When Shoutarou Rinura heard this clapping, he finally felt a tangible sensation of glory.

He felt like he had now reached the most glorious peak of his life.

The fact that he won the top-ranked Gold Award the first time he ever tried writing a light novel from the ill.u.s.trious Thunderbolt Literature meant that he could doubtlessly consider himself a genius with this achievement!

While his idiotic peers in middle school spent so much wasted effort on learning useless things, busying themselves with joining meaningless social and club activities, pretending to be interested in things they weren't in order to maintain hypocritically fake relations.h.i.+ps… he was already on the way to becoming a professional! Soon, he would be able to quit school which he hated so much and start a free life of his own as a genius author… That was what Shoutarou Rinura believed.

Rinura was quite satisfied with his current moment of glory as well as the beautiful future he envisioned for himself. However, he was still rather aggrieved at what'd just happened in the waiting room.

That Kous.h.i.+ Nomura was just a guy who spouted nonsense! That Seigo Harano was handsome on the outside, but merely a violent hoodlum on the inside!

Rinura bore a grudge against these two fellow authors of his. However, there was nothing he could do. After all, apart from being a light novel author, he was simply an ordinary middle school student.

As for why he began writing, it was actually because of his dreams.

One day, Rinura was resting at home with a cold. He hazily had a dream on that day, and after he woke up, he was seized with a strong urge to express what he witnessed in his dream. And so, he picked up his pen, and began writing a story despite his inexperience… a story about someone taking revenge.

The main character of his story was the prince of a small kingdom. The prince's kingdom was invaded by a powerful kingdom, and his father, the king, personally went out into battle and died in combat. The prince obeyed his father's secret dying message to him to surrender to the powerful kingdom.

However, he didn't expect that after the powerful kingdom accepted the surrender, the powerful kingdom instead publicly went against the terms of capitulation and executed all the royalty of their small kingdom, including the prince!

The main character witnessed all of his relatives being cruelly executed, and died as well while wallowing in the depths of despair.

The main character's soul came into contact with an unknown existence in the void, and signed a contract with it so that he could possess a corpse and have a new life for himself.

After coming back into the world, the only thing he wanted was revenge. He wanted to kill all the royalty of the powerful kingdom!

According to the terms of his contract, he wasn't allowed to do anything unrelated to his revenge until his revenge was complete. And, no matter how, no matter what method he died by, he would be able to possess yet another corpse and be reborn over and over again.

He tried over and over again, experiencing death many times over, to the extent where his pain became numbness, and his hatred and desire for revenge hardened his heart into ice… only after he died more than ten times, jumping from corpse to corpse, did he finally succeed in killing the first target from the enemy's royal family.

This story took Rinura an incredibly long time to write. Although he knew what he wanted to write, it was quite difficult for him to express the content using words.

It was similar to recalling the contents of an excellent movie. That would be quite simple. However, writing the movie's storyline down and doing its scenes justice through the power of words alone would be an incredibly difficult task. For some people, it would be impossible no matter how long they had. They just wouldn't be able to express such detailed scenes using the power of words.

Rinura kept thinking about giving up after he experienced how hard it truly was to write a story. However, that dream of his kept repeating over and over again, and it always made him impulsively want to continue writing. And so, he barely managed to keep persisting.

Why did he keep having that dream? Why did that dream make him feel so strongly that he wanted to write it down?

Although Rinura wondered about such things, he never told anyone about it.

And after he entered his story into Thunderbolt Literature's Newcomer Author Awards, and got chosen as a potential candidate after the first round, Rinura started treating his novel as being a product of his own talent.

After his novel was announced as being chosen to win the top-ranked Gold Award, Rinura now believed himself to be a genius.

'No matter what that Nomura says, I'm the Gold Award winner, the most glorious person at this award ceremony!' Shoutarou Rinura was currently quite proud of himself.

"Please welcome Head Editor Souzo Hattori from Thunderbolt Literature to the stage for his speech."

The male and female hosts gave an introduction that livened up the atmosphere, then followed the script and invited the head editor onto the stage to speak first.

This was the first time that Seiji had ever met Souzo Hattori. He had only heard him speak on the phone before in a previous timeline, when Hattori informed him that Saki Yos.h.i.+zawa had died. Seiji felt that this white-haired head editor who wore black-rimmed eyegla.s.ses appeared just as he imagined.

"First of all, as always, I would like to express my sincere thanks to everyone present as well as everyone unable to attend that have all extended their support to our Thunderbolt Literature. Thanks to everyone's continued support, Thunderbolt Literature has become what it is today, and even our Newcomer Awards Ceremony has reached its eighteenth year…"

Hattori spoke at a normal pace in an unhurried fas.h.i.+on. He first discussed the situation of the light novel market in the past year, as well as mentioning some manga, anime, and games that were produced from Thunderbolt Literature's light novels. Finally, he discussed and praised the award-winning light novels that won today's awards and gave an introduction of all seven award-winning light novels and pointed out their excellent points, starting from the Gold Award and finis.h.i.+ng with the special award.

"…Finally, with regards to 'Brother Monogatari,' I would like to clarify that the author himself actually didn't enter our contest. I was the one who made a special recommendation for it. At the time of my recommendation, the author had already signed a publication contract with us. I personally believe that this story's quality will have excellent sales even without any awards added to it. However, it would be a waste for such a high-quality light novel to be published without any awards attached to it, which was why I gave it my recommendation. Everyone knows the result by now. The judges unanimously gave 'Brother Monogatari' excellent reviews, which was why an exception was made for 'Brother Monogatari' to enter the contest and receive a special award. I'm truly delighted with this outcome. Also, I express my sincere apologies to the judges that had to spend their precious time reading an extra novel due to my willfulness, as well as to the author of 'Brother Monogatari' who didn't learn about this until after I had it done for him."

Head Editor Hattori bowed deeply towards the judges who were sitting near the stage, then he turned towards the authors and bowed deeply towards Seiji.

Seiji exchanged glances with him and accepted what Head Editor Hattori expressed to him.

And so, Seiji stood up as well and returned the bow after Head Editor Hattori finished bowing.

Everyone began clapping upon witnessing this scene.

Nomura clapped as well, and Miyabi and the other authors started clapping after him… but only Rinura refused to clap.

Shoutarou Rinura was feeling highly displeased from seeing this scene.

Already signed a publication contract with Thunderbolt Literature…? The head editor personally recommended this light novel…? This seemed like it was on a grander scale than even his light novel that won the Gold Award!

'Even though this special award is clearly just a mere consolation award… the h.e.l.l!'

Rinura's grudge grew deeper inside as he felt like something was about to erupt from deep within his heart.

Meanwhile, it was now time for the award part of the ceremony after Head Editor Hattori finished talking.

The person who was handing out the awards to the authors was the president of an anime production company. She was a woman who appeared to be in her forties. She was wearing a suit and light makeup. She seemed rather regal, mature, and reliable.

"Eighteenth Annual Newcomer Authors' Award Ceremony, Gold Award winner, Shoutarou Rinursan!" the male host called out Rinura's name first.

Rinura stood up and walked up to the anime production company president.

He started feeling nervous when he noticed that everyone below the stage was looking at him. His body started involuntarily freezing up.

When he reached the middle of the stage, he strongly realized that he was now the center of attention, which caused his heartbeat to quicken rapidly.

*Beat… beat… beat…*

Something deep within his heart gradually began to expand from within him.

"Hmm?"

Seiji suddenly noticed that something was wrong, so he secretly cast [Astral Vision].

As a result, he saw a faint black mist emanating from Shoutarou Rinura's body!