Hell's Handbook

Chapter 65: Altering Memories

Su Jin carried the other three men in, flung them into the middle of the living room, plonked himself comfortably onto the couch, then took the cold water from Kano Mai and proceeded to shower the five men with it.

Besides Spectacles and King Kong, the rest woke up with a start. Su Jin guessed that the two of them weren’t able to regain consciousness so easily because he had used his Spirit Power on them, so he just left them alone for the time being.

“All right, you three. Your other companions might have to sleep for a while longer, but since at least three of you are awake, I think…it’s time you told me why you decided to barge into my home.” Su Jin sat on the couch with his hands clasped together, while Kano Mai hid herself in a dark corner. As an expert sniper, she seemed to prefer hiding herself like this, especially when faced with unknown dangers.

Situ Jin was the leader of the group, so he decided to speak up. He observed Su Jin carefully for a while, then said, “You’re the one who attacked us?”

“Oh wow, you make it sound like I was the one who barged into your home and knocked all of you out!” Su Jin chuckled, leaned back and asked nonchalantly, “Let me repeat myself. Why did you barge into my home?”

“Do you know how much trouble you’ve caused?” said Laddie in a threatening voice as he glared fiercely at Su Jin.

Su Jin nodded, then snapped his fingers. Laddie instantly froze, then lost consciousness.

“I’m sorry but I really don’t like having to repeat myself so many times and I don’t like others threatening me either.” Su Jin had a mirthless smile on his face as he stared coldly at Situ Jin. He was quite sure that Situ Jin was the leader of this small group, given their responses.

Situ Jin wasn’t too agitated when he saw Laddie collapse onto the floor. Laddie had lost consciousness, but his breathing was normal, so his life wasn’t in danger.

“We just wanted to find out a little more from you. Sorry for not introducing ourselves. We’re from S City’s Special Police and our unit is in charge of investigating any unexplainable or supernatural occurrences within S City,” said Situ Jin without batting an eyelid. He was an excellent liar because that was part of his job, regardless of whether he was doing his work or reporting to his superiors.

Su Jin raised an eyebrow. He thought that such a unit only existed in storybooks. Then again, he had become a Handbook owner, so nothing was really too crazy for him to believe anymore.

“I see. Special Police, eh? But don’t you find your standard procedure very strange? Is barging into a citizen’s home part of it?” asked Su Jin.

“Of course not. But you’re not an ordinary person. You’re someone with formidable fighting abilities and I was afraid that you might escape, so I tried to think of a way to pin you down first. I felt that doing that would make everything else easier and keep the situation under control. But…it looks like I’ve underestimated you, Mr. Owner,” explained Situ Jin calmly.

Su Jin’s pupils constricted instinctively. Not just anyone would use the term ‘owner’ in such a context. But he quickly calmed down again. If Situ Jin knew about Hell’s Handbook, he would have gone further than just calling him an owner. Su Jin guessed that Situ Jin must have found out about owners somehow and was trying to use this word to get more information out of him.

“￡%$*#!” Su Jin suddenly uttered some words that Situ Jin couldn’t understand at all.

“What was that?” Situ Jin stared at Su Jin.

“Nothing, I just used my hometown dialect to say something nice about you,” said Su Jin with a smile. Just like he had thought, only Handbook owners were able to tell one another about anything within the Handbook universe. If they tried to tell a non-owner about the Handbook, their words would sound like gibberish to the other party.

Situ Jin didn’t believe what Su Jin had just told him. Before this, he wasn’t sure if Su Jin was really an owner or not, but he was very certain now. The department had records stating that when that owner they captured tried to tell them more about his secret, his speech became impaired or incomprehensible.

Both parties got the information they wanted, but Su Jin had the disadvantage. It was going to be very difficult to hide his identity now.

“I hope that you can cooperate with me. Going against a government agency is definitely not a wise thing to do, even if you’re an owner. According to our records, people like you aren’t invincible,” said Situ Jin very resolutely. He was now threatening Su Jin in hope that Su Jin would listen to him.

Su Jin nodded slightly and said, “You’re right. Going against a government agency is not a wise thing to do, but even though I can’t afford to cross them, I can always hide.”

“Trust me, you can’t hide either! I know about you, so if I can find you this time, I’ll be able to find you a second time. And it will only get easier each time.” Situ Jin knew that Su Jin was able to kill them easily if he wanted to, so he tried to pressurize Su Jin and make sure Su Jin knew that his team wasn’t a group that he could kill and get away with it.

“Like I said just now, I don’t like to be threatened. And once I kill you, you wouldn’t be able to find me a second time,” said Su Jin with a smile.

Situ Jin smiled too. “Did you think we’re here on an ad hoc mission? I can guarantee you right now that if we die, you will never be able to escape from the government for the rest of your life. The government is powerful enough to make sure you have nowhere to run or hide!”

Su Jin pretended to look really enlightened and said, “You’re right! That would make things so difficult for me, and I’m someone who absolutely hates trouble.”

He got up and stood in front of Situ Jin, then said, “You’re a clever one, but you’re too complacent. You think that your mission is definitely going to succeed and you think you’ve got everything under your control. You’ve used something you know nothing about to sound me out and you think you’ve got what you’ve wanted.”

“But actually…you’ve not gotten anything at all. This sentence might sound grammatically incorrect, but you’re about to not get anything.”

“And which intelligent person isn’t complacent? You are no better! Grandmaster!” yelled Situ Jin. He felt that Su Jin might kill him anytime and immediately decided to give it one last shot. To him, Su Jin calling him complacent was the pot calling the kettle black. Su Jin was just as complacent, which was why he left all of them on the floor without restraining them at all.

Grandmaster bounced up like a bow whose string had been released and pounced towards Su Jin like a tiger hunting its prey. He knew that Su Jin was an expert in martial arts, so he wasn’t hoping to defeat Su Jin in a fight. All he needed to do was to hold Su Jin back long enough for Situ Jin to escape.

Situ Jin and Grandmaster coordinated their timings perfectly. As Grandmaster made his attack, Situ Jin moved backwards and ran for the nearest window. While talking to Su Jin, he had looked around and concluded that escaping through the window was his best bet.

Their plans were perfect in theory, but pointless in reality. Grandmaster’s body crashed heavily back onto the floor mid air, while Situ Jin tripped over himself and fell just before he reached the window.

Su Jin shook his head and muttered, “Besides bringing terror to its owners, Hell’s Handbook gives them tremendous power as well. The power that veterans can wield makes them seem like gods to ordinary people.”

“Jin, it’s not wise to just keep relying on the power you have!” Kano Mai walked out from the shadows. She had been on standby this whole time so that she could help if Su Jin’s life were threatened.

Su Jin nodded and laughed. “I’m just thinking out loud. Power is relative, after all. If we were really gods, we wouldn’t be having so much trouble surviving Challenges.”

“How do you intend to deal with these people?” asked Kano Mai.

“These people are quite troublesome, but I’ve learned a useful skill from my Hell Domain. I just need to do a little surgery on their memories.” Su Jin pulled Grandmaster up, pressed a finger on Grandmaster’s head and started activating his Spirit Power.

“You have the ability to alter memories?” Kano Mai wasn’t particularly surprised. Spirit Power contained a million and one possibilities and was something that every Handbook owner wanted to have. The fact that Su Jin was able to use his Spirit Power to change an ordinary person’s memories didn’t sound too farfetched to her.

A few moments later, Su Jin removed his finger from Grandmaster’s forehead. He looked a little tired as he said to Kano Mai, “This is making me more tired than I thought. Thankfully I don’t have a lot of memories to alter, or I might collapse before I get through them all.”

“Thankfully, you got this Psychokinetic Spirit Power. If you got some internal energy type or magic type of Spirit Power, you wouldn’t be able to do something like this,” replied Kano Mai.

Su Jin remarked curiously, “You said that psychokinesis was a useless sort of Spirit Power the last time, but I learned so many ways to use it from my Hell Domain. This Spirit Power is great at both attacking and defending, so I don’t see why it’s so bad.”

Kano Mai nodded and said, “If you’re talking about what it can do, then I’d agree that psychokinesis is one of the best Spirit Power types to have. Also, it carries a characteristic that no other types have.”

“What characteristic is that?”

“It’s a universal type of Spirit Power,” said Kano Mai in a serious voice. “Most Spirit Power equipment have requirements on the type of Spirit Power needed. If you don’t have the right type of Spirit Power, you won’t be able to use that particular item. But Psychokinetic Spirit Power isn’t like that. It can be used to operate any Spirit Power equipment, so it’s as if you’ve got every class in the game.”

Su Jin nodded in shock. He had spent a year’s worth of time in his Personal Hell Domain to learn and train himself in using his psychokinesis, discovering many new techniques in the process. But he wasn’t told anything about how this Spirit Power could be used universally.

“If that’s the case, this Spirit Power isn’t useless at all. This is a truly amazing type!” exclaimed Su Jin.

But Kano Mai proceeded to burst his bubble as she said, “But it’s simply too difficult to train and cultivate psychokinesis. As long as your upper limit remains low, your Spirit Power is as good as useless in a Challenge. I’m pretty sure your current upper limit can’t even power a medium level Spirit Power weapon.”

Su Jin’s expression instantly fell because he knew Kano Mai was right. The skill that came with the Demon Lord’s Longbow, the Roar of the Demon Lord, required 150 points of Spirit Power for each use. Su Jin’s current upper limit was at 100 points, which meant that he couldn’t even use this skill once.

If he didn’t have sufficient capacity for Spirit Power, he wouldn’t be able to use it much in a fight. It didn’t matter how powerful or amazing his Spirit Power type could be. Yet, this was the one weakness he couldn’t seem to overcome.