It was shortly into Jake Smithson's career as an Awakener that he discovered that the cumulative purchases he made with the points he gathered from hunting monsters began to bear fruit in the Awakening Store.

Sure, it wasn't long ago that he acquired a general membership for the Awakening Store, with its standard entry-level lack of features other than a pretty card gathering dust in his inventory.

But that wasn't what was important.

After kicking enough ass and spending enough cash, Jake earned his way into entering the Awakening Store's Black Label, expanding his shopping smorgasbord significantly.

And it didn't even take that long for the fireworks to go off out of the corner of his eye; upon examining it, the Awakening Store was basically giving him an even bigger license to splurge, what with the upgrade to Passionate Member.

'Now this is the kind of upgrade I'm talking about,' he thought, as he reviewed the benefits of his newly-acquired membership improvement.

'Feels like I'm moving up in the world, like a promotion. Ten percent off everything is nice. Getting points equal to two percent off the purchase price? Pretty cool.

But this last one, zero percent interest on their installment-based payment plans?'

His smile almost reached his ears at that point.

'Now we're cooking with gas.'

It would be an understatement to Jake that the option of paying via installments opened up a whole wide world of purchasing that made the Black Label membership look mundane in comparison.

At this point, he didn't see enemies to hunt.

What he saw were incoming paydays.

He had just begun the time-honored tradition of looting the defeated monsters when the notification for the upgrade passed by the corner of his eye, and after that, Jake was continuing to carefully read the terms and conditions of the installment plan, a large group of defeat monsters in his wake.

As he collected points, Jake carefully repeated what he read aloud. It wouldn't do to not read the fine print, after all. That way leads to bankruptcy, and Jake had seen his fair share of people throw away their fortunes because they couldn't manage their spending right.

"Okay, let me get this straight," Jake began as he kicked the monster corpse to the side and sat down – he was nothing if not skilled at multitasking, after all, "the installment plan here is locked at one month. There is no specific timeframe to actually pay; you can hand in the points daily or a lump sum at the last day of the month. Pretty convenient. Anyway, because Awakeners finish quests, hunt monsters, et cetera, they earn points which they can use to pay for any item they buy within their purchasing limit.."

Curious, he spared a glance at his own profile, and he could almost hear an angelic choir as he beheld the number appearing before him in all its majesty: two hundred and ten thousand points.

He was broken out of his reverie by an odd box that almost fell on his foot, only for him to see that it was a rare drop – some points.

"Okay," Jake said after the awe – and the monsters' blood – had been cleaned off, "okay, better not be too hasty about this. There are terms and conditions to read through, after all."

As it turned out, that box was the last of the monster items he had to collect, and Jake took his loot and made his way back to Brino, all the while continuing to read off the terms and conditions of the Awakening Store's installment plan.

"Ah," he said. "So this is like the credit rating from another country. The better you are as an Awakener, the more your credit rating will be. Also, the more you buy and the more reliably you pay, your credit rating will also improve. Membership upgrades as well as shop access also affects this rating. Conversely, being unable to pay the installment fees will cause interest to accrue, and should an Awakener's payments stall completely, the Awakening Store will send an agent to collect the fees and interest.. by any means necessary."

Jake could not help himself. He shuddered at the thought.

However, the prospect of having 210,000 points as a monthly spending limit was simply too attractive to ignore. Even then, what Jake didn't know was that for someone who hadn't even made it a month in the Awakening Store, having a daily point limit of 7,000 was unheard of.

If the higher-ups had seen his meteoric rise, even they too would be unnerved at this Awakener's unbelievable addiction to shopping.

Jake's mood had since improved; despite the warning of interest accrual and agent intervention, he found it rather reminded him of home.

Unlike most pathological shoppers, Jake knew there wasn't something quite right with his habit.

And the more he kept other people away from butting into his business, the better.

Another key thing that differentiated Jake from other shoppers, was that he knew the meaning of sacrifice all too well: back when he was in the real world, he routinely maxed out his credit cards at the start of the month, and then adopt a Spartan lifestyle for the rest of those days, and he never, ever missed a monthly payment, come hell or high water.

Why? Because not being able to shop the following month was, to him, a fate worse than death.

But the circumstances he found himself in right now? To Jake, this was the best of both worlds, in his opinion. Normally, he'd kill things, get points, and buy stuff with the points.

Now, though, he could buy the best of the best in gear in advance, make good use of them to kill things faster, and then pay off the gear with the points he'd accrued over the month.

"Guess I'll ration myself to two packages a day while the Awakening Store's taking a break," he told himself as he went up a small hill and saw the gates of Brino in the distance.

Unfortunately, Jake was also very good at lying to himself.

He wasn't the type of person who was satisfied easily.

Gaining the ability to buy things on installment only meant that he'd be okay during the Awakening Store's vacation.

'Hmm.. what to buy?'

***

The Awakener known as Jake Smithson passed through the gates of Brino.

After ceaseless hunting he thought about taking some rest, but quickly quashed that notion.

There was work to be done, a certain murderous bastard to catch, and there was only so much time in the day to work.

Besides, before getting down and dirty with the interrogation he planned to do with those other Awakeners?

Shopping first, of course: Jake's priorities were simple, and rather predictable.

'Okay, clothes.

The Island of Delusion did a number on my wardrobe.

My shirt is gone completely, half a pant leg is torn off, and the other leg is cut off so close it is riding up my rear end.

If this had gone on longer, I'd have lost the loincloth and sailed down the river on my ship like one of those muscle guy meme videos I used to watch.

I did get replacements, but they look a little shabby.'

He examined himself before the mirror, confirming his suspicions: yes, the wool tunic and pants he bought for a piddling number of points were starting to look worn.

'Upgrade time?

Upgrade time.'

As he was scrolling down the list of clothing items in the Awakening Store, he was carefully doing calculations as he counted the points he needed to acquire more attractive attire.

Just like most, Jake followed the rule "if it's not broken, do not fix it"; and went with his own tried-and-tested technique of budgeting through installment.

'Okay, 210,000 points monthly. This is what I have to work with.

Now, then.'

His hand hovered over the "Purchase" button, remembering the cold empty void in his heart whenever he had to refund an item.

So yes, the thought of refunding never crossed Jake's mind.

The feeling of regret and the idealized memory of the returned item both resonated in his mind.

One set of clothing later, he was admiring his new look before the mirror.

"Now this, this is cool. This is hip. This is hip and cool... and dare I say it? Very gangster."

Although Jake's spree continued as the sets flew out of the store and onto his hands, there was one thing Jake insisted on: he had to put on the outfits himself.

But as soon as he put the finishing touches onto the chain-link armor set and posed with it in front of the mirror, it was like a dam had broken within him.

'Forget putting things on slowly.

Buy the things.

BUY ALL OF THE THINGS.'

Package after package flew off the Shop and into Jake's hands as the fugue hit him very hard, the items within inconceivable to both his fellow Awakeners due to their luxury and rarity, and even the Awakening Store employees due to Jake's unbelievable shopping habit.

Boxes and packages were strewn everywhere in the rather large room in the tent Jake possessed, and he still wasn't finished.

He bought and he bought and he bought and he bought.. until the fugue finally passed, and the implications of what he had just done finally hit him square on the nose.

"Okay, that's all of it.. wait a minute, wasn't I supposed to save some for the coming week.."

His tent looked like a storage unit or a department store stock room after a tornado formed inside it.

'This isn't good at all,' Jake thought. 'I had planned on rationing myself... but damn, opening those packages..'

That was when a voice came from behind him.

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"What in the world – where'd all this come from?"

The Awakener he had advised he'd interrogate peered through the doorway and found he couldn't enter due to all the stuff in the place.

"Nice sight, huh?" a voice from behind one of the temporary cabinets asked, and the Awakener had to back off a bit. "Give me a moment or two."

Several moments later, the Awakener opened the door, surprised that there was no resistance, and entered to see a strange sight.

Jake was seated on the edge of the luxury mattress, the packages stacked and sorted properly around the room, and the boxes around the room door were finally removed.

"Come on in, then," he said, and upon seeing the poleaxed expression on the Awakener he was about to interrogate, Jake had to laugh.

All things considered, it was one of the better icebreakers Jake had ever done, especially since he had an interrogation to do.. and a criminal to catch.

***

The Awakeners who had the misfortune to run into Jake Smithson's bloodied bat were only a very small part of the Awakener population in Brino – the 11th tutorial village – of Nohas.

There were only ten of them who got the business, but nearly all of the village residents could see that something happened to them, even as they trudged back into Brino and parked themselves into the town square, glad to be alive, but exhausted enough that they didn't give a damn about the other Awakeners whispering about them.

"Hell happened to them? Did something go wrong?"

"Maybe. They're still sitting around there like they saw a ghost or something."

"Or they got into a fight with a really strong monster? I heard that happened in another place."

"Whatever it was, it got them spooked. Badly. See how their eyes are fixed on the front gate?"

"You think whatever got them is going to come here? Those guys are some of our better Awakeners!"

"I hope not..."

'I hope he doesn't return.

Wonder what he'll be asking.

I wonder if I'm going to stay alive after this.'

Those were the thoughts of the ten people Jake put in their place with nothing more than a bloodied baseball bat.

But even though the beating was itself rather painful, it was Jake's demeanor during the entire ordeal that unnerved them.

Even worse, they had agreed to be interrogated by him, one by one.

Their fears of the unknown awaiting them at Jake's hands and what they knew he could do to them was slowly beginning to wear away at their sanity, almost as if their imagination was causing them more fear than there really was.

It showed when they heard a familiar humming at the gates of Brino, and indeed, there he was, Jake Smithson in the flesh, carrying his sword.

Though they were still exhausted, all of them sat ramrod straight as soon as they saw him coming, and everything stopped.

Even the ticking of the town clock began to sound like a doomsday timer for them.

As soon as he emerged from the town's tradesman, Jake smiled, his burlap sack gone as he made a beeline for the town square, gesturing towards one of the beat-up Awakeners to follow him to his place.

"Good luck," one of them whispered very softly, almost inaudibly, to the unlucky bastard.

"Let's meet again," another added, their stress causing them to hear even their softest of sounds, "and stay alive."

Although Jake had sworn them to silence until after the interrogation had finished, he paid no heed to them wishing each other good luck as one of them was being led away to be personally interrogated by that monster.

It also goes to show that they were scared straight into doing what Jake had said.

The man Jake gestured to slowly pulled himself up, clattering sounds coming from his greaves as the legs within them were shaking uncontrollably from the Awakener's own fear.

The combined exhaustion and fear made his legs feel like lead weights, and he took slow, tentative steps from the town square to Jake's barracks, taking care not to let out a sound lest the man hear him.

It took more than a few minutes for him to stand up and even more to take dread-filled steps towards the tent, and all the while, the expression on the Awakener's face flashed from denial, to anger, to bargaining, to despair, and finally to acceptance.

The rest of the Awakeners seated were fixated on their own as he marched to what was most likely his death, and their own.

Several minutes later, though..

"Thank you! Please, call me back anytime! Thank you very much!"

Their colleague emerged from the barracks with a smile on his face and a spring in his step.

Everyone of his fellows had only one thing in mind.

'What the hell just happened to him in there?'