The unlocked inventory had opened up tactical possibilities Hayato hadn't seriously considered before.
Hayato was back in his apartment now, sitting at his desk, staring out the window toward the distant military base barely visible through the dense forest of city buildings and afternoon haze.
"Before I unlocked the inventory system, I didn't have anywhere to safely store weapons and ammunition. Carrying them around came with massive exposure risks. Getting caught with illegal firearms in Japan, one of the strictest gun control countries on Earth, would mean immediate arrest and serious jail time. No exceptions, no excuses. So I kept putting off acquiring any, focusing on other kinds of preparation instead."
But now everything had fundamentally changed. The inventory system solved both major problems simultaneously and completely.
"Storage is no longer an issue at all. Neither is concealment, transport, or risk of discovery. I can access whatever I need whenever I need it, instantly, with literally zero chance of being caught during random police checks or searches."
The tactical advantages were genuinely enormous, potentially game-changing. Having serious firepower available at a moment's notice, without any of the burden or risk of actually carrying it physically, without any possibility of metal detectors or security screening picking it up...
Complete game changer for any combat situation.
"So... time to go shopping, I guess."
Hayato was very careful to frame it as borrowing rather than stealing in his mind. The distinction mattered to him psychologically, helped him feel better about what he was planning.
He'd return everything eventually, probably with substantial interest if things developed the way he suspected they might. Hell, if this death game escalated into full supernatural warfare the way his instincts were screaming it would, he might end up returning these exact weapons as ammunition and missiles dropped from strategic bombers onto Pacific Federation military installations.
Hayato spent the rest of the afternoon in careful, meticulous planning. Routes in and out, timing windows, security measures he'd need to work around or avoid. The military base was well-guarded by trained professionals with actual combat experience, but guards fundamentally couldn't guard against someone who could literally stop time itself.
The real challenges would be locked doors and sealed armories when you physically couldn't phase through solid matter, when you had to find keys or wait for authorized personnel to open things.
But with enough patience and careful timing, even those obstacles were ultimately manageable.
"Oh. Wow."
The air inside the armory was thick and heavy with the distinctive smell of gun oil and metal and something else harder to identify. Cosmoline, maybe, or whatever preservative they used on stored weapons. The scent of steel and potential violence concentrated in one climate-controlled room.
Hayato breathed it in, standing in perfectly frozen time, surrounded on all sides by organized racks of destructive potential.
Row after row of firearms gleamed under fluorescent lights that would never flicker, never dim, never burn out, as long as time stayed stopped. Rifles of various types, handguns in multiple calibers, ammunition crates stacked with mathematical precision. Everything was organized with obsessive military efficiency, labeled and inventoried.
He felt a strange, complex mix of emotions washing over him in waves.
Awe at the sheer concentrated destructive potential contained in this single room. Nervousness about what he was doing, the line he was crossing. Excitement about the tactical advantages this would provide in future encounters.
And underneath it all, a tiny persistent thread of guilt.
"They'll definitely notice stuff missing eventually. No avoiding that reality. Even with perfect inventory records and security, someone's going to realize these weapons are gone when they do the next quarterly check."
So he needed to muddy the waters, create confusion, and misdirection.
Hayato pulled out a small white card he'd prepared beforehand with careful handwriting and placed it precisely where it would definitely be found during the next scheduled inventory check:
'Phantom Thief, Kaito Kid was here.'
Perfect. Let them puzzle over that mystery. Let them wonder if it's an elaborate prank by bored soldiers, a rival nation's spy operative with a bizarre sense of humor, a actual phantom thief Kaito Kid, or something else entirely. Anything that pointed suspicion away from "random teenager with time-stopping powers.
The operation proceeded smoothly after that. No complications, no close calls, no unexpected problems.
Hayato selected weapons carefully and thoughtfully, choosing proven reliability over exotic or specialized options. Standard military issue handguns in 9mm, a couple of reliable rifles, plenty of ammunition for both. Nothing so rare or specialized that its absence would immediately trigger high-level security alerts.
Everything vanished into his inventory with barely a thought, disappearing with a faint shimmer of impossible physics that never stopped being slightly surreal to witness.
Back in the safety of his apartment, Hayato sat at his desk with one of the handguns resting in front of him. He'd pulled it out specifically to examine it properly in good light, to get intimately familiar with the weight and feel and mechanics.
The metal was cool and surprisingly heavy, substantially heavier than movies and video games had led him to expect. The weight was solid, real, undeniable. This wasn't a toy or a prop or a training replica. This was a precisely engineered machine designed for the specific purpose of ending human life efficiently and reliably.
He ran his fingers carefully along the barrel, feeling the precision of the engineering, the quality of the construction. Checked the safety mechanism multiple times, tested the trigger pull carefully without any ammunition loaded, got familiar with how the grip felt in his hand, and how the balance worked.
"I could try to go to a shooting range, get actual professional instruction from qualified experts. That would definitely be the smart, safe move." Hayato thought out loud, turning the pistol over slowly in his hands, examining it from every angle. "Firearms aren't something you can safely master overnight or learn adequately from YouTube tutorial videos. A qualified instructor with real experience would help me develop good habits from the start, avoid potentially fatal mistakes, learn faster, and way more efficiently."
That was unquestionably the logical, rational choice.
"But I can't exactly show up at any shooting range in Japan with a military-issue handgun I'm completely unlicensed to own. That would raise immediate questions I really, really don't want to answer. Questions that end with police involvement."
So his realistic options were frustratingly limited.
"I guess I could try to somehow get legal access through official channels, jump through all the insane regulatory hoops Japan requires for civilian gun ownership. But that process takes actual months of background checks and training and evaluations, plus it creates an official paper trail directly linking my real identity to firearm ownership. Also, a terrible idea for obvious reasons."
Or...
"Find some truly empty area way outside the city limits. Use online military training manuals and instructional videos to teach myself the absolute basics. Practice in secret until I'm at least minimally competent and won't accidentally shoot myself."
Not ideal by any stretch. Significantly increased risk of developing bad habits or making dangerous mistakes. But ultimately doable if he was careful and methodical.
"Though honestly, conventional firearms probably won't even be particularly effective against cursed entities anyway." He set the pistol down carefully on his desk, frowning thoughtfully. "Spiritual threats and supernatural beings don't tend to care much about bullets made of regular metal. Maybe specially blessed ammunition or cursed bullets imbued with spiritual energy would actually work, but standard military issue? Probably just going to pass right through them uselessly."
The real tactical value of firearms wasn't for supernatural combat at all.
"Their actual purpose, their real use case, is dealing with human threats. Other players in the game, potentially hostile NPCs if those exist in this system, anyone who isn't supernatural but still genuinely dangerous and hostile."
And for that specific purpose, guns were incredibly, devastatingly effective. The great equalizer of human conflict. Didn't matter one bit if your opponent was bigger, stronger, better trained in hand-to-hand combat, or more experienced. A bullet was a bullet, physics was physics.
"Still though, can't hurt to have another skill in the toolbox, another option available. More capabilities mean more tactical flexibility in unpredictable situations."
Decision firmly made, he opened his laptop and started systematically searching for useful instructional content. Military training manuals available online, basic comprehensive firearm safety courses, and marksmanship tutorial videos from qualified experts. Everything useful he could find that didn't require physically showing up somewhere in person.
He'd teach himself through careful study and practice. It would definitely take longer than proper instruction, and he'd probably develop some suboptimal habits he'd need to correct later. But it was infinitely better than nothing, better than being completely helpless if firearms became necessary.
And who knows? Maybe eventually I'll manage to find a discreet instructor somewhere who won't ask too many uncomfortable questions about where exactly I acquired this military hardware.
Time would tell how that worked out.