2 First Steps: Basics
*Beep!* *Beep!* *Beep!*
"Ugh!"
Groaning a young teen stumbled out of his bed after a brief struggle with the blankets he found himself tangled in.
Shaking his head he tried to rid himself of the drowsiness and the blurry vision that was overwhelming his senses. Widening his eyes he managed to clear his sight.
*Beep!* *Beep!* *Beep-*
Grabbing the annoyingly loud alarm clock he smashed it onto the ground shutting it for good.
"Ahh, Thank God." The young man plopped himself on the bed as he buried his face in his palms. The headache and the cramps were killing him. "I... I think I need to puke!"
The young man stumbled onto the floor but somehow managed to reach the bathroom and vomit his guts out into the commode.
"Hah... Hah... Fuck..." He panted wiping his face. Getting up he dragged himself to the sink, to clean his face. As he reached for the tap his eyes landed on the empty bottle of sleeping aid near his feet. "No wonder I feel like shit."
Looking into the mirror as he washed his face, he found himself looking at the face of a mid-teen, Japanese male with dark brown hair and deep brown eyes.
"Too much of anything isn't good, Komuro." He whispered as he grabbed the bottle and threw it in the dustbin. Looking at the reflection, he familiarised it with the face because from now on, he will be living in and as Takashi Komuro. "Hello, there."
Shedding his clothes, Takashi admired his body and just what sorry state it was in. There wasn't much meat on his body, to begin with, and plus his skin was marred with black and blue bruises from the fights he got into.
Not to mention the red patches on his thighs and arms, which resulted from the drugs he had overdosed on.
"This is going to take a while." Takashi sighed as he walked out of the bathroom and once again he could only sigh when he had a good look at the state of the bedroom. "It's going to take quite a while."
Looking at the state of the bedroom he was already losing motivation but he somehow managed to shake it off.
"Well, should get started." Takashi pulled out a big garbage bag from one of the drawers in the bathroom and began collecting the trash that littered the room as he simultaneously dumped dirty clothes in the laundry basket.
It took him an hour and while it wasn't perfect the room was in a much better position than before.
"There's no way I'm going to wash these clothes." Takashi muttered to himself as he looked at the basket of dirty clothes. "I'm going to call the laundry service."
Looking at the full bag of trash in his hand he nodded to himself as he turned towards the door. "I should probably dump these first-"
Takashi was forced to stop mid-sentence and mid-step as the world around him turned into a blur and a holographic prompt appeared in front of him.
[Full Garbage Bag x1.]
"Well, obviously." Takashi looked at it for a moment and couldn't help but get excited. "This is the crafting system that worried Viv huh?"
[Turn it into Matter? Y/N.]
Blinking at the prompt he nodded to himself. "Sure, go ahead."
Takashi grew fascinated as he watched the garbage bag breakdown, dissolve and disappear into nothingness and the holographic screen shift inturn to display a new prompt.
[Menu:
Matter Vault (22)
Recipes
Inventory
Crafting]
Looking at the prompt Takashi opened the Matter Vault tab as it was beaconing him. The holographic prompt shifted once again.
[Matter Vault:
Organic Matter: 10
Inorganic Matter: 12]
Takashi hummed to himself as grabbed grabbed his bedsheet in one hand and the broken alarm in other. Concentrating a little, the prompt appeared like he predicted.
[Dirty Bedsheets x1
Broken Alarm Clock x1]
Smiling in excitement he looked down at the confirmation below.
[Turn it into Matter? Y/N.]
"Oh, yes please!"
He grinned as both of the objects disappeared and as he suspected the inorganic matter increased in his vault.
Take a look at his phone he sighed, it was already 10:30 so no point in rushing to school ill prepared, just to get his ass-kicked by some wannabes.
"Might as well familiarise myself with my power." Takashi sighed to himself. Opening the recipes vault there were to sections, locked and unlocked.
Opening the unlocked section he blinked.
[Unlocked:
Airconditioner (12 Main Components)
Toaster (9 Main components)
PC (24 Main components)
Soap (5 Main Components)
Cupboard...]
The list went on and Takashi was quick to notice that all of these recipies were the ones he has somekind of experience with and knew exactly how they worked and were made.
He had knowledge about the electronics as he had worked as a part-time repair guy, during his college years in previous life and he knew how the soap and cupboard were made from YouTube videos.
He then opened the crafting tab and selected the soap recipe since it had the least components from the list he had unlocked.
He blinked as he was prompted by the system to craft the main componets to be able to craft the finished product.
"How do I craft it-" Takashi shut himself up as he poured points into the main componet slots and the components were crafted automatically.
[Main Components:
Vegetable oil (2)
Lye (2)
Distilled water (1)
Essentials (2)
Colorants (1) ]
And just like that the final product was ready to be crafted and it only cost him 8 OMP for a premium quality soap.
(A/N: OMP and IMP will be short forms for Organic Matter Points and Inorganic Matter Points respectively.)
[Craft automatically? Y/N]
"Ah yes."
[Crafting Successful!]
Opening his inventory, Takashi grinned as he saw the soap sitting in one of the infinite amount of boxes in the tab.
[Activated Charcoal Soap x1:
Take cares of oily skin, deep cleanses pores and prevents acne breakouts.]
"I'll try it out once I take a bath, haha." Takashi laughed to himself. He closed the inventory tab and opened the recipe tab and this time he browsed through the endless list of locked recipies. "Damn..."
Takashi was almost blinded by the sheer amount of recipes and almost passed out reading some of their description.
[Lightsaber:
Needs no more explanation]
"Fuck that's true!"
[Learn Recipe or Unlock for '100000' MP?]
"100K Matter Points?!" Takashi almost shrieked as he looked at the price the system was suggesting. "Fuck no! I barely have 50 MP!"
Exiting the tab Takashi took a breather to calm himself as he looked for something more practical and useful. Looking at his worn-out
[Smartphone:
The world made accessible to you at your fingertips. Play games, record precious moments, connect with loved ones and the world with one touch.]
"Why does the description sound like something veteran salesman would say." Takashi had questions but it was unlikely he was going to get any answers so decided to shut himself up.
[Learn Recipe or Unlock for '5000' MP?]
"Well, fuck... That's still a lot." Takashi shook his head in defeat but then he suddenly had a good idea. He walked towards his cupboard and pulled out a box. Inside the box were random things like his old toys, comic books, and so on.
He grabbing the box, he converted all the items into MPs as soon as the prompt appeared.
[Matter Vault:
Organic Matter: 2
Inorganic Matter: 564]
"Still a long way to go but I think I'll manage." Takashi said. "I should clean up the house as I go on a conversion rampage haha."
Takashi cleaned up his room, bathroom, getting rid of everything he didn't need which included his ragged clothes, his porn stash and crappy otome games.
Looking at the screen he smiled as IMP was sitting on a solid 800. Looking back at his cleaned room he nooded, giving himself a mental pat on the back for a good job.
Walking out of his room he cleared all the rubbish that was pilled in the passage way.
"How did these people even live in a place like this, it's more of a pig house than a house of a sound human." Takashi complained to himself even though he had no job complaining since was benefiting from it. Walking towards the door of his parents room he carefully knocked twice.
"Mom, I'm coming in." He said as opened and entered the room. Looking at the empty messy room he frowned. "Hah, should have known."
He rolled up his sleeve as he got back to work. Cleaning up the old dirty sheets, ridding all of the pulled up trash, the broken photo frames, etc. Opening the cupboard he decided to get rid of all of his father's clothes and belongings.
"It's not like that bastard is returning ever again." Takashi shrugged as he converted it without a second thought.
Cleaning up the room he descended down the stares and immediately frowned as the strong smell of liquor hit his nose.
He grimaced futher at the sight infront of him.
Oh the sofa laying in a sprawled out manner was his mother. Once a beautiful housewife and a kind mother was reduced to nothing more than an abandoned woman, drinking her sorrows away neglecting herself and her teenage soon.
The kindness and the loveliness was replaced with bitterness and spitefulness. Gone was the mature grace as the woman laid there passed out in a unslightly matter.
She was wearing office outfit, her coat discarded at entrance. The white blouse was stained with liquor and the top was unbuttoned giving a good view of her full, big, creamy breasts and lacy black bra. Her pencil skirt was hiked up revealing her thicc white thighs wrapped in black stockings.
Her beautiful face showed clear signs of stress which the makeup she was wearing, did little help to hide it. The smeared mascara wasn't helping her either.
The sight was equally arousing and disturbing to look at the same time.
On the table was a half empty bottle of liquor, and another laid empty on the floor near her.
"I... Hah. Let's just work." Takashi manned up as he began working and cleaning up the house.
It took him quite the while but was able to clean up the whole house getting rid of all the trash and unwanted things. As Takashi was cleaning he came across the treasure vault a.k.a the storeroom where all the useless and ancient junk was kept.
Nedless to say all the junk was converted and Takashi had a new smartphone sitting in the palm of his hand. Takashi sipped on a cold drink he crafted as he checked out the phone.
It was the model of the leading smartphone brand that was set to launch the next year when he was alive. Although there wasn't any hyper-speed internet service available in Japan right now the internet in his phone was running smoothly without a drop in speed even though there was no simcard in it.
"And she said magic was not allowed." Takashi smiled to himself as shoved the phone in his pocket for now. "I should take a bath, I'm all sweaty as hell."
Takashi had figured out the basics about his crafting ability and he was feeling good about it.
"Time to check out the soap as well!"
------
"Hmmm, the quality of the finished products is top notch to say the least and I'm guessing it's the same for other products as well. So, it's not like I'll be dissatisfied with it." Takashi pondered as he opened the fridge door and took a look. Removing eggs, he converted everything else that was spoilt. "What I'm worried about securing a stable source of MPs."
Setting the frying pan on the stove, he poured oil in it, as he prepared to cook the eggs.
'I can't just go around making stuff disappear outside and I've already used up the junk in the house.' Takashi hummed to himself as he pondered his next move. 'Oh! I can always go to the scrapyard! There are more than a dozen scrapyard here and from what I have heard most of them are overflowing due to the huge influx of junk. I just have to figure out a way to be stealthy and not get caught.'
Takashi nodded to himself as he crafted a two simple noodle bowl from the system and poured the fried eggs into the bowl. Finishing the bowl with chicken dipped in hot sauce he was about to store the other bowl when he heard a groan behind him.
"Ugh... W-What time it is?" Raya groaned as she helped herself up. "Argh! My head! It's killing me-"
"Good afternoon, glad you woke up." Takashi spoke up in a neutral tone as he grabbed her bowl and set it infront of her. "Eat, it will help you sober up."
"Takashi... Did you cook this?" Raya stared at the cup, blinking owlishly before asking carefully. Takashi blinked in confusion and looked around.
"Seems like it, there's no one else around after all." Takashi laced his tone with the barest of sarcasm and even then Raya was taken back by his tone. "Eat, I'll prepare bath for you so you can clean up."
Takashi walked back to the kitchen counter and sat there to eat his own share.
"I've cleaned up your room, so after you take a bath you should go and rest for today." Takashi hummed in satisfaction as he stared eating.
"Takashi... I'm sorry-"
"No need. It's fine." Takashi interrupted her. "It's been six months since that bastard bailed and it seems you haven't been able to accept it. Drinking your sorrows away neglecting your household duties in the process."
"..."
"It only felt natural for me to put the pants on and take care of place since I know you'll come back home drunk once again tomorrow." Takashi was relentless with his words but they weren't unwarranted. "Go ahead, do as you please."
It was because of his mom's drinking habits and neglection which caused Takashi to develop insomnia due to stress which developed into an addiction towards prescription which ultimately resulted in his untimely death.
"I am trying you know!" Raya screamed at him in frustration as she bolted up to stare at him in anger to which Takashi only replied with a blank look as he finished his bowl.
"Well, it's clear that it isn't working then. Are you trying enough? Actually, what are you even trying to do?" Takashi asked as Raya flinched. "Are you trying to quit alcohol? Are you trying to take care of the house? Are you trying to look after me now that dad's gone? What are you trying exactly?"
"I... I am sorry."
"Nope. I am." Takashi said as washed his bowl and walked to prepare the bath. "Maybe you should stop trying."
"..."
"Just come home sober and I'll do the rest."
Raya buried her face in her arms as she tried to reign in her emotions. Wiping her eyes she grabbed the bowl and gulped down the noodles. She was taken back by how good they tasted which made her feel miserable even more.
'What kind of a mother am I? Forcing my child to take care of himself...'
------
So, that is the system I have came up with. Any improvements to the system from my ideas and your suggestions will be released as System Updates or Minor Patches.
That way we can punch out any inconveniences without breaking the story or having to rewrite the whole shit. So, your ideas will be very much appreciated.
Anyways, I'll see you in the next one.
