"Scram boy. You don't have enough ammunition to be asking any questions." The second man, maybe in his thirties with ragged clothing and a cigarette hanging from his lips said as he stood up.
I was intrigued, ammunition must be their currency. Kal hadn't mentioned it because he figured I already knew about it. Ammunition being currency made a certain amount of sense though. Unless you completely neglect your weapon, you'll always have it ready to go, but if you run out of ammunition it's nothing more than a fancy metal stick. Unfortunately, there was likely no production of ammunition remaining in the city, even if there once was. That meant as bullets were used each and every bullet remaining would become more and more valuable until they became more useful unspent and securely in the chamber as a threat instead of something to throw around without thought. It may have already gotten to that point, but I found that unlikely as these men seemed to think the new middle class of the apocalypse in this city carried them around.
I think my Intelligence stat must be speeding up my thought process because even after considering all of that, only a second had passed.
"Good thing I have something better to trade." I said smiling at the second man.
"Oh? And what's that?" He asked, dropping the boy and finally seeming to take an interest in the conversation.
Unfortunately for him I didn't think he'd much like what I was offering.
"Well, you see, if you don't answer my questions, I'm going to kill you, which means I'll be trading you all back your lives. How does that sound?" I asked, the smile never leaving my face.
There was a second of frozen silence as their brains tried to confirm what their ears heard. Then, each of the three men in front of me had wildly different reactions. The old man in the back started laughing, the man in front of me drew a pistol from behind him, and the man who had yet to speak turned and ran like he had just seen a demon rip through his entire group. Maybe that man had some sort of future sight skill, because before the man with the gun could raise his hand halfway up, I took it off at the wrist. I completely severed his hand with a quick strike from my energy blade which manifested and disappeared in what must have been a dark flash for these men.
As the man finally brought his arm level with me and presumably tried to pull the trigger of a gun he didn't have with a hand and finger he no longer had, he staired down at his stump with wide eyes.
"M-m-my hand-d!?" He stuttered out with a mixture between shock and disbelief coursing through his voice.
Before the smart one could get away, I cut off both legs of the gunman with a simple slash. As he began to collapse, I walked by the older man who had first spoken to me, the laughing man. He had stopped laughing when he saw me start removing limbs from his friend, now he was standing still shocked and choking on air. I pushed him down with ease and told him to stay. I spoke with calm confidence as if I already knew he would obey before I even spoke the word, his rattled mind obeyed.
Now these three were maybe level 14 give or take a level, so the guy was moving pretty fast. Unfortunately for him I was so very much faster. I was already 7 levels beyond him, but the thing was for everyone one of my levels I gained four times more stats than these people, which meant my effective level was 84 compared to this level 14. I didn't even reach my full speed before my hand came down on his shoulder, stopping him cold.
"Now where do you think you're going?" I asked in a sickly-sweet voice.
He didn't respond, but that was fine he would talk soon, or he would die a slow painful death. Returning with the runner in tow I was met with the sight of a body with no legs and only one hand trying to crawl away, leaving a river of blood in its wake. I didn't even bother to stop him, he wouldn't make it anywhere that could help him fast enough, if there even was someone or something that could help him. The laughing man was still seated where I left him, blankly staring at the crawling corpse to be. I did walk over and pick up the gun before I began.
"Here's how this is going to go. I'm going to ask a question and the first one to answer won't have pieces of themselves cut off. Do you both understand?" I was no expert torturer, but I figured this work well enough.
The runner nodded quickly but I had to snap a few times in front of the laugher before I got an affirmative from him.
"Let's start with what is the Conglomerate." I asked an easy one to start with.
They both looked at me for a second, confused but quickly the runner spoke up deciding that my questions didn't need to make sense to him. A smart decision.
"The Conglomerate is faction that controls the Northeast half of the city opposing our gangs." He said starting with the basics.
"Good, continue." I told him as I walked over and grabbed the laugher's hand. They both looked confused for a moment before terror erupted on the laugher's face. I quickly cut off the man's pinky finger.
"Talk loud enough for me to hear over his whining." I told the runner with a raised voice of my own.
" Well, the Conglomerate tries to market itself as the rebirth of the old-world government, but the only thing they have is some senator that likes to talk a lot. For some reason people believed him, I'm not sure why. The Conglomerate pretends to care about its people but it's really just another gang. They spout nonsense about unity and cohesion, but that's just to keep the sheep following their betters." He finished by spitting to the side like he was disgusted.
Now, I had to take this with a grain of salt, as I'm sure the gang's do their own spouting of nonsense against the enemy.
"Have you ever been to the Conglomerate half of the city?" I asked him, curious if he had any firsthand experience or if this was all hearsay.
"Nah, by the time I knew about the Conglomerate the border was already set up, and they don't allow anyone across unless they can provide something valuable to the Conglomerate." He said, confirming my suspicions that he had no real experience with the Conglomerate.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
It was still good to hear what this side of the city thought of them though, so I continued.
"Who leads the Conglomerate, is it this senator you mentioned?" I asked.
"Supposedly the Conglomerate is led by a council with each councilor representing a section of the city and the people that live there, but the senator, Tim Kirkson, is the council leader and does whatever he wants." He explained.
"I see, well done. Now onto the next question." I looked to the laughing man; he had quieted down by the end.
"I need information about the gangs, all of them, where they're located, and what they do." I said.
"I'll tell you! I know the answers better than this runt!" The laughing man was quick to reply, he obviously didn't like having his finger cut off.
"Very well, start talking." I walked towards the runner to cut off his finger this time and he tried to get up and run, but he didn't even get a foot off the ground before I pushed him back down and grabbed his hand. I took off two fingers this time, partly because he tried to run, but party because I wanted to up the ante to keep them motivated. Couldn't have them getting used to losing fingers now could I. As this was happening the laugher began to explain the situation with the gangs.
"Well, there's the Big Three gangs at the top, The Main Street Masters are the leaders in this area, the southwest of the city. Under them are their three subordinate gangs, the Back Street Bastards are the gang we're from and we deal with border security with the Conglomerate for the Masters. Then there's the Side Street Savages to our southeast, they deal with the border between the Masters and the Five Fingered Jackals, the second big gang. To our northwest are the Under Street Umpires, and they deal with the border between the Masters and the West Side Devils The third of the Big Three." He took a short break to catch his breath before continuing at my gesture.
"For the Devils, their three underling gangs are The Demons of Dawn who are currently the most powerful underling gang of all the nine, which makes the Devils the strongest of the Three right now. Fortunately for us, The Demons Of Dawn are more concerned with trying to usurp the Devils than help them take the rest of us out. They are in the far northwest and only have to deal with their small part of the Conglomerate border and Cerberus. Cerberus is the main line against the Conglomerate for the Devils and is being left alone by the Demons because they know that Cerberus needs strength to keep the Conglomerate at bay. That leaves The Hordes of Hades to face the brunt of the land grabs by the Demons. The Umpires were able to gain an upper hand on our border because of the pressure from the Demons, but our own Side Street Savages tried to take advantage of their extension into enemy territory to stab them in the back. We're used to this kind of thing, but they should have waited until the Umpires secured territory from the Horde. Anyways that covers it for the Devils."
"The Five Fingered Jackals are located in the southeast of the city. They're the smallest gang, but the most unified by a mile. They use that unity to bash their heads against the Conglomerate, always trying to eat at the massive entity. The three underling gangs are The Hand, The Wrist, and the Arm. As you might guess by the names, the three subordinate gangs work together under the Jackals with considerable cohesion. With all of the Jackals attention on the Conglomerate the Savages tend to leave them to their crusade and focus on taking territory from the other two gangs under the Main Street Masters. That also makes the Savages the strongest group under the Masters and Second to The Demons of Dawn. Fortunately, they only scuffle with us Bastards when the Conglomerate is busy elsewhere, which leaves most of their attention on the Umpires." He finished with a sigh.
This was incredibly in-depth information and gave me a much better understanding of geopolitical situation in this city.
"What about the main three's territories, you talked about their subordinates, but what about their base of power?" I asked him.
"They are all centrally located, each of the three is surrounded by their subordinate groups. They build up the central sections of the city they are based in and force all trade through their territory and tax it as well as keeping all the best goods for themselves. Besides that, what keeps those areas secure is the armory buildings in each of the Big Three's territories. They each took a building and built it into a fortress that houses all the stores of ammunition. If the underling gangs don't bend to the will of the three their ammunition supply is cut off which means they're as good as dead whether that's due to other gangs, the Conglomerate, or the monsters." After finishing his explanation, he started getting nervous again, knowing that I would likely switch topics now and one of these two would lose body parts.
I took some time to consider what he had said about how the Big Three held their power. I could understand that bullets were a valuable resource, but how did they gather all that ammunition in the first place, and why don't the gangs just grow their classes and use skills instead of guns. I decided to ask him to see if he had any idea.
"Ah yes, actually that's what the Demons of Dawn are doing, we don't know how, but they've grown quite strong and are able to fight without a constant flow of ammunition from the Devils. It's why they even have a chance." He said, looking happy I was still on this topic.
"What do you mean you don't know how they've grown strong?" I asked surprised. Wasn't it obvious? They killed enough monsters or people to gain levels?
"Well, most of us are stuck below level 15, the monsters just don't give us enough xp anymore to level without spending weeks to gain a single level. Anyone higher than 15 has to start killing people to grow any stronger. The weird thing is there hasn't been a huge drop in population that would have had to occur for so many Demons to grow strong enough to challenge the Devils." He shrugged his shoulders as he finished.
It made sense that these people were stuck at around level 15 if they were only killing the zone monsters, they didn't give much energy. I had an inkling as to what they might be doing, but I would have to check on that later. For now, I considered what else I wanted to know.
"All right, the person who answers this next question the best gets a chance to live." That gave both of them pause, they either thought they were going to be released after, or thought they were going to die regardless of what happened.
"That's right. So, who knows the most about how skills and classes work." I was curious what these people thought about skills and classes and if they had figured anything interesting out.
The runner was the first to speak.
"Classes are given to us by the system once we've killed enough monsters, we have a chance to get a special class for doing something important while we're getting it, and skills are always related to the class and compatible with you. Uhm.. and we use mana or stamina to use skills. Also, we gain xp from killing monsters to level up our class." His explanation was bare bones at best and the only interesting thing was his mention of stamina.
The laughing man had taken longer, but his response was well thought out.
"The xp we gain for our class depends on the level of the monster or human we kill. I've also heard rumors that people who put too many stats into one aspect without any in another will be unbalanced, it's not anything too extreme, but you need a certain amount of agility or dexterity to wield a massive strength stat. There were a few tests done, and most of the physical stats have some sort of physical impact on the body. So, gaining a stat in strength doesn't just add kinetic energy to something you do, it actually alters us in some way so that our bodies now naturally perform at that level." He stopped to think about what to say next but I stopped him.
"I'm convinced, you've piqued my interest." With that I turned and decapitated the runner.
As the laughing man looked at the decapitated head rolling on the ground with a mixture between fear, disgust, and apology. I smiled, I had my guide for the city now, and he had some interesting tidbits to share.