368 "Hidden Character" (2/2)

Seiji thanked them all and breathed a sigh of relief.

Later that night, in Reo's soul realm.

Seiji inspected his system.

After he learned [Beginner-level Healing], his dating sim system gave him many new options, such as new spells, new items, and… new martial arts techniques!

Until now, he only had his special reward, [Demon Slice—First Form] that he had received before for killing an undead creature with a sword. Now, he had the two additional options of [Beginner-level Punching Techniques] and [Beginner-level Footwork].

After carefully reading through these options, Seiji felt that both of these were a priority for him to learn, since they were the basics after all.

Since his goal was to become a Yin-Yang Master, [Spells] were obviously the most important, but he wanted to learn proper [Martial Arts] through his system as well, at least to the extent where he didn't have any obvious weaknesses.

He didn't know if he would be able to use [Beginning-level Punching Techniques] together with [Lightning Strike]. In other words, he wondered if the [Martial Arts] category in his system could overlap with his [Fighting] techniques.

If it was possible to combine them, that meant even more possibilities as well as stronger power. That was what Seiji believed.

After that, he began cultivating the [Beginner-level Punching Techniques]!

The next day, Seiji modified the description of the antagonist in his story based on Demon Soldier Sensei's drawing and emailed the modified draft to Editor Yoshizawa before concentrating on drawing.

Later that afternoon, Editor Yoshizawa sent him the draft for drawing artwork for his own story. After he looked through it, he went out to have it printed, signed the contract, and mailed it to Editor Yoshizawa.

Now that the contract was set, things only depended on his speed. The faster that he completed all the insert art and cover for his story, the faster that Brother Monogatari would be able to be published.

However, what Seiji didn't know was that the fact that he competed with Demon Soldier Sensei in order to take over the right to draw for Brother Monogatari had become a hot topic in Thunderbolt Literature!

When Saki contacted Demon Soldier Sensei about canceling his job to draw for Brother Monogatari, she reported this to her team leader.

Her team leader was astonished.

Since Head Editor Hattori viewed the story Brother Monogatari with high importance, the team leader decided to pass on the news, which astonished the head editor as well.

And so, Saki was called over to Head Editor Hattori in order to explain what happened.

This naturally attracted the idle bystanders… er, the editors' attention, and so they all tried to find out what happened, and in the end, everyone was astonished.

This was too ridiculously amazing!

The author himself stole the artist's job… a first-rate artist, at that, the author stole the artist's drawing job from him, which was basically unbelievable!

While there were some authors that indeed drew for their own stories, they were rather few in number. And, when a first-rate artist had been hired to draw for the story already, but the author suddenly saying that he wanted to draw for his own story and forcibly defeating the artist in a direct competition in order to steal away the right to draw… had anyone here ever heard of such a thing before?

Nobody had.

Nobody in Thunderbolt Literature had ever heard of such an event happening! Including even the veteran Head Editor Hattori!!

This was quite eye-opening.

”An art competition… Such a hot-blooded scene actually happened in real life.”

”Demon Soldier Sensei is first-rate at drawing light novel insert art, and Shore Sensei actually won…”

”He's so good at both writing and drawing… isn't he still only a high school student?”

”That's right, he's indeed a high school student, and he's only in his first year of high school! I saw his information profile before, and it said that he was sixteen years old.”

”Could it be fake? Perhaps the real person who drew wasn't Shore Sensei at all. Or perhaps…'Idle Dimension by the Shore' is only an alias, and the real person who's writing and drawing are both different people.”

”Stop imagining ridiculous things! You must have read too many novels; wake up already.”

”Such a scene, and an author that's like a main character… just wow.”

The editors kept discussing and exclaiming at what had happened.