“Kalli?!”
Despite eight years having passed since their last meeting, Ryota recognized the goddess instantly, without any trouble.
Her image was too deeply ingrained in his mind.
It was associated with some not-so-pleasant things, so Ryota tensed up even more.
But not for long.
The rational, mathematical type of thinking, ingrained in him through years of vector manipulation, had become second nature.
If Accelerator had had a normal childhood, he probably would have grown up to be just as imperturbable.
With those kinds of computational abilities, it was only natural.
Ryota was the same.
He seriously doubted he could do anything to the one who had granted him such powerful abilities.
For her, it probably wouldn’t be any trouble to take them all back.
So he decided to just go with the flow.
And if things did come to a confrontation, he would do everything possible to make sure the bitch didn’t get any pleasure out of it.
If necessary, he would drive something sharp into his own temple.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kalli waved off the gloomy guy.
“How are you doing, little mouse? Happy to see me?”
“…You have no idea.” The sarcasm in his voice could be scooped up with a bucket.
“Relax,” the goddess snorted mockingly.
“I can see your intentions like an open book. It would be a little insulting if you got nervous and killed yourself just to spite me.”
“…You read minds?” Ryota asked without changing his expression, completely ignoring her words.
“Like I need your pathetic thoughts.” Another dismissive wave of her hand.
“I’ve lived alongside all sorts of people for longer than you can imagine. Your thoughts, intentions, aspirations, hopes are all an open book to me.” As she spoke, the girl calmly walked past the tense guy and unceremoniously sat down in his computer chair.
“Let’s say that’s true,” Ryota conceded.
Even among ordinary people, there are those who can read souls in a flash.
And she was a whole goddess who had existed for who knows how many years.
“So why are you here? And why now? And, I’ve been wanting to ask for a long time… why me?”
“Oh, so many question marks in one sentence,” Kalli said, spinning in place.
“Hmm… On one hand, I don’t have to answer your stupid questions at all. On the other hand… why not?” She smiled slyly and spun around again, sitting cross-legged.
‘Her behavior is different from last time,’ Ryota thought as he watched the strangely carefree Kalli.
“Of course it’s different!” The girl grinned broadly.
“I’m the mistress of my own thoughts and character. I’ll act however I want.”
“…Super,” the guy answered impassively, not at all surprised that he had been read again.
Then he fell silent, waiting for answers to his already asked questions.
If the goddess was in a good mood today, he should take advantage of it.
“Oh, so calculating,” the girl said, feigning shock.
“Alright then. The questions… I think I’ll start with the last one.” Kalli leaned back in the chair, put her hands on the armrests, and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.
“…You see, you’re not exactly an ordinary person.”
***
Kalli talked for a long time.
And that was tense.
Why was she answering his questions so thoroughly, after eight years of silence?
Why had she even come?
Judging by the pleased expression on the goddess’s face, she had again picked up on the questions arising in the guy’s mind.
She smiled a very sly smile.
‘Damn devil.’
“…So,” Ryota spoke up when Kalli paused her flow of eloquence.
“You sent me here because I somehow noticed your trinket, and my shitty father is a god?”
“Ha-ha-ha! Shitty father! Ahaha…” The girl rocked dangerously with laughter.
“Phew, it’s too bad he can’t hear that.
Phew…
You see, the thing is,” she turned in the chair again, “ordinary people can’t influence the embodied world.” Kalli raised a finger didactically.
Ryota frowned.
“…You mean those guys who were bothering you behind the garages?”
“The very same,” the girl nodded, pleased with his perceptiveness.
“But, if I understand correctly, you provoked them yourself.”
“So what? That doesn’t give them the right to call me a bitch. I don’t forgive that kind of thing.”
The guy barely managed to suppress an unwanted thought.
He didn’t want to “piss off” this crazy woman.
“Don’t bother. ‘Don’t think about a white zebra.’ Same thing here. The harder you try to hide something from me, the more obvious it becomes.” She smirked.
“Don’t worry. As you’ve already noticed, I’m in a good mood today. And you’re a whole little mouse, not a brainless cockroach. So I’ll forgive you this time.”
“…We’ve digressed,” Ryota said impassively, hinting that it was time to continue.
“Yeah, yeah.” Kalli stretched.
“You see, embodied worlds are incomplete.” She spread her arms.
“And the people living in them have one fundamental difference from ‘real’ ones. They are incapable of Faith!”
“…Something tells me we mean different things by that word,” Ryota commented.
He had spent considerable time online studying various religious movements.
At least it was some source of information about possible enemies.
“Indeed,” the goddess nodded calmly.
“‘Faith,’ in my understanding, is what allows people to create gods and bring the worlds they imagine into being. A kind of omnipotent power that only humanity can wield.”
“I understand,” Ryota said, quickly discarding several of his thoughts about gods and their existence in this world.
“And how does that affect the impossibility of ordinary people living in embodied worlds?”
“I honestly haven’t fully figured it out myself,” Kalli shrugged.
“I’ve only observed this phenomenon once. But from what I understand, the world simply grinds them up and absorbs them. Figuratively speaking,” she added, noticing Ryota’s gloomy expression.
“You see, ordinary people are different from the inhabitants of embodied worlds. When they get inside, the world calmly reshapes them into the common type, turning them into…”
“Canon characters,” the guy interrupted, suddenly understanding the whole point.
“Yes,” the goddess said, not at all angry at being cut off.
For some reason, her face even bore a very pleased expression.
“It happens instantly. Their consciousness, memories, and thoughts become clouded. And along with the crude removal of the part of the soul responsible for Faith, the result is quite interesting. And that’s where you, a demigod, come in!” Kalli slapped her hands on the armrests.
“You are extremely different from both ‘ordinary’ people and the ’embodied.’ And you have enough power that the world can’t do anything to you. After all, it isn’t sentient and can’t consciously control its actions.”
“…So,” Ryota began after a short pause for thought, “am I the only demigod in the world?”
“Pfft, of course not,” the girl shook her head condescendingly.
“I wouldn’t say there are a ton of you, but a couple dozen in the whole world could be found.
Finding a demigod is quite difficult, of course.
But if I set that as a goal, I could do it in a couple of years.
The thing is,” another sly smile, “each of you demigods possesses a certain… gift.
I think that’s the most accurate term.
Some have incredible charisma.
Some can see the future.
Some are damn strong, by human standards, of course.
And you… you can walk through dreams.”
“I thought I just saw the future.”
“It’s not that simple,” Kalli shook her head.
“In many religions and beliefs, the world of dreams is a separate, independent dimension. When a person falls asleep, they only glimpse its distorted reflection at the very edge. Then they wake up in shock. And, as often happens, such human belief does not go unanswered. And so, there you are. One who can look much deeper and stay there longer. Practically every night, you travel to a world embodied by human faith. Does that ring a bell?”
“I understand. And the other demigods, I take it, can’t withstand the world’s counter-pressure?”
“Worse. According to my calculations, they will unconsciously fight off part of the pressure, while another part will slowly eat away at their sanity and consciousness. Basically, they will gradually go crazy. Hell, even you have fallen under this influence!” The girl pointed at Ryota’s gray hair.
“And you’re blocking ninety-nine percent of the pressure. The remaining part can barely get through even the natural defenses of an ‘ordinary’ person!”
Ryota blinked.
This explanation was logical.
And it led to one question.
“But I keep diving into the dream world every night,” he began.
“…and it’s at night that something happens that makes me look like this now.”
“Exactly. Despite your almost one hundred percent protection, at the moments you enter the dream dimension, your defense gets a little distracted. Not for long and very slightly. But that moment is enough to influence you just a little.”
“…But why THIS way?” Ryota waved his hand in front of himself, drawing the interlocutor’s attention to his body.
It looked damn like Accelerator’s, by the way.
Even despite his daily training, his body was built in such a way that he was almost incapable of gaining “mass.” Of course, even with such a “drawback,” his lankiness didn’t look like weakness in the slightest.
It was just that if Ryota put on a baggy turtleneck and loose pants, he would become almost an exact copy of Accelerator, except for his height.
“Features of your power,” the goddess waved her hand in front of her face, as if talking about something insignificant.
“I had to deceive two worlds so you could use vector control.”
“…Deceive?” Ryota latched onto the word.
“Well, yes. I am, after all, the goddess of Lies, Deceit, and Evil Jokes.”
*Click*
It sounded like everything fell into place.
It came from under Ryota’s skull and even into the external world.
So much was explained by the goddess’s casually stated fact.
“You’re damn right! I wonder if there was even a single word of truth in everything I told you today!” Kalli curved her lips in a VERY cheerful and nasty grin.
“Well then…” She spun around sharply in her chair, turning her face to the computer, not giving Ryota time to react in any way.
“I think it’s time to get answers to your first two questions!”
The words hung in the air: “BUT WILL THEY BE TRUE?”
Ryota gritted his teeth in annoyance.
“You see, here’s the joke,” Kalli began her story as if the last minute hadn’t happened.
“The flow of time in embodied worlds is very chaotic.
Nothing like the familiar flow of a river.
It’s more like the rotation of a hurricane.
And like the air in that same hurricane, time in embodied worlds is cyclical.
The world calmly exists until the end of the written canon.
Then it restarts.
This happens constantly.
Even now, somewhere out there, a huge number of worlds continue to recursively disappear and reappear.
That’s how they work.
And the same thing would have threatened this one,” she pointed her finger at the floor, “if you hadn’t changed the canon.”
A pleased smile lit up Kalli’s face.
She hurried over to the computer.
She bypassed the password as if it didn’t exist.
Then she opened the browser and typed a very familiar address into the search bar.
“…What are you doing? I’ve already checked. This world doesn’t have Webno…” Ryota’s words caught in his throat.
The monitor calmly displayed the interface of a site he knew from his past world.
The one where he used to read Novels and fanfics.
“I deceived your computer into believing it was connected to your past world’s network,” the goddess shrugged nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t just done something completely absurd.
“Never mind.” Another second, and the girl typed something into the site’s search.
A few moments later, a fanfic page opened on the screen.
The header image featured a girl with blue hair and eyes sticking her tongue out on a yellow background.
” ‘MHA: My Vector Manipulation Breaks My Hero Academia’ by GodNDevil?
”
‘is that author also a god??’ Ryota thought to himself.
“Yep. Here, read it,” Kalli even vacated the chair with an expression of great anticipation on her face.
“Just the prologue is fine.”
Giving the girl a gloomy look, Ryota carefully sat down in the chair and turned to the monitor, trying to keep the goddess in his field of vision.
Scrolling down past the list of eighteen chapters, he steeled himself and opened the very first one, delving into the reading.
***
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN I’M THE MAIN CHARACTER OF A FANFIC?!”