Dark clouds pressed low over the sky. Orange streetlights blurred behind curtains of rain, casting a dim glow over the road. Holding an umbrella, Kiyono Inori walked home alone.
Trains, cars, motorcycles… now and then, she passed other unlucky souls hurrying along under umbrellas just like hers.
The rain was pouring hard.
The umbrella kept her hair dry, but every step landed in pooled water. Her shoes were soaked through, knee high socks clinging wetly to her legs. It was an unpleasant experience, to say the least.
Kiyono Inori did not like getting caught in the rain.
Still, as long as nothing weird happened, she could tolerate it. Once she got home, a hot shower would bring her right back to life.
…
She let out a helpless sigh.
She had just been thinking that nothing strange would happen, and the very next second she witnessed something strange.
Across the intersection, walking toward her, was a crying high school girl.
Long blue twin tails draped over her shoulders.
She looked like she had suffered a devastating blow. Her small face was deathly pale, her skin delicate and flawless. You could almost imagine how soft her cheeks would feel to the touch.
Toyokawa Sakiko.
It took Inori exactly one second to recognize her.
Back when she reincarnated, MyGO!!!!! and Ave Mujica were still wildly popular. Even sixteen years later, she still remembered some of the more famous characters.
That alone was nothing unusual.
After all, this was a blended multiverse world. Running into anime characters from time to time was perfectly normal. Inori was already used to that.
But some things never became normal.
Like this.
Customer service Sakiko was standing in the rain, head tilted up, sobbing.
By all reasonable logic, without an umbrella she should have been drenched, hair soaked through, probably sick with a high fever by the next day.
But what Inori saw instead was this.
Floating beside Sakiko was a golden phantom, holding an umbrella over her head, shielding her from the rain.
The World.
The phantom was blurry, the heavy rain obscuring her vision, but Inori recognized it instantly. DIO's Stand from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Something was very wrong with this world.
That was the only conclusion she could reach. After witnessing magical girls firing beam cannons, classmates transforming right in front of her, she had now seen a Stand user with her own eyes.
Not something she could afford to mess with.
Absolutely not.
If it were just the pitiful Sakiko from MyGO!!!!!, Inori might have lent her the spare umbrella in her bag. They were not close, but she probably would not get snapped at.
But this one…
Not wanting to get punched through the chest during time stop, or picked up and moved around while frozen in time, Inori decided to pretend she saw nothing.
Kiyono Inori: (⊙_⊙)
She kept her expression calm, brushed past the crying blue haired girl, and finally let out a breath of relief.
After crossing the intersection, she followed the winding path along the roadside. Passing a cat café called MIYA, she was almost home.
Her apartment was not an old building.
It was part of a residential complex built ten years ago. She rented on the seventh floor, with two elevators installed. For an ordinary student, the rent would have been steep.
But Inori had reincarnated into a wealthy family. The kind where money was never a concern.
"Hah…"
Pressing the elevator button, she exhaled.
Everything she had experienced lately felt so surreal that she sometimes wondered if she had really come to Tokyo at all, or if she had even reincarnated in the first place.
existential_crisis.jpeg
Kiyono Inori was a genuine reincarnator.
In her previous life, she had been an ordinary senior year male student in Shenzhou. One night, after evening self study ended at 10:30, she encountered a car wrapped in Castorice livery on the way home. She fought with everything she had and still lost.
Then she woke up as a young lady from a prominent family in Fukui Prefecture, starting over from infancy.
As everyone knows, physical exams and college entrance exams.
Senior year students are at the peak of their academic ability, physical condition, and mental endurance. Few college students can surpass their high school senior selves.
With such a powerful buff, how could kindergarten, elementary school, or middle school stand a chance? That was what Inori originally thought.
Her family was rich too. Money was not an issue.
If she put in a little effort, she could easily become some once in a millennium genius child star, make a name for herself, earn enough money for the rest of her life. Easy, right?
Well… having grown up in an ordinary family in her previous life, even after reincarnating into wealth, her first instinct was still to rely on her own efforts. She had not yet adjusted to a life with a perfect starting hand.
But later, every plan she made fell apart.
Her reincarnated body was strong.
By the age of three, her reaction speed and learning ability had already surpassed her peak senior year self. Truly emperor material.
But the price she paid was this.
Her body was extremely frail. Not due to illness, but a congenital lack of stamina.
Even with a perfectly balanced nutrition plan, she could barely manage a thousand meter run without being lapped by the girls in her class.
She chose to attend high school in Tokyo for two reasons.
First, Fujishi High School in Fukui Prefecture had characters from the light novel Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle. That was how she realized she had ended up in a multiverse world. Naturally, she wanted to see Tokyo and Chiba, high frequency spawn points for light novel heroines.
Second, she wanted to see if Tokyo doctors could improve her weak constitution through long term treatment.
The result?
Magical girls. Stand users. And the TV never said Tokyo was this dangerous!
If she could start over again, Kiyono Inori would absolutely, definitely not come to Tokyo to look at anime heroines. She did not even have any tools. What was the point of joining the chaos?
Unfortunately… for the time being, she could not go home. At the very least, she had to wait until her hospital treatment and the school term were over before she could retreat from Tokyo.
"Mm…"
Her breathing grew shallow, her body heavy with fatigue.
The rain, combined with the unique weightless sensation inside the elevator, made her feel unwell.
But she was almost home. A shower and some rest, and she should be back to full health by tomorrow. Right?
She pressed a hand to her chest, calming her breathing.
That was when faint blue text appeared before the dizzy, frail girl's eyes.
Beep… beep…
Cat System progress has reached 100 percent. Activation complete.
Players can obtain large amounts of Cat Biscuits by completing events and limited time missions. These can be used to purchase additional special items. Active participation is encouraged.
Status Panel activated.
Shop activated.
Wish activated.
…
Inori blinked.
The pale blue interface remained crystal clear. This was not a hallucination? What was this? After sixteen years as a sickly girl, had she finally awakened a system?
And it was not late at all.
If the system had only shown up after she fixed her constitution herself, that would have been truly late. This timing was perfect.
Heh. Just watch me dump points into physical stats and become absurdly strong, crushing the entire world by myself. That thought had already taken root in her heart.
With that in mind, she opened the Status Panel.
Character: Kiyono Inori
Age: 16
Strength: 3
Speed: 4
Endurance: 4
Intelligence: 10
Charm: 10
Skills:
Mastery Level High School Knowledge
Mastery Level Middle School Knowledge
Proficient Self Discipline
Proficient Cooking
Proficient Piano
Familiar Tea Ceremony
Familiar Basic Art
Beginner Violin
Talent: Descender, End of Stagnation
Cat Biscuits: 1600
Money: 137,498,000 yen (T/N: Basically a million dollars)
The human average for basic attributes like Strength, Speed, Endurance, and Charm was 3.
As for skills, the hierarchy went: Mastery, Proficient, Familiar, Beginner.
As for Intelligence…
This stat did not represent intelligence in the everyday sense. After all, everyone had moments of so called world shaking brilliance, and ordinary intelligence was notoriously hard to measure.
On the Cat System panel, Intelligence represented latent talent and potential in areas like sorcery, magic, and mental power.
Humanity had no average value in this field. It could be absurdly high, or it could be absolute zero.
Since she currently had no access to anything related to those paths, Kiyono Inori did not care much about her maxed out Intelligence.
What she cared about was this:
Four points in Endurance and Speed.
She was already one point above the human average. So why was she still barely managing to avoid getting lapped by other girls in the one thousand meter run, even when giving it everything she had?
That made no sense!
The answer lay hidden in her Talent.
Descender, End of Stagnation.
An outsider, a variable, a soul from beyond the world.
Subject to balancing adjustments by the will of the world. Endurance permanently reduced by seventy percent. Intelligence permanently increased by one hundred and forty percent.
Both effects applied as independent multipliers. All items and skill effects were influenced by this talent. In addition, the user gained the grit to stand back up even when on the brink of death.
…
Standing in front of her apartment door, Kiyono Inori wore a stunned expression for once. When she finally snapped out of it, she could only mutter, "Universal Will, you really know how to balance things…"
…
I have completed the author to TL pipeline, 1 chapter per day. Advanced chapters available on patreon.
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Give power stones please I survive solely off of number go up.
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Let me know if I got a name wrong. I know basically nothing about MyGO.