I'm Really Not an Assassin

Yosef looked at the bag in front of him. He paused for only a moment before taking it again.

"Sure."

As he poured his wish power into it, all sorts of thoughts flashed through Yosef's mind.

It had been Li Le who explained the interest rate earlier, not him!

So whether "nine out of thirteen" meant per year, per month, or per week was entirely up to him!

Two thousand units of wish power, plus "Happiness," should be just about enough.

Yosef never really intended to make Tao Yu pay back those two thousand units. He planned to keep him in debt indefinitely, treating the interest as payment for working for him. With "Happiness" added to the mix, he should be able to keep him under control!

At the thought, a faint smile crept across Yosef's lips.

An Outer City grunt with a B-rank talent was actually pretty decent. Dynamic Vision was a talent that could quickly make someone combat-ready, and the giant python his new hire had killed on his own was the best proof.

A small investment would soon get him a human artillery platform of a lackey. What was there to lose?

They'd run into a Space-Time Anomaly this time, and finding a lackey worth having had been a real challenge!

Seeing Tao Yu finish absorbing the wish power again, Yosef even asked,

"Want more?"

"Yes!"

Seeing such a good deal still on offer, Tao Yu had no reason to hesitate.

"I'll take whatever you can lend me."

Then he turned to Winuo with an expectant look.

"Same goes for you, Lord Winuo."

Winuo sneered at that.

"You're Yosef's man. I'm not going to break the rules and poach you."

"I-I want to borrow some too!"

Chen Guan raised a trembling hand.

His gun had been taken, and he had no ranged weapon now. He felt he was in serious danger.

Chen Guan didn't actually want to borrow wish power at such an interest rate. But if he borrowed from the big shots, surely they wouldn't let him die so easily, right?

He'd consider the interest payment for saving his life!

But as soon as he finished speaking, Yosef—who had been so amiable toward Tao Yu and had lent him a full three thousand units of wish power—swung around and slapped Chen Guan across the face.

The blow lifted his feet off the ground, and every tooth in his mouth flew out in a spray of blood.

"Brother Tao has a B-rank talent. What are you? You worthless piece of trash who can't even recognize your own value thinks you can open your mouth?"

Teeth wouldn't grow back. With that one slap, Yosef had nearly ruined Chen Guan for good!

If his mouth got infected or something, he might die on the road.

Chen Guan staggered back to his feet, his vision swimming and his head spinning. Even after taking such a beating, he didn't dare say a word in protest.

Instead, he kept apologizing, the gaps in his mouth making his words whistle.

"I was wrong. I was wrong..."

"Pick up your things and get to the front! You want Brother Winuo to lead the way?"

Surprisingly, it was Winuo, who had always been short-tempered, who spoke up now.

"Enough. If this guy dies on the road, we'll have to find someone else to fill his spot. Let's leave it at that. Just don't get in my way."

Then he glanced at Tao Yu and said mockingly,

"Since you've got wish power now, make good use of the time on the road to practice. That guy with the endurance talent doesn't know how to shoot either, right? Give him the bullets, and don't go firing them off at random."

After seeing Chen Guan lose all his teeth, Zhang Wei didn't dare say a thing. He nodded repeatedly and handed all his spare bullets to Tao Yu.

Li Le, who had been watching coldly, couldn't help but laugh to himself.

Did he really think borrowing wish power was a good thing? Heh. How naive!

Tao Yu alone thanked Yosef with a cheerful grin, then took the bullets Zhang Wei handed him and began splitting his attention between them and his many skills.

Three thousand units of wish power, credited!

His parents might have had to scrimp and save for years to put away that much, yet an Inner City heir could lend it out on a whim!

The fact that Tao Yu had been given "Happiness" for free had already tipped him off to the other man's likely motives. Even so, the ease with which he'd produced the money was enough to show the staggering gap in accumulated wealth.

Without the Facehugger incident, Tao Yu wouldn't have considered borrowing wish power at all.

Now that the two Inner City heirs had joined forces, there wasn't much room for him to maneuver unless something major happened.

The gap in their raw strength was just too great.

But now that the Facehugger had appeared, and he knew what the monsters in the grasslands were, he didn't hesitate. Safety came first. He had to use every means available to improve himself!

Basic Combat, Basic Weapons, Stealth: Python, and Burst: Python.

Tao Yu closed his eyes and Deified all four combat-related skills.

With three thousand units of wish power in his account, he'd never been this rich!

A skill's first Deification was always the most cost-effective choice!

Basic Combat: Enhanced Lv. 2: By expending a small amount of mental energy, you can gain some insight into an enemy's weaknesses. Focusing your mind allows you to channel this into your attacks, inflicting a mental shock on the enemy.

Basic Weaponry Refinement Lv. 2: By expending a small amount of mental energy, you can gain some insight into an enemy's weaknesses (can be stacked). Focusing your mind allows you to channel this into your weapon, inflicting a mental shock on the enemy.

Explosion - Modified Lv. 1: You can compress your muscles to suddenly increase your explosive power. By focusing your mind and expending a large amount of stamina, you can stack the compressed state. Exceeding your body's limits will cause damage.

These three abilities each cost around eighty to a hundred units of wish power, which already satisfied Tao Yu immensely. As usual, the Deification process was efficient.

But the skill that really caught his attention was Stealth: Python, which cost more than the other three combined!

"No wonder the upgrade costs more than twice as much as Basic Breathing Technique."

As the information from the skill flowed into him, Tao Yu couldn't help but marvel.

Stealth - Modified Lv. 1: You can passively lower your presence. By actively expending more mental energy, you can meld into shadows. By actively expending more stamina, you can travel through shadows. There is a certain chance that you will be detected by those with perception abilities.

It had originally been an ordinary stealth skill, a technique for camouflage and ambush, like a python striking its prey. But after this upgrade, it had taken on a fantastical quality!

Melding into shadows!

Wasn't that basically invisibility?

And based on the information he sensed, expending more stamina to travel through shadows didn't mean moving slowly, like with some stealth abilities. It allowed him to burst through the shadows at a speed even faster than his full sprint!

In theory, he could even stack that speed onto his attacks!

Combined with Explosion - Modified and the blood-strengthening effects of Basic Breathing Technique: Enhanced, plus Bullet Time and the mental attacks from Basic Weaponry Refinement, all those effects stacked together. Tao Yu realized that with a weapon that suited him, his close-combat burst damage had surged as well.

"So I really have become an Assassin..."

Tao Yu felt a little wistful, though it was a choice born of both necessity and cost-effectiveness.

The likes of Yosef and Winuo could casually lend out three thousand units of wish power. From what they'd said earlier, their starting capital upon entering had been at least a hundred thousand!

Add in mechanical modifications, alien implants, and the advanced related skills they'd trained in for the first eighteen years of their lives, and with wish power accelerating their upgrades, they'd started out already beyond where most Outer City people would ever end up!

When Yosef had given him "Happiness" for free, Tao Yu had used Bullet Time to observe him. Even vulnerable areas like his head seemed to be covered in metal, making it hard to kill him with a single strike.

With his shoulder cannon, mechanical arm, and related abilities, Yosef's overall stats completely crushed Tao Yu's.

That would still be true even if Tao Yu spent all three thousand units of wish power!

But...

Even someone as powerful as them would probably be done for if a giant python or an Alien managed to ambush them. With this set of assassination and burst-damage skills, Tao Yu would likely be able to reach the threshold needed to kill them!

He just hadn't tested it in practice, so he couldn't be completely sure yet.

With such a troublesome external threat as the Alien, Tao Yu had no plans to do anything else for the time being. He only wanted to focus on improving himself.

Looking at the more than two thousand units of wish power he had left, Tao Yu hesitated only briefly before shifting his attention to miscellaneous support skills like Basic Herbal Identification.

They didn't seem to offer much in combat, but they cost less too—only around fifty units each. Even after upgrading them all, he would still have most of his wish power left to use for acceleration...