[Snippet] Just A Story, Chapter 2 (Patreon)

A/N

Just the second chapter of this snippet because it was bouncing around my head and I felt like writing it. Normal chapter will be out in a bit.

@***@

Alexander was….pensive.

The walk to school was the same as it was every day. Thankfully, it was only a few blocks away and he lived in a rather decent neighborhood, so there wasn’t any expected annoyances on his trek to school.

One of the rare times that he even bothered to eat a full meal beforehand rather than just something to tie himself over until lunch. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest decision to eat something so hot and spicy this early in the morning, but he found himself not regretting it because it was one of the most delicious meals he’s ever had.

But those thoughts passed quickly as he passed several streets without even realizing it due to other questions he had on his mind.

He found himself in an odd situation and didn’t know how to proceed.

Frankly, he needed money.

Something that the vast majority of people in the world also contemplated. But in this instance, he needed money to….fund his activities.

That is to say, his ‘system’ didn’t provide crap and he was pulling his hair out trying to figure things out.

He had the ‘system’ for several  years at this point, and only last night did he finally make ‘progress’ to the point where he even achieved something.

Sure, he received a few rewards here and there for random things, but everything moved at a snails pace. And apparently that was just the ‘tutorial’, which should have been the easiest part!

To release more ‘media’ the next series, or even move on to the big stuff like Fate/Grand Order, he….didn’t meet the requirements. The System had a ‘store’ but all the next stuff was grayed out because he didn’t meet the criteria.

The ‘Tutorial help’ that he received was that the ‘system’ released Fate/stay night on his behalf. Basically, he only had to design the website, do the advertising and a multitude of other small things.

But of course, each of those required months to years of study to even achieve. Going into this, he had no idea how to code, it was something he had to learn. He had gone through four dozen iterations of the website before the System accepted it to its ‘standard’, whatever that was.

And the Visual Novel.

That was entirely done by hand.

That probably took the longest amount of time to complete because the System didn’t just hand him the script to copy or anything like that. He received the [Memory Recollection: D+] Skill fairly early, but it wasn’t high enough rank that he could perfectly recall every detail of some random visual novel he skimmed over in his past life.

It took years of trial and error before the System acknowledged it as ‘completed’ and he could release it.

It wasn’t entirely an effort in futility as he did win a Gacha roll a couple years ago that gave him [Writing: C] as a Talent. Beforehand, it was the lowest rank, and this sudden boost let him fill in the gaps well enough to scrape by a completion.

It was one of the most frustrating experiences Alexander ever had to endure in both of his lives.

He pulled out his phone and pulled up his website to check the viewer count.

It only read at 127 views.

“…woo…” He let out a sigh, putting his phone away.

Granted, it only released last night, but after all the effort and time he spent, and even his own money to pay for the very lackluster advertisements…..this was it now.

And it came back around to his original thought, he needed more money. He was pretty much broke after spending the couple thousand dollars he had saved up from the money his parents had given him over the years and such.

He needed money to pay for tutoring on certain talents, to maybe even explore other talents he may need, to buy technical books that he couldn’t find online….or any of the surprise costs that the system required he pay for to progress.

Hell, he was missing a ‘Music’ Talent to go along with everything and that was something the next stuff required.

He didn’t know what was at the end of the road of this ‘system’ and he was…. skeptical, extremely so, but it was all he had.

And it’s not like he could ask his parents for money…well, more than his ‘normal’ allowance, which wasn’t much. For one, he absolutely refused to tell anyone about what he was doing.

He had absolutely no talent in magic or martial arts or any way to defend himself at all. The System seemed to think he didn’t need anything to protect himself, and he would normally agree if he didn’t recognize the world he was in.

That being said, he was…..relatively normal, if he could call his life normal.

And secondly, his parents and him weren’t on the best terms at the moment, so they probably wouldn’t agree to an increase in his allowance or anything like that for the time being, but that was a whole other can of worms.

His system wasn’t going to help with that, so he had to do it by himself. What could a kid still in highschool do to make money? The most obvious answer was get a part time job, but Japanese schooling was weird in that it didn’t let kids get jobs.

However, the vast majority of Japanese schools – that he’s aware of – doesn’t allow kids to get part time jobs for some stupid reasons. Well, stupid by his standards because he thinks the Japanese schooling system is horrible.

They believe you should spend all your time studying without any other distractions, then you roll the dice on your future by taking a series of tests and if you don’t do well enough, you don’t go to a good college and can’t get a good job.

Sounds somewhat similar to Western Schooling except there was no ‘redo’ so to speak. You fucked up, you were pretty much screwed for life. Atleast back home in the states, he could reapply to colleges, go to community college, or a plethora of other things and still have pretty decent job prospects.

But his hate for Japanese Schooling wasn’t relevant other than he would get in trouble for getting a part time job. And he was fairly sure he couldn’t find a decent part time job without his parents signing off on things.

Frankly, he didn’t care about the former, but wasting time on the latter wouldn’t be worth it. He was nearly an adult and he had no plans to stay around in Japan after he could legally leave.

There was one idea…..and he quickly took out his phone and started browsing the apps he could purchase.

‘Apple’, the company, was called Orange here…..which made him twitch slightly every time he saw the logo when he logged in. But he started searching the apps, and there were quite a few he recognized and others he didn’t, but even to his eyes, they looked rather fun even if he didn’t care to waste time on pay to win games.

But he browsed the top rated to see what he could do.

If he couldn’t have a ‘job’ then a ‘hobby’ wasn’t something anything could argue against. So, what if it just happened to make money?

He had enough technical skill to release a very basic App to rake in some cash. And he was more than capable of plagiarizing something from his past life as he realized after browsing that there was a severe lack of bad games.

Almost all of the games being presented were the type that you had to invest tons of time and money in, with lots of progression and all that. The type of games that tried their damned best to keep you in front of the screen by any means possible.

There were no games that you loaded up when you had to wait ten minutes or when you sat on the toilet.

And there was one stupid game that somehow exploded in popularity and made the creator millions despite it being a stupid game with no purpose.

‘Flappy Bird’, he quickly jot down the notes he could recall, the monetization scheme, the framework from memory, just in case he would forget later.

He had a plan that seemed feasible, which he would explore when he got home. But for now, he was approaching the gates of the school.

Unfortunately, someone was at the gate to greet him.

He cursed under his breath because he glanced at his phone and realized he was a couple minutes late.

“Mr. Edwards, you’re late.” Sona Sitir – rather Souna Shitori as she likes to parade herself around as infront of the humans – she tapped her foots looking at me impatiently.

“Two minutes.” He deadpanned.

“Late is late, Mr.Edwards, you know the rules.”

“Technically, you’re late to class too.” He pointed out.

She didn’t even change her expression. “Don’t be smart. This is the fourth time this month, you’re going to have detention.”

“Whatever you say, President.” He waived it off.

“I’m serious, Mr.Edwards. I’m well aware that you skipped your last detention.”

“I’ll be there for sure.”

He wouldn’t.

“I will be contacting your parents if you skip again.” She frowned.

“Oh no, that would be the worse!” He put a hand over his chest, letting out a gasp. “You’ve definitely scared me into serving my detention, President!”

“…..just get to class, Mr.Edwards.” She scowled.

He gave her a polite smile and trotted off.

It was only until he was out of sight that he let out a chuckle. Truthfully, he barely gave any care about the school or his grades, or anything of that. For one, he intended to leave Japan after becoming an adult, and two, as long as he didn’t get expelled, he really didn’t care if his parents got pissed at him. He was far from a ‘normal’ kid and couldn’t be cowed by threats like ‘detention’.

His parents and him were already in a cold war of sorts, so what more could happen?

Frankly, he thought the idea of a student being able to give him detention was absurd, but that’s just how they did things in Japan it seems.

It didn’t help that Sona Sitri technically owned the school and was just playing around as a ‘human student’.

None of his concern though. He wasn’t going to stick his nose where it didn’t belong and he didn’t care about the ‘people’ here.

They could deal with their own crap, he was just a normal squishy human.

His goal was to live a nice and fulfilling live. Hopefully with plenty of women and money along the way.

There was something to note for the young man, however. His Language Comprehension skill was a life saver. Learning Japanese had been difficult, and now, he didn’t even have to think it about it, he was perfectly fluent.

Alexander stilled because he heard a loud noise he was rather familiar with as he walked down the halls.

[Ding!]

[Congratulations, you received your first ‘Censorship’ attempt for Fate/Stay Night. The System, however, does not allow other parties to remove published media by the user! You receive a reward!]

+1 [Skill: There are no strings on me.  (EX)]

It took him a moment to register what just happened.

He barely had over a hundred views and someone tried to take down his website or something?

What?

A stray thought suddenly bubbled up in his mind.

He quickly took out his phone and started searching through various media sources. Games that depicted Gods or the like, Anime, stupid knock offs that resembled things from his previous life.

Oh, there were a few but….

After reading a few of the descriptions, he quickly realized that there was not a single depiction of Gods in a bad light. There was not a single Anime, not a single Game that had the Gods shown to be anything other than lofty immortals.

“…..fuck,” He cursed out loud realizing why that was the case.

Of course no God would let a type of media get popular that showed them badly! It was one thing for their myths to be recorded in a certain light, it was another for them to be trashed and shit talked by some random anime that pops up.

No wonder a lot of the anime he’d seen in this life were shit copies in comparison, they were heavily censored and rewritten so no God would throw a hissy fit and accidently a Divine judgment!

If Human Celebrities controlled their image, it stood to reason that Gods wouldn’t allow anyone to besmirch their ‘image’ or anything that came close to that.

He quickly pulled up the system and looked at the ‘reward’ he received.

[No Strings on Me: The System does not allow Media released by the user to be censored, both mundane and mystical.]

That was…interesting, he admitted to himself. He didn’t quite understand how it was happening, but apparently, he wouldn’t ever have to worry about any kinds of censorship.

[Ding!]

[New Quest: Have 100 students at your school watch Fate/stay night.]

[Reward: Gacha Roll x1]

[Accepts/Decline]

With a sigh, he pressed ‘accept’.

He contemplated putting up signs around the school that advertised it. There were plenty of easy ways to get the attention of 100 people here considering the school was fairly large.

Just as he thought that, a certain big chested red head came barreling down the hall calling out to him.

His first victim.