In life, Felix wouldn't have said he had a taste for fashion. In fact, it would be more accurate to say he never gave his clothes a second thought.
Now that he had been gandering at a mirror, he found himself whistling. Putting aside his shabby clothes which were lying on the floor, he was fitted with thrifted replacements.
They were nothing special—loose, faded cloth pants and a button-up shirt that was a bit too baggy around his shoulders.
Felix actually liked the shirt. It had a loud print of poker symbols across the fabric, which was probably tacky to anyone else, but it felt cool to him.
The best part was the dark Victorian coat the old imp had dug out from some forgotten pile. It was massively oversized. The heavyweight fabric draped so low over his frame that the high collar swallowed his chin, while the long sleeves completely covered his hands.
He looked a bit ridiculous, but as he moved his arms, he noted the draping sleeves were the perfect curtain for his new ability.
"Not bad," Felix admitted, turning away from the mirror once he was finished posing.
The only real shame was that it took almost everything he had to afford it. Turning around, he was met with the imp sending him strange glances.
"Don't ya still got a few more questions rattling around that skull?"
"Yea, but I'll save that for later. If you don't mind, I'd like to ask for one small favor. One last thing before I leave."
For a couple of seconds, the imp closed his eyes. Opening them, he walked to the side, picked up a piece of paper and a pen, and began to write something down. While he wrote, he occasionally sized Felix up, probably to gauge his reaction.
"You're lookin' for a spot to hook up with a ring. Explains why you got all prettied up. I'll do ya this solid, but you're gonna owe me one."
Confused, Felix gestured with his hands for him to continue. For the most part, the situation was strange. No—actually, it was completely off. The gut feeling that something was wrong grew impossible to shake.
Felix noted the sudden change in the imp's posture; it had warped into something predatory. The shift was most striking in his eyes.
"Go to this joint. It's low-risk, and a guy like you can slowly climb up without gettin' smoked. Get back to me when ya do."
Just as surprising was how quickly Felix accepted the danger without panicking. Putting on his best relieved expression, his eyes widened as he picked up the scrap of paper and stuffed it into his baggy shirt.
"Will do!"
And like that, Felix was gone. He stepped out into the open air and kept walking until a comfortable distance separated him from the shop.
Now that his plan was finally underway, he no longer had to ignore the major complication he had run into a while ago. The price hike completely threw him for a loop, even though he knew how brutal gacha games could be.
He figured it had to be something like a step-up system—nothing else explained why the price had jumped. Under the circumstances, he could only conclude that the cost would escalate with every single use.
In most gacha games, higher risk meant higher rewards. The bigger the cost, the better the pull. Would his system follow the same logic?
Since the question was impossible to answer for now, he simply took mental notes and moved on. He pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket and looked it over.
Staring down at the messy handwriting, he tried to make sense of the strange characters. Come to think of it, it was pretty weird that Hell even had addresses.
Back on Earth, addresses followed a series of numbers, streets, and zip codes. In Hell, it was almost the same, save for the inclusion of a pitchfork symbol.
At a first glance, it looked like gibberish. But as Felix walked and looked around at the nearby buildings, he noticed the same pitchfork symbol carved into the stone of a distant archway.
He reasoned that the symbol likely stood for the entire section he was currently in. Comparing the number on his paper to the marks on the passing buildings, he noticed they were counting down.
Within just a few minutes of casual observation, he had pinned his destination down somewhere to a specific location only a few miles away.
Still, his most urgent problem was his massive soul deficit. Relying on pocket-picking to clear the debt would take far too long, so he quickly ruled that out.
Even if he could use the gacha mechanic again, he couldn't control the outcome, making it too high a gamble. Thanks to the imp's abrupt push, there was almost nothing he could do to prepare.
'Well, it isn't as if I ever considered they lacked predatory intent,' he mused.
Even so, it's like being put on a leash. The only bright side is that leashes often work both ways. When you hold the other end of a chain, your hands are tied too.
They clearly had an agenda, no doubt about it. Thinking back to how they first met and how that imp had acted, he began to suspect the old man might have a history with the mobs running this area.
Felix figured the old demon wasn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart. Two details stood out.
For one, when those knife-wielding punks tried to jump him right outside the shop, the imp hadn't cared at all. While any other shopkeeper would have lost their mind, the imp was barely moved.
Since the imp just confirmed those same punks belonged to a local gang, his casual reaction meant he was already well-acquainted with them.
Another fact was simpler: this was Hell. Nobody here was above being total garbage, and a mugging was probably the least surprising thing to happen on any given street corner.
If the gangs routinely messed with the shops around here, it was a safe bet that the imp absolutely hated their guts—or owed them a ton of cash.
In the midst of thinking, Felix grew a wide smile, speaking out loud.
"I may have an idea!"
He pulled his hands deeper into his oversized sleeves and kept walking. Before going to that place, he had a couple of things to do. As it turns out, Hell was turning out to be pretty refreshing, and he was more than ready to see more of it.