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"It's all the big guy's fault — he's the reason I can't even eat at a proper restaurant." Ryan shrugged off the blame with complete self-assurance.
All he'd done was fail to correct the problem in time. The situation wasn't his fault.
Honestly, apart from his disheveled hair and stubble, Ryan didn't look bad enough to be mistaken for a vagrant. But in this era, even someone who simply skipped the formal dress code — let alone showing up in clothes as old and yellowed as his — would invite whispers and stares the moment they stepped into a restaurant.
He skirted the docking area and found a nearby café, where a single sou soothed his stomach. With that settled, he turned his attention to the future.
Having seen what an official Extraordinaire could do, Ryan realized his original plan had been far too naive. Even if he only targeted people who had no legal protection, pulling too many jobs in the same city might still draw the attention of the Church's Beyonders.
And once noticed — he thought of that Evernight Goddess captain's abilities, and the layered meaning beneath the man's words when he made an arrest: Even if you know nothing, that doesn't mean you're useless.
Ryan couldn't shake the suspicion that even if he left zero trace, the Church's Beyonders could still find him the moment they decided to look.
The safer approach, then, was to expand his operational range — one or two jobs per city, rotating between multiple cities, using time and distance to diffuse suspicion.
"Honestly, it's still a hassle," he reflected inwardly. "Unless you have enough wealth to make money from money, there really are no shortcuts."
Troublesome as it was, he had no intention of giving up. Not just because of the higher returns that came without honest labor — but also because he still wanted to advance.
Even a Sequence 9 potion: the primary ingredient alone sold for 150 to 200 pounds, and the formula for another 200-plus. A Sequence 8 ingredient would fetch at least 300 pounds without effort, and the formula could easily double that. Accumulating enough to reach Sequence 8 without relying on Extraordinary abilities would take far too long.
In the beginning, Ryan had considered simply living as an ordinary person — falling back on his Assassin abilities only when things got truly desperate, with no thought of advancing further. But after two days in this world, he'd abandoned that idea.
Even if he gave up on phones and video games, even if he stopped chasing the faint hope of returning to his original world — even if he simply decided to live out his days here — he couldn't be satisfied with the life of an ordinary person in this era. Not after having glimpsed a better future.
And the problems of this era, which to him was already the past, were simply too numerous and too glaring to ignore. He couldn't change any of them, but he couldn't tune them out the way everyone else had learned to, either.
Within just two days, Ryan understood: his conflict with this era was irreconcilable. He could never fully adapt. He even felt, strangely, that he could almost understand the loneliness that only the most exceptional minds — those who had outgrown their era — were ever forced to feel. That particular loneliness of being beyond your time.
The only thing in this world that still sparked genuine wonder in him was Extraordinary power. If there had been no opportunity, so be it. But now that the big lug had already cracked open that door, how could he possibly resist stepping through?
Even considering the worst-case scenario, now that he had already become an Extraordinaire, he didn't think simply refusing to advance would foil whoever had arranged his transmigration. Perhaps that gambit might have had a sliver of hope for an ordinary person — but not for him. So there was no reason to be afraid. It was what it was.
His mind made up, Ryan stopped deliberating and began searching the waterfront district — where dock workers and factory hands clustered — for a cheap clothing shop.
He had no intention of buying what people of this era considered respectable formal attire. No need for it, no desire to deal with it.
Even setting aside the fashionable walking cane, a gentleman's wardrobe in this era included a top hat, cravat, dress shirt, waistcoat, tailcoat, trousers, leather shoes, a pocket watch, and a leather billfold.
For someone who, in summer, wore two items at most and in winter no more than four or five (not counting underwear) — someone who simply dressed for comfort and convenience — the very thought made both his body and soul recoil. On top of that, a proper set wasn't cheap; ten pounds was perfectly normal if you didn't want to settle.
For a man with no steady income who just wanted clothes that would let him eat in a restaurant without causing a scene, that kind of spending was plainly unnecessary. Cheap would do fine. As for whatever people might think or say, he didn't care — as long as it didn't stop him from enjoying a good meal.
"It's getting late though. I just hope everything hasn't already closed."
With that thought, Ryan quickened his pace.
Back in Mourne, everything would certainly have shut by now. But Avignon was a larger, more bustling city, and convenience came with that. In the end, Ryan arrived just before the shopkeeper closed for the evening, and for two pounds and ten sous, he purchased two reasonably decent cheap outfits, leather shoes, a billfold, a comb, and a razor.
Rental agencies would certainly have closed for the day, so Ryan checked into a cheap inn for the night and cleaned himself up.
"At least I look like a young man now," he said to his reflection, affecting a world-weary tone.
Even someone as indifferent to appearances as Ryan had to admit that the version of himself from an hour ago — hair unwashed, stubble intact — had looked convincingly like a man in his thirties, if you didn't look closely at his face.
A far cry from the young man now looking back at him: hair still damp but black and neat, face clean-shaven, looking no older than twenty-four or twenty-five.
"Huh. The big idiot was only about twenty-four too, actually. Just not a university student."
The memory was a little hazy, but Ryan recalled that the big lug had been thrown out by his enraged father at around twenty, bought the Assassin formula roughly a year later, and then spent three more years gathering the ingredients before dying violently on the spot.
"So I'm basically a year older for nothing." Ryan felt cheated.
He had graduated at twenty-two, worked outside for just over a year, and then transmigrated into this world.
Being male, he wasn't the sort to dwell on something like this. He pushed it out of his mind and decided to take a walk. He wanted to see how much the big lug remembered about this city, beyond that one Extraordinaire gathering.
And now that he had money, it was time to think about picking up a dagger or two — something compact and easy to carry. Guns were useful, but you couldn't fire one freely in the middle of a city, and pulling the trigger also meant you couldn't throw your whole body into a Power Strike.
For an Assassin, cold steel was a necessity. He could hardly use Power Strike with his bare fists.
He hadn't gone far from the inn, however, when he sensed something was off. Someone was tailing him.
At first, he wasn't too concerned. He'd specifically chosen this inn because it was near the slums — poor public safety, easy to move around in. It wasn't surprising that a stranger passing through had been marked.
But when he tried to shake the tail, he found something more troubling. Even when he managed to lose the person momentarily, they always caught up again quickly.
He, an Assassin honed in the arts of tracking and evasion, could not shake this tail.