“HAAH!”

Leo took a hasty, greedy breath upon waking up.

And he regretted doing so the very next instant.

The nanites were still in the process of fixing his body up. After all, while relying on them for too long, his body’s own abilities to perform as usual would degrade… The very cause of this effect, the nanites, were also perfectly capable of restoring his flesh back to its proper shape.

‘I remember someone nagging about some sort of vicious circle,’ Leo thought, struggling not to let out a pained groan which would only put even further stress on his body.

Taking a huge whiff of the tranquilizer smoke right as the grenade went off didn’t help either.

But as Leo forced himself to open his eyes and look as much as he could without actively moving his head…

The cold math of this bet proved to be in his odds.

Despite the first instance of nanite abuse keeling him over… his ability to regenerate went above and beyond anything that evolution could create.

‘That’s what human technology is all about, after all,’ Leo smiled to his thoughts upon noticing the sleeping faces of the three masked strangers.

‘It’s all about brute-forcing nature to do whatever it is that we desire,’ Leo thought, forcing his chest up, taking a few more seconds to regain the sliver of strength before attempting to stand up.

The effects of overdose continued to linger, marking every slightest movement with burning pain.

However, the nanites in Leo's system continued to rush to fix all the degradations, raising Leo’s restorative processes way above natural limits.

And it was this process that Leo bet his life on when he used the tranquilizer slash sleeper-gas charge. He bet his life on his nanites bringing him out of this stunned sleep faster than the locals could wake up on their own.

‘That’s one small win,’ Leo thought, finally managing to get up to his feet and taking a look around from a wider perspective.

The corpses of the knights have yet to start rotting, the courtesy of all the cool and shade of the nearby trees. And Leo’s main point of interest, the one knight that withstood his barrage, slept exactly in the same place he saw him before.

The masked trio fell wherever the gas reached them, with the older one sleeping with his head away from the gas. He managed not only to turn around but also retreat before falling prey to the sleeping agent anyway.

For a moment, Leo contemplated the idea of restraining those people…

‘Nah, it would do more bad than good,’ the young man thought, rolling his eyes as he moved back to the knight and raised the edge of his helmet.

‘Should I pull it off…? Well, it will make a mess anyway so the least I can do is use it to contain it.’

Raising just the bottom of the helmet, Leo affirmed the position of his gun before looking away and pressing the trigger.

Just one quick burst did what Leo’s entire barrage from before couldn’t.

And without a second of hesitation, Leo pulled the gun away before reaching out to his backpack.

The one, extremely important thought that flashed in his head either was all about this knight.

And now that the person in question went off on its dispatch to whatever hell they believed in this world, Leo was free to latch onto his hopes.

‘Come on, where is it…’ Deprived of nanites' direct control, the young man struggled to find the correct item in the packed insides of his tactical backpack. Soon enough, though, he managed to grasp an overly familiar shape.

An item that was at the core of every mission that didn’t end up wiped out upon arrival.

A cheat code of abusing corporate benefits in the worlds that are, according to the researchers back home, more and more underdeveloped the further away one gets from the earth’s anchor.

After all, with the rules of the universe relaxing more and more the further one goes down the probability well, the easier it gets to manipulate the rules that reigned absolute back on earth.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

With no challenge, the problems that pushed Earth’s civilization ahead simply didn’t exist, likely to be resolved by much simpler solutions abusing the limits of the lax or altered physical rules.

And the device that Leo finally managed to pull out of his backpack, was designed all to abuse this probable edge.

‘Let’s hope it works,’ Leo prayed in his thoughts as he placed a simple, fist-sized yet perfectly round orb upon the noble’s corpse.

The moment Leo pulled away, the orb split into four perfect quarters before falling away from the center. Each of the orb’s quarts then split into two again, creating a flowery pattern the size of an opened hand atop the corpse’s armor.

A wave of light moved out from the center of the black, fragmented flower to the outer edges of its petals. Then, merely three seconds later, the innermost corners of each piece lit up, joining in the middle only to create a three-dimensional, holographic projection reaching perfectly to the level of Leo’s hands.

Upon taking a few minutes to carefully study every part of the grading system and inputting some more data by tapping into the holographic keys, Leo took a step back and allowed the device to do its magic.

For a moment, the holograph vanished without a trace when all of the laster-like rays of light ceased. A mere moment later, the holograph reappeared with a simple number flashing in the bottom left corner.

“Not bad…” Smiling for the first time in what felt like ages, Leo stretched out his back as he kept staring at the number displayed by the grading device.

[5300 credits]

Five stacks for the full armor, three hundred for the mutilated corpse.

A fortune that Leo would struggle for months to earn.

And that wasn’t even the most important part.

‘With the corporate discounts…’ Leo put a small smile on his face as he swiped at the holograph, moving over to the secondary system.

Just by doing so, a fee of a thousand credits added up to the bill, for all the costs the corporation would have to sustain to activate the process.

And for the rest of the credits, Leo was free to pick up from the wide selection of specially prepared products.

And all of them, are prized at the manufacturing cost.

It was only within the rifts that one could obtain absurdly expensive technology and tools for so cheap. And with the generous prizing of all the artifacts and resources one could sell away…

‘Well, there’s a reason why humanity nearly self-genocided.’ Leo sighed away. ‘People wouldn’t throw their lives away so easily if the benefits weren’t so damn ridiculous.’

Used to the life of extreme poverty, Leo reeled in his ability to pretty much order years upon years' worth of supplies all at once. Or how he could suddenly afford the tools that his family lacked so much.

‘God damn, there are even scholarships and studying materials!’

Even though it only featured products of the Sava megacorporation, there were so many possible items in the shop, that it was extremely easy to just get lost in it.

And above all…

‘No matter what I get, they will track it, won’t they?’

Cooling his enthusiasm down, Leo took a deep breath before taking a more rational approach to his shopping sense.

For a moment, Leo lingered on the idea of just getting the beacon back home and returning with roughly half of the fortune he was about to make with just this one armor and corpse…

But the moment his finger hovered over the item…

Leo hesitated before looking around.

Those who were immediately hostile towards him and attacked were now dead, leaving only three of those masked strangers as witnesses to Leo’s arrival and ability.

And as much as they were a risk…

In this world likely teeming with stuff that Sava corporation would happily extract, they could also prove to be great assets.

‘Thinking about it, they were in some sort of a showdown, weren’t they?’

Looking up, Leo stole a long glance at the bloody battlefield nearby.

It was still the middle of the day, with the bright sun shining through the trees and covering the entire clearing with its warm light.

And with a sigh, Leo confirmed his options on the holograph before authorizing the contract.

He was the Sava’s corporate contractor, not an employer after all, so while he was owed no social policy or benefits, he could also retain a much greater part of his exploration of the unknown rift.

In a sense, unless another corporate drone were to randomly appear in the same reality as Leo by total chance, this world would be all his to exploit!

‘And for that purpose…’ Leo gave the sleeping trio a heavy look before rolling his eyes and sending the extraction procedure through.

A thousand credits of a fee… doubled when taking into account the need for a replacement extraction device. Then, for the next three thousand, Leo ordered the standard issue rifle, the one tool that he so sorely missed, despite how it was nothing but dead-weight during his first encounter with the lethal nature of the rifts.

And with the last three hundred, he brought forth all the stuff that simply caught his eye, mostly from within the shop's “recommended” category.

The shopping list could easily reach hundreds of thousands back on earth, assuming he would be allowed to possess those items in the first place.

Yet, the price and the use approval all came with the simple restriction that guaranteed Sava’s corporation monopoly over the trade coming off the worlds it sponsored.

A simple rule that whatever one obtained within the rift worlds, had to either be extracted by the company’s device or left behind upon return.

The megacorp didn’t care what happened within the rift world, but it laid full claim to be the sole beneficiary of whatever resource one was to sell back home.

“Now, we wait,” Leo muttered to himself when the black flower of the extraction device suddenly started to shine with bright, white light… Only for the light to cover the knight’s corpse and vanish.

And a moment later, within a similar flash of light, a crate filled with Leo’s requested items appeared in the knight's corpse’s place.

“I wonder how long will it take for them to wake up?” Leo thought, arming himself with the standard-issue rifle and looking down at the masked figures.

And regardless of Leo’s wish to keep his cold and detached attitude… his eyes couldn’t help but linger on that strange girl’s face.