Klein could have caught up to Bullseye.
In the same moment the Bullet String had punched through the man's lung, a Parasitic Thread had attached itself — so fine it was essentially undetectable, anchored to Bullseye's body and feeding back a faint but continuous signal. Location. Vital status. Movement patterns.
As long as Bullseye stayed on the planet, Klein would know exactly where he was.
But right now, Klein had other priorities.
For the past month he'd been running a schedule that would've broken most people — classes during the day, Hell's Kitchen at night, zero margin between. Even the most dedicated person needed to surface eventually.
Now he had money. Real money. And the first thing he planned to do with it was absolutely nothing productive for at least twenty-four hours.
Bullseye's lung would keep. The man was a professional — he'd survive a puncture, heal up, and come back eventually. That was fine. Klein would deal with him when the timing was right, and while he was at it, work his way up to whoever had sent him.
Two problems resolved in one trip. Efficient.
He carried the duffel all the way back to the apartment, dropped it inside the door, and went straight to the bathroom. Cold water, vigorous face wash, long exhale.
Finally.
He walked back to the living room, unzipped the bag, and upended it onto the sofa bed.
Bundles of dark green hundreds cascaded out, followed by the velvet bags of gold bars — heavy, clinking — and a scatter of jewelry from the various nights of operation. He added the accumulated haul from the past month on top of it all.
The pile covered nearly half the bed.
Klein sat on the edge and started counting.
The sound of bills being sorted was genuinely satisfying. He hadn't expected that.
Final count: just over five million one hundred thousand in cash. Gold and jewelry combined, estimated at another one and a half million. Call it six point six million total.
He leaned back into the pile and stared at the ceiling.
A month ago he'd been doing math on whether to add an egg to his instant noodles.
Six and a half million dollars.
Not bad for a month's work.
The weapons he'd collected along the way — various handguns, a couple of shotguns, some automatic hardware, a few grenades — were all stacked in the back of the wardrobe. He hadn't gone looking for them specifically; they just accumulated when you dismantled gang operations. He'd figure out what to do with them eventually. Sell them, most likely. For now they sat in the corner being somebody else's problem.
The drugs he'd come across during operations had all been dealt with the same way every time — heat vision, precisely applied, until nothing remained. He had no use for them and no interest in letting them back onto the street.
"Start the draw," he thought.
[Ding!][The ability you have drawn is — Dynamic Vision!]
The load was subtle — a faint warmth behind his eyes, a cool spreading sensation through his optic nerves — and then the world shifted.
Everything sharpened. Not just in resolution but in speed — his brain's processing of visual information had jumped to an entirely different gear. He could see individual dust particles drifting through the shaft of lamplight. In the corner, a spider was working on its web, each leg movement tracking clean and separate, the silk vibrating in slow motion.
A fly had gotten in through the window gap at some point and was buzzing around the room. To Klein's new vision it looked like it was moving through syrup — every wing beat decomposed into individual frames, its flight path projected a half-second ahead like a trajectory line.
He reached out without really thinking about it and closed two fingers around the fly in mid-air.
Hm.
He opened his fingers and let it go.
Practically speaking, Dynamic Vision was genuinely useful — against ranged attackers, fast-moving targets, anything that required reaction speed above human baseline. Tonight's Bullseye encounter alone would've gone differently if he'd had this loaded already.
But compared to the first three draws — Cyclops, String-String Fruit, Five Elements Talisman Crafting — it was clearly a step down in raw power. The physical enhancement that came with it was barely noticeable, just a brief warm current rather than the full-body restructuring the earlier abilities had produced.
Klein stared at the ceiling.
Can't win every draw. He'd been spoiled by three consecutive high-tier abilities. A more modest pull was inevitable eventually. Dynamic Vision was still free, still useful, still genuinely applicable in a fight.
He'd take it.
He settled back into the pile of bills, folded his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes.
Sleep first. Then figure out how to spend this properly.
He woke up the next morning to sunlight coming through the small window and falling across a bed covered in green paper and gold.
Klein lay there for a moment, blinking at it.
Then he stretched — a full, unhurried stretch, bones popping pleasantly — and sat up.
The fatigue of the past month had cleared out overnight in a way that felt almost physical, like something had been wrung out and hung up to dry. He felt genuinely rested for the first time since arriving in this world.
He picked up a banded stack of hundreds and turned it over in his hands.
Right.
He got up, showered, changed into the least-worn outfit he owned — which wasn't saying much — and stood in front of the cracked bathroom mirror.
The mirror gave back a face that looked considerably less exhausted than it had a month ago.
Klein decided he was satisfied with that.
He had money now. Which meant a to-do list that had been entirely theoretical for weeks could finally become practical.
First: an actual meal. The kind that came on a real plate in a real restaurant, not assembled from whatever was cheapest at the corner store.
Second: new clothes. The current wardrobe had served its purpose but the purpose had changed.
Third — Klein's expression shifted into something more leisurely, a private kind of amusement — he'd figure out the third thing as it came up.
He pocketed a stack of cash, grabbed his jacket, and headed for the door.
New chapter, he thought, and took the stairs two at a time.
[End of Chapter 11]
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