Ichijō Mirai took a step back as the boxes, both large and small, layered together and soon overlapped to form a dense border line.
His field of vision was filled with hints and overlapping words, only a few edges of the road remained, and his ears were filled with a constant barrage of crisp hints and shrill focusing hints, and he could only hear the blur of the street through the frantic vibrations of the jammed replay.
There was traffic, honking, human footsteps, conversations and television, all intertwined and almost imperceptible.
In the midst of these sounds, sharp, heavy footsteps started and stopped abruptly, followed by a gnashing of teeth in suppressed anger, "Kujō Mirai!"
It was Matsuda Jinpei's voice.
Ichijō Mirai, who was rapidly clicking off without blinking, his eyes fixed on the upper-right corner of roughly all of the cue boxes closing, sniffed and looked sideways from the much-emptied edge of his field of view to see Matsuda Jinpei.
Matsuda Jinpei came walking at a brisk pace, bringing with him a gust of spicy wind, the hem of his shirt and the side of his chin still showing traces of red, he looked like he had been running for a long time, panting, and his entire face and exposed neck and palms were reddened, with the skin on his forehead the reddest of all, presumably due to some dizziness from his anger.
When he came over, his eyes seemed to jump up with fire, "I found him! Look at me locate him!"
Even his rather fluffy curly hair was even more fluffy, and he looked like he was about to go up in smoke, and after a brief glance at Ichijō Mirai, Matsuda Jinpei took a historic step closer to going up in smoke, "You had a gunfight with a robber?!"
His eyes fell on Ichijō Mirai's leg: there were several bullet marks there, some from bullets running through the pants leg, others from bullets cutting through the pants.
Only the pants were torn, the bullet did not hit Ichijō Mirai, and there was no blood.
Ichijō Mirai was still frowning as he closed the cue box, a bit annoyed, and was puzzled when he realized that Matsuda Jinpei seemed to be reddening a bit and heard the angry tone of the accountant's voice from a dozen or so layers of the cue box: "What's wrong?"
What did he do?
No ah, this time through the pass, he has been very restrained, only one innocent police officer by him in the spirit of 'come all the way here, do not rob a little clothes will not look like my previous robbing clothes behavior is very stupid? The idea was to rob, not a single weapon was harmed, not a single Matsuda Jinpei was disliked innocently, ignoring the victimized officers, not to mention, not a single officer was slapped in the face as he passed by.
Why is Matsuda Jinpei looking so angry?
It must not be his fault.
Based on the principle of 'thinking more about others and less about yourself', Ichijō Mirai quickly said a second sentence, "Being bullied by others? Okay you can send me a quest later and I'll help you get revenge, right now it's a bit..."
He clicked off all the prompts and met Matsuda Jinpei's eyes with flames, and paused as he clearly felt the direction of the anger.
Matsuda Jinpei's head held a blue prompt box, a number that was rising, the current value was [67], and with a headset attached to his ear, he looked at Ichijō Mirai, "Say it."
"How are you going to help me get my revenge, by writing a copy to the instructor, and then writing five separate conversations to me and Kenji and the others?"
There was a line that popped into his fiery eyes: "You'll be dead if you flippantly go along with it and say 'yes' or flippantly and carelessly retort.
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
He took a polite step back and said, "I'm sorry."
He doesn't know what's going on, but he apologizes regardless.
After a few more seconds of reaction, he realized the point of Matsuda Jinpei's anger: Oh, because he did a copy of the game alone without calling his classmates.
But you didn't seem so angry the last few times we met, did you? Obviously, he was a bit angry but still serious about rescuing the hostages and putting the big picture first, but this time, he looked like he was about to turn into a puffer fish?
Thinking so, Ichijō Mirai glanced at the blue value of Matsuda Jinpei's head, which had risen to [71], and wondered if it was a blue bar value, while asking casually, "Is it because I didn't call you? I'll do it next time."
The exasperated blowfish fluffed up, "Next time?"
Matsuda Jinpei pressed down on his headset, reached out and grabbed Ichijō Mirai's right wrist, and laughed angrily, "You make it sound like it's your first time going solo!"
"That Morofushi guy must have protested to you, right? In the event of an emergency, your first reaction is still to act alone! You just left us at the ramen restaurant and left without even looking back, didn't you?!"
He had no good reason to prejudge, "Don't say 'I didn't find the kidnapping at that time' or something like that, you clearly leaped out of the room smelling the smell."
"If it wasn't for the instructor saying you called him and reported your trip, we wouldn't even know where to look for you, and you didn't answer your phone!"
Huh?
Ichijō Mirai took out his cell phone and saw that there were 20 to 30 missed calls from several unfamiliar numbers, which showed the level of annoyance and anger of his classmates when they couldn't get through to him.
He put his cell phone on silent on the spot, and with some understanding of why Matsuda Jinpei's anger level was so high, he explained in a daze, "Oh, I'm sorry, my cell phone was on silent, so I didn't hear it."
Matsuda Jinpei: "...Hey! I'm not blind!"
The blowfish explodes into a round ball again.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Ichijō Mirai mused, "I don't have any hands?"
That's the truth.
Ichijō Mirai had to hold Suzuki Sonoko and cover his eyes, climb up and down, shoot, change bullets, drive a motorcycle and buy desserts during the hostage rescue, and with only two hands, not quite enough to pick up the phone, much less distract himself from it, and anyway, he'd already talked to Kudō and the others and they didn't need any additional information.
So he ignored the call.
Matsuda Jinpei: "..."
"Oh yeah," He said, his face expressionless, "so what am I grabbing? I see, it's your tail."
And he dragged Ichijō Mirai to the curb and sat down, threatening and urgently warning, "Just wait, everyone will be here soon, and if you don't explain yourself, you'll have to settle old scores with new ones! Wait, don't you dare run away! I'm holding your hand!"
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
Really, but with the cadet's level of compliance and morality, I'd say it'd be a painless complaint at best.
And grabbing...
It won't stop anything, will it?
Ichijō Mirai could have just dragged Matsuda Jinpei along with him even if he had been grabbed by one hand, and easily dragged his classmates into a 'weak and helpless mistress who is being dragged by a large dog and shoveling the ground with her feet'.
The 'helpless mistress of the house' had no idea who she was, and after making a threat that was not threatening at all, she pressed her headset again to listen to the other side of the room.
Ichijō Mirai could hear a little bit of sound, so he glanced over, but instead of listening to it, he opened the hints he had just accumulated and started to check them.
There are three types of alerts, one type of reward alerts that don't need to be checked at all, just positive reputation boosts, friendliness boosts, balance boosts, and being deducted to zero again.
There are achievement tips that need to be clicked on.
Ichijō Mirai's eyes paused for a moment at the details of [The Anointed One's] achievement: [At the moment of the blood moon's descent, adoration brewed into faith at its peak, and the god's first believer appeared, and the god's direction was her direction.]
[When she offers her faith, you are a god.]
[1,The initial believer is bound to [Suzuki Sonoko].
2, When the initial believer is within 15 posts of you, it will mobilize the trust of other potential believers, and your persuasive power will increase by +30, making you the leader by default.
3, You will be able to sense when an initial believer is in danger, and can either increase the crisis to refine the believer, or give the believer a revelation to decrease the crisis.
4, This achievement can be used in conjunction with [Motherland Calling] and [Spiritual Leader].
There is also a red warning: [*Note: Fanatical pursuit will eventually create a huge storm, so please consider carefully if you want to start the 'Religion' subplot]].
Ichijō Mirai's eyes fall on the red tip, auto-translated: no cults, please.
Again: "..."
Thank you, not really interested in deifying myself...
The achievement of [Spiritual Leader] is similar to [Motherland Calling], but it is not for the group, but for the individual, making the initial favor and trust of a single human being towards Ichijō Mirai higher. There is a tip to note:
[＊When in a person's mind, you will influence all her choices.]
[When in a person's mind, you will influence all of her choices.]
[With God's help] is very straightforward: [Early in the morning, the bells of prayer are ringing out across the land, someone is praying for you to be a little bit better, a little bit better, and a little bit better.]
[This is a one-way blessing from a devotee of a god to a god.]
It's an achievement that increases your luck.
[*Note: Overzealous or large numbers of devotee love will distort, so please consider carefully whether or not to iterate on the card bug.]
Ichijō Mirai saw the hint, and his eyes were fixed again as he spoke in a tone of stating a fact: "These achievements, were written by 'Ichijō Mirai'."
The real meaning of this hint was: if, after the game progressed to this point, Ichijō Mirai had no other thoughts about Suzuki Sonoko, and treated her as an ordinary passerby or friend, and considered whether or not to save up a few more 'believers' to iterate his luck, then...
Then he might get killed because of what he doesn't think he's doing, but what the 'believers' think he's doing.
The so-called 'believers' are simply read as 'lovers'.
But...
Ichijō Mirai's gaze drifted for a few seconds: But, Suzuki Sonoko wasn't his lover yet.
As a heat source approached, the hand that held Ichijō Mirai's right hand loosened and went to rest on his shoulder, and Matsuda Jinpei was a bit suspicious: "What are you thinking about, why do you have a look of rare weakness?"
It's as if he knew he was wrong to break up the house.
"Morofushi went to the factory and met the police officer who was there," he said, "and he asked me to ask you if you took on the dozen or so robbers by yourself."
"He said."
Matsuda Jinpei paused for a few seconds, listening to Morofushi Hiromitsu's questioning on the other side of the headset, his face quirky, "he said that he saw one of the robbers get shot five times, but only two of the shots went through the hands and legs, and the others were only minor injuries or only caused rips in his clothes,"
"And there were more than a dozen bullet marks on the wall where the robber was lying..."
He's a little confused, "You just walked away without calling us, and went to rescue the hostages with a guy who's a lousy shot?"
Ichijō Mirai: "?"
That's too much!
"You," He said, righteously denouncing this over-the-top personal attack, "are smart!"
"Yeah that's right, I didn't want to bring a guy with that kind of bad shooting skills, but he insisted on going along, and I was so kind that I reluctantly agreed."
"Oh, I'm the one who hit all the shots, I'm the one who hit all the shots, that guy is the one who wasted the ammo."
"I can't believe you figured that out," he slapped Matsuda Jinpei on the shoulder, hard, "that's smart!"
Matsuda Jinpei bared his teeth as the tap made his shoulder twist, "Ssshh, go easy on him."
He looks at Ichijō Mirai with uncertainty and wonders, "Are you complimenting me?"
Why does it feel like a bit of gnashing of teeth, and a shoulder tap with the suspicion of intentional retaliation?
Ichijō Mirai smiled, "No way, very smart Matsuda-san."
He heard Morofushi Hiromitsu's voice in his headset, "The robber," he said.
There was a pause before Morofushi Hiromitsu continued in a somewhat casual tone, "It seems a bit strange, I clearly saw that he had been shot in the left leg and left hand, but I was away for a moment when I contacted you, and then when I came back downstairs, I found him on the stretcher with a shot in his right hand and right foot."
The question wasn't too much to ask, and there was no suspicion of a personal attack on Savior, so without waiting for Matsuda Jinpei to paraphrase, Ichijō Mirai said, "Oh, it wasn't a hallucination, or a misremembering,"
"You're talking about the older brother..."
It should be the older brother of the twins, because he was left-handed, the one with weak physical skills, and was on the third floor, Ichijō Mirai played on the mistake that every player makes, and simply and roughly nicknamed the robber
The younger brother was nicknamed
Similarly, there are
In a multiplayer shootout, the player has to memorize the locations of the robbers, and the nicknames help him to remember them.
But this is a bad hobby of the player, it is a bit rude to say, Ichijō Mirai hard to change the words, very kindly like to explain, "There are a pair of twins in the robbers, almost the same look, the older brother is shot from the left side, the younger brother is shot from the right side, symmetry."
This reason seems to belong to the player's bad taste and bad hobbies, not quite like the police academy students can do things, he added stiffly: "I did not solve it."
"It was the guy who wasn't a very good shooter, but didn't really deserve to be physically attacked, he was a bit more mischievous, alas, it couldn't be helped, I didn't agree with it either, I didn't think it was a good idea."
He asked Matsuda Jinpei, "Right?"
Matsuda Jinpei nodded, "That kind of reasoning, is very..."
On the other side of the headset, Morofushi Hiromitsu fell silent and didn't speak again, not sure if he was convinced and didn't have any questions, or if he wasn't convinced and had more questions instead.
Ichijō Mirai waited for half a minute, not waiting for a personal attack, so he poked at the system prompts again, checking the last category of prompts.
The third category of prompts required manual control.
One was the number of draws after the two event rewards were settled, [The number of [Community Mystery Boxes] has reached 10, please draw as soon as possible].
One is the business card of [Messiah] and [Satan].
Ichijō Mirai took the latter instead of drawing them on the spot, as he was too distracted to be caught by the 'weak and helpless hostess', who might have been caught in the act of blowing up a round pufferfish.
He put his hand in his pocket, and when he took it out again, there were two thin cards in his hand, and he didn't know what was so special about them that they caused the system to alert him.
One of the cards is white, there are a few bright golden traces on it, outlined by simple lines of a prayer gesture of holding hands together, curved eyes, curved mouth, coarse grass hair and circles.
At the top is a line of text, also in gold: [Savior].
The image of an angel smiling and praying with curved eyes is only a few brushstrokes, but it is very vivid and has a sense of compassion and holiness.
Ichijō Mirai wanted to exclaim, "That's me."
But he knew better, so he took a few restrained glances, and then looked back at [Satan].
The card face of [Satan] is black, with blood-red outlining the sharp vertical pupils, the proudly exposed demon fangs, a dagger with liquid hanging below the fangs, and a curved heart-shaped tail.
The red handwriting at the top is not a word, but a symbol with a large space in the middle.
It is a demon excited by blood.
It's very Satan, and very Ichijō Mirai.
But...
Ichijō Mirai's eyes settled on the dagger dangling below the demon's fangs, moved upward again to the widely spaced symbols, paused, and tentatively overlapped the two cards.
The faces of the cards merged into one.
The golden lines of the angel and the red lines of the demon also merge together to form a new card face, the angel's curved eyes and the demon's vertical pupils combine to form a smiling vertical pupil, the curved mouth and the fangs combine to form a smiling mouth with fangs bared, and the praying hand and the dagger combine to form a knife-wielding hand.
This is a demon that wags its tail in a good mood because it is excited by the fact that the blade in its hand is filled with blood.
The kind with an angelic halo on its head.
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
I can't tell you, it's really him. It's a 100% vivid reproduction.
When the two cards overlapped, the raised lines rubbed against the card, making a raspy, harsh sound, somewhat similar to fingernails scratching a chalkboard.
It's a sound that most human beings are instinctively uncomfortable with.
So did Ichijō Mirai, and the sharp sound traveled down his ear canal and into his brain, as if sending a ripple through it, and he subconsciously shook his shoulders to remove the discomfort, but then stopped abruptly.
He stared at the card.
The shrill sound was like a flash of inspiration, a revelation, or the sound of a lock opening.
Details that had previously been disregarded, or simply ignored, came to Ichijō Mirai's mind: the misleading traces of Ichijō's house, the photographs of Ichijō's husband and wife, Morofushi Hiromitsu's hesitant and polite obliqueness, his sometimes inexplicable looks, Akai Shūichi's questioning ... and so on and so forth.
And so on and so forth.
After staring at the card for a dozen seconds or so, Ichijō Mirai's face changed, like a palette of colors, from blue, to red, to blue, to black, to colorful black.
He couldn't say anything, only a deep silence, "..."