The 100,001st Lucky Draw Story (Seeking Collections, Seeking Recommendations!)

One hundred thousand dollars for a single draw?

Let's put it this way.

Lake was already a detective with the NYPD, but his annual salary was barely over ninety thousand dollars.

Even if he didn't eat or drink, he couldn't afford one draw a year?

...Trash cheat.

...Trash Penguin.

Thankfully!

This NYPD job wasn't Lake's main gig. For him, it was just a side hustle.

Lake's primary occupation was a killer.

A Black King assassin registered under The Continental Hotel.

The reason Lake joined the NYPD was simple.

This was New York.

And the NYPD's intel was no worse than any other department.

So...

Lake needed a legitimate job and his own source of information, plus a few other reasons. That's why he chose to moonlight as a detective.

Pretty thrilling to think about.

At a Continental Hotel gathering, one assassin said he was from a Textile Factory, another said he was from an insurance group, and Lake said, "I'm a killer from the NYPD."

Ridiculous laugh!

Unbelievable.

But if you thought about it, it made sense. This was USA territory. Lake would have to be brain-dead to actually help maintain social order here.

It was all about staying under the radar.

After all, he was a killer who occasionally needed to kill. He'd kill at night, investigate the murder during the day, and if the case ever pointed back to him, he'd just be investigating himself.

Of course.

There was another reason Lake chose to be a killer, a detective, or even enlist in the military right after high school.

The cheat.

At sixteen, when the cheat first activated, it gave him one free draw.

That time, he was blessed by the luck of the gods.

SSR skill: Immortal Body!

Immortal Body: Skill class, SSR-grade, Mystic type. No damage can kill you. You can be hurt, you can bleed, but you will never die!

When he drew that skill, Lake understood.

It was telling him to go wild.

But...

After that, up to his third draw now, Lake had drawn nothing but emptiness.

For someone who'd hit an SSR on his first try, it was indeed a whole lot of nothing.

The second time, he scraped together a hundred thousand dollars from his army salary and some mission bonuses. He didn't even think about buying himself an apartment—he rushed to draw.

He thought he'd get lucky again like the first time, but he drew a dud.

Glock 17: Item class, no grade, Infinite series. Unlimited ammo, automatically justifies everything. Even if you shoot yourself a hundred times, no third party will question your bullet count.

Lake almost coughed blood holding that infinite-ammo pistol.

A hundred thousand dollars.

Maybe in 3030, that would buy you a fried dough stick, but back then, it was enough to buy a studio apartment in New York.

And he spent it all on a pistol, even if it was infinite. Enough to make him spit blood.

The third time.

Lake used the money he earned from side jobs in college plus ten thousand from a science experiment.

And...

Starlight Tower Apartment: Cthulhu-class legendary item (no rank). An apartment on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, with five hundred square meters of space. Owning it might be the start of your rise to the top (all paperwork complete, it's your inheritance. First year's property tax already paid. Remember to pay on time.)

Lake was pretty happy at first—it was like buying a multi-million-dollar mansion for a hundred thousand. But when he saw the text in parentheses, he immediately started thinking about selling it.

The fourth time.

After graduating college, Lake joined The Continental Hotel and the NYPD. Yesterday, after setting aside this year's property tax, he scraped together another hundred thousand for his fourth draw.

And...

Copy: Skill class, R-grade, Fantasy type. Functions as the name suggests—can copy (skill class). When encountering a copyable target, you may copy it (usable 3 times).

For this result, Lake didn't even know what to say. At first glance, the lottery outcome felt like a win, but after actually trying it out, he felt like he'd drawn another dud.

Let's put it this way.

After getting this skill yesterday, Lake specifically went to 117 Bleecker Street and waited a whole day until a guy dressed like an ascetic monk appeared on the street.

Lake used it on the spot.

But...

"Power gap too high, skill read failed, Copy failed."

"..."

Lake was dumbfounded right then.

He'd thought it was a god-tier skill, but it turned out to be trash—no wonder Copy wasn't SSR-class, just R-class.

After the shock wore off, though, Lake mulled over the system's hint.

Power gap too high.

That was the key.

The system said the power gap was too high, not anything else like level or stats. If something else were too far off, Lake might have been helpless.

But power could be made up.

For now, he couldn't Copy the supernatural, so he could Copy the ordinary. Copy bit by bit, and his power would climb up.

That's how Lake comforted himself at the time.

Manhattan.

Police Plaza.

NYPD!

One of the largest—if not the largest—and oldest police departments in the entire US, even the world.

The NYPD had a massive management system; even the FBI had to bow before it.

Over thirty thousand sworn officers, nearly five thousand auxiliary personnel, about six thousand school safety officers, and more than fifty thousand police vehicles.

What could the FBI compare with?

Could they even keep up?

The NYPD oversaw a huge number of divisions, and Lake still hadn't dealt with some of them.

Lake was currently a detective in the Major Crimes Division's Third Homicide and Major Crimes unit, with two other detectives at the same rank above him: George Stacy from the First Major Crimes unit and Kate Beckett from the Second.

In the NYPD's thirteen-grade promotion system, Lake had climbed to Grade Five. Above that were lieutenant and captain...

Around the tenth of last month.

An anonymous complaint accusing Lake of taking bribes was dropped off at the Internal Affairs Division.

Internal Affairs took one look and immediately buckled down to start the process.

Lake was suspended pending investigation per regulations.

But...

No matter how Internal Affairs dug into Lake's finances over that month, they couldn't link him to the fifty thousand dollars mentioned in the complaint.

And from his daily spending—well, even though Lake lived in a luxury home, his everyday expenses were so meager that a thief would cry just looking at his bank statements.

Too broke!

Investors, hurry up!!!