Chapter 35: Brunch

  Lu Bu Post Death

  I've been called charismatic before, charming, or dynamic. It has even been said that I have a good sense of humor. It could be any of these reasons that I have never struggled to make friends. For the most part, I believe the real reason is that I am the strongest. Power draws people like moths to candle flames. There have, however, been a few people and occasions where my ability to draw allies to myself really did come from my personality.

  I had learned a few things about making friends on those occasions, and truthfully, the process can be quite straightforward.

  The case of Fabio De Medici might be the perfect example of such. We ate several courses of good food, we drank seven bottles of wine, and we made jokes at each other's expense. By the time that we strode laughing out of the restaurant known as Sector 404, I was more than willing to kill for that man, and I think he would have done the same for me.

  I had learned a lot over the course of our conversation, well, Diaochan did most of the learning, but I still gained in knowledge and added my lizard armored friend to my [Contact List]. Which was my HUD's way of keeping track of my allies, and allowed me to 'call them'. Not in the sense of the term as I would imagine it, mind you. Oh no, this 'call' wasn't a shout, but the incredible communication ability that the A.Is granted everyone in this world. Even now, after weeks of existence in this non-heavenly afterlife, I still marveled at the technique.

  Even if I frequently used my own strength to carry the day, this kind of ability would have meant my army would have never lost a battle. I almost laugh out loud at that thought. See, the thing is that my army had never lost a battle. Even when I was captured and executed by those treacherous dogs Cao Cao and Liu Bei, my army remained undefeated.

  It had been my very own troops turning on me that had led to such an outcome, not a loss in the field. I still didn't quite understand how a little water had managed to break my warrior's resolve like it had, and probably never would. The weaknesses of lesser men weren't really a mystery I cared to ponder.

  As powerful as Fabio's armor made him, that strength still resided in the evolution suit itself, not within him as such. My newly acquired friend was what I would call dead drunk. Still, every time the man seemed like he was going to stumble, his mechanical tail stretched out and either counterbalanced him or pushed off the ground to keep him upright.

  "Is that thing even fun?" I asked, nodding towards Fabio's retracted armor.

  "What thing?" He said, not quite slurring but clearly in less than full command of his faculties.

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  "Your Evolution Suit does all the fighting for you. Isn't that boring?"

  The blonde man's face as he considered his answer was so serious that he looked like a sage contemplating the very nature of existence.

  "Well." He said, now stroking his chin. "It doesn't do all the fighting; it's more like playing a video game. So there is still skill and timing involved, just very little of the physical side of things."

  "I have no fucking idea what you are talking about," I replied honestly. Which made the drunken young man burst out laughing.

  "Right, right, I keep forgetting you are a paradox incursion, so you have like your past life memories. Sounds bad ass by the way, riding around on horses, sword fighting people, and shit. My great-grandfather was a paradox incursion, too, you know?" I did know that; he had informed me the first time this topic had come up an hour ago.

  He proceeded to go on about how the suit placed limiters on him and forced him to learn how to use his own class's defensive abilities, but truth be told, it still sounded to me like the armor did everything for him. Coming from a family of bankers and bureaucrats, I couldn't really blame him for using it, even if it did mean I had concluded Dioachan was wrong earlier. There was no possibility this chubby little weakling could have defeated me, regardless of the suit's level or my own. A warrior requires a will that Fabio simply did not possess. Even his class wasn't one I would rely on in a fight. At first, I'd thought [Specumancer] would grant him some sort of predictive abilities with which to navigate a fight. That wasn't it at all, the class, as it turned out, was based around speculating on 'market forces', which is a concept I'd needed the Diaochan A.I to explain to me three times before I understood what she was talking about.

  Once I did understand, I informed Fabio that he was wasting his life and had wasted his class selection. To my surprise, he had mostly agreed with me. Fabio also assured me his car would get him home safely without any intervention from him, no matter how drunk he'd gotten. So I didn't feel bad for abandoning my newly acquired friend.

  Ji-Ho 'called' me not long after I left the restaurant and the raindrop behind. The level four [Cyberneticist] had grown concerned by my lack of checking in, and wanted to make sure I wasn't bleeding to death in the hunting ground somewhere. His concern was honestly kind of amusing, or would have been if it didn't annoy me.

  "What are you, my mother?" I'd asked him with a voice full of scorn.

  "Maybe not, but you are supposed to be the muscle today, and I'd really rather not take my little sister into a den of gangster clans without some backup."

  While I couldn't actually blame him for that, it did make me wonder how these two ever survived before I got here.

  "I'll be home soon, don't worry." I Placated.

  "Oh, take your time, the meeting isn't till six tonight. Ji is just being a pussy about it and stressing over everything." Came Ha-Rin's voice through the call. She hadn't 'connected' to it through her own HUD, so much as it sounded like she was calling out from across the house.

  I now understood how time was measured in this city, though truth be told, I considered it the stupidest system I had ever encountered for such a purpose. Either way, my HUD had the time listed in the bottom right corner of my vision as [1:09:]. Ha-Rin was right, I had plenty of time, but I also didn't know how long preparations or travel from the workshop to…wherever it was we were going would take.

  "I will be back soon," I repeated and ended the call.