Tokyo: Earth Online Manga Artist.

The rent is 200,000 yuan a month, and food, transportation, and utilities add up to about 100,000 yuan a month.

In addition, there is the standard "assistant salary" given to Natsume Akane and Takeda Ayane.

I also need to give Erina a monthly allowance, and occasionally buy her some snacks, clothes, comics, game consoles, and the like.

After a month, you actually don't have as much left as you might imagine.

Of course, she still cares a lot about income; the saying "a penny can stump a hero" applies in any era.

Masaya Sakurai immediately said, "Then, as agreed before, I will personally come to collect the manuscript this week, and also take the written interview form and the cover of the collected volume."

"No problem."

Eri Aragaki immediately nodded and said.

"And also..."

Masaya Sakurai paused for a moment, "Is Riko-sensei interested in drawing another short manga recently?"

"A short comic strip?"

Eri Aragaki repeated those four words, but the first thing that popped into her mind wasn't the amount of royalties, but rather the skill points on the panel.

She thought about it, and the main thing was...

She remembered that drawing short comics could quickly accumulate ordinary skill points; a complete work was worth one skill point, and a short story was also a complete work.

Although she hasn't used the two skill points from the Attack on Titan prequel short story and the Wu Song short comic yet.

I've been saving them up and now I have two regular skill points sitting idle in my inventory.

The main problem is that she's a bit conflicted about whether to add those two skill points to her class skill or her racial skill.

Why this dilemma?

That was naturally because of the incident where he was targeted by thugs.

When Erina and I went to the station that time, we were followed by a few thugs the whole way. Although we didn't know why the thugs suddenly disappeared, nothing like that ever happened again after that.

However, one should always be wary of others.

Now that she's a girl, living outside with her younger sister is still somewhat unsafe.

Although her soul was still male, she had to admit that the female body was physiologically weaker than the male body.

Even if she still has a male body, there's still something to worry about, since an ordinary person can't fight against many opponents.

If she had put those two regular skill points into her racial skill, boxing, she would now be on par with an adult male in terms of strength, based solely on her stats.

If her boxing skills improve, she will probably be more than just a match for an adult male in terms of strength.

At that point, it will probably be at the level of "high damage from the left fist, high damage from the right fist" and "Eri, Eri, shout that you are invincible".

When ordinary people encounter danger, they can only run, but when she encounters danger, she can ask the other party which side she wants to be hit on!

However, if she adds points to three ordinary professional skills, she can either speed up her usual drawing speed, or, with a certain level of overclocking, finish a week's worth of drawings in a single day.

She could either improve her learning ability to further enhance her drawing skills, or, with a higher learning ability, she would be more adept at researching various drawing styles, and perhaps even be able to create a few more styles.

Either you need to increase your mental agility, generate more frequent inspirations, and take the fluency of storyboard conception to the next level.

Simply put, the former might not be useful. The area where she lives is relatively safe, and she doesn't usually go to dangerous places. If she were to live a normal life, she might never use her boxing skills more than a few times in her entire life.

But if something really happens in a critical moment, she can protect herself and the people around her, a function that no other skill can replace.

The latter option is more in line with her real life. She can use it for daily drawing, weekly serialization, preparing covers for published volumes, and drawing short stories every now and then.

Improving drawing skills might make Attack on Titan even more popular. If the paneling and visual presentation are enhanced, the reader's experience will be improved, and it's not impossible for the ranking to climb even higher.

Speeding up her drawing process would give her more free time outside of work each week. Currently, she spends about five days a week drawing. If she could reduce it to one or two days, she could do whatever she wants with the rest of the time.

However, no matter where you allocate skill points, having an extra skill point is always beneficial.

After all, this way she can choose to balance her efforts, adding two points to boxing and one point to the necessary professional skills, without neglecting either.

Drawing short stories is like giving away skill points for free; she had no reason to refuse something that was a sure-fire way to make money.

Moreover, drawing another short story would naturally increase her royalties.

Although short stories are not as stable as long-running serials, the royalties for a short story of twenty or thirty pages are still a considerable sum, more than enough to cover a month's rent.

Currently, she relies solely on her writing fees to support herself, and with debts to pay for her younger sister's education, she must be hoping to earn more money.

So she quickly replied, "I can draw it, but is there enough time?"

"There's still time. The short comic strip that the teacher is going to publish this time will probably be published at the end of the month, which is about three weeks from now."

Masaya Sakurai said, "It's another editor, Hayashi Shiping, in charge. Let's meet up this weekend to talk about the specific subject matter. If you have any inspiration, you can share it with us, and we can discuss it together then."

"Okay, no problem."

Eri Aragaki immediately said.

Suddenly, an idea popped into her head. She might need to reconsider whether it was unethical to steal someone else's work, especially when it came to long novels.

But for short comics... it should be alright.

So an idea came to her mind, and whenever she thought of this comic, a strange smile appeared on her face.

"Excuse me, Ms. Riko."

Masaya Sakurai then hung up the phone.

"OK."

Eri Aragaki also put down her phone.

……

The rest of the week passed quickly, as always.

Eri Aragaki, with the help of Akane Natsume, Ayane Takeda, and Erina, calmly completed this week's Attack on Titan manuscript.

Friday arrived, the deadline...

"Teacher Pear, excuse me."

When Masaya Sakurai came to collect the manuscript, he was still very polite.

He glanced around the apartment; it was the same group of girls again. Erina and Natsume Akane were watching a variety show on TV.

Meanwhile, Ayane Takeda has been using Eri Aragaki's computer to complete her major coursework this month.

This was related to Ayane Takeda's GPA, and she was quite engrossed in it, occasionally typing a few lines of code, then typing and deleting.

"Mr. Sakurai...have some tea."

As before, Eri Aragaki first poured tea for Masaya Sakurai, then turned to get the manuscript, cover, color pages, and... a photograph of herself.

"The manuscript and everything are here, Mr. Sakurai... Here you go."

Then she handed everything over.

Masaya Sakurai looked at the manuscript again, and after finding no problems, he looked at the cover of the collected volume, the color page at the beginning, the author's afterword, and the written interview form.

There are basically no problems. These things are just normal and won't be too amazing or have any flaws.

Masaya Sakurai's last look was at the photograph that Eri Aragaki had given him...

A close-up photo, but not an ID photo. It shows Eri Aragaki wearing a brown jacket, striking a pose reminiscent of the "offering her heart" pose from the manga Attack on Titan.

The modeling monster's stats are undeniable, and even in this pose, you can tell that Eri Aragaki is an absolute beauty.

Moreover, because there were no strange gestures or accessories to cover it, Aragaki Eri's entire face was revealed, allowing her character model to be displayed to its fullest extent.

"Okay, there's no problem."

Masaya Sakurai immediately stood up and said, "I won't bother you any longer, teacher. I'll go back and prepare for this week's magazine work."

"Okay, Mr. Sakurai, take care."

Eri Aragaki also got up again to see Masaya Sakurai off.

Masaya Sakurai left Eri Aragaki's apartment, but he stared at her photograph for a long time, pondering it intently...

He felt that there was something strange about Eri Aragaki, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong.

She seemed no different from the Eri Aragaki he usually saw...

"never mind……"

Masaya Sakurai went downstairs and went straight back to Shueisha.

After all... this week's work isn't finished yet.