For 30 advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/AutumnXd
Night.
Ethan stared at his newest card, eyes gleaming.
It was only a Tier 1 Blue. But in terms of personal value? This thing was priceless.
[Card Name]: BGM Machine
[Quality]: Blue
[Rank]: Tier 1
[Type]: Item Card
[Effect]: Summons a BGM Machine that can play music according to the user's thoughts.
[Trait]:Volume Control — Music volume can be adjusted at any time.
[Evaluation]:"In my BGM, no one can defeat me."
With this card, he could play background music during battles.
He'd felt it for a while now — something was missing from his fights. A certain je ne sais quoi. After thinking it over, he'd finally figured out what it was.
How could Sparx climb into a Hyperforce mech without a kickass launch theme blaring in the background?
When Agumon digivolves, how could the evolution sequence not have the classic theme playing?
And because his mental strength was absurdly high after transmigrating, he'd managed to imprint every memorable soundtrack from his previous life directly into the card. Every anime opening, every boss-fight theme, every evolution jingle — all stored and ready to deploy.
On paper, it was just a Blue item card. To Ethan, it was worth more than a Purple.
He spread out every card he'd made so far and looked at the collection.
This deck didn't belong to any single system. It was a chaotic, beautiful mess of cartoon characters, digital monsters, robot monkeys, and a genius wolf inventor. He genuinely had no idea what kind of spectacle it would be when he finally deployed all of them in a real competition.
Also — he'd almost completely taken over the Tier 1 and Tier 2 Monthly Card Creation Rankings. He wondered what the rewards would be when the month ended in a couple of days.
After making two cards back to back, his lower back was starting to ache. He stood up to stretch and grabbed his phone, only to notice Nathan had texted him a while ago.
Nathan: My daughter loves it.
Nathan:(Photo: Evie sitting cross-legged on a bedroom floor, giggling, with Eevee curled in her lap. Both of them had identical wide-eyed expressions.)
Nathan:300 Spirit Crystal transfer complete.
"The man doesn't mess around." Ethan hadn't expected Nathan to send the final payment this fast.
He'd half-wondered if the generous offer was just polite talk. After all, even if Nathan had claimed Evie didn't like it, Ethan wouldn't have been able to contest it. And 200 Spirit Crystals was already a massive profit — enough to fund Tier 3 card production for a while.
Ethan: Appreciate it, Nathan. Hit me up anytime you need something else made.
After texting back, Ethan tossed his phone aside and flopped onto the bed.
Over the past two days, he'd started to find the rhythms of college life in this world. It was different from his previous life — back then, the moment class ended, he'd drag his roommates back to the dorm to game until 3 AM. Anime marathons. Forum debates about power scaling. The works.
Now? When he had nothing to do, he'd take a walk around campus, sit on a bench, and watch other people's relationships unfold like live-action rom-coms.
Speaking of which... could I make a few waifus to keep me company?
Watching couples everywhere was giving him a dangerous sugar overdose.
While Ethan's brain spiraled through thoughts of anime girls and whether summoning one would count as a relationship, the dorm room door banged open.
Jake was back.
Ethan hadn't trained with the team today. After the Nathan deal, he'd come back to campus alone and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the college experience.
He hadn't expected Jake to be this late. It was already 9:30.
"Ethan. You've been targeted."
Great. Leading with bad news. Classic Jake.
Ethan put his phone down, sat up, and looked at Jake's indignant face with mild confusion. "What's going on?"
Jake stood by the bed, arms crossed. "Do you know Ryan Castillo?"
Ethan thought for a moment, then shook his head. "Nope."
"You don't?" Jake blinked. "That guy's been showing up at our classroom door practically every other day trying to talk to Lily, and you don't know who he is?"
That rang a faint bell. There was someone who kept coming around. But Ethan had never learned the name.
In class, the only person he'd really clicked with was Jake — and even then, they weren't together every single day. The original owner of this body had been consumed by grief after his parents' death. All he did was study. Never socialized. Never looked up.
Unfortunately, studying harder hadn't translated to better grades.
"What about him?"
"He'd been pushing for Lily to join his team for the tournament. She kept turning him down. Well — today we went to register for the team comp, and when he found out, he came over to chat."
Jake paused.
"The three of us get along pretty well, so he didn't have much to say about that. But he figured if Sophie, Lily, and I were competing together, then he should obviously be the fourth member."
"When he heard the fourth person was you? Dude went nuclear."
"Hold on." Ethan stopped him. "Since when do the three of you get along so well? I thought it was always just you and me."
"Ugh." Jake's face twisted with visible guilt. "There's, uh... something I never told you."
"...Go on."
"Sophie and I are siblings."
Ethan stared at him.
"When I'm not hanging out with you, I'm usually with her."
Jake looked genuinely ashamed — like he'd been holding this in for years and the confession was physically painful.
"What?" Ethan hadn't cared much about the Ryan stuff. But this blindsided him. "Since when is Sophie your sister? I've been to your house! I never saw her!"
"In high school, we didn't really get along," Jake explained. "So every time you came over, she'd make herself scarce on purpose."
He added: "That's why nobody knew. Not for three whole years."
Ethan's brain recalculated every interaction he'd ever witnessed between Jake and Sophie.
No wonder it always felt weird between those two.
They'd barely talked in high school.
Then suddenly they're at the same college, same major, spending more and more time together?
I thought he had a crush on her.
They're SIBLINGS.
Man... you hid this way too well.
Something else clicked. "Do Lily and this Ryan guy both know you two are siblings?"
Jake looked at Ethan's face. Two seconds of silence.
"...Yeah."
Ethan grabbed the nearest pillow and launched it at Jake's head. "Get the hell away from me. So after all these years, I'm the outsider? Everyone knew except me?"
Jake caught the pillow and held it defensively as he edged closer. "Look — I wanted to tell you! I just never found the right time!"
After placing the pillow back on the bed, he tried again: "I was gonna tell you once we started college, but you were buried in your textbooks every day. I couldn't even get you to come grab dinner, let alone sit down for a 'hey, Sophie's actually my sister' conversation."
That part... Ethan couldn't entirely blame him for. The original body's parents had died the summer after senior year. The grief had changed him overnight. The once-sociable kid retreated into himself completely, pouring everything into academics.
The result? His grades were worse than when he'd been balancing school with an actual social life.
After starting college, Jake had invited him out dozens of times. Every single time, he'd been turned down.
Ethan's personality was different from the original owner's — he'd spent over a decade in the workforce and had long since learned to roll with punches. After chewing Jake out for a minute, he let it go.
"Fine. Now tell me what's going on with this Ryan Castillo."
PLZ Throw Powerstones.