24 Episode 3: News (3)

[ (Breaking News!) Top player, Shinto has disappeared from the rankings?! ]

[ What does it mean for Vainblood?! ]

[ A disaster has struck the rankers! ]

[ Forum:「Shinto is no longer in the rankings?!」Post by Yuu011 ]

@Yuu011: Guys! What's the meaning of this?? How and why did Shinto drop??

@YurMama: Whatchutalkin bout girl??? When was this?? Shinto isn't top 1 anymore??

@Tan: Have you not been following the news? Or heck, the front page of any Spiritual Warriors news site? It's everywhere!

@OPM(uscle): Hah! It looks like that swordsman bastard was weak after all! Couldn't even keep his place haha! Muscles and brawn are superior in the end!

@Rzop: You're not making sense right now @OPM(uscle).

@Damai***: Does anyone know what happened to him?

@^Smiley^: I heard he quit the game! Why did he even quit??

@(Fropp00): Him? Quitting? Bullshit! I think he's just taking a break!

@GibMeMoney: He did leave Vainblood after all! Did he fight with his teammates? Damn! My OTP!

@Q-Q Why does this game suck?: No clue. Everything's just speculation.

@Phovie: Man. When will they reveal more info?!

...

As word of Shinto's disappearance from the rankings spread throughout the forum and amongst the rankers, posts after posts began to pile up. Eventually, gaming news sites started covering the news and speculating on the matter.

"Hello, hello again, gaming fans! It's time for another breaking news!" Behind a screen, sat a young man with a charming look on his face. "It's so big in fact, it's made history! What do you think it is? Of course! 1st Ranked Player, Shinto's disappearance!"

With a snap of his fingers, the screen switched to a thumbnail that featured Shinto. "There are many questions surrounding this event! I'm sure everyone wants to know the hows and whys. So, today, I've brought in one very special guest to speculate with! And that is..."

As the camera panned to the side of the young man, a tanned man in a grey suit could be noted excitedly pointing in front of the screen. "—And that is me! The star of the show, Victt, at your service!"

"Haha! What an introduction!" The young man, Yuta, chuckled. "Now then, shall we get started? What do you think of this entire fiasco? I'm sure the audience wants to hear an opinion from a ranker such as yourself!"

"Oh my, you couldn't be so kind! I, who is the star of the show, shall say my opinion! And that is... Shinto obviously chickened out of his position and ran away like a dog with his tail between his leg, haha!" Victt laughed vigorously. "Who would think to give up such a title? I sure won't!"

"Of course, of course! Some say he ran away from the rankings, while others say he's taking a break. There's no official word on the matter. Not even from the guild leader, Kaisus. But rumours have it that Shinto fought with his guildies and—" As Yuta was about to continue with his sentence, the screen suddenly turned to black.

"—oh for #$%^ sake! Why aren't there any useful channels with meaningful news?!" Sitting angrily at his gaming chair, a blonde-haired man—Arceus, could be seen frustratedly scratching his head whilst holding onto his tablet tightly. "I'm not going to get shit at this rate!"

Gritting his teeth in anger, Arceus exited out of the streaming app and swapped towards Discord. In the next moment, he entered the DMs of Shinto. "STOP GHOSTING MEEEE!!!" he typed out.

The second that he sent out his message, a notification ping vibrated on his tablet. "...?!" In a hurry, Arceus quickly turned to look at the ping that he received, expecting that it was from Shinto. However, to his dismay, it was just an @Everyone ping in his guild discord chat.

"..." His eyes twitched in annoyance. "FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! THAT'S F#$KING IT! I'M GOING TO DUNGEON!"

Giving up, he stood up from his chair in rage, quickly storming off into his capsule, soon logging into the game in the next moment.

...

As the morning sunlight seeped through the windows of Zayden's room, Zayden could be seen sleeping soundly on his bed. However, although comfortable, a loud ring of a tune suddenly rang through his room.

"U-Ugh..." The young man grunted, moving about his body whilst attempting to cover his ears with a pillow so that the loud noise would lessen. Unfortunately, to his dismay, that didn't help reduce the sound that was ringing through his ears at all. "Argh..."

Abruptly getting up from the annoying sound, Zayden rubbed his eyes in drowsiness whilst scanning around his room to find out where the ringing was coming from.

"Where the heck is it coming from?" he frowned, continuing to look around the area. At that moment, he noticed that the ringtone was directly coming from his phone. "...what? Why is my phone ringing...?"

Grabbing onto his phone that vibrated crazily, Zayden noted a large word plastered on his black screen that read, 'ALARM'.

"Huh? When did I even set up an alarm on my phone?" At the realization, Shinto blinked blankly at his screen. With his fingers turning off the alarm, he was immediately greeted by a note from Jisa on his home screen.

[Wake up you dummy! If you don't wake up now, you'll sleep the entire day again!]

"..." Zayden stared at his screen speechless. "How and when did Jisa do this?" Pondering on the matter, Zayden sighed to himself as he placed it aside for now. With a loud yawn, Zayden got off his bed whilst checking up on his messages from last night.

[ @Crowelin (3) ]

[ @Rienla (2) ]

[ @... ]

[ @Arceus (99+) ]

The messages that he had sent the night before all had been replied to by the recipients. As he was skimming through his inbox, Zayden's eyes shook at the sight of Arceus's DM filling it with yet another 99+ messages.

"Crazy... You sent another set of messages overnight while I was asleep? This is just..." He knew not of the lengths of what Arceus would go through in order to get a reply from him. But, not wanting to deal with this in the morning, Zayden opened the DM's of Arceus and closed it immediately after. "I'll... Deal with this later." 

With that out of the way, his inbox on his Discord was finally clean of pings.

"Phew... Now then, let's see whether or not Jisa messed with my phone." Moving on with the next task, Zayden exited the Discord app and searched through his phone. Searching around for a while, he couldn't find anything that had been tampered with. "Hmm... Looks like it's just my alarm. But, how the heck did she even gain access to my phone? It has a screen lock..."

He could not put a thought to it. Helpless, he left his room, now heading towards the bathroom to wash up. Soon after, he made his way over to the kitchen area where he noticed another note that was lying on the counter.

"Huh? Jisa wrote another one?" Taking it upon himself to read it, he scrunched closer to the note.

[ Dear Brother Zayden, I see you didn't eat last night's food! So you must be hungry, right? I've prepared some food for you in the fridge, so go eat it! And, don't think of eating ramen today. Ah, and a gentle reminder... REMEMBER TO EAT PROPERLY!! Ahem. Also, change your password, it was easy to crack :p - (Who uses such a simple pattern these days?) ]

"...Jisa," Zayden shook his head helplessly upon reading the note. "Hah... I should be thankful..." Walking up towards his fridge and opening it, he spotted the food prepared by his sister in a container.

The food that Jisa prepared was the usual. Rice, vegetables, miso soup, and some katsu chicken. At the sight of the food that she prepared, Zayden's stomach growled. Without wasting any time, he proceeded to heat up the food in a microwave.

While waiting for the food to be heated up, Zayden took out two eggs from the carton box sitting quietly by the counter and cracked them open on the frying pan and began cooking. At the end of the session, two omelettes were made, though, a little burnt.

"Well... It's better than nothing I guess," he shrugged. He wasn't used to cooking for himself, thus, his cooking skills were subpar compared to his sister. But he wanted to cook an omelette as it was a good dish to eat alongside what Jisa had made. "Let's dig in."

Finishing up his food in no time at all, he made his way over toward the capsule in his room, now beginning his day by logging into Spiritual Warriors.

...

[ Logging into the game… ]

[ Player (Shinto) has come online. ]

Within [ Black Wolf's Den ], Shinto spawned around the open area of which he had logged off the night before. Looking around his surroundings, he noted that the skies were now bright and sunny compared to when he was here with the party.

"Alright... The first order of business for today is to test out my damage during the day and compare it with night." Shinto thought to himself as he walked through the forest, in search of monsters. "Let's see here..."

Not long after he started walking around the dungeon, he found two monsters. One was a plant-like creature and the other was a white wolf. Upon spotting the two mobs, Shinto wasted no time as he dashed forward to gain their attention.

"Grr!" With the aggro of the monsters, Shinto began to wave his wooden staff around, preparing to shoot out a mana bolt. As the wolf leapt forward, he shot out his basic attack.

[ You have dealt 14 damage to White Wolf! ]

Compared to last night where he had dealt damage below the tens almost consistently, his base damage from the basic attack increased considerably. This was thanks to his class attribute which boosted defence and magic power by 20% during daytime.

"Hmm... A 20% increase puts it to 14 damage?" he pondered to himself as he soon casted out a veil of shadow which began to enshroud his two enemies. "Let's see the base damage for comparison."

[ You have entered an area of darkness. You will now gain a 25% boost in mobility and sight! ]

"Hmm... So it tells you when you enter a light area, or a dark one, huh?" Nodding his head in understanding, Shinto sent out another basic attack over to the blinded wolf.

[ You have dealt 11 damage to White Wolf! ]

Seeing the slight difference in damage, Shinto exited out of his field and sent out a ray of light over towards the white wolf, soon turning it into grey ash. At that moment, the plant-like creature that he had ignored jumped out of his shadow field and attacked Shinto.

But, the young man casually dodged the vines of the plant-like creature. In the next instance, he sent out a few basic attacks to it, turning the creature into grey ash as well.

[ You have defeated (White Fang Wolf)! ]

[ You have defeated (Leafios)! ]

[ Your Divinity Stat has risen by 1 ]

"Phew..." Letting out a sigh of relief, Shinto stretched his body as he turned to look at his class attributes. "With that test run... I guess that should cover the basics of my class for now."

Glancing over to the two gauges that represent Divinity and Shadow, he noticed that the Divinity Gauge was regenerating slightly faster than his Shadow Gauge. Unlike the 10 seconds that he counted from last night, it was now 7 seconds.

"Oh? I never seemed to notice this until now... But it seems that the class attributes also affect my regenerating speed depending on the surroundings?" Although he was spamming shadow skill after shadow skill last night, he didn't pay much attention to the Shadow Gauge as he kept levelling up. Not only that, the horde of monsters prevented him from counting down on when a Shadow point would regenerate, so he assumed that it was 10 seconds. "Hmm... So if it was nighttime... Then my Shadow Gauge would generate at 7 seconds per point?"

In thought, Shinto closed his class attributes screen as he then turned towards his notification window. "Well, I'll confirm the regeneration speed tonight. But for now..."

As his eyes glanced over towards the window, he took notice of a notification that was constantly repeating every so often since the defeat of Black Fang.

[ The shadows are calling out to you. The skill: (Shadow Calling) is shaking. ]

[ The skill: (Shadow Calling) is shaking. ]

[ The skill: (Shadow Calling)... ]

"Huh... It almost looks rather ominous..." he laughed awkwardly. The skill (Shadow Calling) was his fifth and final skill. However, it was a locked one as he couldn't use it due to a certain condition on his skill. But, now that his Shadow stats have risen, it seems that the skill wanted to break free. "Well... Let's see what this is about."

...

[ Shadow Calling Lv 1 ] [ 20 Shadow Gauge ] [ Cooldown: 24 Hours ]

Call upon the shadows for a [Shadow Minion]. They who serve the Shadow Diviner shall aid him in any given situation. The shadow calling ceremony shall begin when you use this skill for the first time.

Condition of Use: Shadow Stat must be at least 10.

"This skill seems to be that of a summoning ability." Shinto analysed the description of the skill. "With it saying a Shadow Minion... I wonder what exactly it is?" Pondering on the matter, he began to utter the skill's name. "Shadow Calling."

Following his call, the spam of notifications stopped. At that moment, a new set of notifications flooded his window.

[ The skill: (Shadow Calling) is greatly shaking! ]

[ The shadows are looking at you from the darkness. ]

[ Some of the shadows show no interest in you. But some were joyous. Others seem to remain silent. ]

As the notifications stopped, Shinto felt a sudden tremble below him. Following that, a black cloud of shadows began forming before him. As if it was calling out to him, the young man unconsciously reached out toward it.

[ A shadow has heeded your call. ]

With Shinto's hand entering the cloud of shadows, the black smoke slowly started to dissipate away. What remained at the spot was a small dark ball.

"...?" Upon seeing the strange thing in front of him, he raised his brow. "What's this? A dark ball...?" Questioning the oddity, the small dark ball began to rumble violently. "...!!"

As the ball shook, a small tail that seemed to be fluffy popped out from the dark ball. In the next instant, the ball slowly started shaping into a figure of an animal, resembling that of a small black fox.

With his eyes opening wide as if it was his first time, the black fox's vision was greeted by Shinto. "...shadow diviner?" The fox muttered out.