Mutation Incident

A cadre, a captain, and a lowly gang member—this strange combination started drinking heavily in the tavern.

As Suren and the other two drank merrily, Sam and several Cross Society gang members suddenly rushed into the tavern in a panic, carrying heavy firearms.

They swept their eyes across the tavern, immediately spotting Kai in one of the booths.

With eyes only for Kai, Sam strode over and said anxiously, "Captain, this is bad! Among those troublemakers we took out earlier, I heard one of them was the brother-in-law of a Steam Party cadre. I got word that Red Hair Kuntu is bringing a group of men over. It looks like they're planning to cause us trouble! Captain, we need to gather the brothers immediately."

He rattled off that long string of words in one breath, looking as though he could barely catch his breath.

Gang fights were perfectly normal, especially in territory where two gangs had contact.

Normally, this would have been an urgent matter.

The enemy was coming aggressively, so the Cross Society definitely needed to gather its people. Whether or not they actually came to blows, they at least could not let themselves be outnumbered.

Yet after Sam finished speaking, he realized the atmosphere at the table was somewhat strange.

At a time like this, shouldn't the captain slam the table and start calling people in?

But Kai looked calm.

He even raised his drink and leisurely took a gulp before sneering. "Brother-in-law? Heh. Looks like those Steam Party bastards are deliberately looking for an excuse to start a war."

Suren remained silent as well, glancing from the corner of his eye at the gambling-addicted young woman beside him.

Anywhere else, he might have had to worry about his own safety.

But here...

Qiantiao had her back to the tavern entrance. Sam and the others had been so focused on finding Kai that they had not noticed the woman at the table looked somewhat familiar.

Now that they sensed something was off, they stared at one another for a moment before recognizing that heavily tattooed arm as Qiantiao's.

"Sister Chijou?"

Sam and the others were both surprised and delighted.

Qiantiao took a sip from her glass and asked lazily, "What happened?"

"Well, the Steam Party..."

Sam had been about to repeat what he had just said, but after seeing Qiantiao's bored expression, he immediately changed his tune with a fawning smile. "Ah, since you're here, there's no problem."

Everyone: "..."

Before long, the roar of motorcycles came from outside. The infamous Bikers of the Steam Brotherhood had arrived on Green Street.

Looking at the finely modified steam Harleys parked outside, Suren felt a little envious. In the Outer City, the Steam Party's Mechanical Modification technology truly was superior.

More than twenty men with Mechanical Prosthetics and an assortment of long guns and heavy weapons stormed into the Elephant Tavern, sending the patrons scattering in fright.

One look at their posture made it clear they had come for revenge.

But then, a dramatic scene unfolded.

Before the farce could even begin, it ended in a bizarre manner.

The red-haired man in the lead spotted Kai at the table and viciously raised his gun, roaring, "Kai, you—"

But before he could finish, his peripheral vision caught the heavily tattooed woman at the table, and his expression changed drastically. The threat on his lips was forcibly swallowed back down.

Red Hair reacted quickly. Without another word, he smoothly lowered the raised barrel into the holster at his waist. Tossing his red hair, he immediately turned and left the tavern as though he had simply taken the wrong road.

The tavern patrons who did not know what was going on were completely dumbfounded.

Meanwhile, the Cross Society members burst into laughter and jeered nonstop. "Hahahaha!"

Qiantiao paid no attention to the departing Steam Party members. As a Cross Society cadre, she would not lower herself to pick a fight with a Squad Leader from an enemy gang.

They had drunk enough, so she told Kai, "Kai, be more careful lately. Those Steam Party bastards have their eyes on Green Street too. I'm sure they won't be short on little tricks."

Kai nodded thoughtfully. "Got it, Sister Chijou."

Gangsters always faced violence and bloodshed.

From the moment they joined, they had already prepared themselves for it.

He encountered quite a few unexpected incidents on his first day in the gang, but life settled down afterward.

Every evening at seven, Kai led the squad on a half-hour patrol before dismissing them.

Life seemed quite leisurely.

Even those Steam Party men never appeared again after that incident at the Elephant Tavern.

As for the gambling-addicted young woman, she appeared at the Gladiatorial Arena every night without fail and dragged Suren along to gamble.

But gambling really depended on luck.

Even though Suren had decent luck at the tables, he could not win every time.

Of course, his bets were small, so the wins and losses were both acceptable.

But Sister Chijou perfectly embodied a gambler's emotional highs and lows.

When she won, she had all sorts of principles to preach, like "cut your losses in time" and "quit while you're ahead."

But once she truly lost her head, none of that mattered. Every loss meant raising the stakes, and another loss meant doubling them again.

No one could talk her out of it.

With that style of gambling, the more than two million she won on the first day was squandered away in less than two days.

That was the usual state of gambling addicts: lavish indulgence when they won, sleeping under bridges when they lost.

Still, although this gambling-addicted young woman had poor gambling habits, she was a decent person.

After losing everything, aside from mooching food and drinks, she never asked Suren or Kai to lend her a single coin.

Since Suren had to go to the Gladiatorial Arena every day to harvest soul fragments, he could only accompany her in gambling. After going back and forth for a while, the two became quite familiar.

Qiantiao had none of a big sister's airs, so the two were half drinking buddies and half fair-weather friends.

No wonder she got along well with the gang members in the society.

A few days later, Qiantiao finally lost the last of her savings and reluctantly headed home. She planned to earn money by doing gang missions and arranged with Suren to gamble again another day.

Suren saw off the gang bigshot, and his own life returned to peace.

Every night, he stayed at the Gladiatorial Arena until dawn, then found an inn to meditate, practice puppet techniques, and read alchemy texts...

His days were orderly and leisurely. Every day, he harvested souls and practiced his professional skills, causing his experience to soar rapidly.

The Gladiatorial Arena produced eight to ten corpses a day, with the occasional professional duel as well.

Within just a few days, he had stripped a whole pile of strange abilities from them: Lip-reading Mastery, Dart Throwing, Motorcycle Riding, Gwent Skills...

A hodgepodge of skills, with just about everything included.

However, he gradually discovered a problem.

After his firearms and combat levels rose, he obtained less and less experience from stripping certain abilities off corpses.

Later, he figured it out. Since he was already nearing the level of Advanced Firearm Mastery, he naturally could not learn much from a corpse that only possessed Beginner Mastery.

There was still something to gain from others' strengths, but not much.

Fortunately, there was no risk involved. Every bit added up, and the practical combat experience harvested from one corpse was at least equivalent to more than half a month of training on his own.

During this time, Suren visited the Black Market several more times, but he never found the Implant Gear blueprints he wanted. However, he heard that in a few days, the Black Market would hold one of its irregular monthly premium auctions. That was when Wilderness Hunters and thieves sold off their goods in bulk, and plenty of good items would appear.

He planned to try his luck again then.

One day, at the inn.

A gunshot rang out with a bang, shaking loose flakes of plaster from the walls.

Who knew which unlucky bastard had been shot.

Though he was used to such things, Suren's arm still twitched instinctively at the sound.

The rune pen in his hand, stained with blue paint, veered off its intended path. Like smeared lipstick, it left an eye-catching failed mark across the puppet's body.

"Failed again..."

Looking at the wooden puppet he had already drawn into something "unrecognizable," Suren felt a helpless bitterness.

Although it was not easy to distract him once he focused, even he could not withstand the frequent arguments, brawls, and sudden gunshots.

Drunken tenants often got into vicious fights in the corridors of cheap inns. In a world where everyone carried a gun, fighting almost always meant a shootout, enough to make anyone jump. Just yesterday, a sudden incident had occurred in the room above Suren's: a prostitute and her accomplice had shot and killed a bodyguard. The hail of bullets had nearly injured him through the floor below.

"Finding a suitable place to live really isn't easy..."

Suren sighed softly. He had had enough of this terrible noise.

He wanted a quiet, soundproof residence, preferably with a shooting range.

Abomination Puppeteers were rare professions to begin with, and he could hardly strip related professional skills from gladiators in the arena. He could only train hard. Both enchanting and inscription were far more difficult than he had expected, requiring a quiet environment and a great deal of practice.

Since he had already been disturbed, Suren did not dwell on the gunshots.

He looked at the failed puppet before him, and his eyes shifted. At that moment, all ten of his fingers suddenly curled as though grasping invisible objects, and the puppet eerily stood up.

It was only half a meter tall, like a naked toddler learning to walk, and it began shuffling around the room.

The creak, creak of its wooden joints rubbing together sounded rather unsettling.

Suren stood in place, his ten fingers moving rapidly as if playing a piano. The puppet followed suit, performing many movements. Though it still looked stiff, it could basically carry out combat actions such as punching, kicking, rolling, slashing, and stabbing.

After practicing for a while, Suren stopped when his finger muscles began to stiffen.

"Phew..."

He let out a long breath.

Looking at the steel wires wrapped around his fingers, he shook his head slightly and muttered, "The wires aren't thin enough or tough enough. Their controllability is too poor. Finding the right thread material really isn't easy."

This was already the most suitable material he could currently find for controlling puppets, yet it was still far from satisfactory.

He thought of the scene in the manor ruins, where Pestoya had controlled dozens of Abomination Puppets at once and effortlessly restrained Bald Ivan with her threads.

They both manipulated threads, yet the results were worlds apart.

His Abomination Puppet was only a half-finished product, without suitable steel wire, and his control techniques were still crude.

As an Abomination Puppeteer who had only just started out, he still had a long way to go before he could make puppets into real combat power.

But Suren was in good spirits. Reaching this level within a few days was already decent progress in his eyes.

There were still several hours before work, and Suren had originally planned to continue practicing puppet control.

But at that moment, Kai's call suddenly came through the communicator. "All newcomers, assemble at the usual place. There's a mutation mission."

Suren did not dare delay. After checking his equipment and ammunition, he left his room.

Not long after the assembly notice was sent out, Red Hair Kuntu of the Steam Party quietly led a group of men into the vicinity of Green Street.

A mysterious voice came through the communicator. "Captain Kuntu, it's confirmed. Kai took a group of newcomers, around twenty people, to the Tube Building."

Thanks to A Maple Night Rain in Two Dimensions and zzb9711 for their support and donations. Thank you.