Monster - Chapter 80
Chapter 80: Silver Stone City - The Red-Haired Girl
"Someone's following us again," Miu the crow complained, sounding exasperated. "It never ends. So annoying."
They had been out for less than three hours, and two different groups had already tailed them. Lin Sandie was gaining a deeper understanding of the chaos in Disorder Land.
"This is just the edge of Disorder Land, not far from Center City. I hear the deeper you go, the more chaotic it gets," Lin Sandie said.
"Stop at the pizza place up ahead. I'll deal with this, and we can grab some lunch," Lou said, unstrapping the accordion without a hint of impatience.
"Okay," Lin Sandie acknowledged, smoothly pulling over at a deep-dish pizza place just ahead. After killing the engine, she got out with Lou and headed toward the back of the car. Miu, left behind, was a bit stunned. The crow had thought the friendly Lin Sandie would take it inside to order first.
What was so interesting about watching a lunatic deal with some thugs?
"Lin Sandie, get behind me and watch this!" Lou declared with theatrical fervor, rolling up her sleeves and drawing a small knife from the sheath on her outer thigh.
"I get it now. Part of the tax we paid to enter the city must be for people like you—for instance, to cover the cost of disposing of the bodies." The wicked Lin Sandie calmly compared Silver Stone City to the cities outside, her words completely spoiling the mood. "In that case, the tax wasn't a waste of money."
If crazy outsiders like Lou were always coming to the city, someone would indeed be needed to clean up the bodies.
"Keep talking like that, and I'll use you as a human shield," Lou said huffily.
The two walked back. The small two-seater that had been tailing them since they left Charles's former residence was parked by the roadside. A red-haired girl got out. She had clearly seen the knife in Lou's hand and hastily raised her hands, saying in a panic, "Please, wait! I-I wasn't trying to follow you. I want to hire you for a job."
The red-haired girl looked to be about fourteen or fifteen, her face dotted with freckles. Her deep blue eyes filled with terror the moment she saw Lou, but she still summoned her courage to speak. "I need someone killed. I saw you in action on the street, and I've looked into you. You're the outsider, Lou, ranked number one on the Rose Society's latest bounty list. I want to hire you for a mission."
After the girl stammered through her explanation, Lou scanned her and confirmed she meant them no harm. Only then did she put the knife away. "I'm expensive. What are you offering?"
"I have 1,000 points. You can have all of them. Help me kill a man named Enzo Feng." The red-haired girl, afraid Lou might draw her knife again, quickly stated her objective.
"I'll consider it." Lou replied the instant the girl finished speaking, catching her completely off guard.
"We were about to get lunch. Have you eaten? We can talk over a meal. By the way, I'm Lou, and she's Lin Sandie." Lou smiled and offered her hand to the red-haired girl. The girl shook it, looking dazed, and was then led to the nearby deep-dish pizza place.
"Are you… are you twins?" The red-haired girl looked at Lin Sandie, who had been standing quietly to the side. Except for their hair color, she and Lou looked exactly alike.
"Are we, Lin Sandie?" Lou teased.
"No," Lin Sandie replied. "We just happen to look alike."
"Because she's my Remnant," Lou said with a laugh, then proceeded as usual, asking the red-haired girl, "What's your name?"
Even though she already knew from the scan that the girl's name was Yi Li.
"Yi Li. So there are humanoid Remnants?" Yi Li said, looking at Lin Sandie with curiosity.
The three of them went back to the deep-dish pizza place, ordered a whole deep-dish pizza loaded with toppings, and began to talk as they ate.
As Yi Li spoke, Lin Sandie and Lou learned about Enzo Feng.
He was the third-in-command of Madness Material, the largest faction in Disorder Land. He had opened a theme park called Thriller Paradise in a place once known as Sally Village, over four hundred kilometers from Silver Stone City. Visitors could pay to hunt zombies. A successful kill earned points—two points per zombie. Of course, entry to Thriller Paradise cost twenty points, the hunt lasted twenty-four hours, and it wasn't without risk, as the zombies could kill you right back.
"The kind of zombies that want to eat brains?" Lou asked.
At this question, an unspeakable sadness crossed Yi Li's freckled face. She shook her head and stopped eating. "They aren't zombies. They're people. Enzo turned them into zombies. He has a Remnant called 'Living Thing.' Anyone who drinks water it has soaked in loses their mind and becomes his puppet. It's not that they don't have thoughts or feel pain, but they can't stop themselves from obeying Enzo's orders to attack the park's visitors."
"If they know, why do they still drink his water?"
"To earn points." Yi Li's grip on her cutlery tightened. "You're outsiders, so you might not know how people who haven't mutated are treated in Disorder Land. We're worse than livestock. My grandma said it wasn't like this when she was a child, but somewhere along the line, the rules here became twisted. Humans became the lowest, weakest group. To survive, we have to find ways to earn points. To make sure the 'zombies' are willing to fight to the death, Enzo offers one point for each time they're 'killed' by a visitor. If they manage to kill a visitor, they get even more."
"…Assuming each visitor to Thriller Paradise can kill at least a few zombies, how does he ensure there are enough of them?" Lin Sandie asked, frowning.
"'Living Thing' gives the zombies multiple lives. Only beheading can kill them for good. Any other way just temporarily incapacitates them, and they'll get back up after about thirty minutes."
"Besides 'Living Thing,' do you know what other Remnants Enzo has?" Lou asked, taking a sip of juice. She had already finished most of her food while Yi Li was talking.
"He seems to have a huge Doberman Pinscher, a legacy item from a tax collector. It's extremely vicious, probably B-rank. And… he must have other Remnants from the visitors he's killed…" Yi Li's voice faltered, sounding a bit guilty.
"Enzo is the third-in-command of Madness Material, surrounded by zombies, and has an A-rank item. Don't you think your price is a little low?" Lou pressed.
Yi Li's face flushed. She seemed to realize that asking Lou to kill Enzo for that price was an impossible demand.
"However, we happen to be very short on points, so I'll take your job. But let's be clear on one thing: after we kill Enzo, all the loot is ours."
"Of course the loot is all yours!" Yi Li's face lit up again.
"So you're from Sally Village?"
"My brother is one of the zombies," Yi Li finally revealed, her true motive for the commission. "If Enzo isn't killed, he can never be at peace."
"So if Enzo is killed, the zombie condition will be reversed?"
"They'll die," Yi Li said, her eyes turning red. "Every time 'Living Thing' changes hands, the previous batch of zombies it created dies completely. But… but you can't call what they are now 'living'! I have to let my brother rest in peace."
"I understand. Pay a 500-point deposit now. We'll head to Thriller Paradise after we attend Madam Lilo's last-words event."
"I can pay the deposit now, but… but I want to set a deadline for the mission," Yi Li said, mustering the courage to press her advantage.
"What kind of deadline?" Lou wasn't one for airs. Full and content, she was in a good mood as she summoned her dark green light screen and asked Yi Li.
"Six months. If you can't complete the mission, you have to return double the points," Yi Li said, summoning her own screen.
"Deal."
The light screens also had a function for issuing missions. A moment later, a new mission appeared on Lou's previously empty screen.
Mission 1.
Task: Hunt and kill Enzo Feng
Assessment: A-Rank
Description: 100% unknown factors
Deadline: Complete within 183 days, or forfeit double the points.
Reward: 1,000 points
After giving Lou the 500-point deposit, Yi Li immediately got up to leave.
"I'll go wait for you near Sally Village. I have to tell the others—the few of us left in Sally Village pooled these points together." Eager to share the news with her companions, Yi Li bid farewell to Lou and Lin Sandie and left.
"Silly girl…"
"Mmm," Lin Sandie said, continuing to eat her now-cold deep-dish pizza. If Yi Li had hired any other bounty hunter, an unscrupulous one might have simply killed her and taken the money. A thousand points was no small sum, and killing an underage girl like Yi Li was far easier than killing Enzo. The clause she'd made with Lou about returning double the points for failure also seemed incredibly naive.
Kill her, and there's nothing to return.
Fortunately, the person she'd hired was the crazy outsider, Lou.
After lunch, the two chatted for a bit before continuing on to the home of Madam Lilo's other childhood friend, Julian.
Julian lived in a remote and hard-to-find place. It was already three in the afternoon by the time Lin Sandie and Lou arrived. The house itself was unremarkable, its door and curtains drawn tight. A few other people, clearly on a mission, were gathered around the house, trying to peer inside.
Miu the crow scanned the area with its Island and concluded that Julian wasn't home.
"The old lady must be tired of all the mission-takers. I'll fly around and see if I can find any useful clues." Miu felt that just tagging along in the car didn't suit its image, so it uttered this and flew away.
"Just the two of us," Lou said, taking Lin Sandie's hand. "Let's leave the car here and walk around."
"Now that we have some points, should we go gather intel on Enzo first? If you're too conspicuous, someone might target you and use a Remnant to control you." Seeing that the mission for Madam Lilo had hit a dead end, Lin Sandie switched to other questions—things that had been worrying her.
"No use overthinking it. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
Lin Sandie turned to look at Lou in silence.
"What?"
"It must not have been easy for you to survive this long."
"Hey, I fight for my life sometimes, you know?"
"Mmm," Lin Sandie acknowledged, then asked an unrelated question. "Did you study poetry and music in college?"
"Poetry, yes." Lou paused, surprised by the question, before answering.
But she couldn't blame her for being surprised. Whenever they were together, Lin Sandie always steered the conversation toward whatever was most urgent at the moment, rarely engaging in idle chatter.
"The first time I went to college, I majored in writing. I prefer poetry to other forms of expression."
"You've been to college many times?"
"I guess so," Lou said with an amused smile. "But most of the later times were for missions. I learned piano while on a mission in another world. I was tracking a vampire back then."
"Are there really vampires?"
"Of course. Anything you can dream of or imagine exists in some Tower World or another," Lou said, telling Lin Sandie about her experiences. "I've even seen a Chinese dragon. It was incredibly majestic."
"So, if a vampire drinks your blood and then you drink its blood, can you become a vampire too, and live forever?" Lin Sandie, however, seemed more interested in vampires.
"More or less. They call it the Embrace, the way new vampires are made. But I don't like vampires."
Lin Sandie listened quietly as Lou spoke.
"They don't taste very good. Their blood is cold, their skin is like cold marble… I don't care how beautiful they are, it's a no from me."
"What happened then? How did you track the vampire?" Lin Sandie asked when Lou paused.
"…" Lou glanced at Lin Sandie again, wondering why she was suddenly so curious about these things. But then it occurred to her that Lin Sandie was probably just preparing for her future as a Guide. After a brief moment of puzzlement, she continued telling Lin Sandie about her time in other worlds.
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