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

Chapter 8 – Purchasing a Familiar

I guess this is what they call the extra newspaper scoop.

Five days had passed since the monsters appeared at school. After looking at the newspaper in the mailbox, I learned about the current situation in the world.

The newspaper reported that there were strange things happening, and monsters were appearing not only in Japan, but throughout the entire world as well.

Buildings were suddenly being transformed into dungeons, and although some civilians seemed to be fighting against the monsters, many of them were being wiped out. Those who were forced to leave their homes either moved in with relatives or moved into temporary housing established by the cities. There were even pictures of people gathering in gyms and other places designated as disaster evacuation centers.

Apparently, the JSDF and other similar national forces were being deployed all around the world to subdue monsters, but there were some dungeons that were posing a considerable level of difficulty.

They seemed to be able to quickly regain control of smaller dungeons like the one that I visited, but large-scale dungeons such as those in schools and large department stores, were rather difficult to recover.

They were also troubled by monsters that had suddenly appeared in the sea and on uninhabited islands.

There were detailed articles written about ships that had been attacked and capsized as well as about people who had fled for their lives and were living it up in survival scenarios on deserted islands.

In any case, the world had changed drastically as compared to five days ago. The articles estimated that approximately 300,000 people were killed or injured within the past five days. It also expressed despair that the number of casualties would continue to rise.

“The world sure is a mess.”

It was 8 AM, and I was sitting in my living room eating a cup of yakisoba noodles while reading the newspaper. Nothing unusual had happened in the past five days, but it seemed that all of my neighbors had evacuated and that various situations were taking place everywhere around me.

Many civilians who heard the news that houses were suddenly turning into dungeons couldn’t trust their own homes and sought shelter in places where there were more people gathered. They might have thought that they would be fine as long as there was enough manpower.

Since there were a lot of people who gathered with this belief in mind, in the end there were bound to be random casualties in the event of a disaster. Even still, I did think that there were a lot of things that could be done with enough manpower, which could help the survival rate to increase.

At this point, I didn’t know if there were any safe zones in this world. After all, even forests, fields, and deserts were getting turned into dungeons. It was even conceivable that the Earth itself would soon become a dungeon and that monsters would begin to appear even on the roads. If that happened, humans would be forced out of their everyday lives, and their numbers would begin to reduce rapidly.

The number of weapons that humans had were limited, and some of those weapons might not even work on the monsters. If dragons and demon kings like those in mangas were to appear, it would probably be the end of human supremacy over this world.

No, this world was already coming to an end. Perhaps a new era would emerge―a world marked by the widespread domination of monsters.

“To survive in such a world, I have no choice but to train my own ability to survive.”

As expected, it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to defeat a dragon on my own, but…

“…No, there is something.”
I opened the <Shop> and entered the words ‘dragon slay’ into the search bar. Upon doing so, I found a hit.

“A sword called [Dragon Slayer], huh? There are also poisons being sold that only work on dragon species. As long as you look for them, there are a variety of options.”

Does this mean that there is no being in this world that can’t be killed? I mean, if things like this exist, then that means there really are dragons out there… Seriously?

Every monster had a weakness, and there were specific weapons and items that were highly effective against them. In other words, if I ran into such an existence, there was no reason to give up straight away.

“But that’s probably only true for me.”

At least in the newspapers, there were no reports of any people appearing who had special powers like mine. If none had been found in the last five days, it is likely that they were ultimately few in number or didn’t exist at all.

In that case, I absolutely couldn’t let other people find out about my ability. If that happened, it was pretty obvious what action people would take.

Take advantage of me, or get rid of me.

Well, that made sense. Even if they were to get rid of me, it would only be after extensive human experimentation to see if they could squeeze the ability out of me.

Thus, in most cases, they would try to take advantage of me. After all, they could buy their safety by being by my side. On the contrary, if there were someone like that, even I might want to cling to them. If I didn’t want to die, that is.

Even if I wasn’t necessarily self-sufficient, as long as I had money, I could freely obtain food, clothing, and shelter, so other people would probably see me as the embodiment of salvation. But unfortunately, I didn’t think I could trust anyone else.

Using others to my own benefit was one thing, but I couldn’t trust people anymore. At the end of the day, people only considered themselves precious, and they could betray you whenever it became convenient for them. Even if they were friends, lovers, or relatives.

If there was such a thing as unconditional love in this world, I think it would only be between parents and their children. Unfortunately, I no longer had such relationships.

Therefore… I didn’t think that there would ever be someone that I could truly trust with my whole heart.

“Hah… not that it matters. I can live by myself thanks to my skill.”

Sometimes, I would experience intense feelings of loneliness. In those moments, I used to distract myself by watching TV or surfing the internet, but in today’s world, that was no longer possible.

I couldn’t bring myself to interact with other people. At times like these, a pet might be able to distract me from those feelings a little.

“….! Let’s check it out.”

I entered some search terms to see if I could buy a pet. Interestingly enough, I found that it was possible to purchase monsters that served as Familiars.

“Oooh, sounds interesting.”

Since Familiars had an oath of absolute obedience to their masters, they would never be able to betray them, which made it an even more attractive option for me. I didn’t need friends, but it might be nice to have such an existence by my side. I decided to search for a monster that was affordable and could provide me with healing.

“In stories, there are a lot of slimes and stuff when it comes to this kind of situation. They’re versatile and make great sidekicks, and they’re cute, too.”

But it didn’t really sound that interesting to me.

“Ah, aren’t there also monsters that can talk?”

In that case, it would be easy to communicate with them as well.

“…..Ooh, these look nice.”

The category that caught my eye was the owl section. I was actually somewhat of an animal lover myself, and I always wanted to have a pet owl one day.

They were smart, had a cool and attractive appearance, and they were well-behaved little guys who were usually quiet, so they were a really popular pet choice. But these were still monsters, as all of them were types of owls that I had never seen before.

It was pretty nice that the description included personal characteristics about each individual pet, like their personality, gender, and so on.

“Hmm, what to do…? To start with, either a small or medium-sized one, but…”

The large ones were really too big, so I decided to put those aside for now.

“Ooh, this one. It resembles my favorite owl, the African scops owl.”

(TL: If you’re interested in what that looks like: African scops owl)

It was a small owl with a white face and a thick black-green feather pattern. To be more precise, there were two different species of African scops owl: one that lived in the northern part of Africa, and one that lived in the Southern part of Africa.

The normal price of one was about ¥400,000. They were among the most popular species of owls.

But of course, this was only when it came to the ordinary African scops owl. The actual ones in question were monsters, so they had different characteristics.

The most surprising thing was that it could breathe fire from its mouth. Exactly what kind of biological structure it needed to have in order to be able to do that was a complete mystery to me, but since there was no point in delving deeper into such details about the monster, I decided to just accept it.

“Alright, I’ll take this one.”

I went through with the checkout procedure, instantly splurging ¥700,000 without hesitation.

“Come on out!”
I took out the Familiar from the <Box>, where it had been sent to as usual. And then, it appeared in front of my eyes in a puff of smoke, just like a ninja. Our eyes met, and for a while, we just stared at each other…

“…! Master~!”

“Fwwahh?!”
It suddenly jumped on my face and clung to me. While talking, too. I couldn’t help grinning, not only at the fact that an owl was really talking, but also from the warm fluffiness I felt on my face.