As the sun rose further above than before, mom left for work again and I was alone at home. After a quick session of calisthenics at home and practicing some of my mana movements for the many martial arts styles I had learned, I changed into my outdoor clothes.

A blue t-shirt and dark blue jeans with a taupe-colored semi-formal coat on top of them.

{Where are we going, Host?}

I pocketed my wallet and left my room, going downstairs and out. "I'm gonna check out an internet cafe first, see what my investments yield to."

The lift quickly took me down to the ground floor and I walked out of the complex. I guess it was a little too early to be playing cards since I didn't see Mr. Samantile today.

{So, are your investments big? Why don't you use it to help out at home?}

"Precisely for situations like these you dimwit. They are not big though. All the money I got from beating up different gangs back when I was a kid, I invested."

{Get? Someone was paying you??}

"Fine... stole."

I thought I heard the system laugh in my head, but that was probably just my imagination. It didn't take long for me to go to the main streets surrounded by giant buildings covered with glass and bricks. Most of these buildings used glass coverings because not only did it look classy, but also since, with magic, transparent solar cell technology was taken many steps ahead to get a groundbreaking 60% power-conversion efficiency while keeping luminescence to a null, true transparency.

I moved over the sidewalks and then returned to the first block where I had met that tailing circus rat for the first time. The clean walkways, the neon signs, greenery all around us with people of all races walking around us, happily enjoying their days. It was a sight that always made me feel good.

Passing through multiple franchise restaurants like QuackDonalds and Burger Queen, I soon found myself standing in front of a large establishment. A cute anime-esque magical girl was winking with her arms together and tongue sticking out above the signboard.

With almost everyone keeping a watch or a pen in handy or at least at home, Internet Cafes had to offer a lot of new things to keep people coming to them, the mascot vibe was just a starter.

I sighed and walked in. Inside the establishment, a simple walkway led directly to the reception desk and the staff area around it. I walked up to the reception where two cat-kin beastfolk stood with a smile. They both looked soft and cute with fluffy cat ears wiggling out the top while their tails fluttered around behind their backs.

"Welcome-nya! How cyan we help you today?" the lady said, tilting her head slightly to the side.

{This is lethal. Are all internet cafes like this?}

"Definitely are. You see their strategy, right?" I whispered back to the system under my breath. Then, I turned to the cat lady again and smiled back at her.

"I'd like a room for an hour, please."

"Definitely! Do nya want a standard room, special room or a deluxe room?"

"S-standard will do..."

"Ok!"

The lady tapped some keys on the computer hidden behind her desk and handed me some keys. "Yours is room 407, you can lock it from the inside!"

"Understood, thank you very much." I took the keys from her hands and thanked her with a slight bow.

"Thank you too, nya!"

Both the catkin waved at me as I walked away from the reception and went to the rooms located on the sides. There was also a merch store up ahead and a restaurant behind. It was possible to rent a room in the internet cafes for a few days straight, so they were convenient for people who had to move homes or for those who ran away from them.

I quickly found room 407. The key that they had given me was just a long metal stick, it had circuits within it and functioned as an identifier for the scanners in the door. I placed the key on the metallic circle below the handle of the door and a bright blue light emerged from it. The door opened on its own and I stepped in.

A small desk and a stool were kept on the side of the room with large cabinets full of books and hard drives of all kinds. It was also possible to bring the desk down and sit on the mat on the floor, so I did that.

I booted up the computer kept on the desk with a simple tap on the ultra-thin screen barely a few centimeters wide. The screen booted up and the holographic lights all over the desk flashed. I opened up a browser and put on some music first, some slow jazz seemed like a good fit. I pulled the tab on the browser with my hand and dragged it away from the screen. A hologram of the tab appeared in the air above the computer.

With the music sorted, I opened the website of my stockbroker and logged in. I checked the current worth of all my investments on the stock site and also checked the money I had invested in the Real Estate joint funds.

"Hmm, Not much."

{I don't know, isn't 500k IC pretty good?}

IC, the currency that had been decided upon by the world after the portals opened and the demon king was dealt with. It was, literally, International Currency. To give some context into things, one could say that the cost of a standard studio apartment went to around 5 million IC, or a beer cost something around 60 IC. The cost of this one hour in this room was already around 600 IC.

500k was good, it would definitely get me through Agriche easily considering they already covered board and food in the admission fees. But the admission fees were a problem too.

{Downpayment?}

"It's a school, dumbass."

I could get in the top 100, but that would be a huge hassle. I'll be eyed from everywhere and it would also greatly restrict my freedom. I was confident in not being tied down by course work, but being a top student in an internationally acclaimed academy like Agriche came with its fair share of status that would definitely tie me down.

{If only there was someone we could extort money from...}

"Hah..." I sighed with the system. If only...

Wait.

"There is someone!"

{What do you mean?}

Those foxkin people whose child I saved! Didn't they leave a message at the hospital saying they owe me?

{You're gonna extort money from them!?}

"Shush! I am not extorting anything. They said they owe me, so it's fine to demand repayment, right?"

{Host...}

I ignored the system's quips and started scouring through the net. First for information on the incident. I found there that the fox kins were actually a little famous. A little more digging for their names from news and information sites led me from one link to another until I found out something concrete.

"Those guys were relatives of the Teumessian Family..."

{Teumessian? What kind of family is that?}

"They're a hereditary fox kin family from Greece, but they have a good operation here in Ternet. Teumessian Finances is known for having their hands in quite a lot of small and medium-sized awakener guilds...."

{A family that invests in heroes...}

"Hmm."

I nodded and opened Teumessian Finance's website, then I scoured through some publicized documents and found the kinds of guilds they had invested in. Most of them were guilds with morally upright standards that showed a fair amount of promise.

"You know System. These guys might be fairly easy to scam!"

{Scam?}

"I mean, convince."

Maybe I'll have them fund me in Agriche. I gave my life for them, so it's only fair, right?