After school, a shopping mall in Tokyo.
"Excuse me, I have a question."
Kenmyo Isayama pointed to a DJI drone in the display case, priced at around 180,000 yen, and asked the sales clerk, "Can this drone take off without a satellite signal?"
"It can take off without satellites, but it's not recommended," the sales lady explained. "Without satellites, you have to rely entirely on manual control to fly it back. It's very easy to lose."
"Alright, I understand."
Kenmyo had never played with drones before, so he had to ask about the basics. Hearing that it was possible was enough to put his mind at ease.
"I'll take two. Charge it to the card."
Kenmyo handed over his card. Subtracting 320,000 yen from his 5 million yen balance hurt a little, but he didn't have a choice. Money could be earned again, but leaving points on the table when they were right in front of him made him feel physically ill.
The [All Souls Temple] dimension had no satellite signals, so he had to be sure the hardware would actually function. If he tried to infiltrate a village with no fewer than fifty vengeful spirits on his own, given the three-lives-per-day limit, he'd have to die hundreds, maybe thousands of times just to map the layout.
That efficiency was too low.
With a reconnaissance drone, his efficiency would skyrocket. It would be like having eyes in the sky. Given how "primitive" those vengeful spirits seemed, they likely wouldn't even recognize what a drone was. To a modern person like Kenmyo, they were no different from indigenous tribes.
Mapping the village layout and devising a method for precision strikes was his only option given his limited resources. After all, the saying "Insufficient firepower results in saturation bombing" required the word "wealthy," and Kenmyo wasn't quite there yet.
He bought two: one for practice and backup, one for the real deal. [All Souls Temple] was plagued by constant heavy rain, but as long as the drone didn't operate for extended periods, it should survive.
After buying the drones, Kenmyo had many more items to purchase. This was a massive supply run.
First was a large quantity of white sugar. Sugar is a strategic resource; it's highly flammable, dehydrates rapidly under high heat, and releases immense energy. Most importantly, when reacted with potassium nitrate, it generates high-temperature, high-pressure gases, boosting the explosive power of gunpowder by several—or even over a dozen—times.
There was a reason why successful "start-up" groups in the Middle East spent their mornings boiling huge pots of sugar. Sugar mixed with fertilizer is a recipe for a very "sentence-heavy" career. Kenmyo was following in the footsteps of these "senior entrepreneurs"—it was a heritage of ancient methods.
He also bought a vast number of glass bottles, industrial alcohol, kerosene, thin cotton cloth, and similar supplies. He intended to make the world-famous "Molotov Cocktail." This stuff had even been used as an anti-tank weapon in WWII. Simply put, it was an incendiary bomb. Filled with flammable liquids, the 800°C heat generated upon impact could melt human flesh and thin sheet metal alike. Simple, but incredibly practical.
Futaba's warm tip: Good wine goes with good porridge, but don't overindulge.
He also picked up outdoor gear: binoculars, night lights, survival tools, a fire axe, an entrenching shovel, and raincoats to suit the wet climate.
But these were just the appetizers. The items he had a delivery company send to a small rented warehouse were the real "heavy hitters." His main battle weapons.
After taking a taxi home to drop off the small stuff, Kenmyo disguised himself and hurried out again. After an hour's journey, he arrived at a warehouse in Minato Ward. Under the cover of night, an empty-handed Kenmyo entered; five minutes later, he walked out still seemingly empty-handed.
However, the contents of the warehouse were now safely tucked away in his system inventory.
With this task finished, Kenmyo looked much more relaxed. He even had time to buy snacks at a convenience store. Back home, in a vacant room on the upper floor, he unloaded his full inventory.
In an instant, nearly twenty squat, yellow steel cylinders—each weighing about 30 kilograms—appeared in a neat row. The "Flammable and Explosive" warning labels on the sides gave these metal objects an immediate sense of menace.
These were civilian gas tanks, typically used by small restaurants for cooking. But if one wasn't careful, a gas tank could become a deadly hazard. To put it simply: the explosion of a single domestic gas tank is roughly equivalent to 150 kilograms of TNT.
Buying one or two is fine, but buying this many is suspicious. A single household would never own this many at once. Kenmyo had paid an anonymous middleman to order them and have them delivered to the warehouse.
He wouldn't change ten of them; he'd keep them "original flavor." But the other ten had a different purpose. He needed to vent the gas, turn them into empty shells, and fill them with the "porridge" he'd brewed.
He was going to make "Gas Tank Mortars." Five consecutive rounds of mortars to shell the village.
It was the most primitive method for the highest damage, similar to the legendary "Flying Tiger" Cannons. It was a bit labor-intensive—cutting through high-strength steel tanks was going to be a workout.
Incendiary bottles, explosives, "gas tank" howitzers—Kenmyo's "firepower deficiency phobia" was finally being soothed. It was better to be over-prepared.
Looking at the tanks, Kenmyo saw the "Steel Plant" logo and a smile touched his lips.
"You bastards... I'm going to treat you to the taste of a gas tank explosion."