Book 1
Chapter Zero: Forgotten Battle
Previously... in a scene nobody remembers. Not even Ken.
The city of Akakawa was on fire. Well, not exactly on fire—more like it was smoking a little, like someone left too many incense sticks burning. The air smelled of sandalwood and something slightly scorched, mixed with the warm scent of baked goods and an unsettling whiff of flammable.
On top of what was left of a bakery with walls that's crumbling like stale cookies, stood BaronBothernaught, Duke of Minor Annoyances.
His shape against the hazy sky was something to see. His cape wasn't cloth, but a bunch of tangled charger cables, crackling with static. His scepter was just a brand-new, never-used plunger.
His eyes, usually a dull gray, burned with the kind of anger only someone who got served lukewarm udon three times in a row could understand.
"KENHANZORI!" he yelled, his voice bouncing off the rooftops, slightly muffled by the smoke.
He stood on a floating desk that kept slowly spinning for no reason, making his dramatic speech feel a little dizzying.
"I'M BACK! And this time, you'll pay… THE OVERDUE LIBRARY FINE!" The last words hung in the air like a threat from a very strict librarian.
Ken Hanzori stood on the opposite rooftop, leaning against a slightly burned chimney, chewing on a takoyaki skewer.
A piece of octopus hung from his mouth. He blinked slowly, looking completely bored.
"I don't even read," he said flatly, his voice barely louder than a distant siren.
Baron Bothernaught's charger-cable cape crackled with anger and snagged on the floating desk.
"Blasted micro-USB…" he muttered, yanking it free—but not before three sparks fell into the alley below, where they glowed faintly before winking out.
"Oh, you WILL read! You'll suffer through bad grammar, missing footnotes, and wrong citations! You'll face the terror of the Dewey Decimal System!"
Ken didn't even flinch as something flew past his ear, a thick, stapled pamphlet thrown hard.
It exploded midair into glitter and a feeling of pure paperwork misery, leaving behind the smell of old paper and disappointment.
"Seriously?" Ken muttered, brushing glitter off his always-clean coat. He gave the Baron a tired look.
"Why do I always get villains who sound like tax forms or angry librarians?"
Baron Bothernaught ignored him, raising his plunger scepter high. A weird glow came from the rubber cup.
"Behold! My ultimate move! Get ready, Ken Hanzori, for the worst thing of all: An Unskippable Dialogue Cutscene!"
Time stopped. The smoke froze. The siren's noise cut off. A giant glowing textbox appeared in the sky, taking up the whole horizon, with a slow-moving scroll bar.
"Before I destroy you, before I make you pay those late fees," the textbox said in fancy, unchangeable letters, "I'll tell you my tragic backstory in five, no, seven, parts! Each part comes with interpretive dance breaks, a deep dive into my childhood trauma involving a lost receipt, and a full orchestra of annoyed office workers playing dramatic music!"
"NOPE." Ken didn't wait.
He moved fast, kicking off the roof and slamming straight into the glowing textbox. It shattered like broken contracts, pieces of glowing words flying everywhere and leaving behind more than glitter.
One shard, thicker than the others, didn't dissolve. It floated just beyond Ken's peripheral vision, reflecting not his face, but a symbol no living accountant would recognize.
His foot kept going, hitting Baron Bothernaught square in the chest. The Baron flew off the roof, screaming about gluten problems and how important it is to organize your files.
Time started again with a quiet whoosh. A bird chirped like it was commenting on the whole thing. The smell of burning incense returned.
Ken landed back on the roof, dusting his hands off with a sigh.
"I'll probably forget this by dinner," he muttered, picking up his dropped takoyaki skewer.
And he did.
---
Chapter 1: Celestial Glitch
The Transcendence Convergence
At the very top of the universe, way above the stars and slightly to the left of making sense, floated the Transcendence Realm.
It was a place of weird, impossible beauty where even logic didn't always work, and sometimes time ran backward just for fun. Here, beyond what normal people could ever understand, lived G.O.D.
But not just one god. Oh no.
There were three: the Generator, the Organizer, and the Destroyer.
They were like the builders, the record-keepers, and the cleanup crew of everything that exists.
They didn't always agree; their last big vote, about what to have for cosmic lunch, accidentally wiped out the Spaghetti Whale species. A real lunchtime tragedy.
Even with their arguments, they had one important job: since ancient times, when a celestial event occurred and the stars lined up just right, they handed out Mone.
Not money, but the super-powerful energy that keeps every living thing alive (and, on rare occasions, non-living things). It was the life force of the whole universe.
And today… was that day.
To cosmic record-keepers, it was "0Ty, ZeroTranscendence Year."
To people on Earth, it was just… Thursday. Or maybe a Tuesday with really bad phone service. They had no idea their world was about to get flipped upside down.
Generator floated in a crackling energy cloud, tapping glowing symbols into the sky. "Alright," he said, his voice deep and echoey. "Is everyone's life-energy ready?"
"All sorted by name, time, and with way too much detail," Organizer said, adjusting his star-shaped glasses. His robe, made of starlight, trailed endless cosmic spreadsheets behind him.
Destroyer, always impatient, leaned on a broken asteroid he'd blown up just to have something to sit on.
"Can we hurry this up? I've got an apocalypse scheduled for dessert."
The three gods hovered around a huge, pulsing sphere, the Core of Mone Distribution.
Inside, trillions of glowing threads stretched out like a spiderweb, each one connected to a living thing's ATM, the Authority's Transcendental Machine.
A metaphysical machine to store the authority's transcendence energy.
Generator raised a glowing finger.
"On three. Starting universal energy refresh. One… two…"
💥
There was no "three."
Instead of spreading out like it should, every single thread of Mone snapped, twisted, and shot straight into one tiny, flickering dot.
All of it.
Every last drop of cosmic energy went into one unsuspecting baby.
As the Mone threads snapped toward the baby, the cosmic ledger flickered.
For half a heartbeat, the numbers rearranged themselves into a configuration even Organizer couldn't parse—then reverted as if nothing happened.
---
The Divine Glitch Baby
Silence filled the Transcendence Realm. Even a supernova in the distance sounded like a whisper.
Organizer's eye twitched.
Destroyer blinked twice. "Did… we just…?"
Generator stared at his hand, now weirdly quiet.
"I didn't even sneeze," he muttered.
They zoomed in, looking through time and space until they saw him: a tiny human baby, wrapped in a fancy Akakawa blanket, yawning in a golden crib.
His hiccups accidentally turned nearby candles into scary little fireballs. A soft golden glow pulsed around him, the sign of all that cosmic energy he'd somehow gotten.
"…Well," Organizer said stiffly, "there's been a small… cosmic accounting error."
Destroyer laughed, shaking the stars.
"He took everything! Even the squirrels' share!"
"Poor squirrels," Generator murmured. "Their nuts won't be as good."
---
The Clause of Cosmic Debt
Organizer, always the rule-maker, was already writing a contract in glowing divine ink.
"Fine. We add a rule. A strict, unbreakable rule. If the energy wasn't meant for him, he has to give it back. Make it sound fancy and impossible to avoid."
He wrote: "HE MUST RETURN WHAT WAS NEVER HIS."
Destroyer crossed his arms.
"And if he doesn't?"
"He will," Generator said, his voice serious. "Or the system will fix itself… violently."
He frowned.
"The refund protocol wasn't meant to be used this soon. It's… extreme."
Organizer sealed the scroll with a sound like a cosmic lock clicking.
"We'll watch. And if balance needs fixing, we'll nudge things along."
Destroyer sighed, cracking a few distant stars.
"And if he messes up the whole universe, I guess I clean it up?"
He looked down at the glowing baby.
"As always," the others said together.
Below, the baby giggled in his sleep. A fancy silk curtain near him turned to solid gold.
The wet nurse screamed and fainted.
---
A Pegasus Sneezes
In the sky, the cosmic alignment ended. The stars relaxed. Time started moving normally again.
Down on Earth, life went on like nothing happened.
Rain fell. A coconut hit a merchant on the head.
And on a quiet hillside, a pegasus sneezed so hard it tripped over its own wings, tumbling down into a muddy rice field, scaring a bunch of frogs.
Its small wings cast a shadow too large for his body—one that lingered a breath too long after he tumbled into the mud.
The world had changed. Its energy had been rerouted.
No one knew yet.
Not even the baby, glowing in his crib with his passed-out nurse nearby.
But fate had just made a very big mistake.
Or not.