“That was a really nice story! I can’t believe you were able to pick up the fact that they were in love.” Megumi looked on in amazement, with a somewhat exaggerated reaction. In reality, throughout the whole story, Megumi was completely lost on why Bunny thought Otako and Nanoko were in love but, was entertained nonetheless.
“The best part is, they’re still a couple even to this day!” Bunny smiled. Looking at everyone there she began to feel a slight feeling of déjà vu after seeing how Ayame acted around Rentaro.
“What would you have done if your plan didn’t work and they ended up hating each other? Hm?” An unfamiliar voice criticized. It didn’t sound like anyone she knew, and it definitely wasn’t anyone at the party.
“Oh, right! While you were telling your story I tried calling one of my friends from the [SPOILER] club! I don’t know if you know him already but I’ll just introduce him anyways. He’s a junior from class B, and his name is Tomoya Utsumi!” Megumi held up her phone, showing that she was currently in a call with him.
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Fujo: Wow, that’s a surprise! Tomoya doesn’t even have any lines in the actual story AND this isn’t even the Tomoya from chapter 7!
Shuichi: What does that even mean? Anyways, that doesn’t matter! This special’s not canon so who cares!
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“Good evening, Merry Christmas! My name’s-” Bunny went to introduce herself but was rudely shot down, almost immediately.
“Yeah, I really couldn’t care less and plus it’s not like you even need to introduce yourself. Pretty much every micro at school knows who you are. Usako Asagiri otherwise known as ditzy b*tch!” He said with a blank and uncaring tone. It was so surprising that Bunny didn’t even have time to comprehend exactly what he said.
“Wow, that’s a surprise I didn’t think I was that popul- Huh…? Ditzy b*tch?” She was in disbelief. How could he say something so insulting with such a mundane tone? Usually, if you’re trying to insult someone you’d at least try to sound somewhat spiteful. But the way he said it, it was almost like he was just reading out some commonly known fact, or he was used to talking like that. And much to Bunny’s dismay, it was actually both. Among many of the more ‘bitter’ and fed up micros at Hanichi, almost every normal student who has had at least one fatal encounter with a micro student was given some kind of heavily degrading nickname.
“You’ll get used to it…” Rentaro looked off into the distance, remembering his own insulting nickname.
“If Ditzy B*tch is there does that mean Siscon Nerd and B-Cup B*tch are there too?” He asked, now with a more sly and sarcastic tone. At first, it sounded like a genuine question but it was clear that he just wanted to say their nicknames out loud without facing any repercussions.
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Shuichi: See! I’m not the only one to point it out! Told you! The cup size of your killer does matter!
Fujo: I think you’re reading too much into a dumb nickname.
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“The hell did you say about me!!” Furyu asked assuming that the last nickname was directed towards her.
“Calm down there, blondie. Your boobs are way too small to be considered ‘b-cups.’ I think it was supposed to be directed towards Alice.” Sekira said slightly chuckling to herself. Alice, on the other hand, had quite the menacing expression on her face.
“You’re lucky that you’re not here right now, because if you said that to my face… Well, I think it’s pretty obvious what would happen.” Alice said in her typical ‘threatening psychopathic’ voice, trying to intimidate Tomoya. But, he wasn’t scared in the slightest. He knew that being in the sealed off computer room guaranteed his safety at school and that there was no way she could harm him at his home, so he was free to insult and belittle her without fear of being killed.
“Wow-ow-ow!! I’m so terrified! Just kidding!!! A ***** like you could only dream of vanquishing the one and only Dark Flame of Annihilation!” He ridiculed once more. It was clear that things were getting pretty heated in here and Megumi was starting to think that maybe calling Tomoya wasn’t exactly the best idea.
“Guys were getting a bit off-topic! Can’t we go back to what we were doing before?” She said trying to calm everyone down. “Hey, Tomoya, can you try being a bit nicer? Also, you shouldn’t be so open about your true identity. Awakening Megami takes a lot of work you know, and I might not have enough mana to protect you like last time.” She whispered to him.
“You’re right.” He sighed. “Oh yeah! Did you still want me to participate in this short story thing?”
"Sure!"
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Fujo: That sure was an “interesting” opening
Shuichi: Tomoya’s an “interesting” person.
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Our story begins with a young boy in Japan. And the moment that sent him to a faraway land. A world filled with adventure and magic. A fantasy classic whose ending is quite tragic…
“My name is Kentaro Ritagawa. I’m an average, run-of-the-mill 2nd-year micro student. And other than my slightly above-average grades, I’m completely unremarkable in every single way. As much as that might sound like a bad thing, I was actually extremely contempt with the life I had. But, of course, things didn’t stay that way for long.”
It was an average spring day, and Kentaro was making his way to class at a completely average pace. As he turned the corner he could faintly hear the feeble cries of a younger female student, or so he thought.
“Help me…” The voice called. From the sound of it, they sounded completely desperate. Wanting to help out however he could, Kentaro followed the voice until he was met with a worrying image. Thanks to him absent-mindedly trying to follow some mysterious voice, he had wandered into one of the more dangerous parts of the school by accident. However, as the voice grew louder Kentaro realized it was too late to give up, and continued to follow the voice.
Turning the corner he finally saw it. A young female micro student cornered by none other than the infamous bully, Arisu Nagayama. Normally Kentaro wouldn’t even bat an eye at something like that. It was the girl’s fault for being in such a dangerous place. But, as Arisu lifted her foot and prepared to step on the poor student, something came over him. A strange feeling that he couldn’t explain. All of a sudden, without even thinking, his body started to move on its own in order to save the young girl. Making a mad dash towards her Kentaro dived into her pushing her out of harm’s way.
“Thank you...” Were the last words he heard as his puny existence was crushed flat under the shoes of someone who was 100x’s bigger than him, or that’s what should’ve happened. When Kentaro opened his eyes he found himself in a strange room. Around him was darkness, as far as the eye could see stretching out for miles and miles. In front of him was none other than the girl he tried to save, but she was dressed in some weird toga(?). (she essentially looked your typical greek goddess, you know the deal I don’t have to explain it).
“Congrats, Kentaro Ritagawa. You have been blessed by the goddess of the afterlife.” She said getting uncomfortably close to him. From this close, Kentaro could see every inch of her face. He could hear the subtle beating of her heart and feel her breaths softly land against him.
“W-What do you mean…?” He tried to back away from the girl but, for some reason, he couldn't move an inch.
"Thanks to your kind and courageous deed, my earthly vessel was saved from destruction. As thanks for your sacrifice, I will grant you the chance of an after-life time haha… get it? Because you're not alive anymore. It's just a little bit of goddess wordplay. We like to have fun here." It was at that point Kentaro realized that this 'goddess' was a full-blown idiot. Nevertheless, the only thing he could do was hear her out till the end.
"I will imbue your body with the strength, courage, and charisma of a great hero and transport you to the world of Perpeterra. In which you will be tasked with defeating The Empress of Dark Shadows and her loyal servants!" She said triumphantly doing some stupid 'adventurer' pose.
"..." Kentaro was speechless. What did he just hear? Was she assigning him a task or was she reading out the plot of some trashy fantasy anime? It was essentially gibberish.
"Now! Go forth and save the world of Perpeterra from the Shadow Worlds’ evil intentions!!" She snapped her fingers expecting him to be teleported immediately. None of this helped with his confusion and the fact that nothing happened perplexed him even more.
"Oh, right that was changed in the recent patch. I guess we have to do this the old fashioned way…" She sighed and almost immediately started to grow exponentially, and in under a minute she was 100x's larger than Kentaro. "In order to send you to Perpeterra, I kinda have to ‘Re: Kill’ you.” Distracted by her sudden growth spurt, he failed to notice that this ‘goddess’ was a few seconds away from being crushed flat against the floor of this...room(?)
“Re: Kill? Sounds like some Re:Zero knock of- AAAHH!!” He yelled jumping out of the way in the nick of time. “At least let me choose how I die, jeez!!!” Trying to calm his still-beating heart, Kentaro noticed a very foul odor coming from right behind him. Hesitantly turning around all he saw was the goddess’ sandaled foot. ‘There’s no way a goddess could smell that bad? It must be coming from somewhere else!’ He thought, covering his nose!
“Wow! You have fast reflexes!! If you can avoid my onslaught of attacks for the next ten minutes I might consider letting you choose how you die!” She winked and for the next six hundred seconds, Kentaro barely dodged each and every single one of her attacks. But, as seconds ticked by the smell only got worse and worse. “If you can dodge my attacks then you’ll have no problem the shadow empress!! But, I won't be bested that easily...” She chuckled, slowly unbuckling her sandal.
“W-What are you doing?! Ten minutes is up, right? Right?!” He started to back up feebly trying to escape the idiot goddess.
“I worked up quite the sweat trying to crush you, ya know?” Dropping her sandal right next to him, he realized that his earlier thought was completely wrong! The smell was coming from her, and it this point, thanks to him being an idiot and not wanting to take the quick and painless way out, he only made the smell worse for what was about to happen. “Now time face the might of my ultimate attack: Scent of Death!!!” As her putrid foot odor invaded his senses Kentaro found himself gasping desperately for fresh air but, no doing so only allowed more of her pungent aroma to enter his body. Blacking in and out of consciousness, the idiot goddess finally realized just how resilient Kentaro really was. This gave her an idea! If she kept putting him through deadly scenarios, slowly but surely his resistance, speed, and many of his other stats would gradually go up.
She snapped her fingers and Kentaro, who was practically begging for death, was surprised as a shining red choker started to constrict around his neck. Once it had completely gone around his throat a strange pop-up appeared right in front of his face. “The Undying Choker: A mysterious SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSR class item that allows it’s user to magically survive on 1 HP forever. However, any damage taken after the user hits 1 HP is amplified by 9.9 x 101000000. Meaning that any pain felt after 1 HP hurt, a lot.” and at the bottom of the pop-up was a sentence written extremely tiny text. “EXP gain scales with the amount of pain felt.” After reading this pop-up, an assortment of strange symbols started to appear right before his eyes. Upon closer inspection, he realized that these ‘strange symbols’ were forming together to create some kind of videogame UI. Displaying his EXP, HP, Stamina, and other typical RPG stats. This would be cool, if not for the fact that he was slowly being poisoned to death.
“W-Wait a minute…” He looked towards the top right of his ‘UI’ and saw that his HP was rapidly decreasing and once it had finally hit the dreaded ‘number 1’ the putrid odor became exponentially worse by an immeasurable magnitude.
“For being of such a high rarity the undying choker sure is a harsh item! I mean, I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like for you hehe~! My foot isn’t even that close to you and you look like you’re in soooo much pain. I wonder what would happen if I put you between my toes or stomped on you. Of course, you wouldn’t die so I suppose it’d be ok…” Her sweet uncaring smile was the last thing Kentaro saw as he was thrust into a life of unending pain and suffering. And that pain would continue until he had reached level 100 which would take quite a while. Luckily, for Kentaro, thanks to time moving differently in the “after-life” even if it took a month or even a year to reach max level, he’d still have plenty of time to take down The Empress of Dark Shadows. No matter how much he begged and pleaded the goddess wanted to be 100% sure that Kentaro was prepared to fight her, which meant getting him to max level.
Over the next month and a half, Kentaro was, drowned by the goddess’ toxic foot sweat, stomped on, pasted to the bottom of her foot as ran in place for an hour, sat on, used as personal ‘you know what’ tool, eaten, digested, crushed flat in between her breasts, stretched and pulled apart...etc. But, as a plus side to this horrific torture, Kentaro’s pain tolerance had gone up extremely, his poison resistance was at the point in which he was effectively immune to all toxins, his physical defense and strength had gone up, he was now more agile, and all his other stats had maxed out completely aswell.
"Now! You are finally ready to start your new adventure in Perpeterra! And as a reward to make sure you aren’t… such an empty husk, I’ll revert your mindset to how it was before we started ‘training.’ With the snap of her fingers, Kentaro was back to his usual positive self and ready to take on whatever obstacle that stood in his way. “Oh, and you can keep the choker!”
“NO THANKS!!”
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Fujo: Wow, just wow! I was baited. I was tricked! I thought this was going to be some generic isekai power fantasy but, boy, was I wrong!
Shuichi: Don’t worry. The first three episodes are the only ones that break the mold. After that, it just becomes your typical isekai story. (if you can guess what anime Shuichi is referencing you get a special reward!)
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“That was such a good story Tomoya!” Rentaro yelled out to him! “Now how much do I owe you?” He pulled out his phone and opened an unnamed cash transfer app.
“The commission prices are all on my main page, but since your my friend, I’ll give you a slight discount!” As the two discussed prices Megumi finally understood why the main protagonist sounded so familiar.
“Oh! Kentaro Ritagawa is just Rentaro’s name with the first letters of his given and surname switched!! Haha~ That kinda reminds me of how my friend Fujo names her characters.” She reached into her bookshelf looking for one of Fujo’s doujins. “Aha, here it is!” She pulled it out, and on the cover was a very lewd drawing of what looked to be a well endowed white-haired girl with a micro sandwiched between her breasts and the title read: “Oppai Sugoi Doki Doki Heart-Stopping Fall Collection! Featuring NEW CHARACTERS: Meguri Shiroe, Akane & Shuchi Rhinko, Testuyumi Saiko, and many more! Illustrated by Fuzue Shijo.”
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Shuichi: Is that really your pen name? Fuzue Shijo? Do you have no sense of identity preservation? Also wow, that title’s a mouthful!
Fujo: Shut up! It was the only thing I could think of at the time and it’s way too late to change it now. And the title doesn’t matter! My art is so good that I don’t even need to think of a good title, because as long as my name is on the cover you can add a couple dozen 0’s to the total sales.
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“Wait, YOU’RE FRIENDS WITH FUZUE SHIJO?!?!” Tsumi got up and started to interrogate Megumi about her relationship with her. It was clear that she a big fan...