After Returning to Yokohama, I Rely on a Mishmash of Secret Identities to Save the World - Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Prologue

“Minami, Daddy can’t stay with you to celebrate your birthday today… Yes, I have to work overtime… Daddy has already ordered the cake! How about having Mommy go pick it up in a little while?”

“Eh?! Don’t, don’t cry! Minami—”

An office worker in a stiff, proper western suit—a corporate drone at first glance—stared at the hung-up phone, wanting to cry but having no tears.

He raised his head to look at the sun that was about to sink behind the mountains, dropping his shoulders in exhaustion: “Sigh… back to working overtime again…”

With dark circles under his eyes, the exhausted corporate drone rubbed his temples, forced himself to brace up, and turned around to hurry back in the direction of the company.

Hurry back…

Hurry…

“Mister?”

A clear and bright male voice abruptly echoed beside his ear. The corporate drone jolted violently, his groggy brain cleared of exhaustion in a flash.

Not far ahead directly in front of him, a grayish-white mist rose from the sea, spreading toward the shore. The visibility in the areas covered by the mist was extremely low, making it almost impossible to see where the coastline was. Only the intermittent sounds of crashing waves could be heard.

—And he had raised his foot, just about to step into the mist.

This wasn’t the direction to the company!

A wave of chill rose from beneath his feet. He shivered, swiftly withdrew his foot, and scrambled away on all fours to distance himself from this obviously abnormal mist.

Only after feeling that he had finally escaped from danger did the corporate drone manage to calm his heart to look at the person who had just spoken to warn him—

That was a youth wearing a sports hoodie, with semi-long red hair falling to his shoulders, and light violet eyes carrying a clarity untouched by the world.

He took a step forward in concern, extending his hand to support the corporate drone who had rushed over in a panic and hadn’t stood firmly yet: “Mister, are you alright?”

“I saw that you almost fell down from the seaside just now.”

Looking at the uncle drone’s obviously unwell mental state, the youth’s tone was gentle and light, his articulation carrying a strange rhythm: “Were you too tired and couldn’t see the road clearly?”

The corporate drone’s gaze dazed for an instant. He shook his groggy head, feeling that his mind had cleared up considerably. He said repeatedly in gratitude: “Ah, yes, yes. I worked overtime until my brain wasn’t even sober anymore. Thank you, young man.”

“It’s getting late, uncle should go back early to rest.”

“Aiya, I want to as well, but my superior called me back to rush a project again.” The man let out a helpless sigh, “But today was truly dangerous, I will be careful next time.”

Having said that, he bid farewell to this kind-hearted young man who had warned him, and departed in the direction opposite to the sea.

—As if completely failing to notice the bizarre mist behind him that had made him hair-raisingly terrified moments before.

After watching the uncle’s silhouette disappear from his field of vision, Oda Hoshimi slowly closed his eyes slightly.

The beautiful light violet eyes gradually gathered fine bits of starlight, turning into a translucent crystal purple. The sclera part, which originally belonged to a normal human, also turned into a deep black color. If one observed closely, one could still see faint light spots distributed like stars within that pitch-black darkness.

The youth possessing the bizarre pupils raised his head, his gaze piercing through the white mist of extremely low visibility, looking straight toward that expanse of sea.

A ferocious rift, invisible to ordinary people, spanned across the void. Tiny electric arcs leapt around the rift, appearing as if even the sea level were torn apart.

Oda Hoshimi seemed to be able to hear a faint “crackling” sound.

That rift only appeared in his sight for a fleeting instant before hiding away inside the endless white mist.

Yet this single instant was enough for him to make a judgment.

“This is bad…”

He rubbed his temples in distress, turning around to leave.

Behind him, the mist slowly dissolved away, and the sea surface became calm with gentle waves, as if the scene just now had never appeared.

Oda Hoshimi was a savior in the literal sense, parenthesis, retired.

Four years ago, in order to protect the children at his older brother’s house, he unfortunately met an untimely demise. Before dying, however, he unexpectedly awakened his family’s innate talent. Then, a powerful existence calling itself the Lord God took a fancy to this talent, pulling his soul away to employ him in the work of saving worlds.

In the beginning, Oda Hoshimi refused. After all, nobody wants to still work after dying.

—But the Lord God gave too much ╮(╯▽╰)╭

That was resurrection! He still had family alive in the world, so compared to the benefits gained, the danger of repairing rifts wasn’t worth mentioning.

According to what the Lord God said, the world they were in and even thousands upon thousands of small worlds around it evolved from certain manga, anime, or novels of a certain main world. This kind of incomplete small world would frequently develop space-time rifts because the world barriers were unstable.

If these space-time rifts were left alone, they would continuously expand, and evil beasts from the dimensional narrow-space would take advantage of this to invade the small worlds, until the small worlds were swallowed by the rifts or destroyed by the dimensional beasts.

As the manager of the small worlds, the hard-pressed Lord God had to shoulder the responsibility of protecting the worlds, searching all over the place for saviors who possessed qualified talents to repair those rifts.

Oda Hoshimi was one of them, and an exceptionally outstanding one at that. In just four short years of employment, he amassed enough resurrection energy to happily retire and go home to see his brother.

Yet before he could stay for even a few months, 741, the System partner who had saved worlds together with him previously, ran back again and brought disastrous news:

—His world… had also cracked open.

Thinking of the rift he saw just now, Oda Hoshimi knocked frantically on the system in his mind with a headache, letting out a sigh.

“Little Seven, aren’t things ready on your side yet?”

“Snatching it, snatching it right now!” Little Seven replied at an extremely fast speed, “Still short of 99.999%, wait for me to find another friend to slash a bit off the price!”

Oda Hoshimi: …

He always felt that the Lord God engaged in this kind of slash a bit off promotional activity was quite unreliable.

“Are you certain you can snatch a combat-type plugin?”

Little Seven fell into a bizarre silence for an instant: “…I’ll do my best.”

Oda Hoshimi: …

Speaking of this plugin, every savior’s partner system only possessed basic retrieval functions; other extra auxiliary functions required loading plugins. The Lord God’s energy was limited and could not allocate suitable plugins to every system according to their needs, so they could only throw them all into the mall for them to snatch themselves, first come first served.

Some hosts possessed formidable strength but simple minds, so they needed an intelligence plugin to assist them. Some were adept at strategy and needed a combat plugin. It wasn’t possible to snatch the one most suitable for oneself in every world’s mission.

Oda Hoshimi only hoped that Little Seven would be a bit of a high-achiever, at least equipping him with some combat values—he was just a brain-power type, alright! Without combat values, was he supposed to use his head to fight dimensional beasts!

“Success, success! I snatched it!” Little Seven’s pleasantly surprised voice came through.

“What is it, what is it?”

Little Seven opened the installation package and took a glance: “It’s a Vest plugin!”

Oda Hoshimi felt a burst of joy in his heart. Although the Vest-type plugin required the host to amass energy themselves to obtain the Vest’s abilities, at least there were a lot of choices for Vests. As long as there could be a few combat-types for him to use, he wouldn’t be picky either.

“Install it first, I’ll look at it again after I return to my room.”

Saying that, he opened the main door of a certain apartment.

“Brother, I’m back!”

Just upon entering the door, Oda Hoshimi extended his hands as if possessing foresight, steadily catching the boy who charged down like a cannonball.

“Kousuke! You cheated by running ahead!” Behind the boy, a group of children ran down from upstairs, chattering and accusing Kousuke who had pounced up first.

Kousuke made a grimace at them, turning to say to Oda Hoshimi: “Welcome back, Hoshimi-niisan!”

Oda Sakunosuke walked out from the kitchen carrying a plate, seeing his own younger brother surrounded by the children at the entrance unable to move at first glance.

“Welcome back, how long can you stay this time?” He nodded to his brother, pulling the children away with a smile, “Don’t block the way here, let your Hoshimi-niisan come in first.”

Oda Hoshimi lowered his head to change his shoes: “The vacation is a bit longer this semester, I estimate I can stay for over a month.”

“That’s good.” Oda Sakunosuke settled the children on the sofa, looking at the sky outside the window, “Yokohama isn’t too safe during this period of time, it’s best not to go out at night.”

“Got it.”

Oda Hoshimi, who ran upstairs in the blink of an eye, responded casually, closing his room door.

Oda Sakunosuke shook his head helplessly, continuing to return to the kitchen to prepare dinner.

Inside the bedroom, Oda Hoshimi opened the system panel loaded with the new plugin with a serious face.

At the very top of the panel, the huge word “Vest” entered his sight, golden light shining and grabbing one’s eye.

Oda Hoshimi rubbed his eyes which were blinded by the shine, swiftly scrolled down to finish reading the plugin descriptions, and then let out a long sigh of relief, collapsing onto the bed.

“The luck is still alright…”

The instruction manual briefly introduced the operating principles and operation guide of the plugin. To put it simply, the friends Oda Hoshimi knew from traveling through worlds previously would enter a database similar to a game card pool, and the plugin would randomly draw data to generate Vests for his use.

As long as the people favored by the “world”—the so-called “main characters”—acknowledged the rationality of the Vest’s existence, they could provide energy to the Vest.

This wasn’t difficult for Oda Hoshimi. Since the Vest’s data originated from people who originally existed in alternative worlds, he could just directly copy their experiences to perfect the character design.

The friends he was able to get acquainted with back then were basically the proud children of heaven in those worlds. Under the circumstance of sufficient energy, using their abilities to deal with dimensional beasts was much easier than him going up himself.

Little Seven rubbed its palms together excitedly: “The systems that snatched plugins during this mall event have extra energy packs gifted. My initial energy can completely support the host to draw the first Vest!”

It urged: “Shall we draw it right now?”

The rift at the seaside couldn’t wait for very long!

Oda Hoshimi nodded, pressing the card-drawing button with a thought: “This time it truly is exactly like a gacha game…”

Following his operation, a burst of flashy special effects covered the entire panel. By the time the special effects dispersed, what entered his sight first was a trace of familiar ochre.

Look at that wild and unbridled smile, that stature which wasn’t tall but had an aura directly approaching 2.8 meters…

“Yoshi!” Oda Hoshimi clenched his fist forcefully, “It’s Chuuya-san!”

Did he not know Chuuya-san’s strength!

—This round is secure!

He tapped the panel excitedly, attempting to release the Vest…

Release it…

Release…

“Little Seven, are you lagging?” Why couldn’t the Vest be released?

Little Seven was also stunned, hastily performing a self-check: “I have no problem… Oh! The plugin displays that your Vest is incomplete… unable to load?”

“Incomplete?” Oda Hoshimi was also muddled. Hadn’t he finished drawing it completely?

The light ball that Little Seven morphed into circled around Nakahara Chuuya twice on the system panel, and then opened the character details:

Character Name: Nakahara Chuuya

Personality: ??? [Click to draw]

Skills: ??? [Click to draw]

Character Story: ??? [Can be filled in independently]

Looking at the series of question marks on the panel, a trace of an ominous presentiment slowly rose within Oda Hoshimi’s heart.

“…Little Seven, how about you perform another self-check to see if the plugin was installed properly?”

While flipping through its own memory, Little Seven mumbled in dissatisfaction: “This is the latest installation package, of course I loaded everything… completely…”

Hearing Little Seven’s voice in his mind growing smaller and smaller, Oda Hoshimi knew he had guessed correctly.

He pinched his nose with a tired heart: “Speak up, what is the problem with the plugin?”

“There’s actually no problem with the plugin itself…” Little Seven said in a small, guilty voice.

It dragged the system panel upward until it returned to the initial interface—and then weakly and cautiously turned off the golden light special effect of the word “Vest” that blinded one’s eyes.

Without the interference of the special effect, the words hidden beneath the golden light, which were at least over ten times smaller compared to the word “Vest,” manifested before them:

—”Piecemeal”

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