At around the same time, the business division at Manga World Publishers received an unusual inquiry.
The phone on Oumi Hiroshi's desk rang.
"Yes?"
"It's the business division; sorry to bother you, Chief Oumi. We've had an external partnership request come in. A game company wants to purchase the adaptation rights to one of our titles."
The head of business sounded comfortable, evidently used to talking to him directly.
"Which title? Just run it through standard procedure. I'll reach out to the creator, find a time for all parties to sit down."
Standard procedure was clean at Manga World. The contract each mangaka signed clearly divided rights: creative ownership stayed with the author, while platform management, specifically how the IP was sold and how proceeds were split, fell under the publisher's remit. In practice, for any major deal, a three-way conversation was always part of the process: the creator, the publisher's representative, and the purchasing party. The author's preferences carried real weight.
"You won't guess which title."
The business head's tone had taken on a faint, entertained quality.
"If you're saying that, it's probably not one of our bestselling titles." Oumi waved his hand. "Skip the guessing games. Tell me."
"It's a new work. Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners."
Oumi went still.
"...Edgerunners?"
---
Aoyama yawned so hard his eyes watered.
He'd pulled another all-nighter. This time: an FPS. The genre had a particular kind of grip that rational bedtimes were no match for, and for the past few nights he'd found himself elbow-deep in firefights until sunrise.
He briefly considered whether a MOBA would suit him even better; that style of game had a very specific kind of addictiveness, but as far as he knew, this world hadn't produced one yet. He'd have to wait.
Or, if waiting got intolerable, he could always pay someone to build one.
The money-and-game double win was not a bad proposition.
He caught himself halfway through the thought and felt mildly sheepish. He had no real intention of following through. He was fundamentally lazy. His ideal life involved doing interesting things with minimal obligation, and the idea of actually managing a game development project sounded like the opposite of that.
The low profile suited him. Mangakas weren't celebrities. He could walk through a crowd without anyone giving him a second glance. The comfortable anonymity of a name people respected in a niche category: that was the sweet spot.
He slapped his own face gently and attempted to locate his functioning brain.
"Group dinner tonight. Can't sleep."
He thought about it. Then:
"Right, system."
He pulled up the interface.
[Host: Hayashi Aoyama]
[Abilities: Hard Drive Memory (Diamond) / Cinematic Storyboarding (Platinum) / Drawing Kaleidoscope (Master) / Lucky Hundred Percent (Silver) / Household Tiger (Silver) / Colour Atlas (Gold) / Game Overlord (Platinum)]
[Points: 9,000]
[Active Missions:
[A Name in the Making: Earn praise from 100 people for any creative work. Progress: 100/100 (Complete)]
[Prodigy's Reputation: Earn praise from 500 people for any creative work. Progress: 500/500 (Complete)]
[Breaking Into the Hall: Earn praise from 1,000 people for any creative work. Progress: 1000/1000 (Complete)]
[A Name That Travels: Earn praise from 2,000 people for any creative work. Progress: 2000/2000 (Complete)]
[Established: Earn praise from 5,000 people for any creative work. Progress: 2,987/5,000 (Reward: 10,000 Points)]
[Impression: Have 100 people learn your name and form a strong impression of you. Progress: 14/100 (Reward: 200 Points)]
Born for This: Use your gifts to leave a mark on this world. Rewards issued by milestone: Stage 1 complete (Lucky Hundred Percent), Stage 2 complete (Colour Atlas), Stage 3 complete (Game Overlord). Stage 4 in progress.]
"Holy--"
The fatigue evaporated.
Nine thousand points. Nearly ten. That was another Platinum-tier ability sitting in the shop, just waiting.
He'd seen firsthand what a Platinum ability did to his output. Cinematic Storyboarding had made every page feel cinematic in ways he couldn't have achieved manually. Another Platinum at the same spending threshold was not a trivial thing.
Then there were the new abilities. Colour Atlas and Game Overlord, both earned through the Born for This milestone progression while he'd been too busy gaming to check the interface.
Colour Atlas (Gold): he turned it over. Colour knowledge? No, that was too shallow for a Gold-tier ability. He checked the details.
The ability gave him complete mastery over pigment; he could mentally construct any colour in existence and reproduce it from base materials. Given the right pigments to work from, he could mix a perfect match for anything.
"Yes."
He knew what this solved. Edgerunners' colour work had been the one gap in his output he'd known was there but couldn't fully close. The original animated series was saturated, deliberate, almost overwhelming in the beauty of its palette. His manga version had captured the structure but not every layer of the colour language. Colour Atlas would let him close that gap.
The Born for This task had been quietly running in the background this whole time, triggering rewards as his impact on this world accumulated. He just hadn't been watching it.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]