"Do you like it?" Yukari's soft call shook Akira from his stupor. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of the change—both to his body and his environment—he could only manage a weak nod in response.
Akira then quickly laid out his plan for bypassing the money problem:
Transmutation Engine: Immediately start using the Instantaneous Financial Transmuter (HFT Briefcase), The transmutation would be split 50:50 into physical gold coins and high-denomination Indonesian Rupiah (Rp 100.000 notes) to ensure both long-term security and immediate liquidity.
Both Yukari and Kurumi responded with knowing smiles, approving of the pragmatic and audacious plan.
Kurumi, having witnessed Akira's exhaustive planning, his physical transformation, and his immediate focus on logistics despite having a goddess in his bed, found herself viewing him in a different light.
While she still fiercely thought of him as a pervert, she kept that thought strictly to herself, no longer allowing her internal judgment to show on her face.
With the plan confirmed and the team aligned, Akira addressed the last bit of necessary maintenance. He retrieved the Bottomless Bento Box and activated it, ensuring they all had a satisfying, if very late, breakfast before plunging into the high-stakes world of financial transmutation. The grand operation was about to begin.
After the hearty breakfast, Akira put his plan into immediate action. He took the Instantaneous Financial Transmuter (HFT Briefcase) and stepped just outside the boundaries of his newly expanded room.
He gathered about 20 pebbles from around of his house.
He placed the pebbles into the briefcase's input slot and set the device's ratio: 50% of the value transmuted into physical gold coins, and 50% into Rp 100.000 Indonesian Rupiah banknotes.
To activate the HFT Briefcase, he needed to meet its peculiar condition: it only works while the carrier is walking briskly, and its exchange rate fluctuates wildly based on the carrier's luck.
Akira began his test run, walking back and forth across the area of his rented house. As he maintained a brisk pace, the briefcase began to whirl.
With every step, the 20 common pebbles were rapidly processed and transmuted. After a few passes, Akira stopped, opened the briefcase, and examined the results. In place of the mere gravel, he had a perfectly equal, neatly separated pile of genuine gold coins and tightly banded stacks of Rp 100.000 notes.
The test was a resounding success. The ridiculous asset was now a legitimate, if unconventional, engine for wealth generation, ready for mass production.
He efficiently organized the small test batch of assets: he slipped the newly generated gold coins into the side pocket of his backpack and the fresh stacks of Rupiah notes into his empty wallet.
Leaving his powerful companions and his katana behind, he set off on foot toward the nearest store that sold building materials, intending to procure the massive amount of building materials for the full-scale operation.
The moment he stepped into the surrounding streets, however, his eyes took in the true extent of the world's sudden change. The scene was utterly chaotic: streets were clogged with piled-up, crashed cars and motorcycles, indicating that the end of the global electronic suppression had coincided with a massive breakdown of order and infrastructure.
Recognizing that attempting to travel through the wreckage to buy building supplies was futile, time-consuming, and potentially dangerous, Akira immediately aborted his journey. He turned back and returned to the relative safety and controlled environment of his spatially-altered house
Seeing Akira return so quickly after stating he was going out to buy materials for his domain's palace and waterpark, Yukari raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
"Well, what happened, dear? Did the local hardware store run out of the things you needs?" she called out, a hint of playful mockery in her voice.
Akira didn't answer verbally. Instead, he went straight to the nearest table, retrieved his now-functional laptop, and quickly opened it. He began searching the internet with a focused intensity, his transformed body rigid with renewed purpose.
He was using the renewed functionality of his electronics to quickly assess the true, current condition of the world. His brief glance at the piled-up wreckage on the streets had confirmed chaos, but the internet would provide a global scale of the disaster, which was a necessary foundation for their long-term plans.