Sunset really did cast a silhouette over everything.
The Hellcat's tires tore sulfur-scented streaks across the asphalt as it carried Ian down the suburban highway at a speed that was definitely way, way over the limit.
Which was only natural.
There were no speed cameras out here. And for a truly law-abiding veteran driver, a road with no posted limit and no enforcement might as well have no speed limit at all.
His little murder-mobile hadn't killed anyone for several hours now.
It knew the rules.
"Taking everything in my stride~
Don't need reason, don't need rhyme~"
...
At the right moment, Ian's Hellcat always seemed to switch to the perfect song. Right now, the speakers were blasting a freedom anthem that had once swept across America.
Highway to Hell.
Of course,
like so many things people saw in America,
it came from Australia.
Just like most of the people living on this land had come from somewhere else. As for what America itself had originally produced? The people who could answer that were mostly in museums now.
"Oh, so that's why you said this place really is hell..." Ian finally connected the dots and slapped the side of his backpack. The demon head inside, however, offered no response.
Ian did not care whether it praised him or not.
"Six or seven kilos. Proof of my glorious record." He was still sorting through the bullets he had cleaned up and collected. The weight of over a thousand deformed rounds had slightly exceeded his expectations.
"I'm going to melt them down into a brass chain. Then when I take my pet out for a walk, I'll already have the perfect leash."
Ian had picked up an orange cat, sure.
But that was meant to be used in his plot to soothe the Mother Goddess.
So from start to finish, the only thing he actually had available to walk was the demon head.
It did not matter.
Walking one thing or another was still walking.
"Right, you worked hard today, so here, have a little trace mineral supplement." Ian picked out a few of the prettiest bullets, opened the backpack, and tossed them into the demon head's mouth.
Since he wanted his garbage can slash gas station to stay full of fuel for tomorrow, his attitude toward the demon head was naturally a little better than it had been in the past couple of days.
"Stop, stop! It's crawling into my mouth! Get it out!" The demon head shrieked like its tail had been stepped on, though of course it did not have a tail anymore.
"That is not an excuse to eat my cat!"
Ian issued the warning with great severity.
"If you dare eat my cat, I'll make you put on lipstick every night and use a fake sultry voice to do phone chats with lonely nerds. How long do you think it'll take you to earn enough to buy me a new cat?"
He really was getting better at threatening people.
At least when it came to the horned demon, Ian's threats worked even better than an exorcism prayer.
The demon went instantly silent. It was full of grievance, but did not dare say a word. It could only clamp its jaws shut and resist the orange cat's curiosity about the inside of its mouth.
The horned demon trembled.
It did not want to eat the cat.
But it definitely felt like the cat might want to eat it.
"Unbelievable..."
The more the demon thought about it, the angrier it got.
And the more it silently cried.
This time, it really had been the one looked down on by a cat. Or maybe the orange cat simply found the demon head comfortable and had decided it made a decent bed, because after that it settled down quietly inside the backpack.
Ian had left ventilation holes.
"Don't blame me. Blame that Batman costume. Ever since I wore it, Batman's influence got all over me. It gave me not just strategy, but a ruthless edge too."
Ian felt that was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Who knew whether wearing Batman's gear might taint you with a little cosmic cause and effect?
His logic was airtight.
Naturally, the horned demon was nowhere near capable of following his train of thought.
"You just did a little cosplay..." the demon muttered weakly. Today it had truly lost too much. Its whole head was exhausted.
"Exactly. That's why I'm only ruthless, not a full-blown lunatic. You're the one not getting it." Ian let out a derisive snort. The demon laughed at him for overthinking, and Ian laughed at the demon for not understanding the bond between him and Batman.
As for what kind of bond that was, well, teacher and godfather had already both been used up...
Thinking that through, Ian realized there were moments even he found difficult.
"Ugh."
That definitely meant he still needed more attribute points.
His body could not sustain the long-term load of his brain.
"My body is still not strong enough to match my mind." Feeling a little wistful, Ian popped a bullet into his mouth.
"Crunch, crunch."
It was crisp.
Almost like a peanut.
He chewed it up and swallowed it whole.
This was an experiment.
Unfortunately,
nothing happened.
His Barbaric Tyrant experience did not increase at all.
"I still need to go touch Uncle Galactus."
Having failed to exploit a system loophole, Ian could only wait until he unlocked a class from Galactus before he could finally get the kind of truly healthy digestive tract he wanted.
The Hellcat kept tearing down the highway.
It was carrying Ian toward a new "mission" point.
In America, places of sin were everywhere, like repeatable quests in one of those live-service games. Endless, truly endless. Ian figured that today might just be the day he finally learned how to fly.
"What is that?"
Ian was humming along with the music and staring ahead when he suddenly realized something was wrong. The suburbs were still the suburbs, but what was a massive factory with a huge LEXCORP logo doing out here?
"Luthor's property!"
Ian's head instantly cleared.
"No, no, no! That's my dad's dungeon, not mine! I'm not qualified for that one!" Ian understood himself very clearly. As an independent NPC, he only wanted to bully normal villain NPCs.
A villain like Luthor, though...
Even if Ian was technically immortal, he had no interest in ending up stuck to that kind of supervillain like gum on a shoe.
"Retreat! Retreat! Retreat! Pick another dungeon!"
He slapped the dashboard.
The Hellcat immediately whipped into a hard U-turn.
It obeyed, but that did not stop it from switching songs to express its opinion.
"I'd hate to look into those eyes~
And feel like I can't change~"
...
That was a little pointed.
"You don't get it. I'm just thinking long term. One step at a time." Ian's defense was actually very reasonable. After all, he had not brought his dual wield weapons with him this time.
Not only could he not unleash his full combat strength, he also had nobody to help distract Luthor. In that kind of situation, Ian thought it made sense to stick to easier dungeons.
"Vroooom."
The Hellcat answered him with its engine.
Then it turned into a black mamba again and sped back into the city, pulling into a lively district.
"People do military chemical deals here?"
Ian was surprised.
He looked left and right.
This was one of the better neighborhoods. The streets were clean, the pedestrians well-dressed, there were no visible homeless people, and even the guys doing snatch-and-grab jobs wore suits and ties.
One of them even left a tip after grabbing something.
He clearly looked like the type of respectable man who clocked in for work every morning.
Ian was very curious. In such a peaceful, prosperous neighborhood, could the kind of dark deal he needed really be taking place?
"Trust me, Pilot."
This time the Hellcat was not playing a song at all. It was quoting a line from a game.
"Right. I get it. The most dangerous place really is the safest place." Ian still trusted his little car. He scanned the surrounding buildings for likely transaction points.
There were a lot of clothing shops.
And plenty of department stores.
Soon, his gaze locked onto a fairly upscale fast-food place. At least they fried everything fresh. He immediately ran over and shoved the door open.
"Here. It has to be here." Ian stated this with confidence, and right then his stomach growled twice. Whenever he had used self-healing, he was always hungrier afterward.
"Better fill up first. Can't fight crime on an empty stomach... no, I mean, can't be a superhero on an empty stomach."
He ordered with the intensity of a starving beast.
Twenty burgers, ten fries, five milkshakes, and thirty fried chicken legs. If not for the risk of being bullied by everyone's strange looks, Ian probably would have ordered even more.
"This is the confidence of a rich man."
He sat down at a large table by the window and even elegantly tucked a napkin into his shirt. The only disappointing part was that his Coke could not be served in a wine glass.
"Gulp, gulp, gulp."
Ian chugged not only the drink that made couch potatoes happy.
He looked over the mountain of food and had just been about to say grace when a figure flashed past the window and bolted into the restaurant.
She started for the restroom, then doubled back and crawled straight under Ian's table.
Before Ian could react, a group of men in black rushed in after her. They caught the attention of a lot of diners, but since they were not carrying guns, nobody really panicked.
"What now?"
Ian looked curiously at the group.
They searched the dining area, glanced around, did not see their target, and then, apparently led by the least intelligent among them, all rushed toward the restaurant bathrooms.
Probably assuming their target would climb out a window.
A classic.
Ian was not surprised. Anyone who wore dark sunglasses indoors in the afternoon obviously had terrible eyes.
"All right, you can come out now, delinquent girl."
Ian nudged the tablecloth where she was hiding.
"Damn it, Ian, quit kicking my chest!" The girl crawled out from under the table cursing and immediately started furiously wiping the shoe print off her clothes with napkins.
It was Madison.
Ian's deskmate from school.
"Are you filming Fast Food Horror or some low-budget Hollywood nonsense?" Ian remembered that Madison liked to go to auditions on weekends, so he made a bold deduction worthy of a detective.
"I'm not filming anything, idiot! Can't you tell? I'm actually being chased by a bunch of freaks!" Madison still looked badly shaken and snatched Ian's soda right out of his hand to calm herself.
"Are you going to die?"
Ian was not upset. He just grabbed another drink and took a sip. Years of having his food stolen had trained him well. At this point, he barely even reacted to having someone snatch something off his tray.
"Probably not?"
Madison sounded uncertain.
"Then if you're probably not going to die, let me eat first." Ian straightened the table a little. He did not want Death to think he was sloppy when he prayed.
Honestly, he was more worried she would take that as an invitation to push further.
"Seriously? I'm talking about a bunch of psychos trying to grab me, and you're this calm?" Madison clearly found Ian's lack of concern impossible to understand.
She was starting to suspect he did not believe her.
"We live in an era where superheroes and supervillains run around everywhere. Isn't this just normal life?" Ian looked at Madison with a slightly strange expression.
"..."
After holding it in for a moment,
she muttered, "God."
Madison was speechless, but she had to admit Ian's words somehow made sense again. Frustrated, she grabbed a box of fries from the table and started eating.
She knew Ian's rules.
So without needing to be reminded, she pulled ten dollars from her wallet and slapped it onto the table.
"You can eat forty-five bites. Count them yourself."
Ian may no longer have needed such a small amount of money, but the speed with which he pocketed it showed that old habits died hard.
"You ordered all this just for yourself?" Madison sounded genuinely startled by Ian's ridiculous appetite. In her mind, this much food could have lasted her at least a week.
"Time for prayer."
Ian closed his eyes.
And Madison, being the curious person she was, immediately leaned in.
"So someone like you is religious? What is it, the Church of Science? The Church of Straight Men? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?"
To be fair,
her filter on Ian really was severe.
"I only believe in the New Church of Superman, but that doesn't stop me from communicating with the goddess who represents death."
Ian had not only said grace. He had also taken the chance to test whether Death was still pretending to ignore him.
"No helping it. If I don't talk to her at least once a day, she gets clingy."
No sooner had he said that than Ian felt an invisible hand clamp down on the brain under his skull.
It did not hurt.
But it was definitely shaking him, as if trying to rattle his brains loose.
So Death had absolutely just been pretending not to respond.
"Why is your head shaking? Did you take something? Got an extra pill for me?" Madison had been staring at Ian the whole time.
"This is just a close personal interaction."
The moment Ian said that, the invisible hand abruptly vanished.
He became elegant again.
"My God, what are you even talking about?"
The blonde girl was truly baffled. Every individual word Ian said was clearly English, but she could not for the life of her figure out what they meant when put together.
"You don't get it now, but once you die, you probably will. Death isn't some evil god. She's the highest of beings, the final destination of life. At least for most ordinary lives."
Ian had not been showing off.
He was actually testing the limits of Madison's weird healing ability. Even so, his deskmate, who could probably revive people from the brink of death, still looked just as confused as ever.
"This is some nerd cult thing, isn't it? A goddess death cult?" Madison seemed to think Ian had entered some bizarre new phase of rich kid rebellion.
"Tell you what, you need to get out more. You're coming with me later. I've got a whole crew of girls, and if you spend one afternoon with them, you'll know what a real goddess looks like."
Even when trying to help a friend, Madison somehow still sounded like she was recruiting customers.
"So you really don't know." Ian had finished testing by now. He was willing to admit that Madison's acting was decent, but not Academy Award level.
"I should know?" Madison shoved both hands into her messy blonde hair and stared at him blankly. Then her eyes dropped to the Rolex scribbled onto his wrist in pen, and the corner of her eye twitched.
"Let me put it this way. Death isn't some evil god. Look around. If there were no death, would we get burgers this good?"
Ian said it while devouring food like a machine.
"And these dead pork chops too. If they never died, would I get to eat something this delicious?"
Then he bit down on one.
"..."
Madison slapped her forehead. She knew it was absurd, but she could not come up with a rebuttal on the spot.
People really could not go around gnawing on live pigs.
Just the image alone was horrifying.
If there had been alcohol on the table, she definitely would have needed a drink.
"That stuff is all junk food. You're going to get fat if you keep eating like that."
It sounded like an attempt to change the subject.
But Ian took it very seriously.
"Junk food is great. My godfather loves it."
He kept stuffing his face.
The way he was eating made Madison feel like he had not eaten in ten days.
"Gulp."
The blonde girl swallowed.
"He means your actual godfather, right? Then shouldn't you be bringing some back for him instead of using him as an excuse to stuff your face?"
Madison sounded very reasonable.
Unfortunately,
Ian had the stronger logic.
"My godfather's in prison right now. He can't eat it, so I'm eating it for him. Thanks to the bond between us, he can definitely smell it."
Ian was convinced that was true.
His cheeks were stuffed full like a hamster's.
"..."
Madison patted her forehead again. She clearly did not believe a word of it.
"You really are enough to make someone laugh."
She shook her head helplessly.
Then, staring at the table full of food, she did not take any more.
Not because she was disciplined, but because she had noticed Ian glance at her the moment she took her forty-fifth bite.
"With the way you eat, there's no way those muscles are real. Those shirtless pictures you sent everyone last night had to be Photoshopped."
Madison gave Ian a deeply suspicious look.
"Huh?"
Now it was Ian's turn to freeze.
"I didn't send anything."
He pulled out his phone and checked.
Damn it.
So Batman's revenge was late, but very much real.
"As if he wouldn't!"
Ian instantly regretted ever trusting anything that had come out of Gotham. Fortunately, his skin was thick enough that he recovered almost immediately.
"So, want to feel them? First time's free. After that it's ten bucks. Actually... how much do you think I should charge so every pretty girl at school can afford it?"
Ian lifted his shirt and revealed abdominal muscles that were not cartoonishly exaggerated but still incredibly impressive.
Madison's eyes widened, and she let out a sincere comment.
"You definitely juiced, right?"
The girl clearly knew what she was talking about.
Her accusation landed hard.
"No."
Ian answered just as confidently. He drank enhancement serum, not injected gear. As long as the wording was different, then it was obviously a totally different thing.
Just like how a herbal drink and a plate of stinky vegetables were not the same thing.
Same logic.
"Fake or not, those muscles could definitely scare people." Madison still looked rattled, and she started digging through her wallet for smaller bills.
A girl who wanted to make it in movies and carried designer goods was obviously from a wealthy family. Ian had already seen plenty of money in her wallet.
No misunderstanding there.
He really had just peeked.
And yes, there was a reason for that.
"Seriously, you need to come with me to the police station and help me file a report. I need them to assign a female officer to protect me personally."
Madison was still shaken enough that she had gone straight from flirtatious to practical.
"Here."
The smallest bill she found was ten dollars, so she handed it over and waited for Ian to give change the way he always did. After years as classmates, the blonde troublemaker knew Ian's pricing better than most people.
Too much money, and he would yell.
Too little, and he would sneer.
"Honestly, I've been thinking about raising prices lately. But since we're such good friends, I'll stick to the old rates."
Ian said it, then pocketed the money and immediately grabbed Madison's wallet.
"Huh?"
Madison stared as Ian counted out eight hundred dollars and shoved it into his pocket. She wasn't angry, only bewildered, desperately trying to remember what exactly eight hundred dollars was supposed to cover.
She had never used that service before.
So she had forgotten.
"For eight hundred bucks, you'll catch me a female cop?"
The blonde green tea girl used her imagination.
It made sense. People who sat together that long usually were not that different.
"In your dreams. Not even my butt. This is to save your life."
Ian said it while wiping his mouth and tossing the napkin off the table.
"Save me from what?"
Madison still hadn't caught up.
Then she saw Ian calmly pull another fresh pair of stockings out of his pocket.
"???"
Under Madison's horrified gaze,
Ian pulled them over his head.
"What do you think?"
He turned around.
Perfect timing.
The bathroom door slammed open.
Five or six men in sunglasses rushed out. They were the same black-clad pursuers from before. The one in front was even holding a huge toad with its tongue hanging out.
The toad was pointing directly at Madison.
"Damn it!"
Madison's face went white.
She grabbed Ian and yanked him toward the door.
"Wait, not so fast... at least let me poke eye holes in this first!"
Ian once again failed to present his back to the world with dignity and instead got dragged out in a mad dash.
Rip.
Too much force.
The stockings tore into useless strips.
"You're paying for that."
Ian, being Ian, still found time to assign blame.
"I have a car! My car's over there..."
He was about to show off when he noticed commotion out on the street. His Hellcat's hood was opening and closing as if it meant to swallow a Black man armed with a crowbar. Apparently it had understood part of what prison meant.
"..."
Ian's voice died.
"You have a car?"
Madison had already kicked off her heels.
She looked back in shock.
"Maybe give me a second to switch accounts first..." Ian avoided talking about his ride and instead pulled out another package of stockings.
"How many of those things did you buy?" Madison was out of breath, but that still did not stop her from being stunned by the bizarre inventory Ian seemed to carry in his pockets.
"Guess."
Ian slipped the stockings over his head again and logged into the role one more time. As a rich person, he understood the importance of humility, so he would never casually reveal that he had bought a hundred pairs and only meant to use them for a month.
"Let them come!"
"I think they're definitely not ordinary! Look, I've got my superhero credentials... no, wait, that's my expired mental patient certificate. This one is my real superhero credential."
Ian finally pulled out his psychic access card.
And it was not that he particularly wanted to show off.
It was just that his instincts were telling him those men, who looked suspiciously like male magic users, were exactly the kind of illegal operators his Hellcat had brought him here to intercept.
Premium delivery.
Ian obviously had to sign for it.
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[+500 Power Stones = +1 Extra Chapter]
[Thank You For Your Support!]