The miraculous collision of fate hadn't just knocked Leo Vance off his feet; it had rewired his entire perception of reality. For a few hours, he simply sat in his ergonomic chair, staring at his hands as if he'd never seen them before. The surprise was a heavy, intoxicating weight in his chest. It wasn't just shock—it was the kind of bone-deep realization that makes everything you previously cared about look like a pile of dusty glass.
This was better than winning the Powerball. It was better than being the richest man on the planet. Because no matter how many zeros you have in your bank account, you're still just a squishy, carbon-based lifeform waiting for your clock to run out. You're still an "ordinary person" destined for a six-foot hole in the dirt.
But now? Leo could feel the Qi—a faint, cool vibration humming through his nervous system like a low-voltage current. He was a novice, a "Level 1" in a game with no cap, but he was finally on the path. Power wasn't something he had to earn from a boss or a gallery anymore; it was something he was literally pulling out of the air. Immortality wasn't some pipe dream—it was just the logical conclusion of the work he was about to put in.
As the initial adrenaline faded, a cold, sharp calm took its place. The NZT-48 modification was doing its job, filtering his frantic thoughts into a streamlined, tactical flow. He wasn't just a fanboy with a superpower; he was a strategist. He needed to maximize his gains. He needed a plan.
The System didn't give him a "quest log" or a forced tutorial. It was a sandbox. He could drop into a high-fantasy world, a gritty cyberpunk dystopia, or a space opera. But as he scrolled through the options in his mind, the logic held him back.
"Don't get cocky," Leo whispered, his voice sounding deeper, more resonant in the quiet room. "You're a Qi cultivator who can barely light a candle, and you've got the brain of a genius, but you're still made of meat. You go into Gundam, you're just one of the six billion people dying in the first five minutes. You go into Jujutsu Kaisen, and some finger-eating demon turns you into a pretzel."
He looked back at his monitor. The paused screen of Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend flickered in the dark.
It was perfect. A slice-of-life world. No supernatural threats. No world-ending wars. Just high school drama, art, and business. It was the ultimate "Beginner's Zone." It was a safe place to build his foundation, test his abilities, and—most importantly—settle a score.
Leo had spent way too many nights grit-teeth-watching Aki Tomoya's antics. To Leo, Tomoya wasn't a hero; he was a parasite in a trendy pair of glasses. He used girls' dreams as fuel for his own ego and called it "otaku passion."
"Transcoding the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional," Leo mused, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face. "People pay thousands for VR headsets just to feel like they're there. I'm actually going to walk into the frame."
He didn't just dive in, though. The new Leo—the NZT-enhanced, "Alpha" version—knew that haste was for losers. He needed to be a one-man army.
For the next week, Leo went into a trance-like state of preparation. He stopped showing up at his part-time job at the Lawson—he didn't need the "foreigner tax" money anymore. Instead, he spent eighteen hours a day at his desk.
With the NZT-48 firing, he didn't just "practice" writing; he deconstructed the entire craft of narrative architecture. He studied psychological manipulation, pacing, and emotional resonance until he could write circles around the show's professional novelists. His fanfic readers back home started freaking out in the comments, asking if he'd hired a ghostwriter or if he'd been possessed by the ghost of Hemingway.
He didn't stop there. He taught himself C++, Python, and Unity. He didn't just learn to code; he learned to breathe it. By the fourth day, he could build a dating sim engine from scratch in his sleep. Music? He pulled out his old MIDI controller and composed themes that were more evocative than anything the show's "pro" characters could produce.
He was effectively making himself better than the entire "Blessing Software" circle combined. He could replace the writer, the artist, and the programmer. He wasn't going to just join Tomoya's team; he was going to make Tomoya obsolete.
But he needed capital. The System provided a "legal identity," but it didn't hand out bags of cash.
That was where the "Alpha" physique came in.
Two nights before his departure, Leo went for a walk through the seedier parts of Shinjuku. He didn't wear a mask; he didn't need one. He looked like just another tall, handsome American tourist—until he walked into a back-alley mahjong parlor run by a local Yakuza kumi.
The encounter lasted less than three minutes.
The sensory details stayed with him: the smell of cheap tobacco and floor wax, the muffled click of tiles, and the sudden, sharp crack of a wrist bone meeting his palm. His body moved with a terrifying, fluid efficiency he hadn't known he possessed. He wasn't a martial artist yet, but his reflexes were so far beyond the thugs' that they might as well have been moving through molasses.
He'd walked out with a thick envelope of yen—his "startup capital." He called it the "Yakuza ATM" strategy. It wasn't exactly moral, but as Leo's time in Japan had taught him, the world didn't give you anything for being "nice." You took what you needed.
Finally, the morning came. Leo sat in his chair, dressed in a sharp, tailored black suit he'd bought with his "withdrawn" funds. He clicked play on the Saekano file.
"Time to go to work," he said.
The world didn't just fade; it shattered. A kaleidoscope of light and static swallowed his room, the smell of ozone and old paper filling his lungs until he couldn't breathe. Then, as quickly as it started, the pressure vanished.
Toyonosaki Academy.
The smell of floor wax, chalk dust, and teenage hormones hit him instantly. It was a sensory overload—the bright, high-key lighting of a modern Japanese high school was exactly like the anime, yet startlingly real. The air was cool, circulating through the vents with a soft, rhythmic hum.
Leo found himself standing in the hallway, clutching a leather briefcase. He looked down at his clothes—the standard school uniform, but on his new frame, it looked less like a student outfit and more like a designer suit. The fabric was crisp, smelling faintly of laundry detergent.
"Now, let's have our new student introduce himself," a gentle voice called out from inside the classroom.
Leo took a breath, feeling the Qi swirl in his gut, steadying his nerves. He stepped through the sliding door.
The chatter in the room died instantly. It was like someone had hit a kill-switch on the audio. Forty pairs of eyes locked onto him. He could hear the faint rustle of skirts, the squeak of sneakers on the linoleum, and the collective intake of breath from the girls in the front row.
He didn't look like the average "exchange student." He was tall, his shoulders broad, his jawline looking like it was chiseled out of granite. He had an air of quiet, dangerous competence that didn't belong in a tenth-grade classroom.
Leo picked up a piece of chalk. The texture was dry and dusty against his fingers. He wrote his name in bold, perfect strokes on the blackboard.
LEO VANCE
He turned to the class, his gaze sweeping over the rows of desks until he spotted a familiar head of messy hair and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses in the back. Aki Tomoya. The guy looked bored, leaning back in his chair, completely unaware that his life was about to be systematically dismantled.
Leo smiled, and the sheer "Alpha" energy of it made the girl in the front row turn a bright shade of crimson.
"My name is Leo Vance," he said, his voice smooth and carrying a natural American cadence that commanded the room. "I'm a transfer student from the States. Seattle, specifically."
He paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough to be impactful.
"I'm looking forward to seeing what this place has to offer," Leo said, his eyes locking onto Tomoya for a split second before returning to the teacher. "Please take good care of me."
Internal monologue: Buckle up, Tomoya. You're about to find out what happens when a real protagonist enters the story.