A man with short messy black hair, and deep dark eyes was in his room having an intense headache. This was Kamizaki Niel a twenty-year-old and a recently turned university dropout. The reason for his headache and dropping out of his university all stem from one event, the death of his parents. It was just a few days ago when his parents died in a car accident. Niel was still, in the university dorms when he received the news. The shock of it all had nearly overwhelmed him almost making him faint. Even during his parents' wake he still could not grasp what had happened. There were only a few people that attended as his parents didn't really have relatives. Niel's father was an orphan who runs a small shop in Shibuya that incidentally was on the first floor of their house. The shop sells supposedly supernatural items from paper talismans to statues that ward off evil, of course, in Niel's mind they were just trinkets that would only attract weirdos. Then there was Niel's mother who wa
After a full day of playing in the gesen, Niel finally noticed that it was getting late. He had wasted an entire day playing instead of working, still for some reason he felt relieved. Niel looked at Manami and Yuno before smiling a little bit. "Thank you, I had a lot of fun. Anyway, do you guys need me to escort you two back?" "We might not have shown it a while ago, since you came too early, but Manami and I are perfectly able to defend ourselves." After she spoke Yuno suddenly did a high kick, Niel already noticed that she didn't mean to hit him so he allowed the kick to almost hit his face without blinking. The two girls had their eyes wide open as they saw Niel not even flinch as something was about to hit his face. "Well you seem a little bit good at fighting, but how about you Manami-chan do you want me to escort you back?" "There's no need to, even though I don't show it but I am very good in Kendo. I also know a little bit of karate and boxing." "Huh, is it a requiremen
After entering the gesen Niel and Manami quickly headed to the fighting game cabinets. The two decided to face off against each other in an old-school fighting game. They chose an old version of the game since this was the only one the two could agree that they were both equally good at. "Are you ready to lose Niel-san?" "When it comes to fighting, I have never lost, in game or in life." "Well, there's always a first time for everything." "Enough talking you two, and get started already. Look everybody is waiting for you two to start." Yuno interrupted the two as she pointed at the crowd watching them. "The Empress is going to play against that delinquent-looking dude." "Who is that guy, why are the Empress and her friend with him?" "Is that dude seriously challenging the Empress in a fighting game? Doesn't he know that playing a game is different from an actual fight?" The people surrounding Niel and Manami were getting quite noisy and their numbers were growing. Niel
Niel was sighing as he accompanied the two girls out. Seeing him sigh like that made Yuno pout in dissatisfaction."Hey, what kind of attitude is that? Are you actually sighing while accompanying two pretty girls like us? Any other guy would've done anything to be in your shoes." Niel was aware that the two girls were in fact, that popular. Just looking around and seeing the men staring at them while walking was proof of their beauty. He actually felt like a protagonist of one of those light novels he liked reading back in high school. If not for his current circumstances he would've enjoyed his situation a bit more."Well, you did kinda force him to join us," Manami responded. "Huh, so you're siding with this guy!""It's not that I'm siding with him, I'm just saying that we did kinda force him to accompany us.""We didn't force him to do anything. He did say that he wanted to pay us back. Not only did we not take his money but he even gets to hang out with us." As Yuno and Manami
After defeating the evil spirit haunting Manami, the System gave Niel the reward of the sub-quest and it was an increase in strength. It gave Niel a supposed minor boost in strength. Even though it was called a minor boost it didn't feel like one. Niel was already pretty strong before but after gaining the System's reward his strength grew to an unbelievable degree. Right now he could easily lift sixty kilograms with one hand.The minor strength also granted him greater endurance and it even changed his body a bit making him look a tiny bit more muscular. There was also another reward which was Twenty System coins.Aside from the System's reward, Niel received the reward money from Manami. She gave Niel as much as a hundred thousand yen which was obviously not an amount an ordinary high school girl should have. At first, Niel wanted to refuse the money and say something cool like a protagonist of shonen manga, but he desperately needed the money so he took it. When the morning sun sh
Tanaka Itsuki was a gloomy high schooler who had no friends, had a family who didn't care and was occasionally bullied. Itsuki was miserable and on several occasions wanted to commit suicide, unfortunately, he was too much of a coward to follow through. Living was hell but death was too scary, he did not know what else to do. As he stopped going to school and got immersed in the land of video games, he earned quite a bit of money from online tournaments. So now instead of going to school he directly gave his parents money to stop bothering him about school. At first, his parents were infuriated by this, but after trying to convince him numerous times his family had fully given up on him. Seeing as he was giving them money like he was paying rent they no longer bothered with him. One day Itsuki heard that there was a limited edition game coming out that could only be bought in a certain shop, so for the first time in a long time, Itsuki went out of the house. It was early morning w
Manami was in a state where she was asleep but awake at the same time. She could see what was going on around her but she could not move. Still, she was not panicking like the first time she experienced this as this had been going on for a few days now. In this state, Manami could only move her line of sight and that was it. Manami looked around the room and saw Niel sitting near the door. She was surprised to see that the item in Niel's hands was an actual sword, it wasn't a katana but something else, it was thicker and looked heavier than a regular katana. 'When did he get that? Is that some kind of ritual sword to defeat the Shadow? This guy might actually be the real deal.' Manami was now feeling a lot more confident as she looked at the vigilant Niel. At first, when she met him she was really skeptical about Niel as he didn't have the air of a spiritual master he didn't even look like a professional. Still, since she had no other choice she made a gamble. 'Looking at him no
After hesitating for a bit Niel held tightly onto his sword and steeled himself. If he were to leave this creature alone without anything it wouldn't solve Manami's problem. Niel knew that he needed to do something right now, or it might be too late. Niel looked at his equipment, he still had four of those immobilization paper talismans and one healing paper talisman. There was also the Kampilan of Lam-ang which was his main weapon. 'Alright, it's now or never.' The banging on the door intensified and Niel unconsciously flinched. Niel then gritted his teeth grasped his sword tightly and opened the door. The moment the door was opened there seemed to be a cold breeze that passed through his body. Niel tensed up his eyes wide open wanting to see this so called shadow, yet no matter how hard he looked he could not see anything unusual. Niel then turned around and looked at Manami she was no longer looking at him and instead had her eyes closed. Niel came closer to the sleeping Ma
Manami called one of her friends and convinced her to tell her parents that she was staying with her. "Wait what?! Why do you need me to lie for you?" "It's complicated, can you just cover for me." "Heh, what are you hiding, can you at least tell me that?... Wait, wait a minute, you're out so late and you have a secret that you can't tell you parents, are you in a guy's house?" There was a moment of silence and after a few seconds the voice of Manami's friend burst out from the other end of the phone. "Are you for real?! Are you really in some guy's house?! Kyaa, if the guys in our school knew that our little empress actually has a boyfriend I bet they'll die from envy, or most likely they'll kill the guy that stole your heart. Anyway, Manami how could you do this to me?!" Manami's friend Yuno became incomparably excited as she spoke at a fast pace. On the other hand, Manami could only sigh as she listened to her friend's excitment. Even if she tried to explain it to Yuno the
"I want to hear your story, what is bothering you so much that you needed my old man's help?" Niel asked Manami. "..." Manami's body trembled as she tried to speak. It suddenly became so quiet that you could hear the dripping water from the sink, and the moving hands from the clock. "Manami-san I'm here." Niel looked at Manami and showed her a serious look. He didn't know what else to say to make the girl feel safe and he spoke the only thing he could say while nodding his head. Seeing Niel give her that look, Manami sighed before she responded. "Alright, I'll tell you... It all started a few days ago. I wasn't doing anything special and just did everyday things. It was after I was done studying I took a bath watched a few videos and went to sleep... Though I'm not sure if I really was able sleep but I had this dream or I thought it was a dream. There was this shadow that appeared near my bed it had a shape of a person. When I saw it I tried to move but I could not move nor co