System Update

Kiana looked at the girl beside her, who had a lovestruck expression on her face, and tugged her, snapping her out of her daze.

"Ah, that guy."

The girl had a good temper and did not get angry. She kindly explained it to Kiana.

"He's one of Queen Raiden's admirers. He's been pursuing her for an entire semester already. Every day, he brings a bouquet of flowers to confess his feelings. The school guards wanted to catch him too, but they simply couldn't. Now they just ignore it."

"And they still call her Queen Raiden? I heard Raiden Mei gets cursed at as a fraud every day now."

Another girl chimed in, "But His Highness the Prince still remains devoted to her, even like this."

"..."

Watching the two girls beside her swoon, Kiana fell silent for a moment before dashing off.

Meanwhile, Qin Mo had once again completed his daily confession and flower delivery. Although that mission had long since disappeared, he still persisted.

By the time the opening ceremony ended, it was nearly noon, so the two of them headed straight to the rooftop.

"I prepared lunch..."

Mei took out the lunchbox she had prepared. Because the people in her class always caused trouble whenever she was gone, she rarely made lunchboxes. But today was the first day of school, and no one was in the classroom. Besides, Mei felt that a lunch she had prepared herself would be better.

The young lady who had once never lifted a finger was now becoming more and more wife material.

The two sat on the cushions Qin Mo had prepared and began eating. This was not the first time he had tasted Mei's cooking, and the dishes were all common ones from before.

There was nothing much to it...

Bang!

The rooftop door was suddenly kicked open with brute force.

"Qin Mo!"

Kiana swept her gaze across the rooftop and immediately found the two hiding in the corner.

"Wow, so you were hiding here!"

"Uh, Kiana..."

Although he knew Kiana was here, she and Mei were not in the same grade, so Qin Mo had not been worried about Kiana finding them.

Was it really because of that bizarre luck of hers?

"Qin Mo, who is this?"

Mei was startled by Kiana, who had suddenly approached them so aggressively.

"She's my childhood friend, Kiana Kaslana. We haven't seen each other in over ten years. She only just came to Chang Kong City, so she's your junior now."

"Qin Mo, have you changed your heart?!"

While Qin Mo was introducing her to Mei, Kiana grabbed him and demanded an answer.

"What do you mean, changed my heart?"

Kiana looked at Qin Mo's bewildered expression and said, "Didn't you say you were going to marry me?!"

"..."

Hearing Kiana's words, Qin Mo instinctively glanced at Mei. Seeing that she had not reacted too strongly, he quickly said, "What do you mean, I said that? I already told you that never happened. Wasn't that just to test whether you had really lost your memory? Besides, I said you claimed you wanted to marry me, not that I wanted to marry you."

"Who knows? I've lost my memory anyway."

Kiana had no intention of dwelling on that matter. She simply sprawled across the table Qin Mo had set up. "And you didn't even invite me to eat with you. Are we even friends?"

"Ha..."

Rubbing his forehead in exhaustion, Qin Mo said to Mei, "As you can see, that's just the kind of person she is. But she doesn't mean any harm."

Ignoring Kiana's complaints about what he meant by "that kind of person," Qin Mo directly told her, "This is Raiden Mei. She's your senior."

"Then what's your relationship?"

Qin Mo had not expected Kiana to ask that, and Kiana herself had blurted it out without thinking.

Qin Mo's relationships had nothing to do with her, but when she saw him bring this girl named Raiden Mei up here, she felt strangely uncomfortable.

That was why she had come up to deliberately make trouble.

"Friends."

"I see..."

Kiana's first instinct was not to believe him, but then she thought about it. Being friends was normal. What kind of couple confessed every single day?

"Hello, Mei. My name is Kiana."

The Kaslana family's fondness for pretty girls was etched into their DNA. After the initial shock passed, Kiana quickly lost interest in Qin Mo.

Fortunately, Mei had a gentle and kind personality. Combined with the changes in her family, she was better able to see people for who they were.

If it had been someone else, faced with someone like Kiana, they would probably have at least given her a few dirty looks.

It had to be said that Kiana's innocent and lively personality was highly infectious. In just a short while, she had become familiar with Raiden Mei.

And because she had not brought lunch, Qin Mo had no choice but to take out a dish he had drawn before from his backpack and give it to her for lunch.

Raiden Mei had long grown accustomed to Qin Mo casually taking things out of nowhere, but Kiana still circled around him like a curious child, staring at him from every angle.

"Fine, maybe food will finally shut you up."

What Qin Mo took out was a plate of Golden Finger-Licking Chicken. It was really just a plate of fried chicken pieces, but it was indeed delicious. The item description said it could increase one's attack power. Qin Mo had tried it once himself. It tasted good, and afterward, he felt full of strength, though not in the way a stimulant worked.

It simply gave him a feeling of overflowing vitality.

Qin Mo figured it was not particularly useful, so he might as well treat it as ordinary food.

And so lunch came to an end. In accordance with the choice of Steins;Gate, Kiana and Raiden Mei successfully became friends. Qin Mo mingled among them and harvested crystals, and everything was proceeding along the right path.

System Update

Peaceful school life passed quickly. By mid-March, Qin Mo had saved up enough crystals for another forty pulls.

Including the ten pulls he had made at the beginning, he could now bring his total character card pulls to fifty in one go.

Although he was still halfway from the guarantee, Qin Mo felt that he might draw an S-rank character card before reaching it.

Why? Of course, it was because of Kiana!

Qin Mo had decided that he would never draw cards himself again!

After all, his luck only ever got him the guaranteed reward, while Kiana had gotten two A-ranks along with the guarantee!

As for why he did not ask her after every ten pulls, he was worried that doing it too frequently would reveal something. Besides, it was not good to keep troubling someone. And why not save up a hundred pulls before asking Kiana?

It was because Qin Mo had noticed that Honkai Beasts had been appearing more and more frequently lately. It seemed the Great Eruption was not far away.

Actually, if his only goal was to escape the Great Eruption, the correct thing for Qin Mo to do would be to take Raiden Mei and the others out of Chang Kong City.

But this Great Eruption was man-made, and Raiden Mei was the core. Even if they escaped this time, there would be another time.

Besides, they were still within the scope of the plot, so no major problems would arise. Who knew what might happen if they left the plot behind?

"Drawing again?"

That evening, Qin Mo went to Kiana's home and placed his phone on the table again.

Kiana did not refuse. She reached out and tapped several times for him, skipping the drawing animation in one go. After all, they were doing forty pulls. If they watched them one by one, when would they ever finish?

Qin Mo did not pay attention to the effects of the cards for the moment. He only watched the card colors.

After the forty pulls were completed, Qin Mo saw one golden glow and seven purple glows appear before him. He was so happy he nearly jumped up.

But he held himself back and said to Kiana, "Thanks. I'm heading back first."

"Huh? That's all?"

Kiana scratched her head. "What game are you playing? Should I download it too?"

"Uh, you can't download this game. A friend of mine made it. I'll tell you more about it later."

Qin Mo hastily came up with an excuse. A friend made it—everyone knew that when someone said they had a friend, they meant themselves.

After hurrying back to his room, Qin Mo looked at the drawing results before him. Ignoring the blue and white glows, he opened the golden card first.

The President (S)

Skills:

D4C: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. By trapping an object or person between things, it can send them to an adjacent world or bring them from an adjacent world into the base world. When beings other than the user themselves from the same world meet, they are drawn together and merge, resulting in annihilation and disappearance from the world.

Love Train: Generates a wall of light within "gaps in space." Only the user and things carried by the user can enter it. All attacks and misfortune are transformed into some form of "misfortune" and randomly sent elsewhere in the world.

Description: "My heart and actions are as clear as a mirror. Everything I do is justice!"

Stand power!

Qin Mo had watched JOJO and had even been obsessed with it for quite some time. Although he had only watched the earlier parts, he still knew the names and Stands of several famous villains from JOJO.

D4C's own ability was only to travel across adjacent worlds, while Love Train was the power The President obtained after collecting the Corpse Parts.

However, Love Train's weakness was also obvious: things carried by the user would not be blocked. Qin Mo had read quite a few analyses written by others. The method used to defeat The President at the time had been the rotational power commonly used in that arc, making use of gravity.

It had been difficult then only because that was the only method available to the protagonists.

If someone knew about it in advance, there were still quite a few ways to counter it. Just like how Accelerator, who could theoretically manipulate every vector, could still be defeated in many ways. The simplest would be to remove the air around him before he used his ability to control the air's vectors. But how many people could actually do that?

So an enemy's strength was merely a result of one's own weakness and insufficient methods.

Although he had drawn a boss-level character card, Qin Mo felt no excitement whatsoever.

Because...

He could not use it at all!

A level-one player only had 5 cost, while an S-rank character card required 7 cost! He needed to level up twice before he could use it.

And so far, he had no way to level up.

After putting the D4C card away, Qin Mo took out the remaining seven purple cards.

Diavolo, Kishibe Rohan, Josuke Higashikata, Okuyasu Nijimura, Ghiaccio...

Five familiar names. Had he stumbled into a JOJO nest?

Qin Mo recalled that he had previously drawn an item from the JOJO world, The Red Stone of Aja. But because it had no supernatural power, he had tossed it into his backpack and forgotten about it.

Of the remaining two A-ranks, one was Kuroro from Hunter, while the other was Credo from Devil May Cry.

Credo was Nero's childhood friend's brother and the captain of the Order of the Sword's Holy Knights. It was not that he was weak... he was simply not strong enough. His abilities were also ordinary, and that demon form looked unreliable at a glance.

Without a second word, Qin Mo put that card away. If he had drawn Dante, Nero, or Vergil, he might have considered using them. But those three could not possibly be A-rank. They were probably SS-rank or even SSS-rank. Even Nero at the beginning of his journey, before he could transform into a Devil Trigger, should at least be S-rank. After all, he had enough strength to completely dominate Credo.

As for Kuroro, Qin Mo had initially thought the system had made a misjudgment. But after taking a closer look, he understood...

Not a single Nen ability had been collected.

Kuroro's Nen ability was Skill Hunter, a Nen ability that could steal other people's Nen abilities. One reason he was powerful in the story was that his Nen fundamentals were not weak. Another was that he had accumulated Nen abilities for many years.

But what Qin Mo had gotten now was just a blank slate. This world did not have Nen abilities...

That was probably why he had been rated A-rank...

As for the final five Stands, Diavolo could erase time, Kishibe Rohan could turn anyone who saw his drawings into a book and freely alter them, Josuke Higashikata could restore anything, Okuyasu Nijimura could erase space, and Ghiaccio could produce extremely powerful freezing abilities.

None of them were weak. Compared to Ezio, they were far stronger. But Ezio was more suited for utility, after all. Assassins were not merely killers.

But...

"Goodbye, Ezio!"

Qin Mo decisively equipped Diavolo's character card.

A Stand with a red body covered in white, fishnet-like markings appeared behind him.

"King Crimson..."

As the deep voice rang out, the surroundings suddenly changed. The apartment walls seemed to shatter, rising into the air and vanishing in an instant.

Qin Mo felt as though he were standing in a boundless universe.