The Loan Shark's Insidious Business Module

It was undoubtedly one of the strongest beasts to have walked into his sacred ground's territory. The affix, combined with the description of its uniqueness, made Euri consider adopting it for cultivation despite his fear of the splitting headaches.

In the end, he chose to cultivate the porcupine because he sorely lacked a beast with serious destructive power among his army. Saw Serpent was too slow to take down an opponent, and Scout Dog was fast but harmless.

After a minute of rolling around on the bed, clutching his throbbing scalp, Euri shook off the disoriented feeling and focused on the miniscreen, recalling the newly added memory sequences of training the porcupine.

Its special ability—Endless Arsenal, turned out to be pretty impressive, just as he had suspected. It gave the porcupine the ability to use its quills as disposable weapons, and regrow them from the roots at an incredibly fast pace. A cornered porcupine thus could fight for hours without running out of quills to stab an enemy with!

"I wonder what effect an upgrade would have on its ability..." Euri muttered in fascination as he ordered the Porcupine to cultivate under the gas well.

Then he turned his focus on the locusts who had invaded the sacred ground alongside the porcupine. Out of the five invaders, three had been killed in battle.

The remaining two seemed to hear Euri's commands and obediently joined the porcupine's side to cultivate, even though the clouds of green gas avoided them.

"This verifies my previous theory—when I bond with a creature that has twins, I can command them all without bonding with everyone. But they cannot claim the privilege of being under my control inside the sacred ground!"

Euri was ecstatic at having discovered a firm in-game mechanism. Most rules he had assumed so far could not be relied on, speaking from his experiences so far. But this one was turning out to be a concrete principle.

Euri then recalled the remaining members of his army, those hiding deep within the woods, and put them back to the task of cultivation.

Scavenger Rat was yet to return with new ingredients for ambrosia. And Euri didn't have intact beast corpses to deposit in the ambrosia pool either. So there was no hope of jumping past 1.2 points of his Physique stat anytime soon.

Of course, he could always just kill one of the beasts in his army to gather ingredients of ambrosia. But unless he needed a boost desperately, Euri wasn't willing to let go of an asset he had been investing resources into.

Due to his extensive experiments since waking up, he had gotten late for school. Euri didn't have time to exercise as usual, and barely fit some bread and moldy vegetables into his mouth before he rushed out of home.

The metro circuit turned out to be severely congested today because of some technical failures, reducing Euri's hurried journey into a meaningless endeavor.

Accepting that he wasn't going to make it in time for the first couple of periods, Euri went to a corner of the massive station to look into his study materials. The Red Sea Lab's test was of little concern to him. He was worried more about the upcoming academic evaluation.

About fifteen minutes into his study session, two shadows fell over his book, and looking up, Euri recognized them both. Aemon and his colleague in the debt collection business, whom he had met a couple of days back right here.

"Were you waiting for us?" Aemon asked gruffly as he pulled out an electronic cigarette from his mouth. Stuffing it inside a pocket of his oversized coat, he and his colleague sat by Euri's side gingerly.

"I wasn't—"

"No, it's fine. It's fine." Aemon put up a hand to stop Euri from explaining.

"I get that you're desperate to earn some quick stacks. I'd be running to people every day if I were in your shoes. Don't apologize for it."

Euri couldn't decide whether to clear up the misunderstanding. On one hand, his parents did manage to get employed fast.

But on the flip side, their job didn't pay well; neither was it sustainable.

He'd have to turn to some ways of making money sooner or later.

"By the way, speaking of earning stacks, we have a job on our hands right now." Aemon continued.

"Been stuck here since dawn because of the fuckup they made with the schedules. But we were supposed to be in one of the wing-zone suburbs, dealing with a habitual defaulter. You can come with us if you want."

Euri's gaze shifted between both men a couple of times, examining the details of their countenance. Aemon's colleague didn't seem delighted by the prospect, clearly. Either he didn't think Euri was fit for the job, or he didn't want to share the commission money.

Perhaps both were true, but Euri realized after a span of silence that the man wasn't going to complain. Just to sate his curiosity about the nature of this debt collection job, Euri agreed to accompany them to the wing-zone of the district. He had nothing better to do anyway.

Conveniently, the shuttle they needed to take for that destination was back in operation half an hour later. The three of them boarded the train and spent the entire time of the journey discussing tactics and information. Of course, Euri's contribution in the discussion was next to nothing.

Their target was a white-collar worker in a well-established firm providing private legal services to other companies. The man had a habit of gambling, and although he tended to keep it within reasonable borders, he had accidentally gone overboard three months ago.

Unable to collect the huge amount of money from his usual sources, he had turned to Aemon's boss, who had extended a helping hand knowing he had hooked a big fish. The man's gambling debt had been paid, but the loan shark's debt was only increasing every week.

"How much money does he owe?" Euri asked after seeing how much emphasis Aemon was putting on the amount.

"764,000 credits as of this week. If he doesn't pay by the end of the month, it'll cross 770,000. That's the final ceiling according to the loan contract. So he better be ready with some cash," Aemon said vindictively.

Euri sucked in a quick breath. He thought the kids who gambled in hundreds in dueling rings were unreasonably stupid, but to gamble nearly a million credits...

How could such an idiot hold a decent job? That too in a law firm!

"Hahaha, look at your face," Aemon said, poking Euri's head playfully. "Don't worry. Jameson and I don't have the clearance to deal in amounts that high. Today, we're going to take back 50,000 at most, even if he insists on paying more. With stable gamblers like him, drawing out the debt is more beneficial!"

The implications weren't lost on Euri, and he couldn't help but suck in another breath of apprehension at the business model of these loan sharks.