Jiang Hang immediately changed his tune.
He changed into an outfit with loose cuffs and hid the Hidden Blade beneath his sleeve. Like a child who had found a new toy, Jiang Hang repeatedly controlled it to stab out from and retract into his hand.
Even when Shizuka Sakaki came to work and brought Jiang Hang breakfast, he was still playing with the Hidden Blade.
He raised his arm and pointed it toward Shizuka Sakaki. Then the Hidden Blade suddenly shot out, and the gleaming blade startled her.
"Jiang Hang, what is that? Isn't it dangerous...?"
"Something for self-defense. As a detective, I might encounter danger someday and not have a weapon nearby. This could come in handy." Jiang Hang said this with a serious expression.
But he seemed to have made it sound too frightening, because Shizuka Sakaki's expression became rather strange.
Why would a normal person prepare something like that for self-defense?
He took the breakfast from her, but Shizuka Sakaki seemed especially wary of his wrist, as though she were afraid the Hidden Blade might suddenly spring out.
"I was joking. I just got this thing, so I played with it for a while. I normally won't wear it on my arm. It isn't sharpened, so it can't hurt anyone." As Jiang Hang spoke, he removed the Hidden Blade he had played with all morning and showed Shizuka Sakaki its completely blunt edge.
Only then did Shizuka Sakaki relax a little.
However, the expression on her face still seemed off.
After fidgeting at her desk for a long while, she asked Jiang Hang softly.
"I heard... when Yoshino went to the art museum with you yesterday, someone was murdered there?"
She thought that was why Jiang Hang had specifically acquired such a "self-defense tool."
"You could put it a little more formally. For example, there was a murder case at the art museum. This is a detective agency, after all." Jiang Hang's reply effectively confirmed Shizuka Sakaki's question.
As he spoke, Jiang Hang glanced at the breakfast Shizuka Sakaki had brought him. Milk and oat bread—there really was nothing wrong with that combination.
He had originally wanted to use the Poison Mastery that the system had acknowledged only after he died three hundred and five times yesterday to check whether his food was safe. But after examining it for a while, he could only conclude that the breakfast was nutritionally unbalanced.
In that case, from another perspective, Poison Mastery allowed him to know what foods were bad for the body and selectively avoid unhealthy food combinations. Didn't that mean he had now become half a health expert?
But after thinking about those people who precisely calculated the calories in everything they ate every day, Jiang Hang decided he would just eat whatever he wanted. He admired them, but he did not have the perseverance to live that way.
"I knew it... Last night, I messaged Yoshino. Why did she only reply this morning with a 'complicated feelings' emoji..." Shizuka Sakaki nervously licked her lips.
"I saw it on the morning news today... Did Yoshino go to the crime scene with you?"
"To be precise, I kept the murderer calm at the crime scene, while Koharu worried about my safety and followed the police there. Then she went to the restroom and threw up for half an hour before coming out."
Jiang Hang said it casually, but he was immediately contradicted.
"—It wasn't half an hour... It was twenty minutes at most..."
That rebuttal really had no force behind it at all.
Jiang Hang looked toward Koharu Yoshino, who had arrived slightly later than usual.
She did not look to be in great condition. Her hair was uncombed, her collar was crooked, and she looked as though she had rushed over in a hurry.
"Yoshino... what's wrong with you? Didn't you sleep well last night?" Shizuka Sakaki instinctively assumed Koharu Yoshino had been so affected by the crime scene that she could not sleep that night, which was why she looked like this in the morning.
However, Koharu Yoshino blushed and shook her head awkwardly.
"I didn't have nightmares. I just slept too deeply. When I woke up, I realized I was almost late, so I hurriedly got up and rushed over... Hahaha..."
She laughed awkwardly.
"???" Shizuka Sakaki wondered if she had heard wrong.
She hadn't been too scared to sleep. She had slept too well?
Was that something a girl encountering a murder scene for the first time should say?
At the Eri Kisaki Law Office, when Shizuka Sakaki learned that Koharu Yoshino had followed Jiang Hang's instructions and used a strange Meditative Sleep Method last night, sleeping until after eight in the morning, she first breathed a sigh of relief. So she had not transmigrated—the world was still the same world.
But after coming back to her senses, Shizuka Sakaki felt that something was wrong again.
Meditative Sleep Method? How could this world have something that sounded so fake?
"It's real. I've tested it myself, and it's incredibly effective. I was a little scared when I lay down last night, but after trying the posture and breathing method from the Meditative Sleep Method, I fell asleep right away. I didn't even know when I drifted off."
"And I didn't have a single nightmare all night. If hunger hadn't woken me up, I feel like I could have slept until noon today."
"That's because your sleep quality hasn't been very good lately, so the first time you try it, you'll feel like you haven't slept enough. Later on, sleeping six or seven hours a day will be enough to keep you energetic all day." Jiang Hang pointed at Koharu Yoshino's messy hair. "All right, all right. Go clean yourself up in the restroom. If a client comes later, they won't know what to think you are."
After Koharu Yoshino went to the restroom to tidy up her appearance, Jiang Hang sensed a mysterious gaze from Shizuka Sakaki.
"Do you want to learn? I can teach you." Jiang Hang knew what Shizuka Sakaki wanted to say just by looking at her, and a "kind" smile appeared on his face. "But you have to come out with me later. Let Koharu watch the agency today. Oh, and you have your driver's license on you, right?"
At first, Shizuka Sakaki was delighted by Jiang Hang's words. She still had another audition coming up in a few days. Because of her previous failure, she had been too nervous at night to sleep properly lately. If she had this Meditative Sleep Method, she should be able to get a good night's sleep before the audition.
But after hearing what he said afterward, she instinctively shrank her neck.
Yesterday, Koharu Yoshino had gone out with him and encountered a murder case. If she went out with Jiang Hang today, wouldn't she encounter some strange incident too?
"I have it with me, Jiang Hang... Where are we going?"
Jiang Hang could tell what Shizuka Sakaki was worried about from her expression. He really wanted to tell her that it was all Conan's fault—or, more accurately, the fault of a certain manga artist—and had nothing to do with him. But no one would believe that if he said it.
"We're going to a very impressive law office. There's something I want to ask about."
Shizuka Sakaki immediately imagined bizarre scenarios like "Famous Lawyer's Locked-Room Death Case," then trembled as she looked at Jiang Hang.
Unlike Koharu Yoshino, who became sleepy whenever she read mystery novels, Shizuka Sakaki took this job quite seriously. Recently, she had been reading Japanese Orthodox Mystery Novels, whose most classic cases involved all sorts of unbelievable locked-room murders.
"Don't look at me like that. I guarantee there won't be any accidents this time. You don't think I'm some kind of jinx, do you?" He would never take the blame for Conan. He was not a jinx; he just happened to be around one.
He first took the pale-faced Shizuka Sakaki to the art museum to retrieve the 86 he had left there yesterday.
Standing at the entrance of the Beika Art Museum, Jiang Hang sighed softly.
The museum had been temporarily closed after the murder case yesterday afternoon. Quite a few police officers were still going in and out, clearly indicating that there was still much to document at the scene.
Without disturbing the officers at work, Jiang Hang sat in his ordinary 86 and had Shizuka Sakaki drive to Eri Kisaki's office.
Speaking of Eri Kisaki, Jiang Hang thought of something.
Japanese creators had always liked putting effort into the names of their characters. Setting aside certain creators with negative thoughts, Aoyama liked to draw inspiration from famous detectives and Gundam when designing character names.
For example, the name Conan Edogawa was a combination of two mystery writers. And as the "Sherlock Holmes of the Heisei era," the main setting of Conan's stories, Beika City, was pronounced in Japanese through a Romanized conversion of Baker Street, where Sherlock Holmes lived.
If all the origins of those names, along with the works of those famous mystery writers, were written out, even an entire page might not be enough.
As for Lawyer Eri Kisaki, whom Jiang Hang was about to visit, her name came from the King of Logic, "Ellery Queen."
It did not matter if someone was not very familiar with mystery fiction. There was no need to discuss Ellery Queen's cases here; one only needed to know that he was a detective character jointly created by two cousins.
What those cousins loved most was openly challenging readers after presenting the clues related to a case, asking them to use the same clues available to Queen in the book to reasonably deduce the true culprit. In the end, readers were usually left thoroughly convinced.
Ellery Queen was such an "arrogant and forceful" detective and creator. Eri Kisaki, whose name originated from him, was equally forceful when it came to being a lawyer.
After more than a decade in the profession, she still maintained a perfect one-hundred-percent winning record. For a lawyer, that was the greatest possible mark of prestige.
Who knew what kind of divine battle it would be if she faced Lawyer Komikado, the lawyer played by Uncle Masato, who also had a one-hundred-percent win rate but used even more unscrupulous methods, in court?
Jiang Hang had sent an appointment request to Eri Kisaki's office last night. Perhaps because Ran had mentioned him to her mother, he received a reply this morning.
The decor of Eri Kisaki's office was quite simple. It was merely an office suite in a high-end office building.
However, a full wall of bookshelves stood inside her office. At a glance, Jiang Hang could see that they were entirely filled with professional law books. Just looking at those books seemed capable of putting clients at ease.
Seeing this, Jiang Hang could not help wondering whether he should get some bookshelves too. But would filling them with detective mystery novels inspire any confidence in clients?
Eri Kisaki had already been working in her office. When she saw Jiang Hang arrive, she stood and led him to sit on the sofa nearby.
Eri Kisaki had the air of an especially forceful, icy beauty. When someone like her stood beside the normally carefree Kogoro Mouri, they truly did not look like a married couple at all.
"Hello, Lawyer Kisaki. I'm Jiang Hang, a detective. This is my business card." Jiang Hang handed Eri Kisaki one of his business cards. He had made a whole stack of them before, yet had only handed out a few so far.
Eri Kisaki had learned about Jiang Hang from her daughter. This was also one of the rare occasions when her daughter had mentioned another man besides Shinichi.
She did not think her daughter had developed feelings for this rookie detective, but she had casually asked Ran about him.
Helpful, and despite having only been in the business for a short time, he had already helped the police solve several cases?
An interesting detective. At least he seemed much more reliable than Kogoro. That was Eri Kisaki's first impression of Jiang Hang when she met him.
She accepted the business card and glanced at it.
Pathfinder Detective Agency... Unlike most people who used their own name for their agency, though that was not unusual.
The card itself was simple. The only thing that caught her attention was a line of text written in elegant lettering above the decorative pattern.
Not English... nor German. Was this... Italian?
Eri Kisaki intended to look up the meaning of that line after this meeting ended.
At the Eri Kisaki Law Office, Shizuka Sakaki was somewhat unaccustomed to such a serious environment, especially whenever that imposing female lawyer occasionally glanced her way.
She felt that her body had grown stiff from maintaining an upright sitting posture for so long.
So impressive. Was this the legendary elite lawyer?
When Eri Kisaki's secretary, a woman named Midori Kuriyama, brought her a cup of hot tea, Shizuka Sakaki felt that even her smile and words of thanks were somewhat stiff.
On the way here, she had already learned from Jiang Hang how formidable Eri Kisaki was. After trying to search for information about her herself, she found that the results were even more exaggerated than what Jiang Hang had said.
For Shizuka Sakaki, who had hardly met any professional lawyers in her life, someone like Eri Kisaki, who stood nearly at the top of the legal profession, was the most impressive person she had ever seen up close.
But this was also an extremely rare learning opportunity for her. She kept observing the tone the two used while speaking. Perhaps she would have a chance to display such things at an audition in the future.
Jiang Hang was comparatively casual, as though Eri Kisaki's presence could not suppress him at all. But that did not seem strange to Shizuka Sakaki. Although her agency director was an otaku by personality, he was an otaku who had weathered great storms. He was also mysteriously rich, so he definitely had no trouble handling this kind of situation.
When Eri Kisaki spoke, meanwhile, she maintained the logic expected of a lawyer. With only a few sentences, she could explain a matter in a clear and organized way, making it difficult to find any flaw in her words.
At least, Shizuka Sakaki, the trembling little assistant, could not do that.
"The art museum murder case? I saw it on the news this morning. So that was how the case unfolded."
Eri Kisaki looked at Jiang Hang.
"As the detective who made the murderer surrender, I assume you aren't here to ask me to defend that museum director. Such a case would have no meaning for you."
Before you continue