Grinding for cash in the Palace was way more boring than Sakiko had imagined.
The scenery around her never changed—endless dim tones, endless twisted Shadows.
She had zero interest in why this hellhole existed, and even less interest in whatever earth-shattering secret might be buried in the deepest part of the Palace.
She had only one thought:
Make money.
"Fourth-Stage Blood Rage—ON!"
Then she simply carpet-bombed the floor with wind blades.
Invisible wind slashes screamed across the battlefield. The Palace walls didn't even show a scratch, but entire patches of Shadows toppled like wheat being harvested.
If she ran into a couple of stubborn ones that were immune to wind damage?
"Annoying."
Sakiko clicked her tongue. The next second, her exoskeleton-wrapped fist crashed into the target and blew it apart.
And if her luck was even worse—if she ran into a whole pack that were all immune to wind?
Then she just carpet-bombed with Monarch's Blaze.
After clearing a floor, Sakiko didn't even need to catch her breath.
A gentle breeze swept over the battlefield, obediently gathering the scattered yen bills that had dropped, dusting them off, and stacking them neatly at her feet.
Wouldn't the wind blades slice the bills to pieces? Wouldn't Monarch's Blaze burn them to ash?
In Toyokawa Sakiko's understanding of reality, those terrifying questions simply did not exist.
And under the influence of that understanding, the cash remained perfectly intact.
But when she reached the tenth floor, a problem appeared.
Sakiko very badly wanted to ask:
Wind immunity, fine—but wind damage reflection?! What kind of nonsense was that?!
Why would anyone's cognition even produce a trait like that?!
And worse, the reflected damage was applied directly onto her—it wasn't like it bounced a wind blade back that she could manipulate. Even her passive "wind control" couldn't do anything about it.
With her blue exoskeletal armor completely shattered, Sakiko punched one of those weird spherical Shadows into pieces, so furious she was practically shaking.
She spent a second healing, then decided she wasn't going any deeper.
She didn't have the time to test every Shadow's exact resistances. She'd rather run the eighth and ninth floors a few more times.
These Shadows didn't just drop money—they occasionally dropped all sorts of bizarre items too.
Most of them she couldn't be bothered to even look at.
Because for Toyokawa Sakiko, the foundational logic of the world was:
Form a band. Hold concerts.
Running dungeons and killing monsters was just how she paid her bills.
No different from picking up a few part-time jobs to cover living expenses.
Of course, items weren't completely useless.
Canned black coffee, mint gum, energy drinks—stuff like that helped restore her mental stamina after hours of repetitive farming.
Time flew by in the grind.
Sakiko kept going until 6:00 a.m.
And beside her, the cash had piled into a literal small mountain.
She walked up and casually flipped through it. Apart from the very top layer—small bills adding up to less than ten thousand yen—everything underneath was 10,000-yen notes.
Seems like when enough small bills piled together, they automatically merged into larger denominations. Otherwise, the volume of this pile would've been dozens of times bigger.
With a quick calculation using her Fourth-Stage Blood Rage–enhanced dragon brain, she estimated the total at roughly 131.6 billion yen.
"Yeah. That's about enough startup capital."
In fact, tonight's haul wasn't limited to money.
This "possibility doppelganger" was a talent extremely compatible with Toyokawa Sakiko.
Because in the cognitive world, as long as your enemies believe you have an ability, you can use it.
And through possession, Sakiko could use her doppelganger's powers without drastically changing her appearance.
The Shadows she killed returned to the collective unconscious—meaning, in the public cognition, Toyokawa Sakiko could use the abilities she displayed while defeating Shadows.
Like right now:
Even in her normal body—without having the hybrid doppelganger possess her—she could still use Monarch's Blaze, and it was the enhanced version.
The original Monarch's Blaze had a fatal flaw: use it in a cramped space, and the shockwave from the explosion would rebound off the walls and injure the user.
But those Shadow monsters didn't know that.
They saw the first explosion not harming her—how could they possibly guess the rebound would hurt her later?
So that flaw simply… disappeared.
That said, she still couldn't trigger Blood Rage transformation directly with her normal body. If she wanted the power and special abilities granted by Blood Rage, she'd have to cosplay the post-transformation form first.
Which meant only one problem remained.
Sakiko stared at the cash mountain beside her, hands on hips, troubled.
"Where am I supposed to put this much money?"
"Sakiko, you again? I told you, you only—"
Toyokawa Kiyotsugu's Shadow had just turned around when the rest of his sentence jammed in his throat—hard-stopped by the mountain of banknotes in front of him.
Sakiko patted the pile beside her casually, voice flat.
"Father. I'll leave this money here for now. Keep it for me."
Toyokawa Kiyotsugu's Shadow wore an expression that clearly said, Are you messing with me?
His mouth opened, then closed.
In the end, he didn't say anything.
She was his daughter. What was he supposed to do?
With the money problem temporarily solved, the casualness drained from Sakiko's face, replaced by a creeping seriousness.
"Also… I'm here to challenge you again, Father."
As she spoke, her tone grew lower—deeper, heavier.
By the time she finished the sentence, she'd already completed Fourth-Stage Blood Rage.
"Heh."
Facing his daughter's terrifying aura, Toyokawa Kiyotsugu laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because he was so mad he had to laugh.
One minute later, Sakiko was back in her run-down apartment in the real world, cursing nonstop.
Four layers of suppression—forcing her power down from Fourth-Stage Blood Rage to Third-Stage Blood Rage.
And her strongest trump card—the wind authority—only passively manifested in Fourth Stage.
Third Stage didn't just drastically weaken her physical durability, reaction speed, and regeneration.
She even lost the ability to fly.
Result?
She got absolutely beat down by a middle-aged man.
After confirming that even her hybrid doppelganger still couldn't elbow that middle-aged bastard into submission, Sakiko began thinking about the "Hierarchy" shackle.
How does a high school girl fight a conglomerate?
Especially when she was the conglomerate's nominal head, on paper.
By Toyokawa Kiyotsugu's definition, even if she someday toppled the Toyokawa branch family, fully seized control of the Toyokawa zaibatsu, and became the true helmsman…
it still might not count as truly breaking the shackle.
Like a certain Emperor—he sealed off that warp-space cesspit, but he was forced to sit on a golden toilet forever after.
Is that freedom?
The Toyokawa family had to be destroyed—otherwise she could never break the hierarchy shackle and defeat her father's Shadow.
And there had to be a replacement for the Toyokawa family, too—partly as the tool used to destroy it, and partly because her band needed resources.
But the executor in the public eye could not be Toyokawa Sakiko herself.
Otherwise she'd just be switching from a golden toilet to a platinum one.
She needed an agent.
A white glove.
Someone who could stand in the spotlight, raise the banner of war against the Toyokawa zaibatsu, and in the end deliver the fatal blow.
"…But who?"
Toyokawa Sakiko unlocked her phone and started searching.
First: this person needed a strong enough reason to be the enemy of a conglomerate.
Second: motive alone wasn't enough—they needed the ability to match that ambition.
Best of all, they should come from the conglomerate class themselves, someone who truly understood how a zaibatsu worked.
Sakiko's finger suddenly stopped.
On the screen was the eldest daughter of the Shinomiya Group, the fourth child of the Shinomiya family head—
Kaguya Shinomiya.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 90)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 95)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 80)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter70)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter70)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter50)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter60)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 30
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 30
My patreon : patreon.com/queen_sin