Book 1
Chapter Zero: Forgotten Battle
Previously... in a scene nobody remembers. Not even Ken.
The city of Akakawa was on fire. Well, not really on fire. It was more like it was smoking a bit, the way a room does when you light too much incense. The air smelled like sandalwood, something burning, and fresh bread, with another scent that was probably flammable.
On top of a bakery that was falling apart like an old cookie stood Baron Bothernaught, the Duke of Minor Annoyances.
He looked pretty weird standing there against the smoky sky. Instead of a normal cape, he wore a tangled mess of phone chargers that crackled with electricity. His big fancy staff was just a brand-new plunger.
His eyes, normally a boring gray, were glowing with the pure rage of a guy who was served cold noodles three times in a row.
"KEN HANZORI!" he shouted. His voice echoed off the buildings, a little harder to hear because of the smoke. He was standing on a floating desk that kept spinning slowly, which made his dramatic speech feel kind of goofy.
"I'M BACK! And this time, you'll finally pay… YOUR OVERDUE LIBRARY FINE!"
The last words hung in the air like a threat from a very strict librarian.
Ken Hanzori was on the roof across from him, leaning on a blackened chimney and chewing on a stick of takoyaki. A piece of octopus dangled from his mouth. He blinked slowly, looking totally bored.
"I don't even read," he said, his voice so quiet you could barely hear it over a distant siren.
Baron Bothernaught's charger-cape sparked with anger and got caught on the desk. "Stupid micro-USB..." he mumbled, pulling it free. A few sparks fell into the alley below and then went out.
"Oh, you WILL read! You'll have to deal with bad grammar, missing page numbers, and stuff that isn't even true! You will know the horror of the library's filing system!"
Ken didn't even move. Something flew past his ear—a thick booklet, thrown like a ninja star. It blew up in mid-air, spraying glitter everywhere and leaving behind a feeling of pure dread, like you get when you have to do taxes. The air smelled like old paper and failure.
"You've got to be kidding me," Ken said, wiping glitter from his perfectly clean coat. He gave the Baron a tired look.
"Why are my enemies always boring guys who sound like government forms or angry librarian?"
The Baron ignored him and held his plunger up high. The rubber part started to glow with a weird light.
"Look! My most powerful move! Get ready, Ken Hanzori, for the absolute worst thing imaginable: An Unskippable Cutscene!"
Everything stopped. The smoke froze. The siren went silent. A huge, glowing text box appeared in the sky, with a scroll bar that was moving painfully slowly.
"Before I crush you, before I make you pay those late fees," the text box displayed in fancy letters you couldn't skip, "I will tell you my sad backstory in five—no, seven—parts! Each part will have dancing, a long story about my childhood trauma over a lost receipt, and dramatic music played by an orchestra of annoyed office workers!"
"NOPE." Ken didn't hesitate. He kicked off from the roof and flew right into the glowing text box. It shattered like glass, and glowing words went everywhere, along with more glitter. One piece of the box, thicker than the rest, didn't disappear. It floated near Ken, and for a second, its reflection wasn't his face, but a strange symbol that looked like nothing you'd see on a tax form.
His foot kept going and hit Baron Bothernaught right in the chest. The Baron went flying off the roof, screaming about gluten-free diets and why you should always organize your files.
Time started up again with a little whoosh. A bird chirped, like it was making a comment. The smell of burning incense came back.
Ken landed on the roof and dusted off his hands with a sigh.
"I'll probably forget about this before dinner," he muttered, picking up the takoyaki he'd dropped.
And he did.
---
Chapter 1: Celestial Glitch
The Transcendence Convergence
At the very top of everything, past all the stars and a little to the left of where things make sense, was a place called the Transcendence Realm.
It was a place so weirdly beautiful that rules didn't really matter. Sometimes time would even run backward just for the heck of it.
This is where the G.O.D.s lived.
But not just one god. There were three of them: the Generator, the Organizer, and the Destroyer. You could think of them as the ones who build everything, the ones who keep track of it all, and the ones who clean up the messes.
They didn't always get along. The last time they voted on what to have for lunch, they accidentally made the Spaghetti Whale species go extinct. It was a real tragedy.
Even though they argued, they had one big job. For ages, whenever the stars lined up in a special way, they would give out Mone. Not money, but the powerful energy that keeps every living thing going (and sometimes non-living things, too). It was the fuel for the entire universe.
And today… was that day. The official records called it "Year Zero." Down on Earth, people just called it… Thursday. Or maybe a Tuesday where the internet was slow. They had no idea their world was about to be completely changed.
Generator floated inside a cloud of crackling energy, tapping glowing symbols in the air. "Okay," his deep voice boomed. "Is everyone's life energy ready to go?"
"All filed by name, date, and with way more information than we need," said Organizer, pushing up his star-shaped glasses. His robe was made of starlight and had endless spreadsheets flowing out from behind him.
Destroyer, who was never patient, was leaning on a broken asteroid he had blown up earlier because he was bored.
"Can we get this over with? I have an apocalypse to start right after this."
The three gods floated around a giant, glowing ball called the Core of Mone Distribution. Inside it were trillions of glowing strings, like a spider's web. Each string was connected to a living thing's ATM—which stood for Authority'sTranscendentalMachine. It was like a spiritual bank account that held a creature's life energy.
Generator held up a glowing finger. "On three. Starting the universe-wide energy top-up. One… two…"
💥
He never got to three.
Instead of spreading out evenly, every single string of Mone snapped loose, tangled together, and shot straight into one tiny, blinking dot. All of it. Every last bit of energy in the universe went into one baby who had no idea what was happening.
In that moment, every drop of power in the universe belonged to a single, clueless infant. As the energy flew toward the baby, the universe's official records flickered. For a split second, all the numbers turned into nonsense that even Organizer couldn't read—then they snapped back to normal.
---
The Divine Glitch Baby
The Transcendence Realm went dead quiet. A star exploding in the distance sounded like a tiny pop.
Organizer's eye started to twitch.
Destroyer blinked. "Did… we just…?"
Generator looked at his hand, which was now strangely still. "I didn't even sneeze," he said to himself.
They zoomed in their vision, looking across space and time until they found him: a tiny human baby, wrapped up in a nice blanket in the city of Akakawa, yawning in a fancy golden crib.
When he hiccuped, the candles nearby burst into little fireballs. A soft golden light pulsed around him—a sign of all the cosmic energy he had just absorbed.
"…Well," Organizer said, trying to sound calm. "It seems we've had a small… accounting error."
Destroyer burst out laughing, a sound so loud it made the stars shake. "He got everything! He even got the squirrels' share!"
"Poor squirrels," Generator mumbled. "Their nuts won't be as tasty this year."
---
The Clause of Cosmic Debt
Organizer, who loved rules, was already writing up a new one with glowing ink.
"Fine. We'll just add a rule. A rule that can't be broken. If the energy wasn't his to begin with, he has to return it. Let's make it sound official and scary."
He wrote:
"HE MUST RETURN WHAT WAS NEVER HIS."
Destroyer crossed his arms. "And what if he doesn't?"
"He will," Generator said, his voice suddenly very serious. "Or the system will correct itself… and it won't be gentle." He frowned. "The system for getting a refund wasn't designed to be used this early. It's… pretty extreme."
Organizer rolled up the scroll, and it made a sound like a giant lock clicking into place. "We'll keep an eye on him. And if things get out of balance, we'll give him a little push."
Destroyer sighed, cracking his knuckles and a few faraway stars at the same time.
"So if he breaks the universe, I'm the one who has to clean it up?" He looked down at the glowing baby.
"As always," the other two said at the same time.
Down below, the baby giggled in his sleep. A silk curtain next to his crib turned into solid gold. The nursemaid saw it, screamed, and fainted.
---
A Pegasus Sneezes
Up in the sky, the special star alignment ended. The stars went back to their normal spots. Time started moving like it was supposed to.
Down on Earth, life kept going. It rained. A coconut fell and hit a guy on the head.
And on a green hill, a pegasus sneezed so hard that it tripped over its own wings and tumbled down into a muddy rice field, which scared a lot of frogs. For just a moment, the little horse's shadow was way too big for its body—and it stayed there for a second too long after he landed in the mud.
Then, the pegasus snorted. The splash it made in the mud formed a perfect spiral that glowed gold for a second before disappearing.
No one saw it. Not even the frogs.
The world had changed. Its power had been sent to the wrong address.
Nobody knew it yet.
Not even the baby, glowing in his crib next to his unconscious nurse.
But fate had just made a huge mistake. Or maybe it hadn't.