As Long as You Have the [Shop] Skill, the Dungeonized World Is a Breeze ~The Bullied Youth’s Payback

Chapter 33 – That Is My Path

“Welcome back, Torimoto-san~!”
When I returned to the Fukuzawa residence, Kanna greeted me with a smile.

“Huh? You seem to be a bit tired?” (Kanna)
“Ahaha, I walked a bit too much. It really is a pain when the means of transportation are limited nowadays.” (Torimoto)
“Yeah, it really is. The phones also aren’t working, and the bus system is pretty much suspended now, right?” (Kanna)
Well, that wasn’t the real reason that I was tired. However, it would become a pain not being able to use the train if I wanted to go to the countryside in the future.

In the end, I needed to buy a means of transportation through the <Shop>.

When Kanna asked me about dinner, I told her that I had already eaten. Then, I went back to my room and flopped on my bed.

“….Pheeeew~”

I stared up at the ceiling in a daze, letting out a sigh as I thought to myself that I had done something completely out of character.

“Why did I go save her…?”

To be honest, I didn’t even know why myself. In the first place, going to the hospital to see Totoki was strange in itself. We had already gone our separate ways. She should have just been a classmate whom I didn’t really care about.

“Tch, back then, I should have just left the community center right away.”
Her parents weren’t here anymore. Her father had already passed away, and their mother was overseas. The two sisters had been forced to live on their own. Maybe I felt a bit of sympathy for her because of this.

Those sisters’ circumstances were just like mine.

“….Hah. Well… It’s good that it ended uneventfully at least.”
It wasn’t like it hadn’t yielded any benefits for me. The Red Armor, which I had to defeat in the process, dropped materials that could sell for a lot, and I got a [Core Fragment] from it.

Also… well, I wasn’t sure if this one could even be called a benefit or not, but… The expression on Ohsaka’s face in his final moments resurfaced in my mind.

“Haha… You got what you deserved, Ohsaka.”
Even though I had decided that I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore, I guess I still had some anger and hatred inside of me. After finishing him off with my own hands, I felt somewhat refreshed at heart.

“But… this is how it feels to kill someone, huh?”
A scoundrel was a scoundrel, and even though he was someone I could kill and not have a guilty conscience for doing so, I was still shocked by the fact that I had taken someone’s life.

It was natural. It wasn’t the life of an animal or an insect… It was the life of a human being, just like me.

It was only natural that I felt a certain weight for taking someone’s life. But I had no regrets. It was the right thing to do at that moment. If I had left him there, he would have become an obstacle in my life after that without a doubt.

“….Master?” (Sol)
“Sol… Nevermind.” (Torimoto)
Next to my face, Sol gave a concerned ‘puuu~’, and I gently stroked her head plumage.

“You really did a great job today. Tomorrow, I’ll make an extra large serving of mashed potatoes just for you.” (Torimoto)
“Wooow, really!?” (Sol)
“Yeah, forreal forreal.” (Torimoto)
“Yaaay!” (Sol)
I got up out of the bed with a ‘hupp’ and went to the window. It was a full moon tonight, basking the ground with a loathsomely beautiful silver glow.

This time, I had gained some new information about the dungeons. As it turned out, monsters could possess Dungeon Cores. This would only make it more difficult for humans to conquer dungeons.

If you could find the Core, you wouldn’t necessarily have to deal with the monsters. But with this new information, if you couldn’t defeat the brutally vicious monsters, it meant that you wouldn’t be able to clear the dungeon…

Then what if those monsters were so overwhelmingly powerful that humans couldn’t possibly deal with them?

I had only gotten this far because of the <Shop> skill.

Could a person with no skills defeat an A-Rank or S-Rank monster with current weaponry? Even C-Rank monsters were strong enough as it was.

“So the end of the human world is gradually approaching…”
However… Even if the entire world was dungeonized, I had confidence that I alone would be able to survive.

In the end, I…

“…Have this <Shop> skill, after all.”

As long as I had this <Shop> skill, the dungeonized world would be a breeze. No matter the obstacle, I could overcome it. And if anyone looked down on me and made fun of me, I would be the one to get the last laugh.

As someone who had been oppressed and bullied, living this payback lifestyle was the path for me.