It is a white, fluffy space with nothing inside.
This is my second time here.
The place of all beginnings. And here I am again.
The words “Game Cleared” float up in my head.
It’s already been a full 20 years since I was hit by a truck and sent to another world.
By fully utilizing my cheats, I brought down the demon lord, and the world regained peace——and this is the next morning after that.
Around when the narration would go “The peoples extolled him, and the night lifted,” I already found myself here.
This mysterious space that I haven’t been to ever since right before I was sent to that world.
After waiting a while, the goddess from 20 years ago appears before me.
She looks young and beautiful, with not a single change from when I saw her last.
“Thank you for your long period of service.”
“Was that good enough?”
“Indeed it was. Thanks to you, the demon lord has fallen. Thanks to you, the world has been saved.”
“I see. That’s a relief.”
I answered like that, but I don’t feel touched at all.
I see. It’s a relief that I’m finally done.
In other words, I no longer have to return to that place anymore.
“So from now on, please continue——”
“Wait. Can’t you send me to a different world?”
“——Eh?”
The goddess appears surprised.
She is looking at me with opened eyes and a face that tells me she does not understand.
“…… What do you mean by that?”
“It’s not like you don’t know how terrible those people are, and why I ended up having to defeat the demon lord by myself.”
“……”
The goddess is silent. So she does know after all.
“The people of that world do not welcome otherworlders at all. No, let me rephrase that. Those guys ostracize otherworlders.”
“……”
“The demon lord could actually have been defeated 5 years earlier. But then this guy went ‘we need to proceed with caution’ while that guy went ‘the back lines are not stable yet’. Every time we had an opportunity to defeat the demon lord, they would throw in unnecessary disruptions, putting things off again and again, causing countless numbers of people to die again and again.”
“……”
“This time was the same. If I hadn’t shaken them off and forcefully gone to fight by myself, a huge number of people would have died once again. Why it became like that——the short of it was just that they didn’t want an outsider, me, to defeat the demon lord and take all the credit for it.”
“…… You are right. That is the kind of place it is.”
With a sour face, the goddess honestly admits it.
“But that is all the more reason why it must be you that——”
“I’m sorry, but I’m done. The demon lord has been defeated, but that world is a sinking ship. I have no intention of going down with it.”
“…… Very well, I understand.”
The goddess casts her eyes down for a while, then quickly lifts her head back up.
Her face is one of acceptance.
“Once again, thank you for your service up to now. As thanks, I will arrange for you to carry over your skills and funds to your next world as a Clear Bonus.”
“Carry over as a Clear Bonus…… Ahh, I see.”
Since the goddess has accepted it, I see no need to bring it up again.
Twenty years in the other world, and twenty years in the real world before that.
I immediately understand what the Clear Bonus is and how it’s going to work out.
“It is as you imagine. But as it is a carry over, it will be only 50%, not the full amount.”
“So it won’t be all…… well, there’s no point in carrying over all the skill points anyways.”
I smile wryly.
I ended up with tons of extra skill points that I had no more use for, so I know.
The maximum capacity for unused skill points is 999. And in my twenty years, I’ve definitely earned several times that amount.
There’s no point in carrying over all those points.
After the goddess finishes processing everything, I really do find myself with 999 skill points.
“How about the money?”
“The amount of money that you possessed at the end will be converted into the new world’s currency.”
“Not that. What I’m asking is, is there no upper limit for it?”
“There’s no upper limit for money, right?”
Her face seems to be asking ‘Why are you asking such an obvious question?’
…… Well, she’s right, I suppose.
“Conversion has been completed. 50% of your total funds have been converted into 12.1 billion yen and some.”
“Wait, you said ‘yen,’ so——”
“One final time, thank you very much for your service so far.”
The moment I try to inquire in further detail, I feel my consciousness rapidly flying away.
Ahh, this again.
It was like this the previous time as well. I never did get a full explanation before being thrown over.
Geez, seriously.
☆
When I open my eyes, I find myself in a park in broad daylight.
I am in an urban area. The place may look filled with nature at first glance, but the smell of exhaust gas has deeply seeped into this park.
I am sitting on a bench.
A youngster passes in front of me, fiddling with his smartphone.
The younger’s looks bear the same characteristics as mine —— Japanese.
As I’d thought.
Currency of ‘yen’.
My second otherworld transmigration, my third life.
The stage this time is Japan. No, the real world.
If it’s just normal reality, then it’s a shit fest. But this time it’s different.
Firstly, I confirm my skills.
The skill window that only I can see opens up.
I really do have 999 skill points. But my skill list is completely empty.
I’m going to have to re-learn all of them from here on.
“Before anything else, first spend 500 points to get [Lower Point Cost]. Then spend 100 points discounted to 80 to get [Double Skill Points].”
Without thinking, I acquire those two skills to start with.
[Lower Point Cost] is a skill that gives me a discount of 20% on all skill point costs.
Last time, it was an enormous pain in the ass to acquire this skill.
I had no points, so I thought I’d save up my points, only to realize that I don’t have good skills to use to efficiently farm points. The beginner’s dilemma is what I call it.
When I finally saved up enough after chipping in a little at a time for the longest time, I was so happy.
But this time, I take it with the points that I already have on hand at the start. Thanks to it, all my running costs from here on would be lowered by 20%.
As an aside, I also got [Double Skill Points].
Skill points are earned after defeating an enemy or experiencing something major.
What [Double Skill Points] does is, as its name implies, doubles the amount of skill points coming in, regardless of the trigger.
This one I also struggled for quite some while to acquire last time. And after I acquired it, it served me well and long.
So those two I took before doing anything else.
If I ever get transmigrated again, this will become my default practice.
“[Unlimited Skill Slots]…… can wait, I guess.”
So muttering to myself, I close the skill window.
I used 500 from the 999, then a further 80, so now I have 419 left.
There’s still quite a lot remaining, but I’ll leave those free so that I can acquire skills later on to match whatever situation I find myself in.
So then, what about money?
I look around. This is a normal park.
I look at myself.
I’m wearing clothes from this world…… more like, these are the exact same clothes that I was wearing the day I got hit by the truck.
When I check what I have on me, I find a card in my pocket.
It’s a bank debit card.
With that in hand, I leave the park in search of an ATM.
I immediately spot a convenience store, so I go in to check my bank balance.
12,121,398,567
A number longer than I’ve ever seen is displayed on the screen.
I can’t even read how much it is at first glance, but the first three digits are indeed ‘121,’ so I’m sure it’s 12.1 billion yen as the goddess said.
For starters, I withdraw 100k for immediate use.
☆
I ended up spending 30k at a sushi restaurant where the sushi doesn’t ride on a conveyor belt.
Oh yes, sushi really needs to be made by a proper Japanese chef.
With the knowledge that I had on hand, I did spread sushi cuisine in the other world. But it always tasted kind of off, and was definitely not as good as the ones on this side.
For the briefest moment, I thought about how 12 billion can allow me to eat as much of the non-conveyor kind of sushi as I want until I get sick of it.
But well, putting that aside. What should I do next?
Since I have money, and I’ve already done what I wanted to with that money, I suppose it’s time to secure a foothold in this world.
Or so I was thinking, when suddenly, I notice my surroundings being strangely noisy.
There are quite the number of onlookers. With a second glance, I notice police and also traffic being redirected.
I recognize this.
Not because of any skill, but because of the sense of smell that I’ve developed after 20 years of crawling through battlefields.
An incident of some sort has happened. For sure.
I stop a nearby youngster and ask.
“What happened?”
“Eh? Ahh…… I don’t really know either, but people on Twitter are saying that there’s a hostage situation happening in the embassy up ahead.”
“Hostage situation at an embassy?”
“Some are even saying that it might be terrorists. Isn’t that just scary?”
With that, the youngster returns to the smartphone in his hand.
So there are terrorists holding hostages in an embassy.
“…… Chance.”
☆
At a deserted place, I open up the skill window.
If there’s one thing that I learned from the other world, it’s to actively get involved with large incidents.
The larger the incident and the more I get involved (and solve it, of course), the greater the return I’ll get.
It is so for not only money, but also connections and further developments.
There’s a terrorist hostage situation in modern Japan happening right in front of me. I’d have to be an idiot to not get involved.
But in order to do so, I’d need to first acquire the skills that would enable me to resolve the incident.
There will be fighting for sure. So I will need fighting skills as a base.
The safest option would be something like [Close Combat].
[Close Combat] is a skill that has levels.
The levels go from 1 to 10. Naturally, the higher the number, the greater the effect.
Acquisition cost is 10 at level 1, 20 at level 2, 30 at level 3, and so on.
In my case, because I already have [Lower Point Cost], it would be 8, 16, 24, and so on.
I stare at my remaining skill points in serious consideration.
My remaining points are 419. It would cost 440 to raise [Close Combat] all the way to level 10.
I don’t have enough.
“And I can’t very well dump them all that way in the first place.”
I smile wryly.
For starters, I spend 120 to acquire [Close Combat] and bring it to level 5.
“Next is a skill to get inside.”
I shoot a quick glance at the direction of the commotion.
There is a police cordon in front of the embassy. I’d need to slip past that.
[Invisibility] should do the trick.
This is another one with levels. Level 1 costs 50 (40 for me), level 2 costs 100 (80 for me), and the cost for successive levels go up by increments of 50.
The effect is ‘level x 10 seconds’ of invisibility after activation. The cooldown time — in other words, the length of time I’d have to wait before I can use the skill again — is 60 minutes.
So I take level 1.
Level 1 is good enough for now.
With my skills all set up, I head towards the embassy.
After getting as close as I can, I approach the police cordon tape, then activate [Invisibility I].
Then I dash at full speed into the embassy.
Within the 10 seconds of the skill duration, I slip past all the police and SWAT officers, rush into the premise, then turn a corner.
My invisibility wears off.
I check a nearby window. There’s no one inside, so I enter from there.
The embassy really is empty, but there is almost palpable tension in the air.
This is the air common to places where something out of the ordinary is suddenly taking place.
This air will be my guide.
Lowering my breath and making sure to not make noise with my steps, I proceed onwards.
Upon going up a staircase, I finally discover the hall where it seems all the hostages have been gathered in.
There are several tens of people who look like staff members of the embassy. In the middle of the crowd is a well-groomed, senior-looking man, next to whom is a young girl with blond hair.
He’s probably the ambassador, and she must be his daughter.
Standing all around are people armed to the teeth who look like the very image of terrorists.
All of them are holding machine guns. If anything happens, they are prepared to mow down all the hostages —— seems to be the easy-to-understand image that they are projecting.
All the way at the farthest back, a man who looks to be their leader is on the phone.
With broken Japanese, he is demanding money and a plane. In other words, ransom and a method for escape.
I count the number of terrorists. There are 10 of them.
They’re not too many, but enough to cause harm to at least one hostage before I can take them all down if I charge in from the front.
I open the skill window.
It was for the sake of this moment that I only took 1 level of [Invisibility].
There’s a trick to acquiring skills.
The types that have a cooldown time, they reset when you get another level in them.
There are still more than 50 minutes left of cooldown time since I used [Invisibility] last.
So then I raise it to level 2.
80 is used, leaving me with 179.
With this, the cooldown time has been reset.
I turn invisible. 20 seconds on the clock, start.
First I get close. I’m invisible, so I can just walk over normally.
I make my way over to the position from which I can defeat all of them most efficiently. 15 seconds left.
I take a deep breath, and run the simulation one last time in my head. One last review of how I can take them all down with the power and speed of [Close Combat V]. 10 seconds left.
My eyes snap open, then I enact what I had simulated.
First person, I clutch his shoulder and slam a body blow into him.
I rob him of his consciousness with that one blow, trying my best to not let him fall down.
I immediately close in on the second terrorist, and do the same.
5 seconds left.
Upping my pace, I manage to take down all remaining 7 within 5 seconds, all in the same manner.
“What?!”
Seeing the first terrorist fall down, then all the others successively falling also, the leader who’s in the middle of negotiations raises his voice in astonishment.
Time’s up. I return to my normal self from being invisible.
“Goddamn!”
The leader grabs his machine gun and points it towards me, but I charge in regardless.
I close in on him in a split second, redirect his muzzle towards the ceiling just in case, then rob him of his consciousness too with a body blow.
20 seconds total. All terrorists neutralized.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 6 skill points.
The announcement rings in my mind after a slight delay. Taking down the terrorists earned me 24 skill points, double of what it would have been originally. With this, my points have gone back up to 203.
What just happened was so sudden that the hostages are bewildered for a while. But then they quickly understand that all the terrorists have been defeated by me, and begin cheering loudly.
From among them, the blond-haired little girl that I noticed earlier jumps out and tackles me with a hug.
She then begins rapidly firing off words, even while still hugging me.
It’s a foreign language. I don’t understand what she’s saying.
All I understand…… is that it’s probably not English.
If it’s English, then even if I don’t understand the words, I would know that it’s English.
Ahh, languages.
This is another one that I need to pick up.
…… Ohhh, I barely have enough.
I open up the skill window, then spend 200 from 250 to acquire [Complete Translation].
I barely had enough after defeating the terrorists. I now only have 3 points left…… it seriously was just barely enough.
“That was amazing!”
The instant I acquire the skill, I become able to understand what the little girl is saying.
“You must be a Japanese ninja!”
That’s what she was talking about the entire time?
I’m not really a ‘ninja,’ but I can tell that she’s praising me so it doesn’t feel too bad.
In this way, I ended up completely using up all the points that I had carried over almost immediately. But in exchange, I resolved a very large incident.
I really hope that this world turns out easier to live in than that other one.
It is a white, fluffy space with nothing inside.
This is my second time here.
The place of all beginnings. And here I am again.
The words “Game Cleared” float up in my head.
It’s already been a full 20 years since I was hit by a truck and sent to another world.
By fully utilizing my cheats, I brought down the demon lord, and the world regained peace——and this is the next morning after that.
Around when the narration would go “The peoples extolled him, and the night lifted,” I already found myself here.
This mysterious space that I haven’t been to ever since right before I was sent to that world.
After waiting a while, the goddess from 20 years ago appears before me.
She looks young and beautiful, with not a single change from when I saw her last.
“Thank you for your long period of service.”
“Was that good enough?”
“Indeed it was. Thanks to you, the demon lord has fallen. Thanks to you, the world has been saved.”
“I see. That’s a relief.”
I answered like that, but I don’t feel touched at all.
I see. It’s a relief that I’m finally done.
In other words, I no longer have to return to that place anymore.
“So from now on, please continue——”
“Wait. Can’t you send me to a different world?”
“——Eh?”
The goddess appears surprised.
She is looking at me with opened eyes and a face that tells me she does not understand.
“…… What do you mean by that?”
“It’s not like you don’t know how terrible those people are, and why I ended up having to defeat the demon lord by myself.”
“……”
The goddess is silent. So she does know after all.
“The people of that world do not welcome otherworlders at all. No, let me rephrase that. Those guys ostracize otherworlders.”
“……”
“The demon lord could actually have been defeated 5 years earlier. But then this guy went ‘we need to proceed with caution’ while that guy went ‘the back lines are not stable yet’. Every time we had an opportunity to defeat the demon lord, they would throw in unnecessary disruptions, putting things off again and again, causing countless numbers of people to die again and again.”
“……”
“This time was the same. If I hadn’t shaken them off and forcefully gone to fight by myself, a huge number of people would have died once again. Why it became like that——the short of it was just that they didn’t want an outsider, me, to defeat the demon lord and take all the credit for it.”
“…… You are right. That is the kind of place it is.”
With a sour face, the goddess honestly admits it.
“But that is all the more reason why it must be you that——”
“I’m sorry, but I’m done. The demon lord has been defeated, but that world is a sinking ship. I have no intention of going down with it.”
“…… Very well, I understand.”
The goddess casts her eyes down for a while, then quickly lifts her head back up.
Her face is one of acceptance.
“Once again, thank you for your service up to now. As thanks, I will arrange for you to carry over your skills and funds to your next world as a Clear Bonus.”
“Carry over as a Clear Bonus…… Ahh, I see.”
Since the goddess has accepted it, I see no need to bring it up again.
Twenty years in the other world, and twenty years in the real world before that.
I immediately understand what the Clear Bonus is and how it’s going to work out.
“It is as you imagine. But as it is a carry over, it will be only 50%, not the full amount.”
“So it won’t be all…… well, there’s no point in carrying over all the skill points anyways.”
I smile wryly.
I ended up with tons of extra skill points that I had no more use for, so I know.
The maximum capacity for unused skill points is 999. And in my twenty years, I’ve definitely earned several times that amount.
There’s no point in carrying over all those points.
After the goddess finishes processing everything, I really do find myself with 999 skill points.
“How about the money?”
“The amount of money that you possessed at the end will be converted into the new world’s currency.”
“Not that. What I’m asking is, is there no upper limit for it?”
“There’s no upper limit for money, right?”
Her face seems to be asking ‘Why are you asking such an obvious question?’
…… Well, she’s right, I suppose.
“Conversion has been completed. 50% of your total funds have been converted into 12.1 billion yen and some.”
“Wait, you said ‘yen,’ so——”
“One final time, thank you very much for your service so far.”
The moment I try to inquire in further detail, I feel my consciousness rapidly flying away.
Ahh, this again.
It was like this the previous time as well. I never did get a full explanation before being thrown over.
Geez, seriously.
☆
When I open my eyes, I find myself in a park in broad daylight.
I am in an urban area. The place may look filled with nature at first glance, but the smell of exhaust gas has deeply seeped into this park.
I am sitting on a bench.
A youngster passes in front of me, fiddling with his smartphone.
The younger’s looks bear the same characteristics as mine —— Japanese.
As I’d thought.
Currency of ‘yen’.
My second otherworld transmigration, my third life.
The stage this time is Japan. No, the real world.
If it’s just normal reality, then it’s a shit fest. But this time it’s different.
Firstly, I confirm my skills.
The skill window that only I can see opens up.
I really do have 999 skill points. But my skill list is completely empty.
I’m going to have to re-learn all of them from here on.
“Before anything else, first spend 500 points to get [Lower Point Cost]. Then spend 100 points discounted to 80 to get [Double Skill Points].”
Without thinking, I acquire those two skills to start with.
[Lower Point Cost] is a skill that gives me a discount of 20% on all skill point costs.
Last time, it was an enormous pain in the ass to acquire this skill.
I had no points, so I thought I’d save up my points, only to realize that I don’t have good skills to use to efficiently farm points. The beginner’s dilemma is what I call it.
When I finally saved up enough after chipping in a little at a time for the longest time, I was so happy.
But this time, I take it with the points that I already have on hand at the start. Thanks to it, all my running costs from here on would be lowered by 20%.
As an aside, I also got [Double Skill Points].
Skill points are earned after defeating an enemy or experiencing something major.
What [Double Skill Points] does is, as its name implies, doubles the amount of skill points coming in, regardless of the trigger.
This one I also struggled for quite some while to acquire last time. And after I acquired it, it served me well and long.
So those two I took before doing anything else.
If I ever get transmigrated again, this will become my default practice.
“[Unlimited Skill Slots]…… can wait, I guess.”
So muttering to myself, I close the skill window.
I used 500 from the 999, then a further 80, so now I have 419 left.
There’s still quite a lot remaining, but I’ll leave those free so that I can acquire skills later on to match whatever situation I find myself in.
So then, what about money?
I look around. This is a normal park.
I look at myself.
I’m wearing clothes from this world…… more like, these are the exact same clothes that I was wearing the day I got hit by the truck.
When I check what I have on me, I find a card in my pocket.
It’s a bank debit card.
With that in hand, I leave the park in search of an ATM.
I immediately spot a convenience store, so I go in to check my bank balance.
12,121,398,567
A number longer than I’ve ever seen is displayed on the screen.
I can’t even read how much it is at first glance, but the first three digits are indeed ‘121,’ so I’m sure it’s 12.1 billion yen as the goddess said.
For starters, I withdraw 100k for immediate use.
☆
I ended up spending 30k at a sushi restaurant where the sushi doesn’t ride on a conveyor belt.
Oh yes, sushi really needs to be made by a proper Japanese chef.
With the knowledge that I had on hand, I did spread sushi cuisine in the other world. But it always tasted kind of off, and was definitely not as good as the ones on this side.
For the briefest moment, I thought about how 12 billion can allow me to eat as much of the non-conveyor kind of sushi as I want until I get sick of it.
But well, putting that aside. What should I do next?
Since I have money, and I’ve already done what I wanted to with that money, I suppose it’s time to secure a foothold in this world.
Or so I was thinking, when suddenly, I notice my surroundings being strangely noisy.
There are quite the number of onlookers. With a second glance, I notice police and also traffic being redirected.
I recognize this.
Not because of any skill, but because of the sense of smell that I’ve developed after 20 years of crawling through battlefields.
An incident of some sort has happened. For sure.
I stop a nearby youngster and ask.
“What happened?”
“Eh? Ahh…… I don’t really know either, but people on Twitter are saying that there’s a hostage situation happening in the embassy up ahead.”
“Hostage situation at an embassy?”
“Some are even saying that it might be terrorists. Isn’t that just scary?”
With that, the youngster returns to the smartphone in his hand.
So there are terrorists holding hostages in an embassy.
“…… Chance.”
☆
At a deserted place, I open up the skill window.
If there’s one thing that I learned from the other world, it’s to actively get involved with large incidents.
The larger the incident and the more I get involved (and solve it, of course), the greater the return I’ll get.
It is so for not only money, but also connections and further developments.
There’s a terrorist hostage situation in modern Japan happening right in front of me. I’d have to be an idiot to not get involved.
But in order to do so, I’d need to first acquire the skills that would enable me to resolve the incident.
There will be fighting for sure. So I will need fighting skills as a base.
The safest option would be something like [Close Combat].
[Close Combat] is a skill that has levels.
The levels go from 1 to 10. Naturally, the higher the number, the greater the effect.
Acquisition cost is 10 at level 1, 20 at level 2, 30 at level 3, and so on.
In my case, because I already have [Lower Point Cost], it would be 8, 16, 24, and so on.
I stare at my remaining skill points in serious consideration.
My remaining points are 419. It would cost 440 to raise [Close Combat] all the way to level 10.
I don’t have enough.
“And I can’t very well dump them all that way in the first place.”
I smile wryly.
For starters, I spend 120 to acquire [Close Combat] and bring it to level 5.
“Next is a skill to get inside.”
I shoot a quick glance at the direction of the commotion.
There is a police cordon in front of the embassy. I’d need to slip past that.
[Invisibility] should do the trick.
This is another one with levels. Level 1 costs 50 (40 for me), level 2 costs 100 (80 for me), and the cost for successive levels go up by increments of 50.
The effect is ‘level x 10 seconds’ of invisibility after activation. The cooldown time — in other words, the length of time I’d have to wait before I can use the skill again — is 60 minutes.
So I take level 1.
Level 1 is good enough for now.
With my skills all set up, I head towards the embassy.
After getting as close as I can, I approach the police cordon tape, then activate [Invisibility I].
Then I dash at full speed into the embassy.
Within the 10 seconds of the skill duration, I slip past all the police and SWAT officers, rush into the premise, then turn a corner.
My invisibility wears off.
I check a nearby window. There’s no one inside, so I enter from there.
The embassy really is empty, but there is almost palpable tension in the air.
This is the air common to places where something out of the ordinary is suddenly taking place.
This air will be my guide.
Lowering my breath and making sure to not make noise with my steps, I proceed onwards.
Upon going up a staircase, I finally discover the hall where it seems all the hostages have been gathered in.
There are several tens of people who look like staff members of the embassy. In the middle of the crowd is a well-groomed, senior-looking man, next to whom is a young girl with blond hair.
He’s probably the ambassador, and she must be his daughter.
Standing all around are people armed to the teeth who look like the very image of terrorists.
All of them are holding machine guns. If anything happens, they are prepared to mow down all the hostages —— seems to be the easy-to-understand image that they are projecting.
All the way at the farthest back, a man who looks to be their leader is on the phone.
With broken Japanese, he is demanding money and a plane. In other words, ransom and a method for escape.
I count the number of terrorists. There are 10 of them.
They’re not too many, but enough to cause harm to at least one hostage before I can take them all down if I charge in from the front.
I open the skill window.
It was for the sake of this moment that I only took 1 level of [Invisibility].
There’s a trick to acquiring skills.
The types that have a cooldown time, they reset when you get another level in them.
There are still more than 50 minutes left of cooldown time since I used [Invisibility] last.
So then I raise it to level 2.
80 is used, leaving me with 179.
With this, the cooldown time has been reset.
I turn invisible. 20 seconds on the clock, start.
First I get close. I’m invisible, so I can just walk over normally.
I make my way over to the position from which I can defeat all of them most efficiently. 15 seconds left.
I take a deep breath, and run the simulation one last time in my head. One last review of how I can take them all down with the power and speed of [Close Combat V]. 10 seconds left.
My eyes snap open, then I enact what I had simulated.
First person, I clutch his shoulder and slam a body blow into him.
I rob him of his consciousness with that one blow, trying my best to not let him fall down.
I immediately close in on the second terrorist, and do the same.
5 seconds left.
Upping my pace, I manage to take down all remaining 7 within 5 seconds, all in the same manner.
“What?!”
Seeing the first terrorist fall down, then all the others successively falling also, the leader who’s in the middle of negotiations raises his voice in astonishment.
Time’s up. I return to my normal self from being invisible.
“Goddamn!”
The leader grabs his machine gun and points it towards me, but I charge in regardless.
I close in on him in a split second, redirect his muzzle towards the ceiling just in case, then rob him of his consciousness too with a body blow.
20 seconds total. All terrorists neutralized.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 2 skill points.
——You have earned 6 skill points.
The announcement rings in my mind after a slight delay. Taking down the terrorists earned me 24 skill points, double of what it would have been originally. With this, my points have gone back up to 203.
What just happened was so sudden that the hostages are bewildered for a while. But then they quickly understand that all the terrorists have been defeated by me, and begin cheering loudly.
From among them, the blond-haired little girl that I noticed earlier jumps out and tackles me with a hug.
She then begins rapidly firing off words, even while still hugging me.
It’s a foreign language. I don’t understand what she’s saying.
All I understand…… is that it’s probably not English.
If it’s English, then even if I don’t understand the words, I would know that it’s English.
Ahh, languages.
This is another one that I need to pick up.
…… Ohhh, I barely have enough.
I open up the skill window, then spend 200 from 250 to acquire [Complete Translation].
I barely had enough after defeating the terrorists. I now only have 3 points left…… it seriously was just barely enough.
“That was amazing!”
The instant I acquire the skill, I become able to understand what the little girl is saying.
“You must be a Japanese ninja!”
That’s what she was talking about the entire time?
I’m not really a ‘ninja,’ but I can tell that she’s praising me so it doesn’t feel too bad.
In this way, I ended up completely using up all the points that I had carried over almost immediately. But in exchange, I resolved a very large incident.
I really hope that this world turns out easier to live in than that other one.
