Walking on the bustling street, he recalled what had just happened.
He and Nangong Nayue could only be described as having an ordinary student-teacher relationship, without much interaction. But if he had to name the most trustworthy person in the school, it would be Nangong Nayue, after all… a doll cannot go against its own setting.
Nangong Nayue was a doll. Although she was usually friendly to students at school, even if a student called her Natsuki-chan, she would only hit that student's head with a fan. But this was just a setting.
He was very certain about this because Nangong Nayue's eyes were hollow and chaotic deep down. Although she acted very well, the emptiness was there.
If these observations only suggested she was someone skilled at disguising a detached nature, then her body, entirely composed of magic power, solidified the truth. Although he didn't know where the core was, Nangong Nayue was indeed a doll.
He used to think so, but, can dolls lie?
Although Nangong Nayue said she had just arrived, he had felt her presence there an hour and a half ago. Thinking about it carefully, would a doll with nothing to do just stand there watching him practice swordsmanship for an hour and a half? Was her brain broken?
Forget it, why was he thinking so much? It had nothing to do with him anyway.
As he thought this, a silver-haired figure hurried past Sid, disappearing from sight in just a few seconds.
"Is that… Kojo? So fast. What is he hiding from?"
Sid recognized who the figure was; it was the older brother from the Xiao siblings who lived next door after he moved to Itogami Island.
"Boom!!!"
An explosion mixed with magic fluctuations came from the direction Kojo Akatsuki had just come from, causing panic among the surrounding crowd.
"What's going on? Why was there a sudden explosion?"
"I don't know, but either way, let's get out of here quickly."
"You're right. If it's a demon, and we accidentally get caught in the crossfire, no one will help us get justice."
Although at this point, as a mob character, he should go with the flow and leave, there were also some self-important mob characters who thought they were strong enough and wanted to watch the excitement or act as heroes.
Was he such a foolish mob character? Was he?
He could be.
His strength was an awkward, just-right B-, and he had a wooden sword on him. With good luck, he might even unlock another mob character achievement, plus he was genuinely curious. He went for it.
The regrettable thing was that when he arrived at the scene, he only saw two small-time demon thugs lying on the ground. It seemed the matter was already over, and he had come for nothing—if there hadn't been a wallet on the ground.
"Sniff, sniff. I smell it. It's the scent of money."
Sid's eyes sharpened, and his gaze quickly locked onto the wallet lying on the ground.
Even though there was a monitor in the upper left corner of his wallet, it didn't matter. He had over a dozen ways to avoid detection, and the simplest one was…
"The World."
Time stopped.
This was a magic he learned after the worlds merged. He named it "The World" because he thought a certain character from an anime in his previous life was cool.
He slowly picked up the wallet and returned to his original position.
"Release, let's go."
Everything was as it had been before time stopped, except for the wallet that was no longer on the ground.
He returned home, closed the door, turned on the lights, drew the curtains, and pulled the wallet out of his pocket.
"Now, it's time to check my haul. Let me see, one, two, three, four, five… it's 200,000 zenix, and… a student ID! Yukina Himeragi?"
After confirming there was nothing left in the wallet, he casually tossed the empty wallet and student ID into a drawer, then lay down on the bed.
For him two years ago, whether to return something found on the ground to its owner depended on his mood.
To become a Shadow Powerhouse, one needed wealth to purchase some top-tier collectibles to serve as a front. In his original world, most of his Shadow Powerhouse activities were funded by killing thieves and taking their stolen goods for himself.
In Sid's view, finding money on the ground was no different from a black-on-black operation. Both sources were wealth lost by others due to unforeseen circumstances; one was obtained through luck, the other through black-on-black means.
Sometimes, when he was in a good mood, he didn't mind trying to find the owner of something he found.
Until a year ago, with the principle of "internal stability before external expansion," the three worlds united and launched a large-scale bandit suppression operation. Since then, his stable source of Shadow Powerhouse activity funds was cut off.
Although he also participated in that operation, racing against the bandit suppression forces to seize a large amount of funds, losing a stable source meant living off past gains, and he couldn't bring himself to borrow from Gamma.
Therefore, for him, who had been actively seeking new funding sources for the past six months and was now extremely short on cash, he had no inclination whatsoever to return the money.
Anyway, a student ID could be reissued, and the found money was only 200,000 zenix. No matter how he thought about it, that woman named Yukina Himeragi couldn't possibly starve to death. Just consider it her paying for a lesson.
"Gurgle~ Gurgle~"
The rumbling from his stomach brought Sid back from his thoughts.
"Time to eat."
First, he hadn't bought any groceries, and the refrigerator was empty. He got out of bed, walked to his desk, opened another cabinet, and found several flyers with magic circle patterns inside. Without even looking, he randomly grabbed one and walked to the living room, tossing the flyer into the air.
The flyer floated in mid-air, forming a magic circle with a radius of about one meter, and a tall female figure slowly emerged in the center.
"Hello, I am… Oh, it's you, Sid. I was wondering why I hadn't seen you summon me for almost a week, thinking perhaps I took too much desire last time. Seeing you so energetic now, I feel much relieved."
"It's you, Tsubaki. This time, it's the same price, the same task. I'm counting on you."
"What's with that unenthusiastic look? Besides me, do you know any other devils?
But never mind, for an old customer like you, I'll take a little less this time."
"No need, Tsubaki. You said yourself it's been a while since I summoned you. My spirit is very good now. Take as much desire as you want."
"You… I'm serious. Look at how you've been half-dead every day. Constantly trading desires will affect your body."
"But desire is all I have to trade. And if the transaction isn't fair, you won't be able to account for it, will you, Tsubaki?
Anyway, desire is something that recovers after a period of rest. As long as it's useful to you, Tsubaki, that's fine."
"Sigh… Alright, but I will take a little less this time. Once or twice, my master won't say anything."
The woman before him, with long, flowing hair, a pretty face adorned with glasses, and a serious yet intellectual beauty, was Tsubaki Shinra, a new-era half-blood devil, and one of his free-ride patsies.
In people's impressions, devils were insidious, cunning, brutal, dark, and evil creatures that obtained lifespan and souls from humans through transactions—those were the old devils.
As mentioned before, a major war involving devils, Fallen Angels, and angels once occurred in World 1. In that war, a large number of personnel from all three sides died, their numbers so reduced that they had to rely on humans for reproduction, which led to the creation of devil pieces.
These pieces could reincarnate humans into other races, and the reincarnated humans became half-bloods. Simultaneously, their strength and potential were amplified. Although the cost was high, it was well worth the value.
It's not that humans cannot possess pieces; it's just that having other racial bloodlines provides a certain bonus. But from another perspective, even when some pure-bloods cannot obtain pieces, for a pure human to obtain a piece is itself an affirmation of their talent, potential, and strength.
Each set of devil pieces can only have one king. The stronger the king, the greater the amplification. Pieces other than the king are the king's retainers.
A king has a limited number of pieces, meaning they cannot reincarnate an unlimited number of individuals.
For every owner of a king's devil piece set, given the limited number of pieces, the answer is obvious whether to recruit those with ordinary talent or those with extraordinary talent as retainers.
In a situation where they need to rely on humans for reproduction, using the old devil method of transactions would only ruin their reputation. So, they switched to using human currency for transactions, and the scope of transactions also changed from power, wealth, and fame to helping with games, counseling for mental stress, finding lost pets, and so on, feeling more like an odd-jobs agency.