“I have to say, that imported liquor last night was seriously good.”
“Yeah, absolutely worth every penny. That flavor, man, tsk tsk...”
As the two were chatting, a soft, sweet, and adorable voice rang out beside them. “Excuse me...”
The two blond punks turned around and saw Freya looking uneasy, as if she wanted to say something but was too afraid to speak up. Of course, this was entirely their own imagination.
Freya hadn't been an actress in her past life, nor did she have any talent for acting. She had simply spoken a little softly, but her appearance and sweet voice were incredibly deceptive.
One of the blonds whistled and said, “Well, well, if it isn't little Freya. What's up?”
Freya said, “It's just... I really need money right now. Can you take me to see 【Brother Scar】? He told me before that I could find him if I ever ran short...”
Brother Scar was their boss and a local gang leader. Hearing this, the two blonds were slightly taken aback. Then, grins slowly spread across their faces, and they immediately laughed. “No problem! Come with us! Who would've thought we'd get business first thing in the morning!”
As he spoke, the guy stepped toward Freya, seemingly trying to throw his arm around her shoulders. However, Freya subtly took a step back and avoided him. The punk didn't mind, putting it down to her being too shy.
Besides, even if he couldn't hold her now, who knew what would happen in the future?
Led by the two blonds, Freya soon arrived at a small three-story building and met Brother Scar. He lived up to his name; a scar ran down his face, starting from his left eyebrow all the way to the right corner of his mouth.
This was also his usual boasting material. He claimed he had fought some ruthless figure for dozens of rounds back in the day, surviving a slash that should have killed him before desperately killing his opponent in return. Whether it was true or not, Freya had no idea.
Brother Scar leaned back on the sofa, crossing his legs with a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he looked at the girl before him. “Little Freya? Didn't you always reject me flat out whenever I approached you before? What made you suddenly come looking for me now?”
Freya sat on the sofa with her knees pressed together and her head lowered. Her hair fell slightly, obscuring her expression. She still spoke in a low voice. “I... I had no choice. I really need money lately...”
Especially as she said this, her stomach let out a loud rumble because she hadn't eaten breakfast. This was completely unexpected; she had left in such a hurry that she had forgotten all about breakfast.
But in a way, this actually lent more credibility to her words. Brother Scar chuckled. “Alright, tell me. How much do you want to borrow?”
Freya thought for a moment and said tentatively, “One hundred thousand?”
She had originally wanted to say a million, but even if she dared to ask, he probably wouldn't dare to lend it. The amount was simply too massive. Besides, how could an underage girl suddenly need such a huge sum? Wouldn't that be suspicious? So she had to settle for the next best thing and ask for a hundred thousand.
But even a hundred thousand was enough to slightly shock Brother Scar. “Holy crap, that much?”
Freya said weakly, “Is that not allowed? Then I...”
Brother Scar waved his hand. “I can still cough up that much cash. But you'd better think this through. Borrowing this much at once means the interest won't be cheap. Can you afford to pay it back?”
Freya said, “I... I'll find a way to pay it back later!”
Brother Scar merely smiled without saying anything. He waved his hand, and soon, the two blond lackeys from earlier placed a large bag of money and a contract in front of Freya.
Freya glanced over it. The interest rate on the contract was as high as forty percent, which was utterly ridiculous. However, she had never intended to pay it back in the first place, so she picked up the pen and signed her name on the contract without the slightest hesitation.
Freya asked, “Is this all?”
Brother Scar nodded slightly without speaking. Seeing this, Freya picked up the heavy satchel full of cash from the table, quickly stood up, and left.
Once she was gone, Brother Scar looked at the two blonds and said, “You two, keep a close eye on her. This girl used to refuse so flatly every time, but now she suddenly borrowed so much money. Something is off. Watch her, and don't let her run away.”
Brother Scar had encountered situations before where people borrowed a huge sum of money and tried to flee the city, but none of them had succeeded, and their ends were always miserable.
Brother Scar muttered to himself, “Little girl, you usually seem pretty smart. I hope you won't make such a foolish decision.”
...
Returning to Freya's perspective, she had no idea what Brother Scar was imagining, and even if she did, she wouldn't care. Now that she had the money, she returned to her apartment first and tossed the bag of cash onto the table with a soft thud.
Unzipping it to see the paper bills packed tightly inside, Freya casually took out a bundle for her immediate use, while the rest was temporarily hidden under her mattress.
Afterward, Freya first went to the nearest clothing store and bought a black trench coat large enough to wrap herself completely. As mentioned before, this city wasn't very safe at night. If she ran around looking like she did now, she would probably get clubbed over the head in some dark alley.
Thus, wrapping herself up tightly would at most make her look “weird” rather than “an easy target.” After buying the coat, she also purchased a pair of goggles and a face mask to conceal her face.
Next, Freya began to scout ahead, searching for the location of the “black market.” During this process, she noticed that the two blonds were tailing her. At first, she was a bit puzzled, but she quickly figured it out.
“Are they afraid I'll skip out on my debt and flee the city?”
She certainly had no intention of running. In a way, having these two follow her was actually a good thing. After all, Brother Scar still wanted his money back, so if anyone else harbored ill intentions toward her right now, the two blonds would end up acting as her “bodyguards.”
Time flew by, and evening arrived. A petite figure, wrapped up tightly, emerged from an alleyway. The information from Freya's classmate turned out to be quite accurate. After a brief search during the day, she had confirmed the location of the black market. She then rested at home for a while, and when the time was right, she carried all her money and walked all the way there.
To be honest, her initial imagination of a black market was a crowd of tightly wrapped people lining both sides of a street, each with a stall in front of them displaying all kinds of contraband banned in the outside world.
But Freya quickly realized that what she was imagining wasn't a black market, but rather the trading streets outside dungeon portals in infinite flow web novels. This actual black market was essentially a very run-down and desolate street, with some buildings on both sides standing empty while others were occupied.
Entering the occupied buildings, one could see all kinds of things for sale, including but not limited to drugs, fake IDs, firearms, and weapons. After a brief stroll, Freya understood how this place worked.
This so-called black market wasn't organized by any single person; there was no big boss or leader. Instead, the logic here was more like a “food street” from Freya's past life. Perhaps only one or two people had initially come to this remote area to sell things, but as time passed, more and more peers in the trade found out about it, and more people began to gather, eventually forming this so-called black “market.”
Freya walked straight into a weapon shop in front of her. A stubbly, middle-aged man sat behind the counter, looking down as he maintained a double-barreled shotgun in his hands. Hearing the door open, he merely glanced up before returning to his work. “Tell me what you want to buy. Everything's right here.”
The wall behind the man was covered with all kinds of firearms—pistols, rifles, shotguns—and Freya even spotted some round objects that were highly likely to be hand grenades.
Freya stepped forward slowly and quickly locked onto her target. Without saying a word, she pointed directly at a revolver hanging behind the man.
Rifles and shotguns were too bulky and hard to carry. A handgun that could be hidden directly in a pocket was the most convenient.
The man glanced back and said, “The latest generation revolver from the Lorenzo Company. Fifty thousand Ducats.”
Freya slammed the satchel full of money onto the counter with a thud, then nodded.
The man cast a puzzled look at Freya but said nothing. He turned around, took the revolver off the wall, placed it on the counter, and pushed it toward her before beginning to count the money.
Freya reached out with her gloved hand, took the revolver, and began to examine it closely. To be honest, this was her first time holding a gun in both of her lifetimes. Like a child who had just received a new toy, she felt a slight wave of excitement in her heart.
The construction of the revolver wasn't complex, and it was very simple to use. She quickly figured out how to operate it. However, when she opened the cylinder, she found that there were no bullets inside.
She looked up at the man, who had just finished counting the money. Finding no issues, he pulled out two small boxes from beneath the counter and pushed them toward Freya. “The money is all there. I'll throw in two boxes of ammunition for free. If you want to buy more, it's two thousand a box.”
Freya thought about it, held up two fingers with her right hand, and placed another four thousand Ducats on the counter.
The man handed her two more boxes of ammunition. Seeing that Freya seemed about to leave, he suddenly spoke up. “The recoil on this revolver is pretty strong, so pay attention when you use it. Try to hold it steady with both hands before pulling the trigger. Also... it's better for little girls to avoid places like this in the future. It's too dangerous.”
Hearing this, Freya froze. She hadn't said a single word from beginning to end precisely to avoid exposing her identity, as her natural voice was simply too soft. Even if she deliberately lowered or raised her pitch, she could hardly cover it up.
Of course, it might also be that she wasn't very good at putting on a fake voice. In short, after careful consideration, her solution had been to play mute and not speak. Yet even so, she had been found out? How did he do it?
The man chuckled. “Even if you wrap yourself up tightly, your posture and body shape can still be roughly seen. You're too petite. Then there's the smell. People who normally come to this place usually carry a sour stench from not bathing for who knows how long, but you don't smell of anything. And those clothes are too new. You just bought them, didn't you?”
Freya was left speechless. The man waved his hand and continued, “Alright, alright, I don't care what you're buying a gun for. It's none of my business. What I said just now was just casual chatter, so you don't need to mind it.”
Freya still didn't say anything and quickly left. Although she thought she had prepared thoroughly, it seemed she still hadn't done enough. Fortunately, this middle-aged man, the shopkeeper, was decent. Otherwise, if she had run into some bad guy who saw how easy she was to bully and decided to rob her, what would she have done?
A hard lesson learned. She silently made a mental note of this. She would have to be much more cautious in similar situations in the future.
Freya took the shortest route straight back to her apartment, but even so, it took her over an hour of walking. The round trip left her thoroughly exhausted. However, just as she was about to head inside, Freya suddenly noticed a figure in black standing stiffly like a tree right behind her building, staring directly at her window.
Freya narrowed her eyes, her expression turning alert. No matter how she looked at it, this guy was definitely not normal!
Freya had actually been very curious about what kind of “death crisis” the system had mentioned for three days from now. Was it a natural disaster or a man-made tragedy?
If it were the former, it might be getting run over by a carriage, falling to her death, or drowning. If it were the latter, it could be getting kidnapped by thugs or murdered.
Looking at it now, the figure in front of her was more or less suspicious. Heaven knew if this was the guy's first time peeping today, or if he had been doing this secretly for a long time.
Even though she wasn't the original owner of this body, the thought of a stalker potentially watching her from the shadows every day still sent a shiver of disgust down her spine.
She looked down to check the revolver in her hand to ensure it was ready to fire at any moment, and then walked straight toward the strange figure.
“Tap, tap...”
In the empty street at night, Freya's footsteps were exceptionally clear. Her shadow stretched long under the glow of the roadside kerosene lamps. Naturally, the sound caught the “stalker's” attention. The figure slowly turned around, and a pair of bizarre, red, beast-like vertical pupils stared in Freya's direction.
...
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