chapter01 · 003-ep3
Episode 3: I Declared My True Name and My Stats Broke
Still sitting on the bed, I stared blankly at the screen floating in front of me.
Name: Ichinose Saku
True Name: Chaos Telos Kurnugias
Epithet: The End of Beginnings
Job: Abyss King Who Rules the End
However many times I read it, what was written didn't change. The true name, the epithet, Abyss King Who Rules the End — every last bit of it was straight out of my notebook, word for word, letter for letter.
Below that, it said:
STR: 8 (+Unmeasurable / Release Rate ???)
"Unmeasurable." What is that even supposed to mean.
I didn't get it. No — honestly, I did. Kid-me wrote the King's stats as "Unmeasurable" and "∞." I even remember switching to that after the fact, because filling everything in with 9999 looked too weak. What part of 9999 is weak?!
And now that "Unmeasurable" was sitting right next to my STR of 8. "Release Rate" was a field I'd never seen, and for some reason it was blacked out.
My brain refused to keep up. At all.
Get a grip, Ichinose Saku. This isn't a dream, right? Or did too much happen today, and my brain snapped and I'm just seeing things?
But for a hallucination, the text was absurdly crisp. Even the wording of "Abyss King Who Rules the End" was unmistakably my taste. I refuse to believe my own brain could reproduce my dark history this faithfully, down to the letter.
So it was real, then. And if it was real — what did that mean?
My Job was 【Chuunibyou】, and the skill column was supposed to be empty. Then, right after I reread the notebook, it turned into this. Which points to... the notebook.
I looked down at †The Book of the King† lying at my feet. That blotchy black cover, the white-penned title. If the things I wrote in this notebook really become power... isn't that ridiculously huge?
No, calm down. First things first: verify. With that thought, I sat cross-legged and folded my arms.
To verify, I'd need a place. My own room was out — the walls are thin, and Seina's room is right next door. If she heard me, my life would be over.
The yard was out too. The neighbors' window is right there. Mom said just last month she could hear them chopping stuff for dinner, so a voice would definitely carry.
What about the park? No — parks have people even at night, dog walkers and all. The riverbank was out too, what with the runners.
Inside a dungeon... no. Minors can't enter late at night, and it leaves a record. A guy who registered literally today going in alone at night — people would absolutely read something into it.
And besides — say I found a place and it worked. Am I doing this in front of those guys?
Tomorrow I'm supposed to dive Kanadun with the four of them, in rented gear. Am I going to recite, right before their eyes, those five lines that open with "Before the kalpa's dawn I came, and past its end I remain"?
No way. Absolutely not.
I covered my face with both hands. Yamabuki would laugh, guaranteed. Osawa would film it, guaranteed. Miyake might actually get weirdly into it, which would be its own special agony. And Fujidou would say nothing and take notes, deadpan. Notes on WHAT?
But if I don't use it, I stay a STR-8 high schooler forever. What do you want from me?!
No, hold on. Is this even usable in combat? I've got exactly one skill: 'The Words I Wrote Are No Idle Words.' The name gives zero hints about what it does, and there are no instructions.
Do I find out by reading it? Or do I just touch it?
I reached toward the screen — and stopped.
......It's gone. The true name, the epithet, Abyss King Who Rules the End, Unmeasurable — all of it, gone.
Name: Ichinose Saku
Lv: 1
Job: Chuunibyou
HP: 22
MP: 14
STR: 8
AGI: 11
INT: 13
LUK: 7
Titles:
Skills:
Achievements:
Titles, skills, achievements — all blank white. The exact same screen I'd looked at that afternoon.
"Huh?"
The word just came out.
"No, I mean — huh?! Why?!"
I scrambled to yank the card out of my wallet and held it up with both hands, but the Job still read Chuunibyou.
I picked the notebook up and opened it from page one. Magic circle, true-name practice, chronology — the contents were exactly the same as before. And nothing happened.
Flipping through again — nothing. Staring at the card with the notebook open — nothing.
Panic started creeping in.
What WAS that, then? Did I misread it? Was I so worn out I was hallucinating? Because if so, the single kindest thing that happened to me today was a hallucination.
......I was dangerously close to crying. I finally thought something good had come along, and handing it to me just to snatch it right back is dirty play, you know.
Why did it vanish? Why did it show up before? What's different between then and now?
I'd been reading the notebook earlier too. The card never left my wallet. I was sitting on the same bed...... oh. My voice. Earlier, I said it out loud. Nothing else comes to mind, so that's probably it.
A glance at my door — shut. No sound from the hallway either. Seina was probably in the bath, and my sister was in her room doing university coursework.
I pulled the futon over my head. This should make a little voice safe, at least.
Then I took a deep breath.
"B...before the kalpa's dawn I came, and past its... end I remain..."
It came out tiny. Tiny enough that even I was wincing. A futon over my head, and it still turned into nothing but a mush-mouthed mumble.
Nothing happened. No screen appeared, and the Job field still read 【Chuunibyou】.
"Huh?"
Wrong conditions, then? It wants me to say it louder? Thinking that, I drew in another breath.
"Before the kalpa's dawn I c—came, and past its... end I... remain..."
I flubbed it. On top of that, I couldn't stand the sound of my own voice, and the ending tapered off into nothing. Don't stumble over something you wrote out hundreds of times, me.
Still nothing.
Inside the futon, I hugged my knees. I'm pretty sure I'd figured it out. I just didn't want to admit it.
The me from earlier hadn't been embarrassed. Rereading the notebook had made me nostalgic, and I was fully back in the old headspace. That's why it came out without a shred of hesitation, and I managed to carry that whole long name to the very end.
The condition, almost certainly, is doing it for real.
Mumbling, blushing, flubbing — none of it's allowed. It has to be said, deadpan, all the way through, at the exact same voltage as that day in eighth grade. So I'm supposed to do chuunibyou at full power, is that it?...... No. There is nothing on this earth I want to do less!
For a while, I lay in the futon playing dead.
Fine. I'll do it. It's not like I have a choice.
I closed my eyes and brought back the feeling of when I had the notebook open. The afternoons spent drawing magic circles. The lunch breaks spent watching the window and murmuring "the time draws near." Kid-me wasn't the least bit embarrassed.
Take me back to those days. No — please come back. I'm begging you.
I opened my eyes.
"—Before the kalpa's dawn I came, and past its end I remain."
From there, my mouth remembered the rest. All five lines, down to the final "Lord of the Land of No Return," without a single stumble, voice kept low.
The instant I finished, my sanity came back. I want to die.
But a screen floated up before my eyes.
True Name: Chaos Telos Kurnugias
Epithet: The End of Beginnings
Job: Abyss King Who Rules the End
STR: 8 (+Unmeasurable / Release Rate ???)
Skill: The Words I Wrote Are No Idle Words
It's back. It came back!
Under the futon, I sat frozen with my mouth hanging half open. So that's how it works.
I wanted to run one proper check. Even in games, when you get a new power, step one is confirming the specs. Last time it vanished before I noticed, so I pulled the alarm clock over from my bedside to measure how long it lasts.
I kept quiet, watching the second hand. One minute — still there. Five minutes — still there.
A little past the eight-minute mark, the text on the screen thinned out. At just over ten minutes, it faded away completely, and the Job field returned to 【Chuunibyou】.
"—Before the kalpa's dawn I came, and past its end I remain."
Recite all five lines to the end, and it comes back.
Go quiet again and it fades; chant, and it returns.
A few more cycles and I had it down. It survives about ten minutes of silence. Past that, the King's stats vanish — and one more recitation brings them back to exactly the state they were in before they faded.
But only when I say it like I mean it.
As a test, around the fifth try, I let my guard down and recited it at roughly "Before the kalpa's dawn I came, and past its end I remain (lol)" energy. Nothing happened. Redid it deadpan, and it came back.
For good measure, I tried stopping after the first line — that did nothing either. Apparently you have to finish all five. ......That's LONG.
I honestly can't tell if these specs are merciful or brutal.
Back under the futon, I thought it through again. If it fades after ten minutes of silence, then it fades while you're just listening to someone talk, or mid-fight while you're catching your breath. And every single time, I'd have to redo the five lines. Deadpan.
"You can't stay strongest unless you're doing chuunibyou at all times" — is that not the worst fuel economy in history?
I poked my head out of the futon and breathed out.
This morning, I was insisting I'd graduated from chuunibyou. I threw out the bandages and the eyepatch, and I fully intended to live a normal life starting from high school. And what got handed to me instead was this. What kind of harassment is that?
......No, but wait. If I can just stomach the embarrassment... isn't this actually, genuinely strong?