Tokyo: The Player Behind the Scenes

Sure enough, less than a minute later, that familiar stinging pain tightened around my heart again, as if a thousand snakes were gnawing at me.

Oshima arched its body again like a shrimp.

Gratitude has many benefits; it can even suppress the stabbing pain in his heart. Unfortunately, the problem is that he has rarely accumulated genuine gratitude from others throughout his life.

Strong distress signal detected

Will he/she appear?

Oshima froze, a sense of tension, like that of someone about to take an exam, slowly filling his body, and he subconsciously wanted to escape.

But the persistent, excruciating pain in his heart reminded him that to find peace, he had to uphold justice.

For some reason, images of the people he had killed in the game flashed through his mind, their eyes filled with an infinite longing for life before they died.

It was because the people in the story were so real that he had been living in a daze, feeling like a murderer who had killed countless people.

"We can't keep thinking about running away."

Gritting his teeth, he chose a classic bodysuit look and made his appearance.

Shinjuku area.

A corner of an alley.

Three Yakuza dragged a young woman into an alley corner and forced her against the wall in a triangular formation.

The woman held her arm with one hand to cover her chest, her expression slightly tense, but not panicked.

"What do you want? I'm already trying my best to raise money. Please give me a little more time. If you insist on doing something bad, you'll be targeted by the Demon Mist."

The Yakuza looked at each other, one of them appearing somewhat exasperated.

"What effort have you put in?! Don't think we don't know!"

"We've been at Okubo Park all along. When foreigners ask about the price, you say it's only for Japanese people. When Japanese people ask about the price, you say it's only for foreigners. Is this what you call trying your best?!"

The woman pursed her lips and lowered her head: "I...I don't want to do this."

"Then how are we supposed to raise the money, young lady? If this continues, we'll have to have your mother sign a contract and go into prostitution to pay off the debt. If you want her to have a less strenuous job, you can sign a package deal together, and the two of you will receive a much higher signing bonus."

Another, more composed Yakuza pulled back his impatient companion and spoke softly.

The woman trembled slightly and remained silent.

"You've dragged this out long enough. We can tell you're not one of those good kids who would abandon their family. But we're a company, not a charity. This is the limit we've given you. Or you could find a sugar daddy, then you wouldn't have to serve so many people, right? After all, you're quite cute, aren't you? We can help with that. You can pay it off in a few years. Think of it as getting a boyfriend and making some money at the same time. Who cares who you give it to?"

This Yakuza was clearly experienced; his words were soft, yet he seemed far more aggressive than the previous, more irritable Yakuza.

The woman leaned against the wall, her fingers clenching tightly around her arm, locked in a fierce internal struggle.

However, this also indicates that the other party's will has wavered.

But just as that person was preparing to make another effort...

Three red halos, seemingly holographic projections, appeared around them, floating and rotating in mid-air, surrounding them and flashing alarm-like red lights.

"What the hell is this?"

One person touched it, and their hand went right through it.

"Damn it, who's playing a joke on our Golden Blade Group? Don't they want to live anymore?"

Holographic projection without a medium is no longer a novelty, and they suspected that some tech geek in the neighborhood was playing a trick on them.

But after looking around, they couldn't find anything special—boom!

Suddenly, a flash of light and a loud bang followed, and a shockwave rippled outwards, sending the three thugs flying and crashing into the wall, emitting bloodcurdling screams.

"Ahh! It's broken, ah, it's broken!"

"My back!"

The woman who was closer covered her head and closed her eyes, but was not injured at all.

“Chao, Chao,” a Yakuza who wasn’t so badly injured stammered, pointing in terror at the guy who had fallen from the sky.

He was wearing a classic American superhero bodysuit, blue and red in color, which covered his face, and even his eyes were covered by a fly mask like Spider-Man's.

Oshima slowly walked up to the Yakuza, calmly grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him up.

"Don't kill me, don't kill me! I'll never do anything bad again! I promise! We'll pay for this woman's debts, we'll raise the money ourselves! Please let us go!"

In that instant, Yakuza seemed to see his great-grandmother. At that moment, his mind was filled with the legend of the demonic mist and the incomplete fate of those corpses.

Oh no, it's started showing a slideshow!

Oshima picked up the three men and threw them in front of the woman. He didn't say a word, but his silence was deafening.

Ignoring their excruciating pain, the men quickly knelt before the woman, weeping bitterly.

"We were wrong! We shouldn't have engaged in loan sharking, and we shouldn't have set this trap for your mother. Please forgive us! The money doesn't need to be repaid. Here, this is all the money I have on me. Consider it compensation for your emotional distress. Please forgive us!"

The man was quite pragmatic. He didn't resist at all, nor did he mention anything about "our boss being so-and-so." He was just very submissive. If he wasn't afraid of offending the other person, he probably would have clung to their leg.

It took the woman about ten seconds to calm down and realize that this was not a dream, but reality.

The surprise came so suddenly that she didn't know how to react.

But what if they retaliate later?

"We would never dare to retaliate, please forgive us! Lord Supernatural Being, I swear to you, if I dare to retaliate, you may tear me to pieces and flush me into a public toilet!"

Oshima remained unmoved, simply continuing to watch the woman silently.

The woman clutched her chest, letting out a sigh of relief.

"I only ask that you stop harassing my family, okay?"

"Yes! Absolutely! I swear on my life—you bastards, hurry up and swear too! Don't you want to live?!"

"We're sorry, it was our fault, we will never do anything so foolish again!"

"Waaaaah, my back, I'm so sorry."

The woman refused the money from those people and instead bowed deeply to Oshima, saying, "Thank you, thank you. You saved the rest of my life; you are my hero."

Then, at Oshima's prompting, she quickly left the alley.

Oshima's five minutes were almost up. He stood in front of the three men, exerting immense pressure.

The three men forgot their pain and waited for their trial, their foreheads covered in sweat.

"Remember what you said."

A hoarse voice came through.

The group quickly kowtowed, expressing their absolute respect for the oath they had just made and their determination to be good people in the future.

Where are they?

After all this, they were astonished to find that the other party had vanished without a trace.

The three of them helped each other up slowly, constantly looking around.

"We survived! We survived! Waaaaah!"

They embraced and wept, thankful to have survived the ordeal. After a while, they dragged their injured bodies to the nearest clinic.

"I told you, we should have changed careers a long time ago. Luckily, this time we didn't encounter demonic fog, otherwise we would be scattered all over the place."

"Don't even think about revenge. That would be a slap in the face to the extraordinary. If they find out, they could find you even if you fled to Hokkaido."

Unbeknownst to them, in a dark corner above, a being clad in black and red armor and wearing a samurai mask witnessed everything that had just happened.

"Is it too eager to use my abilities to do good and eliminate evil right after clearing the game? It seems that being a 'good person' is indeed the most worthwhile choice for me."

Renault chuckled softly and disappeared into the shadows.

The Oshima family.

Oshima Umeta lay on the bed, completely devoid of the coldness and intimidation she had just displayed.

He was so nervous, afraid that those people might resist, or not accept his threats.

A jumble of thoughts kept him on edge like a robot, and it wasn't until he had dealt with everything that he snapped out of it.

He realized that he had indeed acted as a hero.

They didn't kill anyone; they were saving lives.

The pleasurable feeling counteracted the guilt of killing in the game, constantly washing away the pain and allowing his mind to escape from the unseeing eyes of the dead.

The woman's gratitude, in particular, made him forget even the piercing pain in his heart whenever he thought about it.

If you calculate the gratitude points, saving this person will give you enough gratitude points to suppress the stinging pain for half a day, and the points will continue to rise slowly, although the rate of increase will not be as fast as the consumption.

But if there are enough people, wouldn't the subsequent increase alone be enough to cover up the cost of suppressing the stinging pain?

Oshima realized that his ideas were somewhat naive.

Just as not everyone has a mother, not everyone will be grateful for the help of strangers.

Some people take it for granted and even exploit it to disguise their true intentions and gain personal benefits.

However, what Oshima can do is not to ignore those who truly need help because of a few flies.

He believes that most people would be grateful to those who lend a helping hand in times of dire need.

The pleasure was slowly fading, and the stinging pain regained its dominance. Oshima did not abuse the gratitude points to suppress the pain.

The amount he has now is only enough for half a day, so he should use it for something more valuable, such as when he meets his mother, so that she won't notice anything unusual about him and put the snake bone back into his hands.

He looked toward the player lobby.

The number of online users shown above is 3.

I wonder if the sting of reality will still follow me if I'm inside.

Although I'm a little worried that Muramasa Taki will recognize him, the description says that the player lobby should have the ability to automatically hide his identity, so there's no need to worry too much.

After gathering his thoughts, he immersed himself in it.

Player Lobby.

On the seat belonging to Oshima, black mist began to take shape, gathering into the image of the tight-fitting suit he had hastily designed.

Once inside, he first looked at his hands and touched his cheeks to make sure his face was covered by the mask before he felt relieved and began to observe the other online players.

[Wisdom, Moon, Righteousness]

Before he could even say hello, another patch of black mist gathered at another location, and "Sen" had also logged on.

Chapter 171: The Association is Established

"Hello everyone, nice to meet you all—Chisang, you must be Mr. Knight, right? I'm your loyal supporter!"

In the player lobby, Renault is depicted as a black and red armored warrior, the only difference from his real-life appearance being the helmet he wears, complete with an exaggerated front.

But his behavior at this moment was completely inconsistent with the samurai demon mask on his face; he looked like a knight fan who had successfully met his idol, with stars practically in his eyes.

Is this guy really that outgoing?

Nobita scratched his head through his armor and subconsciously looked at "wise strategist" Uesugi.

Nobita only believed 20% of what Renault said.

In the days following the resolution of the Demon Blade incident, he did not remain idle but began investigating some previously well-known incidents.

A rescuer who was injured while saving someone from drowning received the response, "I didn't ask him to save me, so his death has nothing to do with me."

Three 14-year-old boys murdered and dismembered a girl, but due to juvenile laws, they were only sentenced to 5-10 years in prison.

Because of Japan's presumption of guilt in sex crimes, a man was falsely accused by a habitual offender and imprisoned because he couldn't raise enough money for a settlement. Five years later, the habitual offender was exposed by the media, but the man was still not released early and had to serve his full sentence before being released. In the end, the person who made the false accusation kept delaying and never received any formal punishment.

Nobita took specific actions in response to these three incidents.

In the first incident, although the rescuer regretted his actions, he didn't want the other person to die, so Nobi grabbed the person and took him to the riverbank, making him repeatedly experience near-death experiences.

Then he threw the man's belongings into the river, and went to a place where a corrupt official hid embezzled funds to take some money to treat the rescuer's illness.

In the second case, the three men had already been released from prison and were living under assumed names, but with Taki's help, they were still found. The three were still notorious for their crimes and showed no signs of reforming, so they were simply killed—nothing more to say.

As the hero's sword pierced their hearts, their anuses burst open, and they bled to death.

In the third case, quite a few people were falsely accused by the habitual offender, but opinions differed. Some wanted him dead, while others only hoped that he would be punished by law.