Chapter 144: A Scammer’s Reunion
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Almost two months passed, things were relatively peaceful. I completed the transaction with Laura handing over her artifact and continued working on other artifact creation.

While I didn’t like the healer, I decided to simply leave Violet (the healer) alone. Bluntly speaking, kidnapping or killing someone simply because they upset me is a bad precedent. Until I succeeding at creating a healing artifact, there is a possibility I’ll need her.

It should be getting close to the time that people from Hell Difficulty should be arriving. They should’ve found all the necessary artifacts to proceed onward at this point.

While I have no idea whether the exit beacon will release another pillar of light at year-end, Stanley should be able to find the exit with his luck and Tracy should be with him. Rin doesn’t need the beacon to know the location as she should remember it.

It doesn’t particularly matter if Hansoo and Duke reach the exit.

Bluntly speaking, Duke is a complete wildcard that I’d rather do without and Hansoo isn’t that useful. While Duke is strong, unless he’s changed significantly from the setting, he completely untrustworthy.

Meanwhile Hansoo is basically a normal person in Hell Difficulty. It would be nice to have him, but his existence isn’t strictly necessary to clear the zones if others put in more effort.

Hearing the door bell ring, I welcomed a customer with various materials in hand. “How can I help you?”

“I want to exchange minerals for artifacts? I was thinking five to ten of your most valuable artifacts.” The man wore regular clothing placed the minerals on the table.

Staring at the materials with confusion, my brows furrowed together. This was nowhere near enough to even trade for a single artifact. Yet, I felt natural inclined to trade with him?

Glancing toward the slightly familiar man, I had the distinctive feeling I’d seen him before.

Analyze.

{Risen Hosen – Extremely weak, his words seem to have an abnormal influence…}

Risen Hosen… Risen… That sounds vaguely familiar... Ah! Scammer merchant! The guy who sold me the fake fire resistance artifact and cheated me out of an artifact.

I’d basically forgotten almost entirely about his existence after tossing him out the window last time. While I briefly thought about going after him and tracking him down after returning here. Effectively I decided to leave him alone, it felt wrong to punish someone for a deed they hadn’t technically committed.

Punishing someone for a deed they might commit in the future? That was reaching a level of villainy I hadn’t reached.

Yet, this scammer dares to come into my shop and tried to cheat me.

Staring at the scammer with bloodshot eyes filled with killing intent, “You dare to use a mental ability on me, again?”

“No, no! You’re mistaken.” The scammer's expression changed as he realized the grave mistake that he had made.

“You are right, I am mistaken. I shouldn’t have let you go last time.” A stared coldly at him.

Since he’s come to die, don’t even think about leaving.

The scammer ran for the door.

Petrifying gaze.

“NO! HELP!” The scammer screamed. Before the scammer could open the door, his body began turning to stone and his scream was cut short. He’d completely turned to stone.

Hmph. Idiot. Don’t think that rules and regulations of society will always protect you. When you constantly walk near the water, eventually you’ll get wet. If you don’t have enough power to escape when you’re finally caught, you have to face the consequences.

Still, the scammer will make a nice decoration for my other house. Who know? Maybe I’ll feel generous and release him one day. I doubt it, though.

As I was about to move his statue the door slammed open, knocking over the statue. 

The statute promptly slammed into the floor with a crash and exploded into tiny pieces.

“What going on? What was that noise?” Several people stood outside with weapons, and checked on the situation through the door.

I recognized the various guild crests on the groups. It seems the guilds had sent people here to monitor the situation of my shop, likely to prevent a specific guild from kidnapping me to monopolize me or something silly.

A woman inquired, “Are you okay?”

“Completely fine.” I replied while grimacing as I looked at the tiny chunks of stone on the floor.

…Well, he’s certainly dead now. I doubt dripping blood on him will cure him from being shatter into a million pieces.

“We heard a scream and a crash?” A man asked, staring around the room.

“Did you?” I cold replied, my expression changed into a sneer that I didn’t even try to hide. “I heard nothing.”

A group of flies wants to question me?

Affirming that there was a scream was completely pointless. If I did that I would have to come up with a doubtful and useless explanation. Instead, it’s simpler to deny its existence.

“How is that possible? It clearly came from-” The woman began before being stopped by their companion.

“We’re probably mistaken.” A man from the same guild intelligently stated. The glint in his eye clearly implied that he didn’t believe my statement, but that the man had no plans on inquiring further.

I like smart people.

With his words, the other people around seemed to have also realized the situation. There was never a possibility of hiding that I’d killed someone, but as long as no evidence existed… they wouldn’t do anything.

That’s the problem with any justice system. It worked around interests of those running it, despite anyone saying otherwise. While it would be great if people could give up their own interests and desires to run a completely fair justice system, the real world rarely worked that way.

Searching for evidence of the murder would likely cause their guild to be blacklisted from my shop and completely unable to directly buy artifacts. Taking a step back, what if they succeeded in finding evidence and arrested me? They’d lose the opportunity to ever get any artifacts again.

Regardless of the situation, pursing the matter wasn’t aligned with their interests.

Besides although the group probably doesn’t know it, going into the technicalities of it, they’re the ones who killed him. If they hadn’t rushed in and knocked him over, he would only be petrified and wouldn’t be dead.

Regardless, the scammer had already been turned into chunks of stone on the floor, what evidence is there? Murder required a body. If they hadn’t knocked him over and broken him into chunks, maybe they would have the right to be doubtful. After all, a stone statue of a person was extremely suspicious.

…But they had already destroyed the statue, so it was unlikely they could pursue it. Even if they did have a strong sense of justice and decided to pursue the matter, I could easily just escape. Unlike the scammer, I was far stronger than anyone else in the Residential Zone at the moment.

Anyway, robbing materials and artifacts might be far easy than trading for it.

“Since you’re fine, we’ll leave you alone.” The man from earlier spoke as I began storing the material gifts from the scammer.

“Goodbye.” I didn’t feel inclined to speak to the group.

No longer feeling in the mood to craft artifacts or hang around the shop, I cleaned up the stone chunks and decided to go for a long walk.

Heading up onto to roof a taller buildings, I simply stared down at the people walk around on the streets below. The crowds of people in the streets going about life.

Seeing the scammer reminded me futility of this all.

I’d been avoiding Kara, mainly because I don’t know how going to talk with her would affect anything. If she utilizes her ability again and foresees an outcome where I cannot save her then it makes the situation worse.

As for telling Kara not to utilize her ability? Would Kara possibility trust a stranger? Even if she did, it’s possible that the fate can be locked in from other timelines. In other words, it might not even matter if Kara sees the outcome of getting stabbed in the heart in this timeline.

*Sigh…*

I miss Rin.

Suppose that’s why I’m caught up on attempting to save Kara. If I can save her, shouldn’t that convince Rin that I’m still me? That should convince her the real me, right?

I snorted in annoyance with a self-depreciating laugh.

Ha… What a selfish bastard I am. Even while I claim to be saving others I’m only thinking about the benefits it’ll bring me.

Instead of trying to save Kara by interfering and preventing the situation of her near death from happening, I insist on the situation happening and only interfering enough to save the day like a knight in shining armor.

I’ve only acknowledged the ways of saving her that force Rin to acknowledge my existence as the real Tobias. Those are merely excuses to convince myself from avoiding having to contact Kara. In the first place, the plan with highest success rate is convincing her to not create the deadly fate to begin with.

With Kara’s cautious nature, even providing her with a small warning is enough. Even if she doesn’t trust me. After all, she doesn’t need to entirely avoid utilizing her ability, only to be more careful with it.

Let’s face it.

There’s only a couple months left and I’m still nowhere near to creating a workable healing artifact. I don’t even know how to start. Arrogance and ignorance are the only reasons I thought it was possible to do it before the deadline.

The idea of obtaining the healer is directly stricken out due to her untrustworthy nature. How could someone who enjoys pain and suffering of others purposefully prevent the pain and suffering of others?

Even threatening someone like that could be pointless, as a psycho with that personality trait might simply laugh and enjoy the situation at the cost of their life. Even if the healer isn’t willing to enjoy our suffering at the cost of her life at normal times, am I willing to take that risk?

Fate is a tricky and near impossible to change, it can definitely manipulate someone with an already sufficient reason to avoid to heal Kara at a critical moment.

If the possibility of warning her advance has any merit, Kara’s likely to leave the Residential Zone soon. Otherwise Rin should’ve thought of this strategy and utilized it to save Kara already. Very likely, by the time Rin usually arrives in the Residential Zone, Kara has already left.

Delaying any longer will decrease the possibility of this interference method working. I have no idea the specific time-frame that she created the deadly fate after all.

Staring down at the people on the street below, I laughed in a self-depreciating manner.

… I’m really a selfish villainous bastard. If I was a good person, I would’ve warned Kara earlier than this. The fact that I’ve insisted on trying to save her through other more hands-on ways to prove that point.

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