What, Failure to Transition!? Volume 1 Chapter 7 (Patreon)

Chapter 7 – [Appraisal+] is a Prime Example of a Cheat

The next morning, Yoichi decided to try out the function that allowed him to check his home point from a remote location once again.

This time, as it has been fixed by the administrator, he could now look around subjectively as if he were standing at the home point. No static noises at all, unlike the first time.

And upon further tinkering, Yoichi has also discovered that it has an added zoom function as well, so now Yoichi could see everything clearly in about a 100-meter radius.

If there's any problem, that would be the origin point cannot be moved in place.

(Huh? Something feels odd.)

Compared to yesterday when he actually landed, Yoichi noticed that the forest looked quite different from the last time.

Yesterday, the forest was quite dense with trees, but now only a few trees were growing, and they seemed to be a little lower in height.

(In other words, the time period is different from that time I transported there.)

Yoichi could also see a few demons or beasts here and there.

And most importantly, he could also see the rabbit with a huge horn that he saw yesterday.

Apparently, the appearance of demons didn’t change much, even though the time period had changed a lot.

As a result of further verification, he also discovered that while the centerpoint could not be moved, the viewpoint could still be changed.

With this, Yoichi was able to see the surroundings from a bird’s eye view centered on the origin point, and he could also change the magnification so that he could see to a maximum of 100 kilometers in every direction he wants.

After passing through the forest and heading east for a while in his vision, he was able to find what seemed to be a town. However, he still needed to get past through that forest, which was teeming with beasts, in order to reach that said town.

Meaning in order to do that, he would need something to equip himself first, and also the necessary back-up plans just in case anything goes wrong.

Still, because he is short right now, Yoichi didn’t have anything yet that is necessary to camp to the other world, much more in this world, nor the money to spend on those goods.

First and foremost, he needed money. And the first thing that came to Yoichi’s mind as a quick way to earn some was thru gambling.

In this country, gambling is illegal in principle; instead, there are public gaming types that are being run with the government’s approval, like raffles and such.

With that, there should be no violation of his rule of ‘not breaking the law’ in case he participates in them. However, since Yoichi found out that he can go to the other world, that rule was already wobbling.

(Still, I’m going to follow it as much as I can.)

The first thing Yoichi thought of was the lottery.

As a matter of fact, lotteries are designed in such a way that the winning numbers cannot be confirmed in advance.

Even with Yoichi’s cheat skills, he still couldn’t predict the future.

But why did Yoichi still turn to the lottery?

Scratch cards.

It’s a form of gambling where you have to scrape the hidden part of the card to see if you’ve won or not.

Unlike the mechanism of the lottery in which the winner could only be determined by seeing the future, in the case of scratch cards, the winning card was already determined, since Scratch cards’ results were already printed out and are only hidden by a scratchable silver covering.

This line of thoughts eventually led to Yoichi having an idea of exploiting his [Appraisal+], so that he could find the winning scratch card, even if it was hidden in the opaque covering.

Of course, there were still many other ways to earn money. Still, Yoichi decided that the best way for now was to play the lottery, where you can make a million yen legally and not be affected by taxes, and most importantly, avoid the suspicions of the government of him holding a large wad of cash. Of course, he could come up with a better idea than that, but he needs time.

Currently, the winning amount for scratch cards is 1 million yen for the first prize, 100,000 yen for the second prize, and 20,000 yen for the third prize.

For 500,000 yen and above, whatever the form of lottery, an ID is required for redemption.

(Should it be better to redeem the second and lower prizes anonymously over and over again? ...... No, I need to settle some accounts for the time being, so let’s just win the first prize for now.)

The first lottery booth Yoichi chose was a slightly larger one with five reception areas at a downtown station.

There was a reason why he chose a wide lottery booth, but he’ll explain that later.

Yoichi immediately decided to use the search and reverse lookup functions of 【Appraisal+】.

When you use [Appraisal+] normally, you look at the object, appraise what it is, and see the appraisal result.

On the other hand, reverse lookup is a function in which you search for an item from the appraisal result. This is nothing more than a cheat because you can search for anything using any words you want. What’s more, with the reference being your thoughts, the accuracy is always 100%.

Depending on how you use it, it’s a skill that is already enough for you to rule the world. After all, information is power.

Yoichi was not interested in this at all, though.

[Search for a Scratch card with 1st prize.]

But there was no response.......

This only means that there is no first prize within a 100-meter radius. Just to be sure that he’s using the function correctly, Yoichi also tried searching for the “scratch card with the 3rd prize”.

It was then when four arrows indicating the object were displayed in his vision.

(So many kiosks, yet only four of them are available? ......)

Yoichi approached one of the kiosks and checked on where the arrows were pointing.

He pretended to be confused at first about which ones to buy so that he wouldn’t be particularly suspicious.

And upon darting his eyes about, he found one of the four – it was the one that was just taped to the transparent glass wall.

But he didn’t hurry and looked around first, checking to see if there are any other people playing scratch cards around the counter.

It was because if there are people who have bought some scratch cards and are scratching them right now, if you hit a prize in such a conspicuous manner, there is always the possibility that he will be told that “Hey, I was aiming for that first!” and will be accused by the sore loser of getting his chances wasted later on.

This was the first reason why he chose the wide lottery booth – to avoid interference.

(……Okay, no one is around.)

After confirming that there was no one who can blame him, Yoichi called out to the salesperson.

“Uhm, I’d like to try some scratch cards.”

“Please wait for a moment.”

The saleswoman then picked up about ten of the scratchers from the stack on the counter and handed them to Yoichi.

“Would you like to choose instead?”

“Yes, please. Let’s see, can I have this one?”

“Of course.”

“Also, this one, this one, and……”

Since only winning by only one card would be conspicuous, Yoichi bought two cards from the posted scratch cards on the window and three cards from the one the salesman gave him, for a total of five cards for 1,000 yen.

He left the sales floor and moved to a space off to the side, then took out some coins from his wallet and immediately scraped the silver film.

(Oh, I really won the third prize! That’s amazing, [Appraisal+]!)

Yoichi immediately redeemed the money.

Normally, in small kiosks, you would need to go to a bank to exchange a prize of more than 10,000 yen, but at the larger sales kiosks like this one, you can exchange directly up to 50,000 yen worth of prizes.

This was the other reason why Yoichi had chosen this large kiosk.

“Ma’am, I’ve won!”

He went to the same salesperson where he had purchased it to exchange it for cash.

Of course would be more natural to be honestly happy here.

“Oh, congratulations!”

Yoichi earned 19,000 yen within a few minutes of arriving at the sales kiosk.

After that, Yoichi visited about ten kiosks.

There was a good percentage of third prizes. Still, he felt that hitting the third prize so many times would make him look conspicuous, even though he could exchange it immediately for cash at the sales kiosk without identification. Hence, he bought only two more tickets with the 3rd prize in it and refrained from buying any more.

It was already evening when Yoichi finally found the winning card with the second prize, but the bank was already closed when he bought it, so he had no choice but to put it in his wallet and return home.

Soon as he arrived home, he scraped the scratch card, and it proved that [Appraisal+] was right once again.

Yoichi had earned 155,000 yen in just that day.

“I can now manage to pay my debts for the time being with this.”

(Now I just have to find the first prize card, even if it takes me a few days.)

The next day, Yoichi visited a different downtown area, yet it was only a short distance from his house.

First, he went to a bank to redeem his 2nd prize.

At the time of redemption, he was offered to open an account with the bank since he didn’t have one yet, but he refused and opted to give the money in cash instead.

Yoichi pretended to put the cash money, which was given to him in an envelope, directly into his pocket and immediately transferred it into the [Infinite Storage+].

(There is no safer way to store money than this.)

After leaving the bank, he also went to the lottery booths that he had checked out along the way. Walking around the city, occasionally winning the third prize one after the other, his start of the day went with this.

But that was not all the good things that happened that day.

Yoichi discovered that he was now able to walk around the city at a faster pace than usual, probably thanks to his new [Healthy Body+], because even if he got tired, he was able to quickly recover after a short rest.

(Though it’s not included in my standard skillset, [Healthy Body+] is probably the skill I was the most thankful for.)

After a full day of walking, Yoichi was about to give up for the day when he finally found the first prize.

It was inside a small shop, but it didn’t matter because he needed to go to the bank to redeem anyway.

“Excuse me. I’d like to play scratch.”

The saleswoman, a middle-aged woman, gave Yoichi about 20 cards.

But there was no first prize among them.

“I’m sorry, but I want to examine them carefully. Also, can you give me some more?”

“Haha. Sure, sure, take your time!”

The old saleslady then pulled out another bunch of scratch cards.

“Hmmmmm……”

Pretending to be annoyed, Yoichi selected ten cards that contained the first prize.

After paying the money, he then shoved the cards into his pockets without scratching them.

“Oh, you don’t want to scratch them down?”

“Nope. I’m going to put them on the altar for the night and scratch them tomorrow.”

That was a lie.

There was no altar in Yoichi’s room, to begin with.

“Yes, that’s a good idea. I hope you win.”

In the case of the scratch cards, the winner and the loser are already decided as soon as you get it, so no matter what you pray for after you buy it, the result will be the same, but the salesperson didn’t pry into it.

This just shows how professional the saleslady was.

Yoichi could have gone home just as easily with his [Return+], but since he was so far away from home, he decided to make a little more money and bought one more third-prize card. However, this move caused him a bit of a problem.

After redeeming the last prized card, as Yoichi walked home, he noticed that he was being followed by three men.

They seem to have seen Yoichi redeeming the scratch card and are thinking of mugging him of the prize he won.

How does he know of such a thing?

It was all thanks to [Appraisal+].

When you appraise a person, you can see their name, address, occupation, height, weight, and so on, but if you examine them in detail, you can also see their background. The “Treasure Trove of Knowledge(Akhashic Records)“ contains a detailed record of the person’s actions and thoughts in the past.

For example, let’s take a look at the last sentence of the profile of Makoto Yoshida (19 years old, university college student), one of the three people following Yoichi.

[I saw an old man who looks like he’s about to die winning 10,000 bucks with a scratchers, so I’m thinking of sharing a little of the profit with him.]

(These bunch of young people these days……)

Despite that, Yoichi, even upon knowing he was being followed by three people, still chose to walk in places where there are a few people and security cameras as possible.

It’s probably convenient for them, and so far, they haven’t tried anything. In the midst of this, Yoichi moved around while doing a reverse search appraisal on “cameras of people who have set their eyes on him.”

(Surprisingly, there are a lot of security cameras…… focused on me)

This means that if he were to suddenly disappear from the image, it would undoubtedly look suspicious, or paranormal, if you want.

Although the cameras on the streets and in the stores would not be checked that often, Yoichi decided to be cautious just in case.

After a while of walking through the back alleys with the bad ambiance, Yoichi finally stopped when he saw that only three people remained in the search results that were following him in their eyes.

“Ah! What was that thing!?”

“””Eh?”””

Yoichi turned around and pointed to the back of the three people, and they all turned around their heads.

The moment the number in the search results became zero, he activated his [Return+].

As a result, he was able to return home safely.

(That was my first time [returning] to my home in this method, and it seems to have worked well. Ah……dirty feet)

As Yoichi’s home point was still set to indoors, he is now standing in the middle of his room with dirty feet.

“Ugh, I should have set it around the front of the door beforehand. Still, not only the other world is messy, but this one is also messy as hell. I’ve got to get my equipment ready as soon as possible!”

Going back at that moment, in the last second, Yoichi activated [Return+] in a way that he wouldn’t be seen by anyone, but at least those three must have been suspicious of him.

(Well, I’ve saved the results of their appraisals, and I already have a vague idea of the range of their activities, so there should be no problem if I stay away from there for a while.)

This day, Yoichi realized once again how great [Appraisal+] is.

He could become a great detective if I wanted to. No matter what kind of lies or tricks one uses, They won’t be able to fool [Appraisal+].

However, he knows best not to do that, as it would still make him stand out.

Grinning nicely in his mischievous endeavor, Yoichi checked his skills once again. And then……

“Ah, that’s right! Search range.”

In spite of the fact that the area of effect of [Appraisal+] can be extended to infinity(∞), Yoichi was walking around the city with the default value fixed at 100 meters.

If he had expanded the range appropriately and searched from his home, he would have been able to find the first prize more efficiently.

“I’m so dumb……”

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