"But none of this would be easy. I'd also have to take sufficient precautions. It'd be bad if I ended up creating a whole bunch of electronic ghosts and electronic evil gods on the internet. Then I'd become the destroyer of the internet in this era."
"Once Ai Haibara escapes from the Black Organization someday, I'll let her research it. With her brain, she'd be quite suitable for studying this stuff," Miyauchi Hiyage muttered.
Not long after Miyauchi Hiyage returned home, Professor Agasa's place seemed to become much livelier. It looked like Professor Agasa had gone to pick up Conan and his family.
Miyauchi Hiyage paid no attention to it. As long as Conan and the others mentioned him, he could sense everything from next door.
Sure enough, the next morning, Miyauchi Hiyage sensed Conan complaining while he was at school.
Conan's reason for complaining was simple. Because of what happened last night, he seemed to have genuinely caught a cold after waking up. He was now muttering about what kind of "gift" he would receive from him after catching a cold.
From Conan's scattered remarks, Miyauchi Hiyage roughly understood what had happened after he left last night, as well as the entire process of Conan negotiating with his parents that morning.
Naturally, Conan followed what they had agreed upon last night and described him as someone he had met while investigating the Black Organization—another victim who had suffered threats from the Black Organization, but who was unwilling to appear before others because of his naturally suspicious personality.
As for what Yusaku Kudo, the intellectual ceiling of the Conan world, would think, that was a matter between father and son.
In any case, as long as they stayed in Beika Town, Miyauchi Hiyage could easily learn their attitude toward him.
And clearly, as long as Ran Mouri remained in Beika Town, Conan would never go anywhere else.
So after school that afternoon, Miyauchi Hiyage quietly bought several bottles of Hengshui Laobaigan and left them at home, planning to slip the stuff to the cold-stricken Conan after he returned to the Mouri Detective Agency.
The Undefeated Blank
After preparing to give the Laobaigan to Conan at any moment, Miyauchi Hiyage opened the Diary and began writing today's entry.
Last night, I happened to run into the protagonist of a certain work. I thoroughly messed with his head and gave him another round of grilling. Seeing him get put in his place put me in a great mood today.
I even left him a surprise gift. I hope he'll be happy when he receives it.
Also, I recently developed some little gadgets for dealing with vengeful spirits. They can exorcise spirits by consuming life energy. I plan to distribute a few of them later. As for who ends up with them, that'll depend on your luck.
But Yotsuya Miko, don't get your hopes up too much. These things aren't as effective as you think. After all, they rely on life energy to exorcise spirits, so their effectiveness mainly depends on how powerful your own life energy is.
Against powerful Vengeful Spirits, the life energy you currently have might be about as effective as scratching an itch. In your hands, they can probably only be used to check whether there are Vengeful Spirits nearby, and maybe clear out some minor fodder.
Oh, right. Black Cat, I wonder whether you've considered the idea I proposed yesterday. Streaming games as a VTuber has a lot of potential. Your voice and gaming skills are enough to carve out a path in this industry.
And if you're really willing to debut as a VTuber, I might even send you some gifts and become your top supporter.
I was originally planning to talk more about your future love story today, Black Cat, but I took a careful look through your gaming community forums today and discovered that this world really is interesting.
There's actually a legend of Blank in your gaming circle. As gaming experts, you and UMR should have heard that name at least somewhat, right?
They're the Blank who set all kinds of records across multiple games, who have never been defeated no matter what genre they played—the Blank who are practically an urban legend.
I wonder if either of you has ever faced Blank before. But if things really follow the setting from the novel...
You can both be considered professional-level gaming experts. Crushing ninety-nine percent of players would be no problem for you.
But Blank—their game skills, as brother and sister, should indeed be powerful enough to crush this entire era.
Even if you used cheats, you would absolutely be no match for them.
After all, they're big shots who will soon be summoned to another world by a god from that world and save humanity through games.
Yes, you read that right. I mean "summoned to another world by a god from another world."
But you should all be able to accept that, right?
Because I myself transmigrated into this world from another world.
In other words, it seems perfectly normal for people from your world to be taken away by gods from other worlds.
The only problem is that, aside from Blank, who knows how many other shut-ins in your world will be sent to another world to save it.
I think the number should be quite large.
In your current era, all kinds of other-world light novels have already begun appearing one after another.
You might think the current situation is already the peak, but let me tell you: compared to my previous life, this was only just the beginning.
By the time I transmigrated here, other-world works had already become mainstream in the ACG circle. Every season, a huge batch of other-world series would emerge, each with a different gimmick.
And most of those works shared one trait: they would pull an ostensibly ordinary high school student or shut-in from Japan into another world, then have that world's god grant them a special ability and make them use it to save that other world.
But among that huge pile of other-world works that weren't even worth using as toilet paper, the work Blank came from was one of my personal favorites. The only regret was that I never got to see the second season before transmigrating. I never expected to meet the brother and sister in this world.
Simply put, Blank's gaming abilities were so powerful that they could no longer find anyone in reality worthy of being called an opponent. Then one day, they caught the attention of a game god from another world who had likewise never lost, and he challenged them to a game of chess online.
Of course, Blank ultimately won. So the game god pulled them into an other world where games decided everything in life and invited them to begin the second round of their contest there.
Never mind their adventures in that other world. Anyway, getting back to the point, I'm quite curious about how they traveled there, so I plan to meet them sometime later and confirm their current situation.
I wonder whether I'll have a chance to meet that game god from another world and ask whether he knows anything about my current circumstances—because in a sense, I'm also someone who transmigrated from another world into this one and inexplicably received a "gift" like this Diary.
I hope no god has assigned some strange savior duty to me. Even if one has, at least let me peacefully write diaries for a few years first.
Miyauchi Hiyage's diary today had once again casually revealed an earth-shattering truth.
Someone in their world would be taken to another world by gods from another world to save the world?!
Even You Know Who himself might have come to this world carrying some kind of "important mission"?
At once, the chat group began frantically @-ing Black Cat and UMR about Blank.
After all, the only people in the group who had revealed themselves as gaming experts so far were the two of them.
The group members all wanted to know whether they had ever faced the Blank duo, whom You Know Who had called "undefeated."
UMR: "I think I've heard of Blank, but I've never fought them. I only knew they were a gaming guild that was really good at games. I heard they didn't have many members, but I never imagined Blank was actually just a brother and sister? That setting sounds insanely awesome!"
Fallen Saint Black Cat: "...Me too. I've only heard the name. I only know that Blank mainly appears in online competitive games. They probably haven't shown up in offline arcades, so people online have always suspected them of cheating."
The group members could not help feeling disappointed after hearing that neither gaming expert had dealt with Blank. Just as they were preparing to continue discussing other worlds, another girl who rarely spoke in the group suddenly appeared.
NO NAME (Aoi Hinata): "I fought Blank. Not long after 'AttaFami' was first released, they beat me so badly that I couldn't fight back at all."
The Chat Group's Discussion About Blank
Because of NO NAME's message, quite a few people in the group began searching for what kind of game AttaFami was.
They quickly found the answer. It was a popular online fighting game from the past few years. While maintaining its entertainment value, it also had fairly decent competitive depth. It had sold over a million copies in Japan alone, and there were plenty of videos online showing matches between top players.
As gaming enthusiasts, Umaru and Black Cat had naturally heard of the game. Umaru even stated in surprise that she had played it for a while recently and had spent several weeks climbing into the top fifty of the ranked ladder.
UMR: "AttaFami is pretty fun, but I play a wide variety of games. After reaching the top fifty back then, I realized that improving any further would take up too much time that I could spend on other games, so I gradually quit."
UMR: "I just found the game. NO NAME, you're the person currently ranked second on the ladder, right? Could the first-place player, 'nanashi,' be Blank?"
But Umaru soon denied it herself in the group, because in every urban legend about Blank, Blank's character ID was an empty space with no characters at all. Even in games where spaces were forbidden in nicknames, their character ID remained completely blank.
That was precisely why people constantly suspected that Blank had used some kind of cheat to maintain their undefeated record.
If You Know Who had not mentioned in today's diary that Blank were a pair of siblings with gaming abilities far beyond reality, Umaru would probably have regarded the rumors about Blank as nothing more than an urban legend.
And in the chat group, NO NAME quickly replied as well.
NO NAME: "Nanashi isn't Blank. He suffered quite a few losses while becoming number one on the ladder. When he isn't in good form, I'm not completely without a chance against him. Overall, although there's still a slight gap between us right now, if I were willing to spend Reading Points on gaming, I should be able to surpass him in at most a week. I just don't want to use precious Reading Points on that."
NO NAME: "But Blank is different. They appeared last year, before nanashi reached the top. They used one week to directly claim first place with a perfect undefeated record, then held the top spot on the ladder for another two weeks without anyone defeating them. In the end, I don't know whether they were banned by the developers or deleted their account and left on their own. In any case, the total time they spent in AttaFami was less than a month."
NO NAME: "During that time, I fought Blank twice. Fighting them felt like facing a machine that would never make a mistake. No matter how I tested them, I couldn't get any reaction out of them. But if I revealed even the slightest opening, they would catch it. Saying this might make me sound like a sore loser, but before You Know Who updated his diary today, a considerable number of AttaFami players, myself included, had always regarded Blank as a cheater."
Fallen Saint Black Cat: "For you, the current number two player in the entire game, to say that, Blank's strength really must be terrifying. But according to You Know Who, Blank are a brother and sister. This kind of fighting game should be controlled by one person, though. I wonder whether the one who fought you back then was the brother or the sister."
NO NAME: "Either way, I really want to fight them again now. Even the undefeated game god from another world couldn't beat them. Knowing that, losing to them isn't any kind of disgrace. I used to think they were cheaters, so I blamed my own mistakes that they caught on them, and I even looked down on their playstyle. Looking back, that was truly embarrassing. I really want to know how great the gap between us still is."
NO NAME: "Unfortunately, according to the rumors on the forums, Blank never looks back. Once they conquer a game, they lose interest in it."
Several gaming experts in the group also expressed that they would look for traces of Blank, find the next game they challenged, and personally experience just how terrifying Blank's abilities were.
By the end of the conversation, Umaru even took the initiative to invite NO NAME to a match in AttaFami.
Seeing the topic about to go off the rails again, Kasumigaoka Utaha appeared and brought the discussion back to today's diary.
Kashiko Kasumi: "So, setting aside your plans to challenge each other, shouldn't the focus of today's discussion be other worlds? Just how chaotic is our world?!"
Kashiko Kasumi: "Transmigration, Vengeful Spirits, Exorcists, gems that can grant immortality, and now we have a bunch of gods from other worlds watching from the sidelines. And according to You Know Who, those other-world gods might even come to our world in groups to take people away and save their worlds. Are these gods really that bored every day?"
Kaguya: "Who knows what gods think, but their existence has been confirmed. I'll have people investigate Blank, though based on what you've said, their computer skills are probably not weak either. You Know Who also didn't reveal much information about them, so the chances of finding them right now aren't high."
Kaguya: "But Blank and the gods from other worlds won't affect our lives for the time being. Still, everyone should prepare yourselves mentally. Because You Know Who mentioned 'the responsibility of a transmigrator' in the diary for the first time, and the reason we obtained these diaries may very well be related to the gods of our world. No matter how you look at it, the world we live in definitely won't remain peaceful in the future."
Kaguya: "Today, I learned some simple methods of cultivating Spiritual Power from the Shitamachi Godmother. After testing them, I found that Reading Points can be used to assist cultivation. I also received a reminder from the Diary that Reading Points can be spent to fuse cultivation methods from different systems. However, it requires fifty Reading Points. At the current rate of gaining them, it would take almost a month. If anyone is interested, you can start saving Reading Points now."
Miko: "I'm planning to save my Reading Points too. Whenever I encounter those Vengeful Spirits, simply looking through the Diary keeps them from noticing me, so I don't need Reading Points to maintain the current situation for now."
Conan Was Fed a Mysterious Liquid
The discovery of a new function for Reading Points was good news for all the girls who possessed diaries.
Although the fusion function Kaguya had discovered consumed many Reading Points, in the long term, it could save them even more Reading Points and time.
For example, under normal circumstances, cultivating Spiritual Power while cultivating Ripple Chi Kung was nearly impossible. Even if they used Reading Points to assist both at the same time, they could easily run into the problem of how to allocate their Reading Points.
They just did not know what form the fusion function would produce by combining two power systems. At present, though, none of the girls with diaries had enough Reading Points to try it.
But aside from Yotsuya Miko and a few girls in poor health who needed Ripple Chi Kung to restore their bodies to normal, the others had not encountered any trouble around them so far.
Thus, they were not under any urgent pressure to use their Reading Points. Quite a few had already stated that they wanted to save up fifty Reading Points and try the fusion function.
While the girls with diaries worried over not having enough Reading Points, Conan was experiencing a completely different situation.
Still suffering from a cold today, he had finally managed to explain last night's events to his parents that morning and find a suitable identity for the Tom who had helped him. Then, after much effort, he got his parents to agree to let him remain in Japan.
By evening, after resting at home for the day and feeling slightly better at night, Conan was sent back to the Mouri Detective Agency by his disguised mother.
Although Mouri Kogoro had quite a few complaints, the sight of the ten-million-yen check made his expression toward Conan much warmer.
Ran was naturally quite happy to see Conan return as well. Ever since Conan came to her home, her father's detective agency had received much more business. She had come to see Conan as a lucky charm.
Come to think of it, Ran had initially suspected that perhaps Professor Agasa had made some medicine that turned Shinichi into a child, since Conan's behavior was far too unlike that of a child. As time passed, her suspicion grew stronger and stronger.
Even though "Shinichi" later called her while Conan was watching television nearby, somewhat dispelling her doubts, Ran had not completely put them aside.
When Conan's mother came to take him away yesterday, she had even felt a little relieved, thinking that she must have been overthinking it.
Therefore, Ran now trusted Conan's identity more than ever.
Conan thought so too. Even though Tom had told him to come clean to Ran and make her his Watson, how could he possibly bring himself to say something like that immediately?
After all, over these past few months, Ran had washed his clothes, cooked for him, even bathed him and so on. If Ran found out about this, she would definitely beat him up badly.
In any case, there was no rush to tell Ran his true identity. He would wait until he learned more secrets about the Black Organization from Tom.
As for the Stun-Gun Wristwatch, from now on he could just give Uncle Mouri more hints at crime scenes and try not to use it whenever possible.
"Anyway, I should think carefully about the Vengeful Spirits first. Since those things really exist, I'll have to pay attention in future cases to whether the culprit has been affected by them," Conan muttered softly.
Thinking of those strange existences from the Reverse Side World gave the still-sniffling Conan a headache.
Previously, whenever he encountered cases involving supernatural tricks, he would never consider the possibility that ghosts and monsters had caused them. He would only investigate what person had committed the crime and what method they had used.
But in the future, whenever he encountered such cases, he would probably instinctively wonder whether they might truly have been caused by the influence of Vengeful Spirits.
"I'll just have to get used to it slowly. After all, no detective before me has ever encountered anything as bizarre as what I have," Conan sighed.
However, just as he was preparing to take a hot bath and go to bed, he suddenly felt a tug at his ankle.
He lowered his head and saw a familiar mouse appear before him.
"You're Jerry?"
The brown mouse nodded and waved at him again.
Conan looked around, confirmed that neither Ran nor Uncle Mouri had noticed anything, and only then cautiously brought Jerry into his room.
"Did that Tom ask you to bring me something this time?"
Jerry looked around the Mouri home and felt that it seemed like a suitable place for a mouse to live. Unfortunately, he now lived in Miyauchi Hiyage's big house, and he had become somewhat disdainful of such a small place.
After hearing Conan's question, Jerry puffed out his chest and nodded. Then it pointed outside the door, seemingly indicating that the item had already been placed near the entrance.
Watching Jerry's movements, Conan's heart stirred. He truly could not imagine what sort of item could be useful while he had a cold.
Before you continue