The blue-white glow of the store interface hung in the darkness in front of Ervin's disembodied face. Two hundred and ninety-one points. It was a solid sum, enough to make meaningful purchases, but not so much that he could afford to be careless. Ervin drifted closer to the display, his attention moving slowly across the available options.
His gaze settled first on the Character File. Two hundred and fifty points. The question that had nagged at him for days resurfaced: what exactly was it? A second character? A new body to control? The idea was tantalizing — the ability to be in two places at once, or rather, three. To train one vessel while another handled business, could he, at some point, build a network of avatars across the city? But the uncertainty gnawed at him. Could he even handle two bodies simultaneously? His mental bandwidth, whatever that meant in his current state, was not infinite. Splitting his attention might leave both half-controlled. He filed the thought away. Not now. Not until he understood more.
His gaze drifted to the Fighting Styles section. The list stretched before him: Street Dog Fighting Style, Kickboxing, Boxing, Karate, Muay Thai, Taekwondo, and more, each priced at a hundred and fifty points. Ervin studied the names, drawing on the vague scraps of knowledge he'd picked up over the years. Muay Thai was aggressive, known for its devastating kicks and elbow strikes, a brutal and efficient style favored in close-quarters combat. Kickboxing was similar but more reliant on punches and footwork, a hybrid that balanced offense and defense. Boxing was pure punching—fast hands, head movement, footwork, but it lacked any grappling or kicking, which could be a liability against a grappler. Taekwondo emphasized high, flashy kicks, impressive in demonstrations but perhaps less practical in a real fight where a missed kick could leave you off-balance. Karate was more structured, focusing on linear strikes and blocks, but it often lacked the fluidity needed for chaotic street fights. Street Dog Fighting Style sounded like a catch-all brawling method, probably effective, but not amazing at everything.
He considered them each in turn. A fighting style would give Han Joon-seong immediate combat capability, something that would be invaluable if the gang situation escalated. But Ervin had no real understanding of which style would suit his needs best. He didn't know the mechanics of the system well enough to judge whether the styles were taught instantly or required practice to master. And with no way to test them beforehand, buying one felt like gambling. A hundred and fifty points wasn't trivial, it was over half his current balance. If he chose poorly, he'd be stuck with a style that didn't fit his attributes or his situation. Better leave it for when he was better informed.
His attention moved to the Characteristic Card. Two hundred points. A new characteristic. He already had four: Adaptation, Talent, Auto Pilot, and Money. All four of them bore the label "Perfect." The power of Auto Pilot alone had proven invaluable—it allowed Han Joon-seong to act independently, to execute commands with flawless precision, to handle the body's daily routines while Ervin's consciousness drifted and explored. If the card could grant something even remotely as useful, it would be a game-changer.
He thought about the possibilities. A characteristic that enhanced combat instincts. One that improved learning speed for new skills. The range of potential outcomes was vast, but that uncertainty was also its appeal. Unlike the fighting styles, which were fixed and finite, a characteristic could open entirely new avenues of growth. And he already knew how powerful characteristics could be. The card was a gamble, yes, but it was a gamble with a far higher ceiling.
Ervin looked back at the three options. Character File—too complex, so too risky. Fighting Styles—practical, clear, important, but he lacked the knowledge to choose wisely right now. Characteristic Card—a proven category, with known potential for game-changing abilities. The choice crystallized in his mind.
He thought about his situation. The gangs were circling. Han Do-yun had made his offer, and while he'd politely declined joining, the contract work was still on the table. But Ervin didn't want to be caught in the middle of gang politics. The Juhwang-pa, the Galsaek-pa, the Kkachi-pa— all in balance? Yeah, right, like Criminals could be trusted to mantain order, at some point or another these three would clash, and a lone actor with no allegiance was a target. He had just obtained the chance to rise to heights he had never had before, and he absolutely would! To survive, to thrive, he needed strength. Real strength. The kind that made people think twice before crossing him.
He made his decision.
Han Joon-seong's sleeping form stirred slightly as Ervin willed the purchase. Two hundred points vanished from his balance, leaving him with ninety-one. In the darkness of his disembodied space, a soft light began to coalesce. A card materialized in front of his awareness, hovering in the air—translucent, shimmering with the same blue-white glow of the system interface. Its edges were clean, sharp, like a slighly larger playing card. On its face, a symbol was etched in pale gold: a sword piercing through an eye, the blade running vertically through the pupil, the hilt visible at the bottom. Ervin thought it odd. It was abstract, vaguely ominous, but not threatening.
He reached out with his imaginary hand and took the card. The surface was cool and smooth, almost glassy, and it seemed to hum faintly with latent energy. He turned it over, examining the back and there a rapid cascade of symbols began to scroll across the card's surface—letters, numbers, pictograms, shapes he didn't recognize, all moving so fast they blurred into streaks of light. It was like watching a slot machine in overdrive, the symbols cycling through an endless sequence at dizzying speed.
He stared at it, bewildered. "What is this?"
The symbols continued to scroll, unrelenting. He tried to make sense of them, to catch a pattern, but they moved too quickly. Frustration flickered through him. He shook the card—a reflexive, almost childish gesture—and the scrolling slowed. Not much, but enough that he could see individual symbols flickering past: a stylized fist, a pair of wings, a crescent moon, an open hand, a flame, a pair of eyes. He shook it again, harder this time, and the scrolling decelerated further, the symbols now passing at a leisurely pace.
"Okay," he thought, a nervous excitement building. "This is like a slot machine. I just need to let it stop."
He held the card steady, watching as the symbols continued their procession. Over and over, cycling in no apparent order. He considered trying to will it to stop, but he had no idea how to do that. So he simply waited, letting the card run its course.
The symbols began to slow on their own. The pace dropped from a blur to a crawl, the images now passing one by one, each lingering for a moment before fading into the next.
The card froze on a stylized interrogation symbol, a curved line with a dot beneath it, simple yet strangely evocative. Ervin stared at it, waiting for the familiar chime and text that usually accompanied a system notification.
[[System]
[Characteristic Acquired: Intuition (Lvl. 1)]]
Ervin blinked. Or rather, he would have, if he'd had eyelids. "Intuition?"
He pulled up his status window, the blue-white interface materializing beside the now-dissolving card.
[[System]
Player: Ervin Mandor
Character 1; Han Joon-seong
[Characteristics:
Adaptation(Perfect)
Talent(Perfect)
Auto Pilot(Perfect)
Money(Perfect|Middle-class)
Intuition (Lvl. 1)
Looks(Lvl. 5)
Speed(Lvl. 4)(11/80)
Strength (Lvl. 4)(22/80)
Endurance (Lvl. 5)(42/160)
Vigor (Lvl. 5)(10/160)
Intelligence (Lvl. 3)(6/40)
[Tasks:
[Street Policing — End the Contraband Market in Sangdo-dong. Reward — 200 Points]]]
He stared at the new entry, his confusion deepening. "Intuition? What does that even mean?"
The word echoed in his mind, offering no answers. Intuition. The ability to know something without conscious reasoning. To sense things that weren't immediately obvious. It sounded useful in theory, but he had no frame of reference for how it would manifest. Would he suddenly start getting hunches? Would Han Joon-seong's body move on its own in response to unseen threats? Would random thoughts pop into his head, guiding him toward the right decisions?
He considered the possibility that it might be useless—if it's only right sometimes, it means it's sometimes wrong, not reliable. But that didn't feel right. The system, for all its oddities, had proven itself practical so far. The Strengthening Pills worked exactly as advertised. The Recovery Pill had healed Han Joon-seong's injuries completely. The Money characteristic generated funds reliably. Even Auto Pilot, which had seemed bizarre at first, had turned out to be one of his most valuable assets. The system didn't seem like the type to give him something without reliable use.
Except, of course, for the Weakening Pills. Those remained an utter mystery. A pill that made you weaker for twenty-four hours, costing points to acquire? He still couldn't imagine a single scenario where that would be useful. But that was an item, a consumable. This was a characteristic. Characteristics were foundational, integral to how the system operated. They weren't supposed to be useless.
So Intuition had to have some application. He just didn't know what it was yet.
He mulled it over, letting his thoughts drift. Intuition was the ability to make leaps of logic from minimal information. The classic example: a person sees someone buying diapers, but the buyer doesn't look like a parent. Something about their demeanor seems off. There's no concrete evidence, nothing the person can point to and say "that's suspicious," but their instincts tell them something is wrong. That was intuition—the subconscious mind piecing together details too small for conscious awareness, then presenting the conclusion as a gut feeling.
But how would that work for him? Would he just start having random thoughts about people's intentions? Would he get a sudden flash of insight in the middle of a conversation? The uncertainty gnawed at him. He couldn't test it properly while Han Joon-seong was asleep. He would have to wait until morning, until the body was awake and moving through the world.
Then another detail caught his attention. He looked back at the status window, at the line that read "Intuition (Lvl. 1)." There was no "Perfect" tag.
His mental brow furrowed. Adaptation, Talent, Auto Pilot, Money, all four of his previous characteristics had come with the "Perfect" label. Intuition did not. That meant something. It meant that not every characteristic he received would be perfect. Some could be Ordinary, so he would call it, just a level one that could presumably be trained or upgraded. He had kind of hoped that all characteristics were created equal, that the system's baseline was excellence. But that wasn't the case.
So why had those four been Perfect? Was it because they were the initial package, the basic setup for a new player? Or had he simply gotten lucky? And if Intuition was just level one, that meant it could grow, but it also meant it started weaker. He would need to invest time and effort to make it useful, assuming it could even be trained.
He let out a long, soundless sigh. "So much for a free lunch."
But even as he thought it, a subtle shift occurred in his awareness. A clarity, almost imperceptible, settled over his thoughts. It wasn't knowledge, nothing new had entered his mind. But the way he processed the information he already had felt different. Cleaner. The connections between ideas seemed more apparent. He looked back at the status window, at the list of attributes, and without any conscious effort, his mind began to draw connections.
Strength and Endurance were both physical. Speed and Vigor also physical. Intelligence was mental. Intuition was something else—not quite mental, not quite physical. It was perceptual. A different category entirely. And if it could be trained, what would that training look like? Would reading help? Or was it something that improved through experience, through exposure to situations that required quick judgments?
He considered the mission sitting in his task list: Street Policing — End the Contraband Market in Sangdo-dong. Two hundred points. A substantial reward. But the nature of the mission was ambiguous. Ending a contraband market could happen in many ways after all, though violence, negotiating it, or infiltrating on the operation. Intuition might be exactly the tool he needed for that kind of work. Being able to read a unreadable situation, sensing a lie or someone hiding something, and to know when to push and when to retreat.
"Alright," Ervin thought, a tentative optimism creeping into his mental voice. "Maybe this isn't so bad after all."
He looked down at Han Joon-seong's sleeping form. The body lay still, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. In the morning, he would test this new characteristic. He would walk through the city, talk to people, observe his surroundings, and see if anything felt different. If Intuition worked the way he suspected, it would be a suitable tool.