Tatsuki put on a friendly smile and introduced himself.
"Hello, I'm Tatsuki from 401, I just moved in and came to greet my neighbors. This is a little gift."
Just like before, he handed over a bag of fruit.
"…"
It looked like the girl spent a moment confirming something.
Then she fully opened the door, accepted the fruit, and hurriedly began gesturing with her hands.
Sign language? Tatsuki roughly guessed she was signing.
He quickly noticed the red hearing aid in her left ear.
Can't hear…?
The girl's hands repeated the same motions over and over, clearly anxious to get something across. Her lips parted slightly, but some dim emotion in her eyes held the words back.
"Big sis, what are you doing?"
Right then, a short-haired girl with black hair walked over.
The moment she saw Tatsuki standing at the door, she rushed forward and stood protectively in front of the pink-haired girl.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"I'm…"
Patient as ever, Tatsuki introduced himself all over again.
"Oh, you're the new neighbor!"
Once she understood who he was, the short-haired girl let out a breath of relief and bowed apologetically.
"I'm sorry, my attitude just now wasn't very good. I'm Yuzuru Nishimiya, and this is my older sister, Shouko Nishimiya."
"My sister has congenital hearing impairment and can't hear clearly what people are saying. I'm worried she'll be bullied, so that's why I acted like that. I'm really sorry."
Yuzuru apologized again and briefly explained her behavior.
"It's fine," Tatsuki didn't mind in the slightest.
What surprised him instead was Yuzuru and Shouko Nishimiya—yet another pair of familiar faces. That really was quite the coincidence.
"…" Shouko lowered her head, fingers tightening around the handle of the fruit bag, her expression clouded.
She felt like she'd caused trouble for her little sister again.
"Tatsuki. That's my name. Please take care of me."
From Yuzuru's perspective, Tatsuki inexplicably re-introduced himself, then turned and left.
But Shouko suddenly jerked her head up, her moist eyes going wide, clear as crystal gemstones.
Puzzled, Yuzuru glanced at her sister's shocked expression and signed with her hands.
What's wrong, sis?
Shouko signed back haltingly, I heard him clearly.
"You heard him clearly?"
Yuzuru frowned. "What did he say?"
Shouko hurriedly signed again. He said his name is Tatsuki and 'please take care of me'.
"…?" Yuzuru was stunned. That was exactly how he'd introduced himself at the end.
But how had her sister heard it clearly?
Maybe her hearing just got better for a second… It was only one sentence, Yuzuru guessed inwardly.
Still, she clenched her fist and encouraged her out loud, "Maybe your ears are getting a bit better, sis! Keep working at your rehab!"
Shouko smiled and patted Yuzuru's head, then signed, Thank you for worrying about me, Yuzuru.
...
As for having Shouko Nishimiya as a neighbor, Tatsuki was only mildly surprised.
He didn't dwell on it.
Instead of going back home, he stepped out the building's front door from the first floor.
Glancing at his personal status, he saw 4.7 million Apocalypse Points.
He was only 300,000 short of five million. To round that up, it was about time he went and did another sweep of evil spirits and monsters.
This time, he drew the cleanup range as: the entire planet.
...
By dusk, Tatsuki was walking along the street, brows knitted.
Using the power of the Source of Space, he'd combed through every open corner of the world outside of people's homes.
And discovered something very strange.
The number of evil spirits and monsters decreased as you went farther out from the city he lived in, with that city as the center.
It gave him the feeling that his city was the very epicenter of the anomaly outbreak.
"Why is that?"
Tatsuki frowned even tighter. He was starting to doubt his understanding of how the Cognition Apocalypse had come about.
After sweeping the entire world, he'd only gained 700,000 Apocalypse Points. He'd originally thought he'd get at least one or two million; honestly, he was a little disappointed.
But it was still something, and with 5.4 million Apocalypse Points, he could power up another ability.
Walking down the street, Tatsuki split off a bit of his attention to open the ability-upgrade interface in the Apocalypse Chat Group.
He didn't hesitate long before choosing Zanpakuto: Dominator.
He had many reasons to pick Dominator.
Both Mystic Eyes of Death Perception and Vector Manipulation needed 25 million Apocalypse Points to go from lv7 to lv8—that was way too much of a gap.
And don't even mention taking the Source of Space from lv8 to lv9. One glance at the cost and he snuffed out all fantasies… billions.
Yeah, that jump is a little insane.
From the look of things, it might take a 7-star or higher apocalypse to earn huge amounts of Apocalypse Points.
Unfortunately, no one in the chat had cleared a 7-star apocalypse yet. Worlds with 7-star or above apocalypses, aside from his, only included March 7th's and Exusiai's.
March 7th's 9-star apocalypse… his first estimate was that it would affect all Aeons. That wasn't something he could deal with right now, so he didn't even think about it.
As for Exusiai's 7-star apocalypse… he had absolutely no idea what it was, and there hadn't even been a stage mission triggered yet—also not worth thinking about for now.
So his only option at the moment was to keep steadily powering up his other abilities.
Dominator was also a power he used frequently, useful in all sorts of ways.
Against a lot of enemies, he didn't even need a drawn-out hard battle anymore—it saved time and saved him the trouble of trash-talking.
The most important thing was, he had a hunch: the changes happening to Dominator were anything but simple.
Once his target was set, he confirmed the upgrade without hesitation.
[Ding! 5,000,000 Apocalypse Points consumed!]
[Ding! S-Rank ability "Zanpakuto – Dominator" has been raised to lv7!]
[Human]: Tatsuki
[Points]: 400,000
[Apocalypses]: Cognition Apocalypse (12-star), Anomaly Apocalypse (12-star), Uncertainty Apocalypse (12-star)
[Abilities]:
B-Rank – Physical Reinforcement (lv4), Fivefold Thunder Dharma – Yin Five Thunders (lv4), Rokushiki (lv4), Armament Haki (lv4), Observation Haki (lv4)
A-Rank – Instinct (lv4)
S-Rank – Gemstone: Vector Manipulation (lv7), Zanpakuto – Dominator (lv7), Gluttony (lv6), King of Time (lv6)
SS-Rank – Mystic Eyes of Death Perception of All Worlds (lv7), Chaos Wings (lv6), Source of Space (lv8)
His personal status had changed.
The upgrade was successful. Tatsuki closed the chat group and quickly familiarized himself with Dominator's new power.
Just as he'd expected, it was much like the boost to Vector Manipulation—an expansion of the range he could dominate.
After testing it briefly, he pulled his power back.
"Anomalies?"
At that exact moment, he picked up the heart-voices of anomalies through Dominator… and there were two of them!
Both were extremely neurotic and chaotic.
One of them:
"Kill! Kill! Kill people! Eat! Eat! Eat people!…"
It just kept repeating killing and eating people.
The other:
"I'm human! I'm not a ghoul!"
Another flesh-eater, huh.
The funniest part was that these two anomalies were very close to each other.
"Interesting."
Tatsuki decided to go take a look at these two cannibalistic weirdos.
....
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