Soon I could hear some ruckus in the railcar before ours, I stood up to see what was happening through the door window.
I could see two Enforcer and the Enforcer with a bigger statue used the other of end of his gun to smack the face of a girl; who is definitely from the slum, making her immediate drop, then I quickly noticed the Enforcer’s partner suddenly looking at my direction.
I immediately fell back to my seat and kept my head down, after some minutes the two Enforcers entered our railcar. The Enforcer with bigger statue had the serial number ‘CA-1-19-19-0’ written on the right-side of his chest and the other Enforcer which seem to be a woman because of her small statue had the serial number ‘JF-13-13-2-2’.
They started from the people close to the door and worked their way down, when they got to where I sat, the female Enforcer asked, while “Who stood up here?”
“I did” I immediately answered softly, she didn’t react or respond back to me in any way, instead it was the other Enforcer that reacted to what I said while she just stood there saying nothing.
“Weren’t you told to sit the fuck down, do you want me to put two in your body?” Enforcer ‘CA-1-19-19-0’ said with a vexed tone, as he pointed the gun at me.
I immediately notice that Daigo wanted to speak up for me, but I placed my hand on top of his own; a signal for him to chill.
“I’m sorry” I said with the most apologetic tone I could muster.
“Don’t fuckin' ‘sorry’ me, where are your ID’s” He said still vexed, then yelled at the top of his lungs to everyone in this railcar “Don’t let me fuckin' get to you before you show me your ID”.
I and Daigo showed him ours and as expected mine drew his attention.
“Yours has expired” I said to me, tossing Daigo’s ID to his face.
“I have three more days before it will officially expire” I responded.
“You have three more days…” He said in a very low tone that was barely audible, before turning around like he was about to leave but before I knew it, he gave me a front kick to belly, which prompted me to lower my upper in pain.
Daigo immediately stood up to something, but he was knocked down by the Enforcer with the arcane-assault rifle with the butt of the gun before he could fully stand up.
“You punk! Are trying me, right?!” He yelled as he placed the muzzle of his gun of Daigo’s head and continue yelling “C’mon try something tough guy!”, then removed the safety of his gun.
“Wait!” I yelled raising my hand up to show I am not trying any funny thing.
“Why the fuck should I wait, I thought you guys were badass right?” He asked, then pointed the gun at me and started talking to me “‘I have three days before it will officially expire’ (imitating me in a funny voice), I will tell you when it has expired not fuckin' you!”
I just sat in silence as he yelled, wrapping my arms around my belly.
“Now I’m going to tell you what to do shit-face, you going to pay up for stressing the fuck out of me and if you tell me you don’t have I will put ‘two’ in you and your friend’s head!” He demanded, moving his gun between me and Daigo.
“Ok, I will pay, I want just reach for my bag” I slowly pull off my bag and reached for the money in it.
I grabbed some of it; enough to not make this fuckin' Enforcer snatch my bag and take the whole time or shoot me right in the face for giving him small coins like he was a beggar.
He grabbed the rumpled Yen notes from my hand and looked at it, before saying “Sit the fuck back down two of you”.
He moved away from us and pulled similar stunt on some of the people here, almost all the people he assaulted were from the slums; we all dress alike – dirty poor in every sense of the word.
After the Enforcers rough ‘search and collect’, the female Enforcer instructed everyone who wants to exit the train to form a queue facing the railcar door linking to the railcar in front of ours.
The kid and his friends stood up and formed the queue with other passengers too, they looked so frightened by what just happened here that they kept their heads down whenever the Enforcer walked pass or look at them.
The Enforcers left our railcar and after some time, the male Enforcer came back to instruct those on the queue to move to the first railcar to exit the train.
After a while some people boarded the train and it started moving.
Daigo and I just immediately looked at each other; we were having similar thoughts – To check how much I gave the Enforcer.
I immediately open my bag to count the money that I had left, it amounted to 18,640 yen which met I gave those fuckers 11,000 yen.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Fuck!!” I couldn’t help but lament out loud and other people who gave those Enforcers lamented or cussed or even did both at them.
Daigo placed his hand on my shoulder, as I covered my face with my hands; I almost cried there.
‘Why the fuck!’ I couldn’t help but lament inwardly until we arrived at Taisho public train station.
Surprisingly or not, DRCT officers were stationed here and two Enforcer searched the train too and I paid 4,000 yen to this set of scum bags while Daigo gave them 5,000 yen. Costing a loss of 15,000 yen for me and 10,850 yen for Daigo but I seem to be angrier about this than Daigo.
Since we were getting of here, we formed a queue and we were forced to 6,000 yen to some fuckin' government contribution collectors. Immediately those fuckers found out we were Mercenary-Guards, they straight up just bullied us to pay that stupid amount.
After the series of robbery by the law enforcement on us, we walked to the abandoned Taisho Shopping mall with glooming expressions and it seems we weren’t the only ones because immediately we entered the building the usually rowdiness of the Mercenary-Guards was reduced.
Everyone wore serious expressions and complained about how much each of them had to pay as contribution for the recovery of the Kyoto outbreak.
I and Daigo just went to our usual spot and sat there in silence, even if punks were still throwing themselves for Towers and military forces to hire, we weren’t in the mood for that now.
I had only 5,640 yen left and 11 days to make enough money for Kuroda and Jiro to not come around my crib and straighten my ass or worst – break my arms like they did Kenzo. I still have to renew my freaking Guard ID card.
After a while of thinking about my financial problems, my mind somehow took me to everything that could be covered about the game the kid on the train played and talked about.
I stood up and told Daigo that I will be back soon but it might take a while, he asked why but I told him I just want to check something out concerning my body.
I left and took the stairs to the first floor of the mall, searching for a room that could give me some kind of privacy to check out those characters and ‘things’ stuck in my line of sight because three of what I’m seeing is in that kid’s game and weird things started happening since yesterday.
I want to make sense of the anomalies I am seeing because there is a possibility that I might not be crazy, I mean anything is possible when it comes to Gates and Arcane, and with every that has happened I owe it to myself to try.
It took me a while to find some privacy, since Guards were occupying virtually everywhere but I found some privacy in a messed up toilet on the second floor.
The walls of the toilet were covered in graffiti and almost everything in the toilet were old and broken but no one was there.
I took a flat wooden board and placed it on the toilet-seat for me to seat down, then I focus on what I was seeing.
Elixirs: 1215 Profile
Coins: 15 Evolution Pod
Interface
Codex
I tried to touch them but it was like my hand was always behind them, no matter how close it was to my face and they were stuck to my eye, even when I close my eyes I still see them. So tapping on ‘writings’ was not possible.
“There should be a way to interact with this writings, I shouldn’t just be able to see them without a means to interact with them” I said myself.
They are only two ways humans naturally communicate or interact with other people and their environment – Speaking and Hand work (either hand sign or writing).
“Elixir” I called out in hopes for a response, but there was no response.
So I shifted my attention to the ‘things’ on the top-right side of my view to try the writing there, since they appeared different from ‘Elixir’ and ‘Coin’.
The ‘Profile’ and ‘Evolution Pod’ had an asterisk behind of them, while ‘Interface’ had the side view of a machine gear in a box at behind it and ‘Codex’ had a donut-circle in a small box behind of it.
“Profile? Wha..” I said wondering aloud, when suddenly a nearly-transparent green floating screen appeared in front of me.
It displayed some interesting thing written in black.
Profile
Name: None
Nature: Evolved-Human
Level: 1
Title: Ratty
Hit point: 100
Damage per hit: 2
Arcane Energy: 6
Arcane Skills (None)
Arcane Physiology (None)
Power Status
Trophy
It seems ‘Profile’ activated when I said it aloud.
‘So they activate with voice commands, let me try Evolution Pod next…’ I pondered in my mind, when another screen with similar features to the first screen appeared.
Evolution Pod
Level Up
[Level 2: 100 Elixir]
“So, it seems they even respond to thoughts. Let’s try ‘Interface’” I said to myself, expecting an Interface screen to appear since I called it out but it didn’t.
Then I said ‘Inferface’ loosely in my mind but nothing still happened.
“Opening Interface?” I said with a bit of confusion
‘Why isn’t Interface…’ I didn’t complete that thought when the Interface screen appear.
Interface
Language
View
? About
“I don’t understand. I called it both aloud and in my mind, so why didn’t it open the first two time” I said to myself.
“Close Interface” I said firmly, to test a hunch I just had and the screen instantly disappeared.
‘It seems I need to give the command with intent and I don’t matter if I say it aloud or in my mind’ I thought.
“Close Evolution Pod” I command, and it also disappeared.
It seems that I am making some progress, so I focused on the Profile screen to understand it better.
Name is empty, so I guess it doesn’t acknowledge my name, why is that?
While Nature said ‘Evolve human’, which meant this ‘Game-like System’ or ‘Power System’ acknowledges that and even had the Title as Ratty – The nickname Razor and some other people call me.
The Level, Damage per hit and Hit point were something that kid on the train explain to me, I don’t really get it all that well but I think ‘Damage per hit’ is attack, ‘Hit point’ is health and ‘Level’ show how strong a character is in a game; it’s like a Grades of Evolve, the only difference is game characters can level up but can’t do that.
‘Fuck, does this mean I can become stronger?’ I thought aloud with sudden realization of what this might mean.
I poured all my focus to navigating this strange ‘System’ and understanding it, when someone suddenly walked and called my name.
“Fuck, I’ve looking for you, what the hell have you been doing for more than 2 hours?” Daigo asked me, as I sat on the toilet seat covered with wooden board, which was a kind of awkward moment.
“Let go down, I think I might have seen a job that will take us” Daigo said giving me a weird look.
I slowly looked away and replied “Give me a sec”.
