I Became the Must-Have Character of the Academy City

19 – Abyss City 1.0 -3-

Rustle- Rustle-

Ichinose mechanically solved problems and turned the pages.

Problems that cleverly changed words or played with numbers were now solved in seconds.

“Nose~ Let’s stop and go have dinner.”

“I’m not done reviewing yet. Wait.”

Ichinose gave the same answer as always to Noah, who was always occupying the bed.

Noah’s presence wasn’t a disturbance.

Ichinose even used Noah’s endless attempts at conversation as an element to increase the difficulty of the problems.

Perfect for enhancing concentration.

“Ugh… I’m bored.”

Noah grabbed the dolls on Ichinose’s bed and stared at them.

There was a dragon doll with teardrops falling and a shark doll.

They all looked stupidly cute.

“Nos. What were their names again?”

“I told you last time. They’re Ululi and Blueby.”

“Ululi and Blueby… right, those were their names.”

Noah could tell.

That his aloof friend had hugged these guys to sleep last night.

The dolls had a strong scent of Ichinose.

Meanwhile, Ichinose, who was sitting at the desk chatting and moving his pen,

stopped his hand when he saw the problem related to the South.

“Noah.”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever been to the South?”

“No? But I’ve heard stories from my dad. He said it’s not a place fit for people to live.”

“That’s right.”

“My dad also said… it’s a good place to gain experience because there are a lot of monsters.”

According to Noah’s story, the South was just as the public knew it.

The monsters that the Void Whale had spewed out continued to breed and increase their numbers explosively.

A place where heinous criminals who can’t find a place in society hide and form groups.

To an ordinary person, it has no value as land.

“But why the South all of a sudden? Nose never really cared.”

“I asked because it was in the workbook.”

“Oh! Hey, cutie. If you’re curious, shall we take a trip to the South with this sister?”

“Don’t use that creepy tone.”

Ichinose loosely refused and solved the last problem before picking up his smartphone.

‘Experience…’

An empty profile with not a single photo came into view.

*

Rohan quickly extracted information while checking the dead man’s smartphone.

He played a video to keep the screen from locking while moving.

He finished rechecking the information by searching through the smartphone and confirmed the faces of the companions.

‘One is missing, so there are five left.’

Rohan moved quickly.

He shoved the man, who had become a corpse with a sock in his mouth, roughly into the dark bushes.

He hijacked the driver’s seat and wiped the blood clotted on the knife off the passenger seat while rummaging through the vehicle’s interior.

A bundle of unknown pills, cigarettes, a lighter, alcohol, a few coins, and tokens.

Coins jingled in his hand.

‘I’ve earned my fare and meal money.’

Apart from that, the special item was, of course, the gun in the passenger seat.

It was a model he had never seen before.

Its obviously an automatic pistol.

Rohan had never handled firearms in this world. The vehicles were also all new to him.

So he focused and touched it briefly.

He checked the chamber and removed the magazine.

The bullets… What caliber are these? I dont know the specifications here.

Even though the appearance was different, there wasnt much difference from the guns he had handled in his previous life.

The handling was the same, and he could disassemble and assemble it immediately.

Click!

As he took the pistol and got out of the car, he recalled what Jooyeon had said during a practical class.

A gun is a weapon that is pure fear for ordinary people. But its hard to inflict fatal injuries on a body with magical power.

In that class, Jooyeon had shown that his palm was unscathed even after firing multiple shots at it.

Thanks to that, Rohan realized that the perception of firearms in the academy city was not much different from that of hunters.

As Jooyeon said, for guns, bows, and throwing weapons to be effective as proper weapons, one needs the talent or skill to imbue projectiles with magical power, like Princess or Clara.

Although I dont have such talent, I still carry a gun.

Its useful for deterrence.

For the current Rohan and his enemies, getting hit by a bullet would be very painful.

Soft parts like pupils would be penetrated, and flesh would be shallowly embedded with bullets.

Thats enough.

‘Next.’

Rohan climbed into the idling dump truck.

On the floor of the passenger seat lay syringes and drugs scattered haphazardly.

In the back seat, a toolbox was visible.

The tools, smeared with grease and blood, seemed to have a variety of uses.

‘Crowbar.’

It fit snugly in his hand. Rohan’s arsenal had grown by one more item.

He fastened the excellent weapon and conversation tool to his waist belt and got out of the dump truck.

“.”

A dull container loaded onto the dump truck caught his eye.

Rohan stared at it for a moment before lowering his gaze.

‘No need to open it myself.’

Inside was a space for breeding mice of various types and sizes.

Additionally, it was filled with illegal devices for recording and filming.

The reason was simple.

There was someone in the group with the skill to possess mice.

That guy, along with the one who specialized in handling computers, formed the backbone of the information-gathering tasks assigned by the old elves.

After rummaging through the last remaining vehicle, Rohan began walking down a dark path where no light penetrated. He started tracking the faint voices he could hear.

‘At my current level, there’s only one guy I really need to watch out for…’

The leader of the group is likely to be alone by nature.

So, it’s important to quickly deal with the underlings before he joins.

The ones gathered inside the pitch-black factory.

Rohan’s eyes clearly caught the group.

Damn, the wind is blowing hard. Should we ask the boss to take us to a warm country after this job?

Idiot, how many years have we worked, and you think you can coax the boss with that?

Shit.

We should suggest going to a country where paint dries well.

Well, he’s probably lost in graffiti on the walls again today. He loves having lots of canvases.

It’ll take him a few hours to come back.

Ah, damn, I’m out of cigarettes.

Want to buy a butt for 100 coins?

One, two, three, four… everyone except one is here.

The cigarette lights in their hands were the best markers in the darkness, more than their voices.

The fact that they couldn’t find him by scent, even with a beastman mixed in, was likely due to the overwhelming smell of cigarettes indoors.

Or perhaps it was complacency.

Leave the gun on the floor.

If the leader is away, a noisy gun would be a bad move.

Seeing them playing, shouting, and exchanging curses among themselves, I think it wouldn’t hurt to mix in a scream or two.

‘The visibility makes a surprise attack tricky…’

Rohan hid the knife in his pocket.

He turned the hammer hanging from his waist to the back, making it invisible from the front.

He stood up.

Step. Step. Step.

He turned on the light with his smartphone and confidently approached the group.

“Who is there? This is private company property, you shouldn’t be here.”

At Rohan’s voice, their gazes gathered in a rush.

Then, the corners of their mouths lifted slightly, as if they had found some amusement in their boredom.

“Is that so? What should we do, I’m so sorry.”

The biggest one among them strode out of the factory and stood in front of Rohan.

The one with the highest stamina and defense among the minions.

In Rohan’s memory, he was a dog-man.

“Please leave immediately.”

When Rohan spoke boldly, the dog-man chuckled and extended his hand.

“First, give me a cigarette.”

“Cigarette…”

Pretending to search his pocket.

And pretending to take something out and hand it over.

Rohan made contact with his hand.

‘Grant Weakness’

[ Grants the target a weakness to physical attributes. ]

At the same time.

‘This smell of blood…?’

The beastman twitched his nose at the scent of Rohan carried by the wind.

In the moment he sensed something.

Rohan, enveloped in magic, thrust his knife.

Thud! The blade cut through thick muscle like tofu and penetrated.

“Ugh…!”

He drew the knife up to the neck.

It didn’t require much strength. The bones caught on the blade were cut like straw.

‘That’s three now.’

Thud! The beastman fell backward with a sound.

The ones who saw it quickly erased their surprise.

Calmly, they prepared for battle.

“What the hell? The kid uses a knife pretty coolly.”

“That b*stard! I haven’t gotten back the coin I lent to that dog yet!”

“Heh, if I had bought a cigarette butt earlier, it would have been free.”

Even while making trivial chatter, a sticky murderous intent flickered in their eyes.

The fact that he had already sorted out his feelings of being caught off guard was interesting from Rohan’s perspective.

Ssssss! Sssssss!

The man who had filled one wall of the factory with spray paint turned his gaze.

The one approaching was not his subordinate.

A man drenched in quite a bit of blood.

In one hand, he held a crowbar, and in the other, a gun.

He had wounds here and there, but none that could be considered fatal.

So he asked.

“My subordinates?”

“Dead.”

At the unwavering assertion, he felt sad.

To erase the rising sadness, he took out and wore brass knuckles from his bosom.

“Ha, I’m so sorry. I knew they were fighting, but I couldn’t go…”

“Did you get a cramp in your leg?”

From the middle, Rohan also thought this guy would know.

The screams of the men were quite rough. One of them had even tried to call this guy.

“Today, I felt especially good. On days like this, I can’t stop my work midway.”

“Is that so.”

Rohan nodded and aimed his pistol.

Bang!

He pulled the trigger.