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At this moment, Kai had absolutely no idea.
That yet another girl was going to be tossing and turning all night because of him.
"Plagiarizing is seriously the ultimate speed-run!"
Inside his rented apartment, Kai sat at his desk, his fingers flying effortlessly across the keyboard of his newly bought laptop. If you wanted to get famous, you had to strike early—and the exact same rule applied to making money.
That was exactly why, the second school let out for the afternoon, he had hit up the nearest electronics store and grabbed this laptop.
Even though it was just a standard office model, it still set him back over a hundred thousand yen.
In his past life, he had been a corporate drone grinding through twelve-hour workdays. He might have lacked other skills, but his typing speed was absolutely cracked. Not to mention, he already had the entire novel perfectly downloaded in his head; all he had to do was act as a human typewriter.
In just a single, short hour.
Kai had already banged out over ten thousand words.
"If the local light novel authors saw this typing speed, they'd literally cry tears of absolute envy."
The light novel industry here in Japan was notoriously slow—most authors barely pumped out a hundred or two hundred thousand words an entire year. With a sluggish output like that, they'd starve to death in the web novel scene from his old world.
Taking a quick second to grab a sip of water.
Kai geared up to keep writing. His goal was to hit the hundred-thousand-word mark within the next few days. Light novels here were typically published in volumes of roughly a hundred thousand words, give or take.
Once volume one was finished, he could take it straight to a publisher.
As for whether it would get accepted? He was absolutely confident. If one publisher rejected it, he'd just take it to the next. It wasn't like every single editor in the industry was completely blind.
Ding!
Right at that moment, the smartphone sitting next to his laptop suddenly chimed.
Picking it up, he saw it was a message from Miko Yotsuya. He had been so entirely locked into his typing zone that he completely forgot to chat with her.
"Hmm?"
However.
The moment he unlocked his screen and read the text, his brows knitted together in a tight frown.
'Help, please save me!'
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Over on Miko Yotsuya's end, the terrified girl was currently curled up tightly in her own bedroom, completely buried underneath her heavy quilt.
'What do I do?? What do I do?? Why the hell is one of those things inside my house??'
It was a nightmare scenario she never could have anticipated.
Why would the same kind of grotesque monster she had just encountered at the bus stop suddenly show up right inside her own home?
Her entire body was trembling uncontrollably. She grabbed her phone and desperately fired off a message to Kai. At this exact moment, he was the absolute only person she could think of who might actually be able to save her.
"Can you see me...? Can you see me...?"
The monster's raspy, sickening whispers kept echoing right next to her ear.
Miko clamped her hands over her ears in sheer terror. It's okay, it's okay. I'm hiding under the blanket. It can't find me.
But in the very next second.
"Found you...!"
As she slightly tilted her head up, a horrifying monster—resembling a massive, mutated sea serpent easily three or four meters long—phased its entire grotesque head straight through the fabric of her quilt, stopping just inches from her face, dead-staring right into her eyes.
"..."
Why?? Why the hell doesn't the blanket shield work??
"Can you see me...?"
Miko's entire body went completely rigid. Fighting with everything she had to keep her facial expression totally blank, she reached out with a trembling arm and pulled her phone closer.
"My hand is getting kind of numb from holding my phone for so long."
Ding!
At that exact moment, a notification chime rang out from Miko's phone.
Her eyes instantly lit up, and she frantically swiped her screen to unlock it.
'Address!'
Kai didn't waste time asking what had happened; he just demanded her location with a single word.
Even though it was just a single word, it sent an overwhelming, anchoring wave of pure relief crashing through her chest.
Without hesitating for a fraction of a second, she immediately texted him her exact coordinates. As for the horrifying "sea serpent" hovering inches from her face? She forcefully pretended it didn't exist.
"You can't see me...?"
Seeing her entirely focused on typing on her phone, as if she genuinely couldn't perceive it, the sea serpent let out a disappointed groan and slowly phased its head back out of the quilt.
However, it didn't leave the room.
It just kept slithering and coiling its massive body around the confines of her bedroom, acting as if something in there was drawing it in.
A long, agonizing while passed.
No further messages came through on her phone. Miko knew perfectly well that even if Kai was rushing over, it was still going to take him some time to get there.
Hiding completely submerged under the heavy quilt, she was already suffocating and drenched in sweat.
Did it leave?
Maybe it had finally gotten bored after failing to get a reaction out of her and just drifted away.
Clinging to that desperate sliver of hope, Miko slowly prepared to peek her head out to check.
But in the very next second.
"Miko...?"
It was her mother's voice. Hearing that familiar, comforting tone, Miko instinctively threw the blanket aside and looked toward the sound.
"Mom?"
But the absolute second she pulled the quilt down, she wasn't greeted by Toko Yotsuya. Instead, she was met with the sea serpent's malicious, cunning glare.
"YOU CAN SEE ME!"
It let out an ear-piercing roar and lunged straight for her throat.
Miko scrambled backward in sheer, unadulterated terror.
"!!!"
'Why is this happening?? Since when did these monsters know how to trick people??'
'I'm completely dead.'
Left completely defenseless, all Miko could do was watch helplessly as the grotesque abomination closed the distance. She had backed herself completely into the corner of the wall; there was nowhere left to run.
"Slaughter it!"
In the very next second.
Kai's commanding voice suddenly echoed from the direction of her bedroom window.
A jagged tear in space violently ripped open right in front of Miko. A massive, pitch-black arm shot out from the void, driving a brutal, heavy punch straight into the side of the sea serpent's head.
BANG!
Caught completely off guard, the sheer kinetic force of the punch knocked the sea serpent's head violently to the side.
At that exact same moment, Kai threw the window open and vaulted into the room. Thank god Miko hadn't locked it.
"A Grade 3 Cursed Spirit?"
Seeing the sea serpent simply shake its head to shrug off the blow, Kai immediately calculated that its power level was definitely a step above a Grade 4.
"I'll exterminate you right now!"
But even a Grade 3 Cursed Spirit wasn't nearly enough to intimidate Kai.
"Kill you!"
The Cursed Spirit obviously didn't care about the power dynamic. Recovering its balance, it roared furiously and launched itself straight at Kai.
Controlled entirely by Cursed Spirit Manipulation, the Grade 4 Cursed Spirit acted as a fearless meat shield, throwing itself directly into the sea serpent's path. Even as the massive snake tightly coiled around its entire body, it didn't flinch. Seizing that split-second opening, Kai slammed his palm dead center onto the sea serpent's skull.
"Cursed Spirit Manipulation!"
As dense Cursed Energy violently surged from his palm, the sea serpent's entire massive body began to grotesquely warp and compress, violently tearing itself apart as it was sucked directly into Kai's hand.
The Cursed Spirit's eyes finally flashed with genuine, primal panic.
"No! No—!"
Too bad. A mere Grade 3 Cursed Spirit absolutely did not possess the raw power required to resist the absolute authority of Cursed Spirit Manipulation.
Within seconds, a dense, faintly glowing black orb materialized in the palm of his hand.
He raised his hand and swallowed it whole without a second thought.
"Whew."
This feeling.
The sheer, intoxicating rush of his Cursed Energy permanently expanding and surging through his veins... it was genuinely addictive.
"Fall back."
With a casual wave of his hand, the battered Grade 4 Cursed Spirit dissolved back into the void. Even though it was the absolute lowest grade of Cursed Spirit, utilizing it for a surprise attack had yielded surprisingly perfect results.
Only after the entire situation was completely neutralized did Kai finally turn around to look at Miko, who was still slumped in the corner.
"Are you ok—"
Thud!
Before he could even finish his question, Miko suddenly scrambled forward and practically tackled him. She buried her tear-streaked face deep into his chest, wrapping her arms around him and holding on with a desperate, vice-like grip.
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