Let’s Start a Business!
As the police dragged the main character's body away, I looked through the two new apps on my phone. This phone suddenly became magical and managed to kill off the main character! What else can it do?
The Inventory app is a storage space that contains all my personal items. Most people have this except for those who are extremely poor, so that's not too new. All of "my" items are in there. I didn't find any personal items. I'm pretty sure I isekaied into the game.
The MC Shop app is a shop containing what you could call skills. Only, the skills are what MCs usually have. Like "plot armor." There's a skill called plot armor and there's actual armor! I can also buy weapons and armor in this app!
I don't I will ever be able to buy the actual armor version of plot armor. The amount of zeros is to make my head spin. Apparently, if I wear the armor, I will become invulnerable.
To buy the items in the shop, I need "infamy points." I could also convert kills into a certain amount of infamy points depending on the power of the one killed.
If I was an anime character, I would have black lines on my face. Instead, I look constipated. This phone wants me to play this d*mn game! I don't want to be a villain!
Infamy points could be earned by having a notorious reputation. If I do something that incites fear, awe, admiration or some other emotion from others by doing something "villainous," then I get an amount of infamy points. Fear gives me the most amount of points. You know what, I'll just delete this app...
Oh I can't? Then I'll just put it in a folder that says, "Crazy App."
Now that's over. Time to watch some anime while waiting for the starship to be ready!
I pull out a pair of futuristic headphones that somehow still work with my iPhone and plug them in. I open an anime app and watch an anime about the main character reincarnating as the villainess and trying to stop her doom.
'Oh right, what happened on the ship?'
After the main character got on the ship, she immediately meets all of the love interests in different ways. First she meets Grath, a tall golden haired boy with light blue eyes. He helps the main character when she drops her bag. He doesn't ridicule her for being one of the poor peasants who can't even afford a storage device. After that brief encounter, he leaves to find his own seat.
He is one of the love interests that isn't a villain at the start. All the girls love him because of his looks, which could kick the most popular idol from my world's ass. He doesn't want to conform to society because of his parents, who were peace lovers that died in a terrorist attack. However, he is bullied verbally (but not physically because he's too strong) since he is a pacifist.
That all changes during his time at school. He finds out that the terrorist attack was actually an attack by the local government. They made a public announcement saying there were dangerous "heroes" on the planet. Grath then vows to take revenge and becomes an underworld villain with hundreds of millions under him. His underworld takes down organizations they don't like, not caring about who they hurt.
Of course, there were other factors such as a major bullying attack, but listing them all would take too long.
Next the main character meets Shiya, an extreme klutz. He lived in the woods and didn't go out much, so he's very innocent and ignorant of the world around him. He's a cute shota type that gets easily influenced by the world.
He's short, around 140 cm. He has chestnut brown hair and dark hazel eyes.
Shiya doesn't understand how society works. All he knows is that some things are edible and others are not. His parents are absolute sh*t when it comes to education.
He got lost on the way to his seat. He is smart enough to pass the exams, but lacks common sense. He was reading the map wrong. When he trips, the main character saves him and helps him find his seat.
He easily goes from an innocent boy to a perverted government official. He has a high position and tried for the throne several times. He failed, but managed to keep his position.
As the starship takes off, the main character gets water spilled all over her. The guy in the aisle next to her takes a handkerchief like a fairytale prince and wipes the water off. He then proceeds to attempt to pick her up. He fails and is gently rejected.
His name is Tractos. His hair is red and styled like royalty. He has green eyes and strangely the permission to wear whatever he wants. He always looks like he's cosplaying as a prince to me.
It turns out that he's a yandere. He looks like a kind person, but actually he's a sadistic villain. He gets angry over small things and brawls a lot. He likes cutting people up and experimenting on them. Sometimes he eats them...
I'll stay away from him. Maybe I'll help Grath and Shiya as they are genuinely good people, but definitely not Tractos.
As Tractos returns to his seat, someone says he's lame for failing to pick up a poor peon. Tractos then turns in that direction, flashes the main character a smile, then disappears from view. It's later revealed that he got into a fight with the person who insulted him.
The next love interest gets up from his seat to avoid being in the crossfire of the fight. He has jet black hair hair and blue eyes. This is the character I failed to clear. Wait a minute, I can still play in this world!
Don't mind me, I'll just play the game while I'm explaining. I can also refresh my memories...
He has a sturdy build and medium height. His name is Inuod. Most people think he's a cold, mysterious person.
That's right on the mark. You can't "unravel his mysteries" or "pry him open" because that's how he is. I had to stay with him all the time and literally barge into his room in order for him to be an option. Whenever he finally trusts me, that trust is immediately shattered. He's incredibly paranoid, so if something seems suspicious, he will immediately kill me. He's a ruthless person as well as a businessman. That rival that he was talking about in my last round was actually Tractos.
Tractos opened a medical company, same as Inoud. Inoud opened the company to earn money, while Tractos opened the company to lure people in. He wanted people experiment on, torture or eat.
The final love interest's name is Keotex. He has violet hair and violet eyes.
The main character meets him when Keotex kills everyone in his aisle. Keotex is a crazy psychopath who likes killing people randomly. He likes killing just for the fun of it. He doesn't like hearing his victims scream all the time, so he wears headphones. I tried to see if he actually had a conscience but was killed.
He doesn't have a conscience. It has been confirmed in the forums.
How did I conquer him then? Simple, I didn't. He is an impossible character to conquer. The game considers him conquered when the main character survives his route.
After graduating, he goes on to form his own nation. Yup, he's overpowered. I will have to avoid him.
Now that's done, it's time to think about the future. I am dirt poor as an isekaier. I only have the nessesary materials for school, headphones, a standard device like an iPhone for this futuristic world, and my iPhone. I need to make money. The school provides you with nothing. You even have to rent your dorm.
This should be easy. I know the future after all. I already created a plan.
Step one. Sell my headphones. I can buy a new one later.
I find a pawnshop and do that. I don't need that much money, so the transaction quickly comes to completion.
Step two, bet on fighting games or the lottery.
I buy a lotto ticket and pour all my money into betting for a disadvantaged game. The more disadvantaged, the better the rewards.
As a villain oriented society, betting and other underground activities are legal. There's even public duels where hundreds of people die every day. I'm thinking of somehow buying the "Gore Filter" option in the MC Shop. It makes blood and other gore look pixelated.
I'm not going to watch the battle anyway. The lottery will take a while, but the fight will end in a couple of minutes.
The line at the check-in center is still long. The sun has barely risen. I have time.
Step three, invest in stocks. After I collect my money, I open the stock market on my device, or holophone, hPhone for short, and open the forum on my iPhone. There are security cameras everywhere, but I have the standard black market hPhone that shields me. It's not like the government directly monitors this spaceport. I would know.
I correctly invest in multiple stocks. I now have 100,000 stellar coins, or $1,000,000. The exchange rate is 1 stellar coin for $10.
Step four, open a company. I can hide everything and be as shady as possible without being conspicuous. In fact, if I revealed anything, it would draw more attention.
I set the account to auto trade. I then open a multi-company called Earth Kaleidoscope. Earth doesn't exist here anyway.
A multi-company is a company that covers all areas. Food, technology, transportation, you name it. It's super hard to maintain one, but it's the most profitable type of company if you play your cards right. One of the richest people in the universe became one of the richest using a multi-company. However, due to the risks involved with maintaining this type of company, he soon fell. He made one mistake. But as a person from another world who also knows the future, I won't make a mistake like that.
I'm still worried about that, but it's not like I'm aiming to be the richest person in the universe. If I happen to become a rich tycoon, that's okay. I'll just buy some trustworthy bodyguards.
After I open the company—no papers or checks required—I promptly open an entertainment subsidiary. I will hire all the future hit singers, popular writers, and top actors all in one fell swoop! I can even pick and choose! I won't choose the problematic ones though.
I also decide to open a gaming subsidiary, a dueling team, and a security firm under my parent company. Gaming is much more popular here than in my world, so it's quite profitable. Fighting, as you saw before nets me tons of money. Security is mainly for myself, as I need to hire some trustworthy bodyguards. It also will help me make money.
The subsidiaries are named Uno Entertainment, Overpowered, Subzero, and State of Security respectively. Subzero is the name of the future number one fighting team. Since none of the members have been recruited yet, I'll just recreate the team early.
As this is a game that I know or have all the information for, it doesn't matter how much I change things. People and events will stay the same no matter what.
Step four and a half, buy new headphones. I buy black headphones with a purple lightning bolt going from on side to the other. It's not cute like my old magenta one, but it's better than the headphones with skulls or blood spatters on them.
I put the new headphones on and continue stock trading.
Step five, buy a starship. No one buys office buildings when planets can be easily destroyed. For those that are protected, there's no point in buying land as countries tend to span over several galaxies. This country is the largest, spanning a little less than half of the known universe.
A starship may sound expensive, but this is the age where common people travel to other planets to visit relatives. Starships are treated like cars in my world.
The average starship costs 60 star coins. That would be $600. That's only for what the middle class generally buys though. For a business class starship, you would have to pay 10,000 star coins. I want to buy a large, luxury warship. Yes, a warship. With top-of-the-line shields and engines. That includes FTL engines. The reason being that if I buy a purely business ship, it would get destroyed in the upcoming war.
The benefits of knowing the future is knowing all the bad things that will happen. For example, in six months, a war will break out. Only half a year. If I buy a normal business ship, I would end up like most of the other business owners.
Most others had their flagship destroyed. They could not gather enough funds to get a new ship with the war going on and fell to poverty.
I can't help them. I only have six months to prepare. How am I going to get enough power to help them? Besides, they would reject my help.
Eventually, I'll start making and selling weapons, starships and war materials. I need to gather the machines first though.
Some can't be obtained with money. I need a chance encounter to get them. I know when and where to get them, so it's not hard at all.
For the actual weapons, I have detailed blueprints on the forum, made by the producers. They looked so realistic that some weapon experts though they could work. I looked up blueprints on my hPhone and realized that the schematics will work here. They didn't work on Earth due to the lack of magic.
In this world, every single person has magic. That's because magic is everywhere. The magical energy is called Aether and is what gives people powers. It also subtly changes certain elements.
The changes were so subtle that no one realized how to incorporate Aether in technology. In the future, someone will realize this and create the blueprints I have.
That's why although this world has magic, it still leans towards the sci-fi route. Magic is mainly used for daily lives or fighting as it only exists prominently in humans and animals.
Anyway, back to my starship. The starship I'm eyeing costs 500,000 star coins. I now have 7,000,000 star coins. It's already past noon. Plus I'm making the outrageous bet here and there. Bets are much bigger in this world.
I don't need the best starship as I'll upgrade it once I get my hands on the machines. It still needs to have top-of-the line engines and weapons though. I can't make the super futuristic weapons right away. I also need a starship with interchangeable parts that can be swapped out easily. It needs to have tons of rooms and luxury furniture. I can't use blueprints to create comfy furniture after all.
I also need a ship with a high tech stealth drive. I don't want people trying to steal my ship or assassinating me. Plus, I'm going to drive it to certain "chance encounters."
I find one that fits my requirements. It's new and doesn't have a name yet.
I buy it. The ship gets sent to my hPhone. The phone can actually store spaceships. It does cost a little to buy this function, but I'm rich now. I can't compare to those tycoons with trillions in their accounts though. The tycoons seem to be richer here.
I also buy a firewall for my hPhone. I don't have to worry about my iPhone because it's not connected to anything in this world. What can anyone use to hack my phone?
Step six, hire people. The shadier and scarier the company looks, the more inclined people are to join. The people in this world are insane.
Anyway, I send a couple of people a set of coordinates, a picture of my starship, and a contract. My starship is sleek, with an triangular main body and slimmer triangles attached to its sides. The whole thing is black with silver lines running all over it. Aqua blue lights shine from the engine. The whole thing gives off a cool, sci-fi look to me. This world is based off a game after all. The aesthetics here are stunning.
To others, this ship is the embodiment of a rich villain. To them, "cool" translates to "evil" and a "sci-fi look" is scary.
As for the starship's name, I'll call it Nexus. It's the future core of my business after all.
Step seven, park the starship in the perfect area. I choose an area that will be perfect to defend when the war comes. Plus, I can easily access the areas containing "chance encounters." I should also buy some fighters and shuttles.
I buy ten fighters, twenty cargo ships and five shuttles. I don't need that many as I will soon be making them. Plus, I do need to pay high salaries.
I send out my ship. I can control it remotely from my hPhone. It also notifies me if something happens to my ship.
I activate the FTL drive and warp my ship through space to the place I've marked on the navigation. Some other ships were there, but fled immediately. My ship was pretty imposing.
I bought that area of space and got the clearance to build whatever I wanted there. I'll soon build facilities to make starships, weapons of mass destruction, and war materials.
I get a reply from some of the candidates right away. They said yes and kept at the chance to get a job. I looked into their backgrounds on the forum and noticed that all of the illustrious figures were going through hard times at this point. I guess the producers just wanted their characters to do things at the same time to save code.
With my company coming along, I leave my hPhone to auto trade and watch some anime using my iPhone.
"Hey, are you the CEO of a company?"
'Did someone see me?'
Well, it's not like I'm doing anything unusual. A lot of teens start up their own business during school to try to earn money. Most of them fail.
"Yes." I reply. "But it's not like I'll succeed or anything."
"You're being modest. I saw you making bets on these outrageous odds and you got every single one of them correct. I couldn't see your bank account, but I'm sure it's loaded."
He saw all that? But wait, I haven't seen him. Unless he used magic. Then I wouldn't see him even if he stood right next to me.
"Where are you anyway?" I don't see him even though he sounds close.
"Oh, right, I'm in stealth mode."
A teen with violet hair suddenly appears in front of me. Yup, magic. Wait, violet hair? Don't tell me?!
"Hello, I'm Keotex. Please hire me."
No, it's the psychopath-
Wait what?
Please hire me?
"You want to join my company?"
"Yes!" He nods. "Please hire me!"
He stares at me intently. What do I do...
Wait, if I say no, will he kill me?
...
And that's how the unconquerable character became my first official employee.