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Ryan's plan was solid — but reality has a way of delivering a hit exactly where you don't expect it.
After spending over an hour mapping out the slum district and filling in his mental terrain, Ryan stopped at the far edge of the southeast outskirts. He needed a moment.
Because the hour hadn't turned up any trace of money — but it had turned up plenty to weigh on him.
His own clothes were worn, but at least intact. The slum residents' were filthy and falling apart. Their bodies were frightening in their thinness — legs like bamboo poles, faces that said they hadn't eaten a full meal in a long time. The living conditions, needless to say, were difficult to observe even from near-rooftop height. Beds were rare. Most people slept on the floor, packed together, with barely room to find a spot. The blankets were threadbare and rotting — he worried about how they'd survive the winter coming.
If the dock workers looked tired and without hope, the slum residents were something else entirely: a numbness so complete it was barely human, as if they were moving without any consciousness behind it. It unsettled him enough that he found himself wondering whether the concept of the zombie in his world had been inspired by exactly this. The resemblance was genuinely eerie.
Both the Storm Church and the Church of the Evernight Goddess ran poorhouses and free vocational schools — but it was a drop in an ocean. These people worked from dawn to dark for barely enough to survive on; they had no time to see a doctor, let alone learn. At most, children too young to be useful were sent to attend.
After an hour of watching, Ryan found himself understanding something he hadn't before: in those turbulent eras of his own world's history, what had made the conviction of reformers so unshakeable — what had made them willing to risk everything — was exactly this. See a scene of hopelessness this suffocating, this airless, and how could anyone look away?
"A pity this is a world with supernatural power," Ryan thought with a bitter smile.
Forget being a humanities student — even if Marx himself showed up, he'd have a headache. Ryan was only Sequence 9 and already far removed from ordinary people; the gap at higher Sequences was incomprehensible. A single powerful Extraordinary wiping out an entire army of ordinary soldiers wasn't out of the question.
Though it wasn't entirely hopeless, either. The gods were real — which meant the churches didn't have to stand against progress and change. They might even welcome it. Every charitable institution he'd seen so far had been founded and run by a church. Inadequate, yes, but compared to the kind of capitalists who deserved a lamppost, the churches were at least still treating people as people.
Rosselle the Great overthrowing the Intisian royal family and establishing the Republic was another precedent. Though the changes he'd brought, in hindsight, hadn't gone far enough.
In a world with real gods, no matter how the times changed, as long as the divine power behind the churches remained standing, the churches would remain standing — until the day technology could rival the gods themselves.
Though Ryan suspected that even if that day arrived, it would be the gods — not some ordinary person — who held the technology.
However you looked at it, this was an ugly era. Ugly enough that he found himself thinking, for once, that his luck at being born when he was had been rather good.
But it wasn't without hope either. Supernatural power had added untold disaster to this world — but it had also provided something in return. He didn't know quite why, but gods who needed faith weren't the worst arrangement, were they? The gap between needing faith and being accountable to people wasn't necessarily wide. However a god actually felt about it, those carrying out divine will were still human — and specifically, people who had chosen faith over power and wealth.
"At least more hopeful than a lot of the novels I've read," he thought.
After sitting for quite a while, Ryan finally stood, let out a long breath:
"Alright. Enough. Stop overthinking. Take care of yourself first — there's nothing I can do right now anyway."
He slipped back into the shadows. He wasn't changing his approach to earning money — just being more deliberate about choosing targets that had as little connection to the genuinely poor as possible. He didn't want his actions making already miserable lives worse.
"Or just be cleaner about it," he murmured to himself.
Back in the slums, looking at the scene in front of him, he felt again, sharply, that he was not of this world — and not of this era.
"I'll never understand people who want to transmigrate to ancient times. Weren't they afraid of ending up worse off?"
He kept himself at near-rooftop height, leaving no impression of having been there. It also gave him a better vantage point for spotting anything suspicious — or outright conspicuous.
Petty theft was so common here it barely registered as suspicious. Poverty didn't equal crime, but it led there — and no one could blame people for it. Concern for ethics and propriety only arose once survival was no longer in question.
It was worse in a world where the dead could disturb the living. Poverty could drive more extreme behavior here than anywhere else. The Ruen Kingdom had specific laws requiring burial in designated cemeteries — to reduce the incidence of the undead, water spirits, and vengeful ghosts. Throwing a body in a river or a shallow grave was a criminal act.
But even at the lowest available fees, the cost in time and money was still a real burden for the destitute.
On his route through, he'd already passed a few bodies simply left where they were, not yet buried. They'd probably vanish one night — quietly interred by relatives, in whatever hasty way they could manage.
Ryan himself had no feelings about what happened to his remains after death — in slightly dramatic terms, you could pour his ashes into concrete, mix them into a wall, and he genuinely wouldn't care. Dead was dead. Even in a world where bodies could get back up, whatever animated them had nothing to do with the person they'd been.
But that didn't stop him from understanding the quiet grief and helplessness of it.
Moving between buildings did restrict his sightlines, but with the sun out, he couldn't use Shadow Concealment on rooftops. If a church Extraordinary happened to be in the area, the exposure risk was too high.
Still, he wasn't entirely relying on chance. Beyond watching for potential targets, he was mapping the area — noting where the crowds were thickest and targets least likely; identifying the overlooked corners where something larger might be hiding. A patient hunter, working out where prey was most likely to be found.
Even if the daytime yielded nothing, that didn't mean the effort was wasted. The night was long.
And besides — he might look like a berserker, but he'd drunk an Assassin potion. Knowing the terrain mattered. Whether for taking action or for running, you couldn't do either well without it. This wasn't a game, and he had no illusions of being the kind of omnipotent assassin who "kills everyone in sight and calls it a successful infiltration."
"For an assassin, gathering intelligence is the first step — and the most important."
The work was a bit tedious, though. Whenever he noticed his focus starting to drift from the length of time, he'd let his thoughts wander briefly to reset himself.
One thing he'd been turning over: during the hours when sunlight made it harder to operate freely, he could volunteer at one of the churches' charitable organizations.
It was partly about helping, even in a small way. It was also about building goodwill with the church. If he were ever suspected by a church Extraordinary, a record of voluntary service wouldn't clear his name — but it might soften the response.
Besides, he didn't have a day job anymore, and this world had neither games nor computers. Sitting idle wasn't really his style.
He'd also considered dirtying himself up, putting on something more ragged, and mixing into the slums to gather information directly. People's eyes were sharp — if you knew how to listen, the community itself could point you toward your targets.
Then he thought about his own build and height, and quietly dropped the idea. Who would believe a malnourished slum-dweller could be this size? That wasn't a problem even the potion's disguise techniques could solve.
Time drifted by in this somewhat tedious fashion until a shifty, slight figure finally crossed into his field of vision.
The man looked to be around five foot five, moving in a rhythm that alternated fast and slow, keeping to the edge of the path, glancing back periodically. The look of someone trying to shake a tail.
Ryan's interest sharpened immediately. He followed.
The slight man clearly knew the area. After a short distance, he ducked into an alley and began moving through a maze of irregular terrain and debris, cutting and turning rapidly. Most people, even with reasonable familiarity with the neighborhood, would have struggled to keep up.
For Ryan, watching from above, it was no effort at all. He even had attention left over to track the direction the man had come from — and saw nothing particular there.
"Did he already shake them? Or was there never anyone?"
Eventually, the slight man slipped into a half-collapsed ruin.
The straight-line distance wasn't far. His sightline was blocked, but with his sharp hearing, Ryan picked up the faint sound of a wooden panel being pulled aside and then set back.
"A basement?"
His curiosity deepened as he moved closer. Even through the planks, the deliberately muffled conversation below reached him clearly:
"You're getting slower." A woman's voice, slightly reproachful.
"Sorry, sweetheart. I came straight here the moment I clocked off. It's just — lately, being with you all the time, people are starting to wonder where I've been. So I circled around a bit to be safe. I'm not sharing you with anyone." A man's voice, a little urgent.
"What's the rush? I'm not going anywhere." The woman's tone softened into a gentle pout.
The man gave a low chuckle and didn't answer. A moment later, all that could be heard were two slightly quickened sets of breathing.
Outside, Ryan was briefly at a loss for words.
"All that sneaking around… and it was just so you could have her to yourself."