An Easy Way to Make Money (2)
The protagonist of The Reincarnator Wants to Live is a reincarnator.
A young man living an ordinary life on Earth is, for reasons unknown, reborn right here — Earth, yes, but a somehow different Earth.
This Earth has supernatural abilities. Once kept secret from ordinary people, they were gradually revealed to the public decades ago and completely overturned society.
What does that mean, exactly?
It means the world is crawling with martial artists who shatter boulders with a knife-hand strike and make the ground tremble beneath their footsteps; summoners who soar around on birds the size of buildings and get slapped with fines for it; incubi who pass for ordinary humans before draining your vital essence and vanishing; shamans who try to kidnap people for human sacrifice only to get beaten senseless by their intended victims and handed over to the police; and little arsonists with rotten prospects who hurl fireballs at each other for fun.
And Warna Academy is the place that gathers all those supernatural abilities under one roof and teaches them to students — cultivating gifted talent so they can become the pillars propping up this precarious world.
"Easier than I expected."
I swung a dagger coated in black Aura through the air, this way and that.
How does one survive in this chaotic world? Safely, without bodily harm, no less. There are several methods.
The first is to strengthen one's own combat power. I can produce Aura, so I've more or less satisfied the first condition.
The second is to have someone who protects me. That, I do not have.
As a law-abiding citizen, I can confidently say I haven't done much wrong. But can I be certain the original owner of this body I possessed was the same? So I needed a guardian — someone to shield me from dangers I couldn't even perceive.
That was why I learned summoning arts.
For me, summoning was a supernatural ability with nothing but advantages. I could handle most summons myself, so there was no risk of getting hurt by one I failed to control. And a successfully bound summon would become its master's loyal hound, ready to throw its life away to save him.
But maybe it was because I'd only learned summoning from videos?
I'd clearly summoned a protector exactly as the video taught, but something was off.
"This is… rather problematic."
The summoning had succeeded. It had succeeded, but…
Sitting leisurely before me, mid-yawn, was a black fox. And a rather small one at that — a kit that looked as though it would fit comfortably in one hand.
The yawning fox seemed to notice me watching. It stopped mid-yawn and padded over.
"Kyeng."
The little black fox came up to my feet and cried out.
No — why had something like this been summoned? I'd wanted a sturdy companion that would protect me. But the black fox resting on my palm looked so small and fragile a light breeze might carry it off.
It was rather cute, though — the way it was already nodding off on my hand, head bobbing as if it found the spot perfectly comfortable.
"…What do fox kits eat, I wonder."
Mother's milk, I suppose.
In the end, I never fed the fox a thing.
The black fox oddly wanted only my mana, and wouldn't touch food at all.
After that, we formed a contract. Following the YouTube tutorial, I drew a magic circle on my wrist and chanted the incantation. Light poured from the circle and enveloped the fox. She didn't resist; eventually the light returned to the magic circle and transformed its shape.
When I raised my hand to check, the circle had already become a fox-shaped mark. And I felt a strange sensation — as if my mind and the fox's had connected.
"From now on, your name is Miho."
I gave a name to the fox staring blankly up at me. I'd taken it from the nine-tailed fox — the gumiho. A fox made me think of nothing else.
Whether she liked the name or not, Miho let out a small "Kyeng" and rolled around on my hand. When I strongly willed her to enter the mark, she somehow understood the signal, nodded, and in an instant was sucked into the drawing on my wrist.
I let out a small sigh and stuffed all the meat I'd bought for her — plus the milk I'd pulled from the fridge just in case she couldn't eat meat — back into the refrigerator.
So was the summoning a failure, then?
It didn't particularly matter. I hadn't even entered the academy yet. I was going to learn this stuff once I got in anyway, so doing it now was fairly meaningless. In other words, since Warna Academy would teach summoning and every other kind of supernatural ability, there was no need to exhaust myself over it.
Still, the reason I couldn't hold back was simple curiosity.
Come on — I've got mana now. How am I supposed to resist using it?
I stretched and looked out the window. Outside, dawn had already passed and the sun was beginning to rise. I let out a small sigh. My body wasn't tired — this physique could casually crush an ordinary person — but the mental fatigue was considerable. I'd spent the whole day staring at screens, studying summoning knowledge.
The technique I'd used was just a basic introductory one. But it was a discipline that didn't exist in my original world, and with all the talk of mana this and circuits that — jargon I didn't understand — I'd ended up spending ages studying the fundamental makeup of this world.
In the process, I'd also learned that my mana was Black Mana by nature, and that Black Mana was directly linked to monsters, demons, and dark magic, making it a type people didn't particularly favor. Among them, my Black Mana seemed to be of remarkably high purity.
From what I found, Black Mana didn't mesh well with ordinary magic. Something about the repulsion being too strong even at the stage of constructing mana circuits. In severe cases, spells wouldn't activate at all.
So did that mean I had to learn dark magic? Summon demons, too?
"…I'm not, by any chance, in a villain's body, am I?"
A villain with dead-fish eyes who uses dark magic — the idea was so persuasive it gave me chills.
What does a person need to live?
First, food to nourish the cells that make up the body. Clothes to protect that body, and a home where one can rest at ease. Food, clothing, and shelter.
But can a person truly live well on just those three necessities? Don't you need hobbies and leisure to live happily? And to live well like that, you need money.
How does one earn money? There are many ways. Among them, something that would help me while being achievable in short order.
I could work day labor at a construction site, but there was a method that would improve my skills and let me make money quickly before entering the academy.
Hunting villains.
It hones combat instincts, and catching villains is even satisfying. You can also loot the wealth they've been hiding, and every villain eliminated brings me one step closer to the peaceful life I dream of — truly a golden goblin that gives without limit, surpassing even the Giving Tree.
The villain I was targeting this time was the same. This one appears in the original work. And not just any villain — the heroine's stalker.
One of the protagonist's harem members who lived near this villain had the misfortune of catching his attention. While stalking her as usual with his familiar attached, he spotted the heroine together with the protagonist. So this idiotic villain developed a grudge against the hero and swore revenge.
This idiotic villain was a fairly high-level dark mage with his own dungeon, no less. But he kidnapped the protagonist and met a thoroughly unpleasant end.
Of course, the protagonist's kidnapping happens mid-story, and the current timeline is before the novel has even started — but I'm confident I'm stronger than the mid-story protagonist. If someone weaker than me managed it, why couldn't I?
But there was a problem.
I'd made it to the mountain where the dungeon was, but I had no idea where on the mountain the dungeon was located. The mountain was fairly large, and without clues, finding it in one go looked difficult. Moreover, though the mountain was somewhat remote, it felt quite desolate despite having hiking trails — empty of people. It being winter, with all the leaves fallen, only deepened the desolate atmosphere.
How did they do it in the original?
First, the protagonist discovers the familiar attached to the heroine and realizes a stalker is targeting her. So when the stalker attacks him, he pretends to lose consciousness without panicking and easily gets taken inside the dungeon. Then he strikes the completely off-guard stalker from behind and wins.
But I couldn't use that method. I had no connection to that heroine.
So what should I do?
The method I chose was simple. Just comb the entire mountain thoroughly. I'd find it eventually. Of course, searching alone would take quite a while. But I had a friend.
And I had luck, too.
I found a clue at the mountain entrance. A yellow cloth was tied to a tree branch near the entrance, and a faintly ominous energy continuously radiated from it. Apparently black magic had been cast on the cloth, which was why people didn't frequent this mountain much. Even if you planned to go hiking, something about this mountain made you reluctant — made you not want to go. A magic of that small an effect.
But that tiny magic served as the first rampart protecting his nest, so in that regard, he'd used his head rather well.
I pointed at the yellow cloth for Miho, and she sniffed at it.
"Miho."
"Kyeng."
When I called, Miho answered from atop my shoulder.
"You can sense mana from this object, yes?"
"Kyeng."
"Guide me to where this mana is strongest."
She hopped down from my shoulder and trotted ahead, sniffing, as if telling me to follow.
Fox summons are said to be sensitive to mana. And for some reason, Miho was extraordinarily good at finding the scent or traces of Black Mana. Whether it was because she'd been summoned through Black Mana, I didn't know — but it was good news for me.
Following behind her, I could clearly tell she'd grown larger than when I'd first summoned her. After clinging to me these past few days and greedily sucking up my mana, Miho had gotten a bit bigger. Still just a fox kit's size, though.
I followed her, idly flipping my dagger around in my hand, until she came to a stop.
"Kyeng kyeng."
This place definitely felt alien. The trees growing sparser until a fairly wide open space appeared around us, for one. And the Black Mana faintly seeping from the ground — well-camouflaged to avoid suspicion — for another. Without Miho, I probably wouldn't have spotted it right away either.
He'd concealed it quite well, but a fox's nose was hard to fool.
This was clearly the dungeon entrance.