It seems He became a Person of Interest

School ended without anything else worth mentioning. Higashi walked back to his home. On his way, he stopped at a convenience store to buy some instant noodles. He noticed there was nothing to eat when he explored the house yesterday night.

Within the small store, a certain book caught his attention. A Weekly Shonen Jump, with a recognizable feathered character on the cover. It was CROW, the main character of a manga series by the same name created by the fictional character Niizuma Eiji.

Well, he supposes he could take the 'fictional' off of that now, considering Niizuma Eiji is very much real in this world. So it seems Bakuman is also a thing in this universe.

[Bakuman Quest created. Please go to the Quest screen for details]

He could already guess the content of the quest without even looking. This one was going to be a troublesome one, maybe too troublesome to even be worth doing. Not to say he won't do it though, considering how much the Bakuman series. He will just delay it for now.

He left the store, wondering where he could buy himself some drawing tools. If he bought two Visual Art skills his drawings stat would reach 40 points or an effective amount of 80. That should be more than enough to make a manga.

However, if he wants to recreate a masterpiece from his world, then he will need something more than that. He will need perfect memory, and that should be achievable by buying the tier 5 Academic skill 'Perfect Memory'.

But to buy that skill he needs to be level 5, which is definitely a pain in the ass. Considering level 1 required a stage-2 relationship and level 2 required two stage-3 relationships… Well, level 5 should take 5 stage-6 relationships or MAX affections.

It'll take some time before he will be able to attain something like that. Maybe he should just recreate something he knows by heart instead? No, his taste is shit for the most part. If he was doing this then he will try his best to reach for the top. That was only natural.

On his way home he passed through an abandoned building. There were people doing skating tricks around the place. Their 3-d movements are certainly something.

Roller skates… No, these people were wearing Air Treck. A form of high-end roller skates with somewhere around seven parts, allowing the user to gain high speed and even 'fly' to a certain extent. It was a popular tool among teenagers but a menace according to most adults.

Shortened A-T, they are the main tool used in the story Air Gear.

[Air Gear Quest created. Please go to the Quest screen for details]

It was probably something like 'get your own A-T' or something similar to that. It was actually a hard task considering A-Ts are pricy. The base ones cost about 100,000 Yen if he remembered correctly. That is about a thousand Dollars.

Nevertheless, he decided to check the Quest screen to ensure he wasn't misunderstanding anything.

[Quest]

[Level Quest: Get to the Crush level with three women]

[Bakuman Quest: Publish a manga to Shonen Jump]

[Air gear Quest: Get an A-T]

Yup, nothing unexpected there. He continued onward back to his house. Publishing to Shonen Jump… What should he publish? A serialization was out of the question. A newbie mangaka starting with serialization is nothing but a big joke.

He will make a one-shot. But the problem what one-shot….

Well, considering the fact that Bakuman exists here...

Yeah, let's do that one then. But before that, there is a need to buy manga drawing tools. He could check on the net for details on them. Hopefully, with high enough Visual Art stat he could be like Niizuma Eiji who can draw without a name (storyboard). That would be just wonderful.

After returning home he opened his Love Shop and bought the tier 1 and tier 2 skills from the Visual Art category, which were Drawing and Photography. The Drawing skill was normal, like any other time he bought a skill. He felt some warmth within his body and that was about it.

However, things were different when he bought the Tier-2 Photography skill. Information flooded his brain and it actually hurts. There were constant tinges of pain within his head as if he was having a headache. Knowledge just poured down into his head.

Angle, background, lighting, all kinds of stuff related to photography. He just learned them all without actually learning them. It was a strange feeling.

[Congratulations on reaching Visual Art Adept Level! Please choose a Perk as a reward.]

[Visual Art Enthusiast II: +200% Visual Art stat Growth Rate and replace Visual Art Enthusiast I]

[Visual Art Genius I: +100% Visual Art stat Effectiveness]

Definitely Visual Art Genius.

Done with that he grabbed a mechanical pencil, an eraser, a ruler and papers before starting to draw. After a few seconds of mulling he decided to just draw a random anime girl without any reference. Drawing without a reference was a bad idea but he decided to do it anyway to test out his skills.

He decided to do the angle facing straight towards the viewers. First draw the lines and boxes, then the eyes and then the hair, and finally everything below that. It might seem strange to draw eyes first but according to his newfound knowledge, it was more convenient to do so when drawing characters facing the viewer.

Making thick eyelines... Shading the eyes… Making and shading the hair…. body from neck to upper torso… shading them again…

Time passed. By the time he was finished, he found out two whole hours have passed. It was an unnecessarily long time considering he was doing some simple works with one pencil. He certainly took some time shading but he didn't even use a blending stump. He needs to be faster next time.

As for the quality… It was nice enough. He felt the tools were lacking, and that he could have done better with higher quality tools, but otherwise he was satisfied with his art. This might be enough to make a simple one-shot manga.

It will take some time though, so he would rather take this one slowly. It wasn't even evening yet, and he still has time before he needs to sleep. No point in drawing without manga tools. He decided to research what kind of tools a mangaka needs on the internet. He did that for another hour until he was bored, with a completed list of what to buy and the location where he could buy them.

He thought about the Air Gear mission. 100,000 Yen is not cheap, and it might not be something he could afford even with the money earned from writing manga. He decided to find an alternative way of getting himself an A-T.

Therefore he opened the online search engine and typed in 'Tool Toul To' before clicking the enter key.

No website called such existed, but as expected there are articles about them. Tool Toul To, or if you want to make fun of it Turu Turu Tu, is a collective group whose goal is to help Stormriders (People who use A-T) maintenance their Air Trecks.

They are very helpful, mainly because the tuning of A-Ts is as pricy as buying them, and most people cannot afford that. The reason Tool Toul To keeps running even though its operation cost must be enormous is because there is another goal for its creation.

To gain tuners who would help the Kings with tuning their Regalia.

Regalia. He licked his lips. Maybe he could try his hands at obtaining one somehow. Regalias are special A-Ts which are far more advanced than the average ones. Regalia are specifically engineered to use the air to activate the King's road.

Those who own Regalia are called King by the stormriders. They each possess a 'Road' that is connected to the Regalia itself. Roads are basically the name of different fighting styles.

He opened an article on how A-T works. If he intends to join Tool Toul To then he needs to have some knowledge on A-Ts. It should be easy to learn about them with his 180 Academic stat points.

That was what he spent the rest of his day learning about. Soon enough the day passes and another new day started.

...

He couldn't be bothered to cook in the morning so he ate instant noodles again before taking a bath and changing into his uniform. The walk to school was normal as well. Nothing interesting happened until just five minutes before the homeroom bell rang.

"Yo, first-year."

Someone opened the door roughly and looked towards Higashi. The person was a man with spiky blonde hair and bat-like features.

Hiruma Yoichi.

"Higashi Murasaki. You will join and participate in the school American football team."

Hiruma said with an evil grin on his face. Higashi sighed, so it seems Eyeshield 21 also exists in this school. He needs to check the school clubs later to see if he recognized any of them. There are many high-schools-setting clubs-based anime out there, especially ones about baseball. Nevertheless, he turned his attention back to Hiruma.

"I have to refuse. There are certain things I am busy with."

"Oho? And what could you be busy with?"

"New endeavors. Both in terms of hobby and job."

Hiruma snorted.

"Well, you've got a new hobby in the making right in front of you. Join the American football team. Or else."

"And what could you threaten me with, Hiruma-san?"

The man silently took out a black book from his pocket, before pointing at it.

"Your embarrassing information is on page 68 of this note. If you refuse to comply I'll have this thing blared to the whole school."

Blackmail is it. He remembers there were such details about Hiruma early in the Eyeshield series. Hiruma blackmailed people of his school to join the club temporarily if he remembers correctly. If what Hiruma said is true then his reputation at school will most likely be ruined if those secrets were blared.

That would certainly be a problem for his school life. What a troublesome condition. One thing for certain was the fact Hiruma was certainly pissing him off.

"Feel free," Higashi spoke. "However if you did, I'll also make sure you'll never throw another football in your life."

Hiruma's eyes sharpened at that. The tension within the room was getting heavier as the seconds pass by. Neither seems willing to relent to the other side as they glared towards one another.

"…You sure are cocky for a first-year."

"And you sure are disgusting for a senior."

Hiruma Yoichi was trying to recruit a junior for the sake of fighting for his dream, while Higashi Murasaki was trying to protect his freedom. Higashi did not hold any sympathy or pity for Hiruma considering the team will recruit some hardworking talents who will drag themselves to glory next year.

The two stare at one another. The mood continued to sour between the two, until—

"Hiruma-san. How many times do we need to tell you that we will not allow such behavior within this school?"

A female voice called out.

Right afterwards an orange-haired woman walked into the classroom. She put one hand on her waist, sending a strict glare towards the pointy-eared blonde. Hiruma stared back, sending sparks of lightning between their glares.

"Nanami Shizuka…"

Hiruma muttered those words out with a grumble. He let out a small 'tsk' before wordlessly leaving the room. Huh, a woman who can shut Hiruma up for good should not be underestimated.

Just something to note, Higashi does not know who this Nanami Shizuka person is. The name did not ring a bell for him. Considering she seems to have some form of authority over Hiruma-senpai, maybe she was part of the student council or something similar.

Hmm… Maybe she was from an anime he did not watch yet.

The woman looked at him.

"Am I correct to assume you are Higashi Murasaki?"

"…That would be correct, yes."

"Please come with me for a moment. The Rokkisei (Six Knight) has a business with you."

Rokkisei.

Oh.

He realizes who she was. She is nothing but a minor antagonist in the story so he couldn't recall her up till now, but he remembers the Six Knight.

So it seems Beelzebub is here as well.