Epilogue - Edge of Dreams

INT. DREAMSCAPE'S NICHIYOUBI NORTH HIGH SCHOOL - THIRD PRACTICE POOL - BEYOND TIME'S DAY

Nothing about the last instances of the Final Chapter was true.

Each and every fight has a factor of death─the chances in the impromptu set between Shirayuki Otogibanashi and Nayami Ayanami:

Close to zero.

More of the chances wind with her dying instead.

We have no need for examples─I don't need to prove myself in the most desperate way possible.

What's served atop the table: the dreadful Plot Armor.

I'd definitely despise the creator if she'd kill her character in nonchalance.

I was kicked at the nape to finally feel the physical pain I haven't felt in four years. What in the actual fuck? No worries, if stumbling down was the price─I'd gladly take the hits. I'd smile, probably have cogs and gears turned. Heart churned for what treasure has come now that I can finally fight without holding back.

Once more.

Her second kick missed by a hair's breadth.

Freezing the whole pool made its point that it can't be a reliable foothold.

Afterwards the failure was a compressed explosion, telling another kick was to rummage me to the ground underneath. Spectacularly chaining her commands, Miss Ayanami clutched her nerves─and I'm but a smudge of dust in her circle.

Not that I care if my status is overshadowed.

More importantly, how long does she plan to stay midair─this person?

I gave up on the foundation from my limbs, and rolled over the side.

Just then, the impact of her kick reached the floor.

She finally got a foothold for herself, but giving her close consideration about how long she can stay being all vertiginous above the ground can't yet be defined. Although not breaking it, the shake it brought to my ears resembled extra might. She didn't plan on stopping her blitzkrieg any time soon, all the while not using her ability for a direct attack…She has too many edges, like, what in the actual fuck?

Gripes are often reserved for perilous situations.

I would ramble all day about how it's decidedly out of my level.

Contrary to her starting move, she's only using her howitzers as bodily dynamic support.

She kept her groove. I kept my nonchalant ways of avoiding and defending without landing any hits. Flatly as it sounds, I kept grasping at straws and calculating on a tide turner. I'd planned to start blowing her back, but no chances could be met, and doubts emerged as to how the plan wasn't a plan at all.

In fairness, my predictions lived through and it made a sequence of events in the same style. Still, her hostile martial arts forced Snow White to heighten his reaction time. Thrashed, over and over again, without a comeback chance.

It wasn't like I was fighting a powerful villain.

However, I'd been forced to grow out of my comfort zone.

Like how it would be for high octane school battle stories─the spotlight of the day should shine upon the Strongest Mage.

I might have to recalculate for the next instance.

If not, I'd have an embarrassing defeat and the school would inevitably laugh at their kingpin's name.

It's mind over magic, and heck, it's gone all physical too that the disadvantages tripled in count.

I have a highly regarded status.

Also, it's not in every fiction that the strongest wields ice so I take pride in it. I prodded for about six years acting like the person who didn't really care. I may just have wanted to show my abilities and take their expectations up a hundred knots.

Now, could this be the chance for me to do it?

My predisposition somehow found itself in the garbage.

I changed my mind.

I could argue I had no care about victory or defeat, but that would come for the "past tense" notion.

We look at the present.

Her face crumpled in her inability to land yet another howitzer blast.

Unbelievable as I see it myself, my efforts in being dexterous paid off even without the intention.

It's not a fallacious statement.

It would have left me smug there for a second, but instead, I used it for the creation of an ice wall.

Despite lack of worldly impact, it had strength into it capable of breaking bones.

My usual parries couldn't begin to keep, so as the emergence of even sturdier shields.

It's a rout.

Still rough on the edges, but it was a horizontal rectangle thick, wide, and high. Mighty it would sustain more than twenty throws from a siege catapult. Mind you, I'm not trying to become an immovable object.

The wall couldn't suffice.

She suddenly emerged high up, having likely propelled her feet.

It wasn't that high of a wall.

Perhaps, I mistook it as good to hinder her for a while and turn it into my momentum.

The blaster boost can surely scare anyone who's trying their best to siphon time.

She came surprisingly easy to read, I had time to create another wall behind.

One to corner her for a sandwich─and at my foothold was a thinner and smaller wall. Faster than the first, and meant to vault me upwards to avoid getting squished with her. A fair show of my magic chain command as I see discouraging out of desperation.

I hoped the strategy would work but given how there was enough space to slip into the sides. She used the opportunity to make a swift escape but failed from consequential mindwork. Pillars emerged from below, thus ending the match─with Nayami Ayanami entrapped in the frozen barriers cast by the Strongest Mage.

"But that's not how it went, right?"

Smash to:

INT. DREAMSCAPE'S RANDOM BUS STOP - RAINING - BEYOND TIME'S DAY

"It's a rhetorical question, and the answer is yes?" I tilted my head. "It's not how it went, but it was the supposed outcome should it have continued."

He didn't say anything back.

"I would have unnecessarily upgraded my designation if it happened. More than the impactful introduction of a Psychic, they would have witnessed the birth of the first Level 6."

I would have broken through the unparalleled spot in the world.

"Seems unoriginal as a breakthrough point."

"Hmm?" I raised an eyebrow. "I know, right? The level system blatantly copies that of Kazuma Kamachi."

Level 1 through Level 5─with regards to the magical instead of the scientific community. From weak to strong, the explanation doesn't need to be complicated. Calculated numbers do adhere to them─but let's admit that attachment of interest goes towards the simple.

Shift the blame to the author, she's inclined to imitate what works.

I've been fretful knowing the phony representation firsthand, but never was I involved in its making that I'd throw a fastball for its removal.

I'm sure I couldn't have pitched anything better, and more so that I've yet to understand how they quantify magic output when it relies on nonlinear dynamics.

The underlined problem would have been rising through the unexplored ranks.

"You think too highly of yourself," Hotei abruptly dismissed.

Meh, it was better than they were only lurking around.

They didn't talk nor asserted existence.

Talking to one didn't make a difference─unlike how it was four years ago.

I'm sure in the outside world, I'd be selling fragments of my memory in order to communicate with them─but that also doesn't make any difference.

Pretty much, I complained to the fortune deity who's mysteriously keeping me company.

He wore a blue happi coat and his round glasses, almost that at-home person who's taking breaks at new year's eve.

Lazily the same description as before.

Please don't sweat the small details.

"Then how about nerfing her down?"

"It has been hard for me, too," he dismissed in such a beaten demeanor, and rested his head on the wall behind us.

Tired, he exhumed.

From the scenario I laid for him, it seems like it only drained his energy for how much bullshitting it contained.

A scenario of victory prior to a sloppy defeat.

I initially brought for him the chronicle thinking it was the best thing to hear from a warrior, but he has seen through the lies.

Now he's tired.

It's my fault, but I don't regret it.

It's not everyday that you can see a divine deity feeling rather humanly so it was bliss in itself.

I can't say I like him, though.

Hotei was besides my eccentric field of existence.

Whence the rift between fortune and misfortune emitted its disgust.

It couldn't have happened if not for the sudden rainfall, tragically enough that we're both at the bus stop in the middle of nowhere. Upfront was an empty asphalt road, and beyond was an endless 

We sat on chairs with poor ambience.

All the while listening to the heavy trickling of water down the asphalt road.

It took only a few moments for us to converse.

The fortune deity and I, their accursed immortal who tampered with Chaos Magic, don't get along─and will never be─but when a situation occurs where we meet, it amounts to a conversation neither of us can pass out.

It has been going on for a while, and it's not a dream nor is it inside reality.

It borders both.

Somewhere I'm thrown into each and every time I die─a personal purgatorial dreamscape reserved only for chaos.

"It's been four years since you've been immune to death, Shirayuki."

One single day in the past four years I don't want to talk about─and drag along the proceeding weeks.

"No, I died," I countered. "Let's not sugarcoat how it went there. It's kinda unbecoming of us."

Hotei was kind enough not to jab the hypocrite.

So, what did he just address? Immortal─in the sense that I'm forbidden from death. Sure, I knew: I've been immune to death for four years now…Or the theory says, but I fail to grasp my regenerative inheritance.

I might just want to kill myself and find out.

Although I stand alongside good ol' Wolverine, there's no corroborative proof to have existed until now.

I have my perfect memory reliable enough to say for a fact, my supposed immortality didn't show even once. As much as immortality is cool and wholesome if wishfulness bares itself: I have never died once.

The flair has become obsolete.

For example, a werewolf can only be a werewolf when you see one transform under the full moon.

As such, an immortal can't be an immortal from when he only says he's one.

It's not a matter of words─but an episodic moment.

"Yet you embraced death."

"You know, I'd rather not blatantly go around saying it for everyone who knows about it." Huff a sigh, Snow White flashed a contemptuous smirk. "Because I haven't tried killing myself even once."

Hotei didn't say anything, as in his part, there were no subjugatory statements forcing me to leap off from a tall building.

Well, in terms of his lack of reply, I hit the nettle, saying, "While the Mages are trying hard to push my level, the Gods are trying to make me acknowledge my position."

Blanked, nothing more than an empty shell.

Hotei stared into the far side. I've hit the truth of the matter, but I can see someone shrugging the notion easily from the lack of emotion. It's not like I had a forceful aura, either. I was talking with a God, it didn't matter whether I'm the Strongest Mage─or someone in their ranks.

"Both parties have one thing in common."

Hotei didn't mind, eyes focused on the swaying corn.

Disregarding the rain and noise trickling down the galvanized roof and the asphalt road.

I can point out what they're trying to do all I want, but he'd be unmoved nonetheless.

Well, it's not like I care if they cared.

I know what I'm getting at─and I'd dwell in such a space where I can answer the questions underlined.

Nayami Ayanami, the singularity who came to the Magic Side, who then stirred the power structure during her first hour.

I pushed myself back, the wall creaking under a small force. I imposed upon Hotei with great dissonance, "Shouldn't you be protecting her, not let her be used?"

"Do you remember being protected?" he countered back.

Wry.

Smirking at the worst of it, I pondered, "Yeah…I do remember carrying all the burden by myself, which is unfortunate when I could have been blessed."

I swear, the Human Side had it wrong when they named them, the Seven Lucky Gods.

"Huh, it wasn't a rhetorical question."

Hotei sighed as he debunked the assessment.

"No, you meant exactly what you said."

I suppose we won't meet each other in the middle.

Drawing shame from my mockery of astuteness, he asked, "Why don't you look into your mind and see what we sacrificed for you to live?"

"Fancy hearing that from a God who feeds off memories."

"You know well you misunderstood us."

"Nuh-uh, please don't act like it wasn't your fault in the first place."

I wish my throat could have burned.

"No, that's not true," he, such a man of unmatched reverence, argued to a certain factor of apology. "We did help you, Shirayuki."

"No, you did not," I stipulated, and looked up to somehow relax my head. "As far as I know, it was Amaterasu. And there's Azusa, my sisters Otohime and Orihime, and Naru. Miss Kuzuhara…then Yotsuba and Nagisa."

And while I did list down the people, Hotei found a way for him to be the hero, saying, "Why do you think they helped you?"

"I refuse to believe you sent them."

I wish my throat could have burned.

"You have a severely serious case of trust issue."

"It kind of works de facto when you're around," I ended. "I know now…You're trying to enlist my help?"

As if I'd believe him.

Hotei only sighed, deciding for himself then and there, saying, "Well, I don't think I can ask you for help now.

"Yeah…Do it yourself, man."

"I suppose I'll let her threaten life alongside you."

"Is it weird that I'm the devil in the book?" I asked in nonchalance. "I'd like to see her shred life."

I received a glare.

"If her battle continues, she'll hurt everyone along the way."

Following his point of view, I added, "And realizing her mishaps, she will end up hurting herself…Which I've gone through and you didn't flinch."

"So I need your help."

And when he said he can't rely on me, this damned Envoy of Children.

"No."

"Thank you for your kindness, Shirayuki Otogibanashi."

Hotei stood at the end of his gratitude─walking away into the road.

"I haven't agreed yet."

As the volume turned itself down, he disappeared─fading away like a bursting bubble along with the trickling of the rain.

I also stood up, huffing air from the coldness.

I'd impose upon better storytelling that I'd chase Hotei at the dead center of the road, and I'd be hit by a rummaging bus. Blasting headlight, clashing towards the bumper as an invitation to reality─soon to be roused awake. However, no such action was triggered─the calmness enthralled.

Nothing happened more than being awakened.

I opened my eyes, my body felt its heaviest in four years─and somehow, there was someone underneath.

A fake little sister supporting a senseless corpse.

"Onii-chan, you have to wake up now or I'll eventually collapse from how heavy you are…"