Wiz & Vanir Setup
Arfter all the good time with someone he have in common they decided to part ways due she has a quest with her group since Ruko fine with that and wish her good hunting. When she departed the rumor reached Ruko just went to his home the way most problems in Axel did—loud, exaggerated, and delivered by Kazuma kicking the door open like he'd discovered a secret boss room, waving a crumpled guild notice and shouting about a Demon sighting, high reward, high risk, and very probable death while Aqua gasped, Darkness blushed, and Megumin immediately began whispering explosion chants; Ruko didn't even look up from his phone-cyclopedia, scrolling through of finding 'GTA XL' with complete disinterest until Kazuma confused of what he's doing but realized what that meant and froze, pointing at him and demanding to know if he was seriously not coming, to which Ruko calmly replied, "Nah y'all got this," and when Kazuma demanded a reason he added, "Statistically, i have no trait since the beginning which you survive through dumb luck and plot armor," which only made Aqua scream, Darkness tremble, and Megumin accuse him of abandoning dramatic narrative structure while Ruko leaned back and put on his earbuds, which already done with the conversation as they stormed out to fight a Demon without him.
The house went quiet the moment the door slammed, and Ruko sat alone with modern music/hype phonk filling the medieval room while Yew's system window flickered warnings about a low-mid-level entity in the city, which he muted without hesitation because if the rumor matched the demon then Kazuma's absurd luck would carry the encounter; outside, distant explosions confirmed Megumin's participation while Ruko calmly reviewed soul-binding theory and cursed item depreciation curves, treating the entire Demon event like background noise until couple a days later the party burst back in covered in soot and emotional damage, Aqua yelling about divine disrespect, Kazuma ranting about debt contracts and mind-reading devils, Darkness looking disturbingly fulfilled, and Megumin being dragged across the floor, at which point Ruko finally paused his music and repeated one word—"Let me guess, financial metaphors i persume?"—because that, unlike near-death experiences, actually interested him.
Kazuma dragged him to Wiz's shop the next day, where the moment Ruko stepped inside his system flared with high-threat alerts and his body moved before thought, he use basic seal while forming a tiny purification in his palm as he fired a pure exorcism strike at the masked devil standing beside Wiz; the attack shattered on impact like glass against something immovable, leaving silence as Kazuma screamed, Wiz panicked, and Vanir tilted his head in theatrical delight, calling Ruko "the boy who smells of broken variety and stolen eternity," which made Ruko step forward again with cold intent until Wiz desperately explained that his name is 'Vanir' who will worked there now, a statement that caused a visible logic error in Yew's interface while Vanir bowed as a "humble shop employee," and after a long pause Ruko lowered his hand and stated flatly that if any civilian was harmed he would erase the devil without hesitation, earning a wider grin from the mask and the first flicker of genuine interest from Vanir.
Ruko returned the next day, and the next, not out of friendship but because the shop had become an unexpected research hub where souls were quantified like currency and cursed items were analyzed with disturbing precision; when a customer brought in a haunted necklace Vanir broke down its emotional residue into measurable components, which made Ruko lean in and demand methodology, and what followed was hours of dense discussion on soul density, contract clauses, and curse mechanics that Yew logged as passive skill acquisition while Kazuma, in the background, accidentally signed a debt agreement he didn't read and began screaming about post-mortem interest rates, creating a chaotic blend of financial horror and academic curiosity that only Ruko seemed to appreciate.
Word spread quickly that Wiz's shop handled curses, with Wiz purifying minor ones, Vanir monetizing complex ones, and Ruko silently stepping in whenever something posed real danger, such as the possessed scarecrow a farmer brought in that Vanir wanted to sell as a poltergeist asset until Ruko erased it instantly with a single basic seal because it had been attacking livestock, sparking an argument about profit versus safety that ended with Vanir calling him inconsistent and fascinating while Ruko simply replied that people came before margins, a statement that made Vanir pause long enough for Yew to log an increase in devil interest metrics.
Kazuma repeatedly tried to outmaneuver Vanir's future sight and failed every time, leading to escalating contracts and louder panic while Ruko observed quietly until he muttered that prediction required patterns and he did not follow patterns, which caused Vanir to turn fully toward him for the first time with genuine curiosity because the statement introduced uncertainty into a system built on inevitability; later, when Wiz sold a high-value cursed sword for almost nothing out of kindness, Vanir demanded Ruko explain profit to her and instead received a lecture on trust-based long-term return and volume economics that he labeled "diabolical," marking the moment the shop's strange balance became clear—Wiz's compassion, Vanir's greed, and Ruko's cold protective logic coexisting in unstable equilibrium.
As evening settled and customers left, Vanir studied Ruko across the quiet shop and remarked that he carried a basic seal that did not belong in this world yet restrained it, to which Ruko replied that Vanir was not currently harming anyone and that was the only reason he still existed, a blunt exchange that ended with Vanir admitting he had never met a human who treated souls as both data and dignity while Ruko deflected the comment and put his earbuds back on, modern music echoing softly as Yew initialized a new Soul Interaction Framework in the background; for the first time since their meeting, Vanir attempted to read his future and found nothing but static, an absence that made the devil laugh quietly as Axel's chaos continued outside and the shop became a neutral ground where profit, kindness, and calculated protection formed the beginning of a new and dangerous dynamic.