"Holy—"
Loki rubbed her eyes, wondering if they were playing tricks on her. They weren't.
While updating Tiona and Tione's Falna, she found a brand-new entry under Skills.
[Dying Will Circuits: Earned access to the Dying Will Gate through training; "Sun," "Storm".]
"A completely new power," she breathed.
It was the kind of surprise that nearly unhinged even Loki's jaw. She'd known Tsunayoshi had been working closely with the Amazon sisters these past days and had been expecting a big reveal. She just hadn't expected it to arrive in barely a week.
"Dying Will Circuits," unlike the Dying Will Flames Tsunayoshi himself wielded.
The Circuits felt like a partitioned authority—something carved off that could be granted, by special means, to those who originally lacked the power. The proof was obvious: Tsunayoshi commanded the full set of seven Flame attributes.
Tiona and Tione, by contrast, had grasped only a portion.
Loki smoothed her expression, excitement bubbling up to replace shock.
"My, my… we've struck a vein of ore, haven't we?"
She was certain the Dying Will Flames were Tsunayoshi's intrinsic ability—an origin power from another world that outsiders shouldn't be able to touch.
And yet, here they were, that "impossible" broken open because of him.
What did that mean? Simple.
The two worlds had begun to "intersect" at a deeper level.
An intersection wasn't bad; it was great. The worst thing for gods—and for worlds—was stasis. "Unchanging" meant a future already fixed, everything unfolding like lines from a script. You saw it most starkly when an Apocalypse loomed.
But if a world began to accept "change"—to admit things that once didn't exist—then the ordained future started to loosen. That was very good news indeed.
"If Uranus heard this, he'd be delighted," she mused. "And if such a thing can happen, then perhaps that glimpse of the future Tsunayoshi saw really was the drafted future of this world."
Loki let out a long breath. She believed the future wasn't absolute—but if Tsunayoshi hadn't dropped into her bath when he did, maybe the future truly had been locked. Now the "change" moving through the world had, broadly speaking, ridden in on Tsunayoshi's back.
That was a very fine thing.
"In that case, best if his world ties itself even closer to ours," Loki thought. "Spreading the Falna over there sounds… delicious."
She could almost see it: a fixed equation into which someone had poured a dose of chaos, the result now un-definable and branchy with possibilities. In her eyes, both worlds had admitted "change" because of the boy—and "change" was indeterminate. It could swing good; it could swing bad.
Which was why it needed guidance.
How to guide it? Simple: deepen the intersection. And the simplest shared language was power. Exactly what Tsunayoshi was doing already, perhaps without meaning to. The moment "impossible" cracked, the intersection began to stabilize. And if the world had a voice, what would it be saying now?
She chuckled at the thought, then patted Tione lightly between the shoulders.
"All done. Update complete."
"The other stats didn't move much," Loki reported, "but your Magic rose a lot. Tiona jumped from 0 to 623. Tione, from 226 to 741."
They hadn't hit the 999 ceiling, but Magic rose differently from the other parameters. Magic grew with how often you used it, and how. In short, the new Skill had upended the sisters' foundations. The Sun and Storm powers they drew through those "Circuits" were, for all practical purposes, off-catalog "magic"—and using them fed their Magic stat.
That it had climbed so far in just a week made Loki wonder how on earth they'd been employing this power.
Still, the results pleased her.
She handed the copied status sheets to Tione.
"A new Skill," Tione said at once, eyes locking to the line that mattered. The Magic numbers barely registered. Compared to a fresh Skill, the growth there felt like a natural byproduct.
"Tsunayoshi's training paid off," Loki said. "You've learned a slice of what he can do. So what you two have isn't 'Dying Will Flames,' and it doesn't sit in the Magic column—it's in Skills. And its name—'Dying Will Circuits'—points straight to your source."
Different name, different slot—both marked the power's special origin.
"So he ran a private boot camp for you, did he?" Loki's grin turned sly. "What do you think Ais will say when she hears about that?"
The lingering thrill in Tione's chest faltered. She remembered Ais's quietly wounded look, and a small, guilty twitch tugged at her cheek.
"It's not like that," she said quickly. "Tsunayoshi never said it would only be us. Ais will have her turn."
Tione steadied herself at once. She knew: if she and Tiona had succeeded, others would follow. They wouldn't be the only ones.
But she was confident of something else.
They might not be the only ones—but they would always be the first.
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[Thank You For Your Support!]