1% Lifesteal

Chapter 108 - Lay of the Land

Freddy loved 1% Lifesteal.

All the other benefits aside, being in top shape every day was already enough to make it a top-tier talent.

He got smashed yesterday. Today, from the instant he woke up, he was ready for action.

While he was tempted to take a few days off and allow himself to relax a bit, he didn't want to become complacent. There were things to do. Important things.

Repentawa wasn't a metropolis, but it was a city nonetheless, full of leaders and servants, rivals and friends—who knew who, who owned what, who lived where, who hated who—it mattered. The political climate was full of extreme weather events, and keeping track of the patterns was important for anyone who didn't want to get caught in a storm.

Freddy was one of those people. And by god, he was ready to befriend thunder itself.

That being said, making friends was easier said than done. And besides, he wasn't really out here to "make friends." He was trying to establish mutually beneficial relationships with as many of the local powers as possible.

But what would he provide? Just being a peak two-star wasn't enough to give him a lot of political credit.

And who would he make allies with? It wasn't that he just didn't know who the local powers were—he didn't know the relationships between them.

If A and B were mortal enemies, he could only choose one side. If A happened to also be friends with C, they were better a choice than B, who was politically outmuscled. But if A and C were insanely sketchy and dealt in terrible things, he'd rather take his chances with B.

While he was ready to kill, he did not want to side with villains. He was aware that this mindset—especially in the Northern Belt—put him at somewhat of a disadvantage, but that didn't mean he would do literally anything for personal benefit. He had boundaries.

But he was willing to overlook... some stuff. Like financial crime. He didn't give a single shit about tax evasion or theft from competitors. He had a strong dislike of running gambling rings, but he could tolerate it.

Also murder. Depending on context, of course.

He wasn't exactly the purest maiden in the village, and neither was he the cleanest pair of tighty whities in the laundry basket.

He'd be a hypocrite and a fool to go all hero of the masses. He was in the Northern Belt. This wasn't exactly a place where he'd find righteous factions to side with. Still, stuff like dealing hard drugs and human trafficking of any kind was something he could never tolerate.

The first order of business was quite simple. Information.

If he had a hundred obedient spirits like Bloodshed, he'd send them off to spy on people until he got a complete picture of the inner workings of the city. But he didn't.

That left him with only a few options.

He could directly befriend someone powerful and then, through conversation, extract information. This was the last option by default, since it required him to get involved without knowing the lay of the land.

He could also try and step into contact with an information dealer, but that risked putting him on the locals' radar.

But he had a different idea.

He visited several nearby stores and noted any local magazines and newspapers up for sale. He noted the companies' names and then looked for their locations. There were seven places he needed to visit.

While putting his two-star prowess on full display, he went to all of the businesses personally and asked for a copy of every edition they'd published for the last ten years.

It cost him quite the sum, but he managed to obtain a number of huge boxes full of published articles.

Then he got to sorting.

The speed at which a two-star could read was nothing to scoff at. As a two-star, Freddy also had a much better memory than ordinary people. Together with the help of 1% Lifesteal, a massive pile of energy drinks, and several long days of research, he had a pretty decent picture of how things worked in Repentawa.

Freddy stood in his living room wearing nothing but his silk robes and underwear and holding a can of energy drink. His beard was starting to get messy. He slumped on an armchair, swung his arm back, scratched the back of his head, blew some air through pursed lips, and took a sip from the can.

Before him was a wall full of cutout images and articles, all connected with red string and sorted into piles of valuable information.

It was clear as day that the local journalists were spineless.

First, he analyzed whose dick the newspapers sucked the hardest. That was most likely the faction that owned them. Then depending on how they reported on other factions, he could tell who they were enemies and allies with.

There were five major factions in play. Two of them were strong allies, while the other three seemed to keep each other at arm's length, although they weren't strangers to cooperating to keep the other two in check.

The number of violent incidents between two "mysterious groups," as the newspapers called them, suggested that there was a lot of fighting between the major factions.

There was also a fun pattern of a new, smaller faction appearing, then getting slandered to hell and back, and finally, when they were "righteously eliminated" by one of the local powers, it magically turned out that they were responsible for all this bad shit that had been happening for way longer than the faction was even around.

A good number of these smaller players were probably just puppets of one of the more prominent factions, created to take the fall when an operation went bust, and a more minor part was new powers trying to break through—whether they were actually criminals or not it was hard to tell.

Unfortunately, this made it nearly impossible to tell which faction dealt with what kind of dirty work—if anything, it seemed like all of them were willing to at least dabble in things he wasn't willing to tolerate.

Except for one possible outlier.

Around six years ago, a smaller player appeared. They hadn't expired since, mainly because of the powerful three-star at the helm—a man who went by Thor, which Freddy found really funny because the man had the lightning affinity.

According to the newspapers, this organization, which went by Valhalla—again, super hilarious—was guilty of doing an incredible amount of dirty work. Most commonly, dangerous and harmful "terrorist vigilantism".

Valhalla dabbled in tearing criminal operations apart, and the newspaper always made it seem like they were just "annihilating the competition" or even "plundering the contraband for themselves."

He was a mortal.

Well, he seemed to be, at least. Freddy couldn't feel the kid's soul.

Suddenly, Freddy was struck by a thought. This young man seemed like an ordinary citizen. It was improbable that he had any connections to the local powers. At the very least, he didn't recognize his face from any of the numerous articles he'd read. He didn't even resemble anyone Freddy had seen.

If he was trying to be more social, he should probably try to socialize more. What better person to get some practice on than someone who didn't seem involved with the local politics?

...

Well that sounded like a good idea in theory. But Freddy felt queasy at the thought. Why? This was just some pathetic kid who was probably up to something idiotic...

So why did he feel so anxious about approaching him?

His palms were sweating beneath his gloves, and his heart rate was elevated.

Come on now... he chided himself mentally. You can't seriously be nervous?

Freddy didn't find it hard to talk to people per se. But his mind went back to that time he approached that receptionist girl. That shit sucked. Putting yourself out there only to be shot down wasn't a pleasant experience. To Freddy, who had spent most of his life playing the social reject, trying to make friends was a spine-chilling thought, even with some random civilian.

No good, he thought. If I want to get anywhere, I'm gonna have to get over this.

And with that thought, he got up and approached the young man before him.

***

Lucas was having a real crappy day. And week. And month. And year. Honestly, he didn't remember the last time his life wasn't miserable.

There he was, standing in his dead brother's old gear, quivering like a coward and second-thinking the life choices that brought him there. The worst part was that it wasn't even his fault.

His dumb broad of a mother got herself in trouble again. After gambling all their savings and a large loan away, she was being threatened into paying it back as quickly as possible. Else, both she and Lucas were getting their kneecaps removed. And not surgically, either.

Though they might lose their kidneys surgically. And half their lungs. And probably a part of their liver. Maybe a finger or two... What other parts of the human body were worth money?

At any rate, they needed a miracle to get out of this one. And there was only one thing Lucas could think of. "Come on, you got this, man," he told himself as he squared his shoulders up and finally looked straight at the passage.

Prime vestige manifestation. Little was known about the phenomenon, but fighting against monsters could help people generate one. Most people died before getting that far, but there was a good number of people who succeeded.

His older brother had been one of them. Well he didn't last long after getting his talent, but he did manage to get it.

"God, I can't do this," he mumbled as he shrank again.

Whoever the hell was in charge of his fortune, would it kill them to throw him a bone sometimes?

"Hey there," Lucas heard a deep and intimidating voice call from his side.

He turned around and froze. An armored giant of a man was staring down at him.

The man proceeded to take his helmet off, only to reveal a full, thick beard and angular features beneath. The man's gaze was predatory and intense, like a hawk staring down at a mouse.

Lucas felt his buttcheeks clench. "H-hi?"

"Hello," the man said again and smiled tensely. "I'm Freddy stuuu..." The man coughed. "I'm Freddy Cliff. Nice to meet you."

Why was this man introducing himself? What was happening?

"Uh... Hi?" Lucas tried dumbly. "Can I help you?"

"Sorry for being rude, but you're a mortal, right?"

Lucas tensed and nodded briefly.

"And you're planning to head into the passage?"

Lucas winced at that and then nodded reluctantly.

The man laughed with a voice that made Lucas's chest tighten, and he nodded vigorously. "You're a pretty brave dude. If you don't mind, you uh... You want me to come with you?"

Lucas's lips tightened into a line. "Yeeeaah... Sure thing, man! I'd... Oh, I'd really love to, but I uh—"

"Great!" The man lightly slapped Lucas's back, causing him to stumble forward a bit. It felt like a horse had kicked him. "You have anything to do before we set off—oh, yeah, I forgot, what's your name?"

"I'm... I'm Lucas," he said. "Lucas Black. And I can go uhm... whenever... whenever you want..."

"Great! Let's uhm... Let's go then."

"Sure thing," he eked out. I'm so losing my kidneys today.