{Chapter 1} Work after work
Part I
In the Sinchi City, where Hiroto Domori lives, there was now a petit construction rush. Six months later, several large condominiums were scheduled to be completed near the station.
Sinchi City is positioned as a commuter town from the center of the city, and since it was located at the edge of the city, a peaceful rural landscape spreads out a little away from the station.
However, recently, with the relocation of the vast train depot at Shinchi Station, a development plan for a suburban commercial mall directly connected to the station was announced in the vacant space.
Then, land prices rose little by little, and major real estate companies and others, believing that the market could be profitable, began to build large condominiums, which is how the current petit construction rush happened. In fact, sales have been good, according to the report.
A young boy who was busy working at the construction site at lunchtime on Sunday lamented over and over again as he carried away the debris.
“I don’t have a job. My life is going to dry up because of this. After all, …… I have been forgotten. Haah~”
Hiroto, who was supposed to be in the middle of his work right now, muttered something like that.
This is because the work that Hiroto is referring to is not this kind of part-time work.
“I even took the initiative to take the rookie exam of the World Ability Agency to get a rank ……”
“Kid! You can take a lunch break after you carry that!”
“Oh, I get it! Thank you!”
After being instructed by the site supervisor, Hiroto stopped working at a good time, took off his gloves and pulled out a homemade sandwich and a water bottle that he had brought with him from his backpack.
It was currently June and the construction site was hotter than other places. Hiroto sat down at the site in the shade to avoid the sunlight.
“At this rate, it’s going to be difficult to balance …… high school life.”
This year, Hiroto was admitted to Horaiin Kitsurin High School, a private school that has been in existence for more than 80 years and is known for its fame in both the literary and athletic fields. It is well known, and students come from all over the country to attend. However, the tuition fees are also somewhat high in line with this.
Hiroto had to earn it himself. The reason for this is that the person who caused this situation, grandfather Tenzo, said to his lovely grandson.
“Well, why don’t you try living on your own?”
The grinning face of an unpleasant Tenzo comes to mind and Hiroto grabs the sandwich, a valuable source of calories.
“That old man …… was the one who spent the family’s money, you know!”
Of course, Hiroto tried to resist this tyrannical proposal, but Hiroto, who was still a young boy, was successfully persuaded by cunning Tenzo.
He said things like, “A man of the Domori family is a full-fledged man at 15” and “When I was young,….” but Hiroto doesn’t remember everything.
So now, after being introduced to him by a dubious connection of Tenzo, he lives in a cheap house by himself.
Hearing this, he wondered, “A house?” Everybody would think like that. And Hiroto was the same.
When he first went to the site when he moved in, he was astonished to see the house.
It was a large single-story wooden house, maybe three orders of magnitude older than the previous one, with a 3,000-square-meter garden.
It was in a tattered state, and totally uninhabitable. ……
There was no way for him to afford the huge repair costs of a needlessly large house… and the owner of the house was never contacted.
Hiroto, a freshman in high school, helpless socially and income-wise, now sits in that rundown garden ……, and
Lives in a tent.
“Kuh! I hate that wasted space!”
It would be a fine house if it could be restored. But that would require a lot of money.
It’s hard for a first-year high school student like Hiroto to make ends meet, but he was seriously thinking about repairing it somehow.
In fact, he really doesn’t want …… to live in a tent anymore.
“I even faked my rank as a natural gifted person, and I’ve heard that agency work pays well, so I planned to earn a living by doing well as long as I was asked to do so. ……, hmm?”
Hiroto, who had been bracing himself and clenching his fists, frowned at the sudden feeling of discomfort.
Then a dimly lit space appears in front of where Hiroto is sitting. It is clearly different and would be difficult for an ordinary person to understand if they saw it. But rather than being surprised, Hiroto sighed.
“Fuuu…… it has been drawn to this peculiar constitution of mine again, hasn’t it? It’s a hassle, but it would be a problem if the bosses got into trouble.”
Because Hiroto’s spiritual power usually leaks out, he is often attacked by miscellaneous spirits and others. This was not an unusual occurrence.
Hiroto stood up awkwardly and began to knead Senki into the dantian below his navel, and that Senki was instantly sublimated to spiritual power.
The dim space in front of Hiroto’s eyes that contained the spiritual energy began to deflate, and in proportion to that, the spiritual energy began to compress and take on an odd shape. Hiroto was not caught off guard and stared at it.
Then, out of the dense spiritual air, a three-legged non-human figure in the form of a white tiger appeared. For some reason, the three-legged figure did not have the left leg part of its front leg.
With the appearance of this monstrosity, the color of the area became slightly duller. This is evidence of a dimensional shift. This is a common phenomenon that occurs when a medium or higher level extraterrestrial appears.
The white tiger’s spiritual energy touches the circle of Senki that has begun to spread around Hiroto.
”Huh? I thought it was the usual miscellaneous spirits, but this guy is surprisingly tough, isn’t he? And whoa!”
Suddenly, the white tiger lunged at Hiroto at high speed and leapt low and thrust out the sharp claws of his right front leg, aiming at Hiroto’s chest.
Surprised, Hiroto reacted astonishingly, rotating his body around the axis of his right leg and ducking the white tiger’s attack with minimal movement, making room for a counterattack.
Well that was with some…… room to spare, but it’s only because it’s Hiroto Domori.
”Fuuuh!”
Hiroto did one fluid rotation and slammed his right hand strike into the white tiger’s back from above.
An ordinary person would not be able to see how Hiroto moved.
The white tiger, which was gliding at a high speed got knocked down by the impact of that Hiroto’s strike and crashed to the ground, scattering dust all around causing its movement to halt.
“Phew.”
Hiroto let out a breath and looked down at the white tiger, which was out of breath from his blow.
The game was over in the blink of an eye, but considering the white tiger’s strength, its fighting ability was comparable to that of the agency’s high rank holders.
“Could this guy be a guardian deity of this land? How could it lose one leg and still build wards and attack me so angrily, even with this strength ……?”
Hiroto looked around the grounds where the apartment is being built. There, his eyes fell on something.
There was a large, magnificent rock lying at the edge of the site. Perhaps it was in the way during the construction of the apartment building and the contractor had used a construction machine or something to move it from its original location. Also, perhaps due to the impact of the move, a rock that seems to have been part of a large rock was lying haphazardly next to the large rock that was probably the main body.
Hiroto approached the two rocks and inspected them.
“I’m sure that …… certainly feels divine. I’m not sure if it was once enshrined in the old days. That’s where he came from. So the rock over here that’s missing is his left leg. ……”
Hiroto looks back at White Tiger, who can no longer move.
The white tiger had lost its power in the fight with Hiroto, and its presence seemed to be on the verge of disappearing as well.
Before the construction of this mansion, there was a large house on this large property, and Hiroto had heard that it was the home of a quite influential person. This large rock must have been in the garden all along. He imagined that it had been left there when the landowner sold the property.
“It may have been a guardian deity of the area,…… and that’s why it’s so angry. And I think the divinity was quite high, too, wasn’t it? I’m sure this rock must have been placed on a node in the earth’s veins.”
Essentially, if the guardian deity of the land is eliminated without any procedure in this way, the inhabitants and trees in the vicinity will not benefit from it either. If it’s done poorly, it could even become a haunted god.
This means that even if the apartment building is completed, the residents and the landowner who sold the land will lose their blessings.
The landowner who lived here became an influential figure would not have had anything to do with the blessing of this guardian god…….
The white tiger, which is about to lose its power, was staring at him.
As soon as his eyes met with the white tiger, Hiroto made a decision.
“Alright! This is an important place for me to work right now, and it’s also the domain of a spirit swordsman and hermit master.”
When he said that, Hiroto put his hands on each of the pieces of the boulder. Then he pulled the two together and overlapped them with a power that was unimaginable for an average high school freshman’s body.
“I couldn’t become a proper spirit swordsman because of my peculiar constitution, but my study of Sendo helped me. I’ll use this useless, just-out-of-the-box spiritual power of mine!”
Hiroto placed both palms on Boulder as if he were letting it suck in his spiritual power and used a tremendous amount of senki to draw the vein of earth from underneath the apartment foundation to himself.
”Haaaaah!”
On the ground where Hiroto was, one could see what looked like a light red river flowing from underneath an apartment building. Eventually, it moved directly underneath Hiroto, or rather, it was drawn to the position of the large rock that Hiroto was holding, which had become one again.
Then a small light is emitted around the large rock, and the area regains its usual calmness.
And the warding caused by the …… sliding dimensions also disappeared.
“I think …… that it is going to be OK. Now I just need to tell my boss not to mess with it. Hmmm, but what should I tell him?”
Thinking of this, Hiroto turned his head to the white tiger, but it was no longer there.
“It’s the same as it was in the past. No?”
Hiroto wore a worried expression and rode the warm early summer breeze and heard a voice.
“Thank you …….”
A gentle girl’s voice could be heard. Apparently, this white tiger’s divinity was a girl.
The gender doesn’t really matter much to an extraterrestrial who has reached the point of having a divinity, and takes the form of a man or a woman with that extraterrestrial nature. However, the color of his voice makes Hiroto feel like he saved a girl, and he can’t help but smile.
“But …… I’ll never forget that you gave me used a hand strike on my back!”
“Ugh! That’s because it’s going to come at you out of nowhere: ……, hey! And I helped you! Sorry! Please, do not take over! Any more bad luck and I won’t be able to live with it!”
Hiroto flushed with blood and desperately shouted …… but there was no reply.
“Ora, kid! What’s the big deal? Get your ass back in the field!”
Hiroto’s shoulders go up at the angry voice of the field boss.
“Ehh! No, I didn’t get much rest!”
If the World Organization of Gifted People gave him a job, he would be paid on better terms and would not be resented by the land gods he thought he had helped.
“I can’t wait to get a job!”
“I’m giving you one here! Come on!”
Later, when Hiroto told his boss that he didn’t want the Oiwa to be moved, the apartment developer said that he had originally moved it to its current location because he thought it could be used for the exterior of the apartment building’s courtyard, so the boulder was to be left in place.
Hiroto returned to work without a break and started pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with debris. It’s mainly miscellaneous jobs, but he is a serious person, so he does his best.
” Master Hiroto, you’re so diligent! Working in a place like this.”
Before he knew it, a large silver-haired man was sitting on the rebar yard, feeling relaxed.
“Hmm? Ah! Gaston! Don’t come in here without permission, the boss will be pissed if he finds out!”
“It’s okay. Did you forget? I have a useful ability called [positioning]. No one ever gets suspicious of me.”
Positioning …… It is the ability to twist one’s position in relation to the other person.
For example, it can give the other person the illusion that you are the most trustworthy friend, even though you have never met them before.
It was originally the special ability of Edmund Stan, an unaffiliated gifted infiltrator and spy, but the vampire Gaston sucked the blood of the gifted person and took this ability away.
Gaston told him later that this man, Edmund Stan, was quite a scoundrel, and used this positioning ability to do bad things to the rich and beautiful women he saw.
“oh, yeah. ……. And? What are you doing here? I’m busy, as you can see!”
“You don’t have to talk like that. I’m here to check on my master! Even though I look like this, I’m not master’s contractual demon ……, I’m your friend~”
“Gaston …… by any chance, did you come to notice the fight with the Deity of this land earlier?”
Without answering the question, Gaston looks over at Hiroto’s work area and sighs lightly.
“Master …… still hasn’t received any work from the agency? I’m sure you can handle any job lightly. Wouldn’t that be a better way to get paid? Even for master, living in a tent forever will destroy your body, right?”
“Yes, but I can’t help it if the requests don’t come in. Maybe the requests are few and far between and they don’t come to me…….”
“No, there seems to be a serious shortage of people at the agency right now due to over-requesting, don’t you think? I think if the job is not coming to you, that means that you’re simply being forgotten.”
“Oh, really? Gaston, how do you know that …… ah! You didn’t sneak into the agency! You’re a wanted man, so don’t be that way around….”
Gaston is listening to Hiroto’s sermon and looking towards the entrance of the work site.
There is a woman in a suit getting out of a black car and talking to the foreman about something.
“Oops, master! Do the rest well. Bye!”
“Hey! Gaston! You heard me, …… and he just disappeared. I want it!”
Hiroto makes a bitter face next to the wheelbarrow, staring at the spot where Gaston was.
“Hey, you”
“Huh?”
—-Part I end—
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