“Are you ready?”

A droplet of sweat trailed off from her forehead. Her ragged breathing stopped momentarily, she swallowed, and panted again. Her cheeks were a dark shade of red and her eyes were jumping around frantically.

“P-Please, be gentle…”

“I will… Here I go, then.”

She closed her eyes, preparing for what was coming.

“Now!”

Lawrence swung the bags hanging from his hands, both of them filled with tennis balls, marbles, oranges, forks, paper crumbles and whatever other easily obtainable random item he could lay his hands on. The completely unrelated articles flew forward, dispersing as they advanced.

Hearing Lawrence’s warning, Mika opened her eyes and held forward both hands, focusing on all the flying objects at the same time. Eyes wide open by the sheer effort, she silently activated the Shadow Dimension feature.

The next instant, a legion of minuscular balls of darkness formed out of nothingness, right in front of their targets. In less than a second, all of them flattened like paper and grew in size, turning into spatial rifts that consumed the flying garbage before vanishing in a trail of mist.

… Well, most of them.

A couple of worn dices, a button and a basketball fell to the ground with a succession of hollow thuds.

“Tch…” Mika frowned at the look of the failed interceptions before dropping to the ground herself. Her legs were visibly shaking and her erratic breathing almost didn’t let her be.

“That was quite better. For someone who has begun to train seriously a mere couple of hours ago, that was quite the improvement… Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t do better. However, I am satisfied with the results…”

Lawrence clapped his hands and jumped out of the rocking chair, handing Mika a bottle of milk.

“Rehydrate yourself. It seems that your blink and storage features take a toll on both body and mind…”

Mika nodded and gulped the content of the bottle, wiping the sweat out of her forehead.

“Tasty white fluids, hmmm.”

What’s with the incredibly lewd manner of speech?!

Mika didn’t seem to notice what she had said, as she kept drinking with no concerns. Some of the milk spilled off, spilling on her face and already drenched sweatshirt.

She’s got quite the nice couple of knock— Ooookay! That’s as far as you go, mister!

Lawrence rested his chin on his hand and his eyes, his mind wandering away from such blasphemous thoughts and back onto the past few hours of supervising Mika’s training.

The ability to phase between dimensions in literally zero time lapse. The ability to store a literally infinite amount of items in a sealed storage, moreover, to be able to take things out of said storage at a range.

… Why the fuck does my minion have the overpowered MC’s power?!

Really, are you kidding me?! Would you have a look at her powers?! That’s literally cheating? You can probably outdo a whole fucking Spec Ops squad with those skills!!! Hey, Root-dono, are you sure your anti-cheat protocols or whatever are working properly?! I mean, not even This Side Up had that kind of power!!! And the guy obliterated a FREAKING COUNTRY for the love of God!!!

…

Haaaaahhh…

Once again, Lawrence thanked his recently acquired Façade Feature for not letting his thoughts show on his face. What a convenient skill, really.

Convenient, but utterly boring.

Why don’t I get to have some overpowered skill too? Like, dunno, laser eyes, summon an army of undead, pull a One Punch on everything, that kind of stuff?

Siiiigh…

And it’s not only her innate abilities. The girl is literally a genius. In three to four hours she not only learned how to properly utilize her skills, but also reduced the cooldown time for the blink Feature, and increased the range for the storage one!

There was also the fact that she was his loyal minion, of course. Not that Lawrence really cared when such unfairness was put in front of his eyes.

“You can go rest now. You have earned it, after all…” Lawrence waved Mika off after patting her shoulders and giving her a “great job”. Thinking it better, he reached for a pocket on his jeans and took one sixty doralls out.

“Go outside and buy yourself something worthy of celebrating.”

Mika’s eyes widened in surprise, and she grabbed the money rather desperately, with a look of disbelief on her eyes.

“Wow… For real?” Her eyes shone with innocence as she stared at Lawrence in utter disbelief. He simply nodded while smiling.

Right, sixty doralls must be quite a lot of money for someone who has lived on the streets for their whole lives…

Or is it? I don’t really know the way homeless people live…

… Hmm…

Oh, I’ve got it. Once I have conquered the world, I make sure to eradicate missery. Why have people being miserable and living on the streets while I can exploit them while they have a smile on their faces…?

Muhuh…

Muhuhuh…

MuhuhuhuhahahahahHAHAHAHAHHHH!!!!!

Stolen story; please report.

*Cough, cough cough*

“Okay, that was a dangerous track of thought…”

Nevertheless, he drew a ballpen and a small notebook from his pocket, and wrote ‘Goals for after I achieve world domination’, with an item A of ‘eliminating poverty (and instituting a corporative drone system where all my slaves are happy)’.

He took a good look at it. Then, he laughed wholeheartedly.

“Lol, this feels so petty…! Hah, I bet Dean would make fun of me for the rest of my life if he saw this…”

He laughed some more, then suddenly stopped.

“No, seriously, I can’t let him see this. Absolutely can’t. I’d rather die. In fact, why don’t put this under a lock? Yeah… that’ will be the best…”

He then remembered the time Dean had stolen his fifteen years wishlist from his safe and posted it on Imsgatran under the title of “A Peek Into a Chuuni’s Darkest Secrets.”

“Hell no. I’m burning this shit.”

What? Everyone has ever wished ‘reincarnating as an isekai rom com protagonist’, right? That’s not something to make fun of, right? You probably wished it true, right?! Then why are you laughing, right?!?!?!

…

… The ‘having a cool cursed eye power to say “I can’t hold it any longer!” while holding my face dramatically’ thing did seem something of an exaggeration, though.

…

Sigh…

Lawrence took another look at the scribbled notebook.

His eyes wandered around the ‘Goals for after I achieve world domination’ title. He snorted awkwardly, and looked away from it.

…

For some reason, though, he felt like it wasn’t that much of an impossible task.

“What with my overpowered minion and all…”

He snorted again, took a final look at the notebook, left it in the coffee table, and locked the door.

And so, he left The Beer Room, a little bit more decided about his next steps for the future.

…

“I seriously have to rename this shit.”

* ••••

[Status!]

Slightly motivated after his training session with Mika, Lawrence had decided to test out a few things on his own.

Well, it was more like, I told her to try some stuff, and her instinctive geniuses doing the rest.

Yes, whatever.

Anyways.

Right now, he was trying to experiment with his control over his own Status. Part of it was because he had the vague impression that the Root acted too much like a regular program. He felt like he could do some interesting things with it, if well not ‘hacking’ it, at least configure it, even understand the rules with which it worked.

The other part was because he was fucking tired of that shitty interface nobody but him seemed to have to work with.

And so he, he was currently getting acquitted with mental commands.

According to his MSS (Meta Society Studies) book, mental commands, or ‘silent casting’ as chuuni people called it, was, as the name implied, the act of casting one of the Root’s functions via mental orders.

Now, the tricky part with mental commands was that, to actually cast one, you had to concentrate quite a lot before you were able to bring out the desired effect, while vocal commands achieved the same effect almost instantly.

“Pros and cons. It’s just like fantasy books’ silent casting. It takes a lot more of concentration and time, those are the cons. The pros are that it naturally increases your concentration as well as the fact your foes don’t know what you are doing.”

This might not look all that important. However, that was only because Lawrence was currently using silent casting on the Status function.

However, activating an active or semi-active skill without calling out its name, in a fight between metas, was an advantage not everyone had access to. If he could master the skill, his options would improve a lot…

That was, of course, counting on the fact the Root actually ever game him a combat skill.

…

Oh, dear, I am soooo fucked.

Lawrence further laid back on the couch, lazily turning off the TV and munching on a handful of popcorns.

“What’s with the lack of fighting Features? Sure, I’ve only gotten two or three of them, but that’s around the time non-combat oriented classes get their combat resource. There’s not a single meta that doesn’t have a fighting skill, not even summoners and information brokers…”

A frown formed on his face.

“Shit.”

He just remembered. His link to the Root treated him in a way masochists would puke at.

Noticing the status window hadn’t popped out, he stretched out his hand and once again mentally voiced the command.

[Status]!

“Woah!”

Lawrence jumped out of the couch, flipping off all of the popcorns as he did.

He was startled. Just as he thought of his status opening, he felt something. Granted, it wasn’t anywhere near a giant holographic window popping out of nowhere.

Still, he had felt ‘something’. As inaccurate as the description might be, and he knew just how inaccurate descriptions could get (he had read over half of the shitty web novels there were out there, it was a Dean-scale headache).

Even so, there wasn’t any other way to describe it. What else would you call feeling like a lot of information that made absolutely no sense came into your head at the same time, after all?

…

Hysteria? Dementia? Hallucination? Psychosis?

No, you know what? Forget I even asked.

“Ahem… Anyways, that was some progress… Probably? Possibly? I mean, that ‘was’ information, after all… Maybe if I can isolate the information bits and handle them separatedly…”

…

That’s… probably going to take some time… Yeah…

Aaand, he had just hit a barrier.

“Welp, I guess that’s it for today’s training. It’s not like I have to be wonderboy myself, anyways, since I can always just train Mika to be an even better minion…”

So, he gave up on the matter.

Pretty simple.

“Speaking of which… I’m pretty sure I earned some kind of recognition from her after that much training… Let me check my status, maybe I did a little progress on that mission about earning her respect and stuff… [Status]”

-----

Villain: Lawrence Lakewood

[ Status ]

Rank: D (You’re a zero to the left)

(8) Quests before rank-up

Reputation: None (Your mom barely recognizes you)

Feature Points: 10 (Next Feature costs 1 Feature Point)

-You have a Free Feature Voucher

[ Meta-Ability ]

Criminal Mastermind: Every time you do anything a teeny tiny chance you’ll trigger a chain of events that will help you on the long run

[ Features ]

Silver Tongue:

- When in a dire situation, you find it easier to reach an agreement that benefits you the most.

- Semi-Passive Skill (automatic activation, 24h cooldown)

Façade:

- You are unfathomable. Mind reading and cold reading are both rendered useless against you.

- Passive Skill

[ Quests ]

– First Stain:

Fear! Respect! Appreciation! And more fear! When a villain’s deeds grow famous, so does the villain’s name! And who doesn’t want to see people flicker at the sole mention of his name? And so, it is your turn to make this meek neighborhood to know your name!

Goal: Make your name grow famous around the local area (1%)

Reward: Free Feature Voucher

– Criminal Black Company:

Yeah, yeah, you have your first lackey! Wowie! But you ain’t conquering the world with a few people only. So, it’s time to start expanding your business!

Goal: Obtain more minions (1/3)

Reward: 50 Feature Points

– The Lord of the Things:

Respect is power. Nobody is going to follow a wimp to the frontlines, now, are they? Make those subordinates of yours see you as a chief worth following!

Goal: Obtain a certain amount of respect from your minions (100%)

Reward: 25 Feature Points

This Quest is completed. Claim Reward?

– Mastermind Moving:

Clashing weapons? Sniping each other dead? Violence is for the inferior. You are a mastermind, your sword is your words, and your armor is your influence. Make sure you are ready for the next battle!

Goal: Gain influence on an important individual (0/1)

Alternative: Make an ally out of an important individual (0/1)

Reward: 25 Feature Points (Alternative: +25 Feature Points)

-----

“Seriously? Already?”

He might not be aware of the fact, but Lawrence’s figure had earned quite the respect from Mika after he had offered to protect her happiness.

Which was a phrase many could misunderstand, given the fact they were minion and boss, not a lovey-dovey couple.

“[Claim All Quest Rewards]”

His hand once again stretched forward, Lawrence voiced his command.

And…

BOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!

…

……

………

With a deafening explosion, his house was blown to pieces.