Ring, ring!
Early in the morning, Fujino was once again startled awake from his dreams by a noisy phone ringing.
"Damn it, why does someone always call me so early in the morning?"
Fujino grumbled as he slowly sat up in bed, shaking his head in an attempt to wake himself up.
He pulled out his phone and saw Mieko Shibasaki's name displayed on the screen.
The moment he saw the caller ID, half the anger in his heart vanished.
So it's a client. Then it's fine...
A moment later, he answered the call and asked the person on the other end in confusion, "May I ask what Miss Mieko Shibasaki needs from me?"
"Detective Fujino, do you have time right now?"
Mieko Shibasaki's voice came from the other end of the line.
Fujino glanced at the clock on the wall, thought for a moment, and replied, "I have school today, so I probably won't be free until after four in the afternoon."
"Then I'll come over tonight."
"Come over tonight?"
Fujino responded in surprise. "Come to think of it, Miss Mieko, don't you still need to prepare for your concert?"
Mieko Shibasaki sighed and explained slowly, "That was the plan, but when Tatsuya came home last night, he seemed to have strained his back. Today's concert can't go on either..."
"He strained his back?"
Hearing that, Fujino Doji frowned, feeling that things were not so simple.
A strained back...
Don't tell me those two really went at it until the middle of the night?
A moment later, an amused smile appeared on Fujino's lips.
At noon, Class 2-B, during lunch break.
The shadows of trees outside the window were dappled by the sunlight, and a light breeze blew through. It felt as though time had returned to autumn.
Fujino sat by the classroom window, propping his chin on his hand as he stared at the system's profession interface before him:
Student: Advanced (500 proficiency points until breakthrough) Profession Skills: Student Discount (Advanced: Whether in the system or reality, the host receives a 10% discount!; Note: This skill is currently limited by the profession level bottleneck. Please break through the profession bottleneck.) Natural Scholar (Intermediate: Enhances the host's learning ability by 150%)
"Has Student Discount already hit a bottleneck?"
Looking at the system interface before him, Fujino muttered to himself.
The system's secondary profession levels were roughly divided into four ranks: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Top.
From low to high, each level gained awarded one profession skill point.
Reaching the Top rank would probably earn him four points in total.
The maximum level for a profession skill, meanwhile, was Advanced, which required three profession points.
Clearly, if he possessed two upgradeable profession skills at the same time, four allocation points would definitely not be enough to max them both out.
So he had long expected the current bottleneck in his Student profession skills.
If his guess was correct, there should be an even higher level above Top.
However, he had no idea what that level was yet.
Maybe first advancement, second advancement, or something like that. Who knew?
"But then again, advancing from Advanced to Top already requires five hundred proficiency points. If I want to upgrade from Top to that indescribable level, just how many proficiency points will it take?"
Fujino stared at the remaining five hundred points needed to upgrade his Student profession and could not help complaining.
Originally, studying at school for one day could earn him fifty proficiency points. After obtaining the Natural Scholar skill, he could even earn over a hundred points a day.
But recently, the returns he got from attending school had been steadily decreasing.
After studying at school for the whole day today, he had only gained fifty proficiency points... and he might gain even less in the future.
"Could it be because I've caught up on all the classes I fell behind in, so the proficiency I gain has decreased?"
Fujino could not help making that guess. Then he could only sigh softly. "Looks like I need to focus on improving the Natural Scholar skill from now on."
After Natural Scholar reached the Intermediate level, it improved his abilities by roughly another 0.5 times compared with the Beginner level.
In other words, knowledge that had originally taken him six hours to learn with the Natural Scholar skill now only took four and a half hours...
Teitan High School began classes at around eight in the morning. Lunch break began at twelve after four hours of class, then classes resumed punctually at one in the afternoon and continued until around three.
There were only eight hours of class in total each day, with nearly an hour of breaks in between.
After doing the math, less than seven hours were actually spent studying.
Improving the Natural Scholar skill would allow him to learn more in less time.
For someone like him, whose returns dropped sharply the more he learned at school each day, that was exactly what he needed.
After all, learning more things meant earning more Student Proficiency.
And more Student Proficiency would let him raise his Student Level sooner and break through the Student profession's bottleneck.
"Senior Fujino!"
At that moment, a familiar voice rang out beside him, interrupting Fujino's thoughts.
He turned around and saw Suzuki Sonoko in her school uniform leaning close to him.
"Hey, Senior Fujino."
Suzuki Sonoko walked up to Fujino and asked with a light smile, "How many points did you get on this quiz?"
"The quiz score? I really didn't pay much attention to it."
Fujino frowned.
It should have been the math test from that morning. The results had come out before lunch break, but he had been in a hurry to study, so he had not checked.
After thinking for a moment, he took a test paper from his desk and replied to Suzuki Sonoko, "I think it was a perfect score?"
"Huh?"
Sonoko leaned over for a look and froze. "It really is a perfect score..."
"By the way, Sonoko, how many points did you get?"
Fujino casually asked Sonoko in return.
"Ah... well..."
Sonoko stammered awkwardly, unable to say anything. The hand holding her test paper behind her back tightened around it.
She had originally planned to come and comfort Fujino, who she thought was suffering the same fate as her.
But who would have thought that this guy Fujino had actually gotten a perfect score...
That made things rather awkward now.
"Why can Senior Fujino get a perfect score too?!"
Back at her seat, Suzuki Sonoko clutched the test paper in her hand, stared at the scattered red Xs across it, and vigorously scratched the back of her head.
"Sonoko, I think you should work harder!"
Ran, who was sitting in front of her, turned around with a faint smile. "If you paid attention in class and weren't so 'frail and sickly' all the time, your grades wouldn't be this bad."
"Ran!"
Suzuki Sonoko's face flushed red at that. "I'm just the type who doesn't have any talent for studying. Studying depends on talent too, you know..."
As she spoke, she looked toward Fujino resentfully. "Take Senior Fujino, for example. I remember he failed the last test too, but this time he actually got a perfect score... Yeah, it must be a talent issue!"
Before you continue