Slaughter 2

I proceeded with the Mage Sword and continued into the next room which only had a single man eating at a dining table. He wasn't doing anything incriminating, but he was covered from head to toes in gang tattoos. Judgement… I can't tell. Would it be unfair to judge him as a criminal just because he looked like a gangster? Discriminating a person just based on their appearance was bad, right?

…Hah, fuck it! High minded rhetoric that ultimately serves no practical purpose is pointless! I will suffocate my conscience just for one night.

With that in mind, I ran towards the man and swung my arm. The Mage Sword silently and smoothly sliced through the man's neck with ease, as expected of a magic sword that was as sharp as the deadliest sword in the world.

You have gained experience. +4,526 EXP

There was no loot in this room, which seemed to serve as a dining area for the thugs, so I went back where I came from and entered the room on the other side of the corridor.

This new room was more of a drug den, with several people laying on the ground or on couches with needles in their arm.

Narcotics… what a despicable concept. But my high INT head started brainstorming, with the knowledge of chemistry that I had studied being stimulated. I knew the formula for making methamphetamines, and it honestly wasn't a difficult process. I wondered if I could invent a new narcotic substance from scratch, with less harmful side effects and less severe withdrawals?

Drugs were a billion dollar industry after all. There was a reason why drug syndicates existed everywhere in the world where it was easy to grow and produce illegal narcotics, since drugs were a demand inelastic product that would have high demand no matter how expensive it was.

Even pharmaceutical companies were raking in billions upon billions of dollars every year selling opioids that were just as harmful if not more so than traditionally hard drugs.

I filed that idea away for now, in the new cabinet labelled 'Evil Jae Sung', containing the thoughts and ideas I thought would push me more towards the path of 'destroying the world' as the Ancient One put it.

For now, I decided to ignore the druggies destroying their own bodies and minds with substance abuse. None of them looked like the tattooed gang members of Los Pollo Loco. Rather, they looked more like victims than perpetrators.

I used detect once more, and found that other than the six people high off their minds in this room, the rest were upstairs. Given that the system had yet to alert me of a quest complete, it was obvious that there were more gang members on the upper floors.

My blood soaked path continues…

__________________________________________________________________

You have gained experience. +10,449 EXP

Quest [Street cleaner] Complete!

Eradicate the 'Los Pollo Loco' Gang (√)

(Bonus 1) Remain undetected (√)

(Bonus 2) Complete Mission within 1 hour(X)

Reward:

+25000 EXP

+10 Points

(Bonus 1) New Perk: Arcane Assassin

[Arcane Assassin]

Offensive spells used while in concealment deals 50% more damage.

The notification that I had completed the quest was delivered as I finished decapitating who I assumed was the leader of Los Pollo Loco. He had given the highest amount of EXP, easily 3 times more than some of his subordinates. He didn't seem three times stronger than the other gangsters, so perhaps status also contributed to the mount of EXP I would receive from killing them?

Blood dripped down the ceiling and walls, a gory scene that would fit perfectly in a horror movie.

Well the rewards for the quest were all well and good though, with the bundles of cash being safeguarded by the gang leader a far greater reward in my opinion.

I now had $194,068 stored in my inventory, along with 15 firearms - 1 of which was a shotgun. There was also a ziploc bag of crystal meth weighing around a pound, a brick of marijuana, a couple baggies of heroin as well as a couple baggies of cocaine.

I didn't know what I was going to do with so much drugs in my inventory, but I didn't want to leave it lying around for one of those unconscious druggies downstairs to find and inject in their veins.

It was a social service I was providing, confiscating illegal firearms and narcotics from society.

194 grand wasn't a massive sum of money, but it couldn't considered little as well, especially in 2000, where the 2004 financial crisis had yet to inflate prices of goods and real estate to brow-raising levels. There was a lot I could do with just this amount of capital… this brain of mine was constantly churning out ideas.

The biggest concern with the money, however, was how I was going to launder it. There was a reason why money laundering operations existed. 'Dirty' money needed to be 'cleaned' to avoid arousing suspicions from an evil organization known as the IRS. As the saying goes – you can cheat god, but you can never cheat the tax man.

I doubt using it in small quantities would trigger any suspicions, but the problem would arrive if I ever tried to make a larger purchase with the money.

I thought about using my parent's shop to launder the money, but that thought was erased just as quickly as it arrived. There was no way I would involve my parents in something criminal that could harm them without their knowledge.

But staring at the money in my inventory gave me a thought. What I did tonight, while brutal and unforgiving by society's standards, in a purely utilitarian point of view, would result in an overall net positive in terms of societal happiness.

I slew an entire gang of criminal scum who would have gone on to hurt, steal, rob more people if I hadn't stopped them. I mean, sure, the money I found and the EXP gain was great as well. But I could do a lot of good for this world with my powers and abilities, starting with cleaning up New York City.

Precisely because I had [Gamer's Mind] suppressing all emotions other than cold logic, I knew that I was not trying to be a good person out of emotional needs. I could objectively weigh the pros and cons of my decisions without bias.

Pure altruism was not my motivation, I was also heavily influenced by more practical reasons, such as the material and EXP reward from both quests and loot. Factors such as economic benefits from lower crime rates, reputation and identity building, future influence and authority amounting from the cleansing and more reasons were also considered.

Plus, I could make the city my parents lived in safer…

I left the dilapidated building which was once the headquarters of the now annihilated Los Pollo Loco gang, with the weight of having taken multiple lives now on my shoulders. Surprisingly, this weight was as light as a feather. It was a little scary how little I now regarded human lives, but I found it waste of time to interrogate my conscience regarding the cause.

It was getting late so I made my way back home.

I yawned, which would have been an adorable sight if anyone could actually see me. I was still a growing child after all, I needed proper rest. Especially since tomorrow would be another late night…