Here is part four to chapter 7.
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"Ask Help."
"Huh? I've been asking you for help."
"Not me. You have a mode for assistance. Wouldn't now be a perfect time to try using it?"
"R-right. Good idea." He had only ever used it a couple times, and was such an obscure ability that could sometimes trigger randomly that he just thought it would appear when necessary. A smart person would have already tapped into the power and figured the ins and outs by now. Chalk it up to his naivety for not being proactive enough.
Unsure where to begin, Issei cleared his throat and looked off to the sky like he were addressing some metaphysical entity - which he might've been after thinking about it. That idea made this seem even stranger.
"Okay Help, err... do multiple universes exist?"
...
...
...
"Hello? Help system thing? You there?"
...
"Fucking answer me, damn it!"
"That's not going to work. Obviously."
"But it's answered my questions before, so why not now?"
"There must be a clause or condition for it to activate." It had to be more complex than that. After all, Issei had asked loads of questions, and the ability hadn't activated. It must be a specific sort of question. "Ask it something else."
"Like what?"
"Anything."
"'Kay... Tits or ass?"
"Not this shit again..."
"Hey, you said anything!"
"Be serious. Try asking it for help. Be genuine. Be... stupid."
"Did you just tell me to be stupid?!" Issei looked appalled. "I resent that!"
"I don't care."
Disrespected yet again, Issei begrudgingly obeyed his bossy partner. Obeying, which sadly meant acting like his ordinary self.
"How can I get stronger?"
Help: Complete Quests.
"It worked!" Issei perked up, before deflating as he reread the message box in front of his eyes. "But it told me something I already know. The hell?"
"I see. I think I understand."
"Understand what? That it's being a bitch?"
"No. That Help, or rather Assistance Mode, merely guides you down the 'correct' path. You're given the answer, but you still have to complete it yourself. It doesn't tell you everything you want to know."
"...I think I understand." Recalling the other times it appeared, Issei agreed with the dragon. It usually came out when he was near a crisis, or was clueless on an action he felt he must take. "When I didn't know who to turn towards for help, it told me to seek out the devils."
"And you did. Quite the safety net you have. Whenever you are in trouble or stumped, you can fall back on a hint for a chance at victory."
That's exactly what he did to those fallen angels back when he and Koneko had saved Asia. It was dangerous charging in there, and the Help option had given him direction to defeating them in a much safer way. "Hold on, but Assistance Mode also let me cheese the hell out of Sona at chess."
"Correct. The mechanic has several functions. Help appears to directly allow you to ask for a hint, while other passive effects act as a guiding hand. Recall that I said that you're given the answer?"
That was an understatement. He was practically given an entire cheat sheet to everyday life. All he had to do was follow. Every time he looked down at his homework, invisible blue markings would appear in the open spaces of the sheet ready for him to trace over them. It was so free that he never had to study again!
"I've gotten way smarter, too. Like, I know a bunch of science crap I never could've remembered before. Things like aquatic ecosystems, family-groups, and geological periods," Issei brought up another instance of a time he had benefitted, possibly due to Assistance Mode. "Think I learned all that from that one time in the library..."
"Ah, yes. You barreled into the glasses one and made a ruckus." Not having been fully awakened at the time, Ddraig relied on Issei's own account of the incident. "From knocking her down to knocking her up."
"Shut it, Ddraig! We didn't even go that far!" Issei's face lit up. Dragons weren't supposed to poke this much fun at their hosts, right?
"You mean you couldn't go that far. I was there, remember?"
"Nngh..." He couldn't argue against the beast when he was right. It would take awhile to rid that humiliating memory. He still dreaded the next encounter he would have with Sona. "A-anyway, I've gotten smarter from absorbing a bunch of books. I think I might've also leveled up doing that, though it was awhile ago..."
"Wouldn't hurt to try again."
"Right. Guess I'll hit up the library again."
"You said you were smarter, didn't you? You're thinking too narrow-minded."
"...Go ahead and tell me how," Issei said with reluctant compliance, knowing that Ddraig would cook him again if he got riled up.
"The box devices. They have access to immense data?" The dragon asked for clarification.
Issei tried not to chuckle at Ddraig's terminology. "You mean computers? Yeah, phones and some other stuff, too. They can access the internet and look up basically anything."
"If what you claim is true, than forget limiting yourself to mere books. Access this internet and use its wider bank of knowledge to learn much more."
...Why didn't he think of that?
"But wait, could I even do that? It sounds broken."
"Doesn't hurt to try. The point of experimenting is to learn what you can and cannot do."
Adding the idea to his growing to do list, Issei pulled himself to his feet and stretched his languid muscles. So little moving around and yet his body felt similar to how it was after a rough training session with Koneko. Magic casting with the Boosted Gear really was something.
Jogging in place to get the blood flowing, Issei slapped his cheeks with an eager look. "I'm good to go now, right? I can go for it?"
Able to infer what he meant, Ddraig quietly sighed to himself. "You didn't reach the goal of boosting ten times, but you did level up... I suppose I shouldn't get in the way of experimentation..."
"Yes!" Hearing the concession, Issei quickly accessed his inventory, fiddling with one of the new items he was dying to try out. "Pulling these from the gacha really pissed me off at first, but if they got great potential like you said, then I gotta see!"
"Calm down. It's new power - foreign power from a different land. You should be more cautious than anything." One of the said items appeared in the pervert's hands, causing Ddraig to do a double take. "You're starting with that one?"
"I have to! Go on, tell the truth. You're interested in seeing it too."
"...Just use it. And be ready to kill it with your sword if things go wrong." The warning sounded ominous - and a bit harsh to the boy. However, he understood the gravity of what he was doing. As cool as this was, there was still danger.
Holding the item out, Issei attempted to call on its power. "Okay then... Goooooo!"
Shouting out as if he were releasing a Dragon Shot, or an attack from his favorite anime Drag So-Ball, Issei braced himself for the magic to come to life. After several seconds of nothing happening, he knew it was a bust.
"I knew they were only stupid little kid cards!" Issei yelled, taking the object in both hands and gripping it with the intent to tear it in half. If the card held no real power and just had some drawn caricatures on it, than he might as well trash it. Matter fact, trash them all in a dumpster where no one could find 'em!
He collected porno mags, not cards!
"Stop. Can't you sense the card is magical? The feel of it alone should tell you it is no ordinary card." Intervening on the boy's temper tantrum, Ddraig was fascinated by the flat, rectangular object. It was about as large as the human's whole palm, with one side revealing an image and the other a simple back design colored brown. What made it special was the fact the magic inside felt completely different to the ancient dragon. Certainly foreign to the world and connected worlds they resided in.
Scanning the card again, Issei searched for any evidence of magic leaking out of it. "I don't sense jack."
"Too inexperienced to pick up on it. You don't possess a skill to aid you in this area."
That was something he'd overlooked. Just because he had a sensing ability in the form of Foresight, as well as Assistance Mode to warn him of enemies, didn't mean he had developed enough to sense magic and the like. Without Ddraig having his back, this could have been a vulnerability. If someone chose to spy on him using magic and not in person, he wouldn't have been able to tell. "Maybe I'll get lucky and pull another detection power. I'll be counting on you until then, Ddraig."
"Or you can develop your senses naturally. You don't need the System holding your hand through every possible means." Ddraig then made a small hum. "No, maybe you do."
"I don't!" Issei rejected quickly. "I can improve, you saw it today."
"That's just the start. I want more from you," Ddraig said, expectation and a hint of respect in his tone. "With your Mana Bank skill, it shouldn't be difficult for you to grasp traces of mana. You now have a strong affinity towards the source; the opposite to how you were beforehand. You could even make it into your specialty."
"My specialty?" Questioning the dragon, Issei shook his head. "Forget about that. How the hell do I get this card to work?" Sensing the card's magic wasn't pertinent to activating it. The issue was that it didn't work when he called upon it to, using his own mana as a circuit. He was beginning to worry that he may not have the power to get it to work because the magic inside the card was 'foreign' and therefore unable to synergize with his own. If that were the case, then it was a dead item and he'd wasted his pull, making him consider reloading and claiming his Rare Token back.
Preventing his agitation from growing further, Ddraig's insight came to the rescue yet again. "If you cannot naturally call upon the card's power, or intuitively receive knowledge of an activation chant, then an action must be required."
"And just what 'action' am I supposed to make?"
"It's a card, is it not? Cards are played."
Play the card... Issei wasn't exactly sure how he was supposed to do that, but he would try.
"I choose you!" Throwing the card down through the air with a flick of his fingertips, the thin material soared straight like an arrow before hitting the grass. A shining ethereal light immediately blasted out of the card, enveloping the forest clearing with a glowing yellow sheen.
In place of the card was something new. Something that had been summoned.