Chapter 153 - Konosuba Side Part 38.
In a certain place, the blue sky was dotted with fluffy white clouds that drifted lazily in the gentle breeze and the warm and comfortable sunlights were illuminating the place, or so would be the case if this was a normal place.
There was no breeze nor a sun to illuminate the world with its light, yet the place was very bright. The existence of ground was completely absent from this location. What is left is only the blue sky reflecting itself from up to down, like the whole land becoming a reflection of the sky.
"...."
"...."
In a place where the ground and sky looked exactly the same, two young men were staring at each other without talking.
"...." Kazuma was wondering how he could sue someone for entering his dreams.
"...." Leo was waiting for what bs this guy is going to say, so he can counter with greater bs.
"You, what are you doing in my mind?" After his thoughts were clear, Kazuma returned to his senses and asked the most obvious.
" Chilling, but you can count it as diViNe revElatiOn" Leo stated calmly as Kazuma\'s eyebrow twitched.
"Who wants your divine whatever, I\'m talking about my brain, my mind! Your spell worked? Cool, yeah, but why is it in my mind?!" Kazuma was a few seconds away from flipping off Leo.
"Hmmm, my \'ceremony\' didn\'t wORk though" Leo corrected Kazuma\'s wording before saying in a slightly tired manner.
"Didn\'t work? Then what is this?" Kazuma pointed at Leo and the huge throne he\'s sitting on.
Although Kazuma can\'t see the shape of the throne or why Leo\'s eyes changed to that clear platinum color, he believes that ceremony somehow worked or how this guy is in his mind?
As for his eye color and other stuff? Please, it\'s probably just a show-off and a chunni syndrome because this guy should be able to change them. Something like a mere eye color can\'t have meaning, right?... Right? Kazuma suddenly felt like he doesn\'t know anymore.
"This is an utTEr failure. Things went in an unwanted direction, some things appeared, and I arrived like this. You mIGht want to say \'it worked anyway\', but this is unacceptable in these matters" With a sigh, Leo leaned on the throne and said " I\'d have stopped the world jump immediately until another notice, but at least there\'s no spiritUAl poisoning"
"Hold on, I didn\'t hear anything about poisons!" Kazuma panicked when he heard the word poison, especially with that ominous and vague \'spiritual\' ahead of it.
"It\'s written in the file I sent, my spirit is too pure for minds to handle. Well, ignore it, it\'s a pain to explain" Leo sighed again as Kazuma\'s eyebrow twitched.
"Forget it, I don\'t need to know" Kazuma shook his head before he stretched his hand to Leo.
Leo blinked in puzzlement, but Kazuma didn\'t buy it " Don\'t pretend to be ignorant. Pay me, now"
"Huh?" Tilting his head, a comical question mark literally appeared at the top of Leo\'s head.
"Cost of staying in my mind, this isn\'t a free place you know?" Kazuma cleared his throat before he began announcing " First, your unauthorized breaking will put a daily rate of interest, not to mention you terrorizing me with the Rick Roll. Also didn\'t you come here from another world? Sounds like my mind is an airport now, that\'s rough buddy"
In mere moments, Kazuma has counted and sentenced Leo into crippling debt in his mind, and he still didn\'t stop.
"Ah, I see. Then how about pAYing in an imaginary non-existent currency, like your hospitality" Leo rested his head on his fist while looking at Kazuma with a bored look.
"Like hell I would accept… wait, imaginary you say" Kazuma took a moment to think before his eyes flashed. " You know…"
"Rejected" Leo rejected Kazuma\'s idea without even hearing it.
"C\'mon, you didn\'t even hear what I wanted to say! Listen, if we are in a dream now, maybe you could, you know, change it a little" Kazuma\'s eyes were sparkling.
"Bitch, do I look like a succubus to you?" Breaking into foul language, Leo was considering calling another Rick Astley.
"Although you\'re an angel, you can do the same, right? You can\'t deny it, I mean look what you did here. Tsk, Tsk, Tokyo Ghoul chunni place and a throne. Man, I\'m not chunni like you, why are you doing this?" Kazuma shook his head in distress.
"This is discrimination. By the way, this is cauSEd by you" Who knows when Leo got a cup of tea and was sipping slowly.
"Excuse me?" Kazuma cleaned his ears like he didn\'t hear clearly.
"Is it that hard to believe? Nevertheless, is this how your mind dEAlt with my ArriVAl and ##### nature? The picture of a place where heaven and earth are one, or maybe they lost all their meanings and became inDIstinguishable, a ##### indeed"
"Also, this poor imitation of #####, did it get draggED by #####? Or another joke from fate?" Tapping the \'throne\' he was sitting on, Leo showed a thinking expression mixed with dissatisfaction. Probably about the \'unwanted\' things that appeared in the ceremony.
At that moment, Kazuma\'s mind clicked and almost everything froze. It\'s like when you\'re chilling in calm and someone suddenly puts max volume earphones on you and plays heavy metal. Can hear, but can\'t comprehend.
Kazuma thinks he\'s in the same situation because his mind cannot process anything. The sudden voice filled with distortion took him by surprise and he started to doubt if his ears were working properly.
Although his thoughts were still chaotic from the meteoric RickRoll, Kazuma noticed that Leo\'s voice has a slight weird distortion, like an audio distortion. He thought it\'s something because of the spell or an angel\'s thing, but now some terms were distorted beyond recognition.
"What was that?" Kazuma didn\'t know when he started sweating. Can you even sweat in dreams?
"AnsWErs to your questions, but also your subconscious mind. REMember, I, my spirit is \'poisonous\' in the sense that it is too \'pure\' for the human mind to handle and must be \'watered down\', for example, dISplayed in a way that many of its meANings are obscured in order to be viewed without MInds being destroyed" Leo glanced at the surrounding, a place where sky and land are the same.
"..." Kazuma was strangely silent and waited for Leo to finish.
"I already considered that in the ceremONy, but your subconscious mind also played a role. All that you sEE now, even if it\'s this shape that I have, is your mind obscuring meanings in an understandAble way for you" Leo curled his lips in amusement " Funny, even if I wanted to tell you everything, you simply cANnot understand"
"Your shape?" Kazuma frowned when he heard this phrase.
"Hmmmm, forget it, we don\'t have all day" Leo shook his head and ended this subject before he said " After ARriving here, I learned a few interesting things, especially about the nature of what is happening"
"Really?!" Kazuma, who was in a strange state, blinked his eyes before exclaiming " Did your Clairvoyance work? Wait, why didn\'t you use your clairvoyance from the start?"
"Indeed, but to answer that, we need to talk about parallel UNiverses" Leo said with a straight face as Kazuma snapped like he witnessed a cosmic horror " NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
"Calm down, it was a jOKe. But it does involve parallel worlds" Leo froze for a moment before a frown appeared on his face " Tell me, how do you feel about all this \'mission\', irritating? Vague? Or straight-up confusING?"
"All, all of them, but are you seriously asking me this?" Kazuma started to wonder if this guy really has any omniscience at all.
"Indeed, but this is how things should be. We were led by the nose" Leo ignored Kazuma\'s sarcastic comments.
"Elaborate" Kazuma pondered for a moment before asking.
"It\'s pretty obvious. We werEN\'t supposed to understand anything because all these actions are for some hidden greater goals. What are those goals? Don\'t ask me, I have no idea " Leo sighed and said " You can say, we were like chess pieces advancing things further"
"World\'s Wills, Outer Gods, Multiversal Spaces, these are the true plAYers. Or I could be wrong again, who knows?" Leo took a sip of his tea as Kazuma was thinking with a frown.
"Why do you sound so calm?" Kazuma couldn\'t help but blur out with dissatisfaction.
"Hmmm, you want to ask why I\'m not angry to be compared to a mere chess piecE? Why should I be that angry about a completely true fact?" Laughing at Kazuma\'s confusion, Leo said "Honestly, if I got angry for every time I led by the nose in this existence, my wrath will know no end"
"Or maybe you\'re feeling stressed about losing an imaginary superiority, Kazuma? The anxiousness of uncONtrollable things in life" Leo clapped his hand as the cup of tea vanished into thin air " This is why I said just do your best without looking at other things"
"..." Kazuma blinked his eyes and couldn\'t say anything.
Why does he have a feeling this guy is hitting bullseye everywhere? Did he lie and read his memories and thoughts? In any case, he was currently speechless.
After a period of silence, Leo opened up with "I think my work here is done and I got enough data. Don\'t worry about the outside world. A moment outside could be equal to infinity here"
Waving his hand, a small mirror appeared next to Kazuma. It displayed the frozen outside world while he was still falling down, which made Kazuma\'s eyebrow twitch. He\'ll fall on his face and that will be painful.
"Wait, you\'re going away like this? Nothing else?" Kazuma wanted to scream in Leo\'s face as if all of this world jumping was for nothing!
"There\'s no helping it" Leo raised his hand as Kazuma titled his head in puzzlement.
After everything that happened, Kazuma thought it\'d not get weirder, but apparently, he was wrong. Leo\'s body became slightly transparent and flashed with a weird pattern of dots and \'snow\' that reminded Kazuma of the static on those old TVs. Is the signal bad here?
"I appeared and unwanted things follOWed. I can\'t even access any plane beyond this. What an utter failure, although this how it should be" Leo shook his head before his body returned to normal, or this what Kazuma could see now.
"Oh, and one thing. You guys need to be careful. I can\'t really describe it for you, but I feel something… similar? Yes, a familiar thing to me." Leo pondered to get some correct wording without going beyond Kazuma\'s understanding " Don\'t underestimate my senses, they are sometimes much better than the whOLe clairvoyance"
"Yeah, right. So, about the clairvoyance, can you give me a map?" Kazuma directly skipped the confusing things.
"About my clairvoyance, do you want the truth or lie?" Leo said calmly.
"Why there are choices" Kazuma\'s eyebrow twitched as Leo\'s shrugged, so he just said " the truth"
"I can see everything" Leo\'s answer was simple and short, which surprised Kazuma and made him say "Then the lie?"
"I\'m blind HEre" Hearing one of the biggest bs he ever heard, Kazuma\'s mind stopped for a second.
"I\'m not joking. Well, this is a story for another time. I\'ll resume my great villain explanations of powers and EVents later" Giving a thumbs up, Leo\'s throne started floating and disappearing.
Watching Leo\'s on the throne flying away slowly, Kazuma was expressionless " Acting like a dumb chunni isn\'t cool though"
*Screech!!*
A sound like car tires\' screech sounded in mid-air as the throne hit breaks immediately before turning slowly. Leo appeared with an emotionless face and said "What the FUck did you just say to me?"
"Dumb chunni" Kazuma didn\'t back away as his expressionless face reminded.
"I\'m not a chunni" Leo\'s face was getting darker with each moment passing by, even an atmosphere of terror was descending upon the place.
"Yes, you are! Don\'t lie!! Look at yourself, trying to act mysterious and cool… wait, what is that"? Kazuma screamed all his dissatisfaction because he had enough!! But then, he saw something that drained the blood from his face.
Reaching to his back, Leo pulled something like pulling a sword before it appeared completely in front of Kazuma. It was a PNG clipboard Rick Astely, held like a sword and making Star Wars\' lightsabers sounds.
"..." Who knows when Leo appeared in front of Kazuma and held the mighty sword up high as his expression was devoid of any emotion.
"Just because it sounds cool in your head, it doesn\'t mean it isn\'t cringy!!!" Kazuma refused to back down against a threat that would make entire magical organizations pray for nonexistence miracles.
"I didn\'t think it\'s coOL. But tell me, why do you think they are cool and you\'re jealous because of it?" Lowering his head, some hidden nerves finally stepped on as flames seemed to burn in Leo\'s eyes.
"That\'s a damn lie! I\'m innocent!" Kazuma instantly defended his position as a completely logical non-chunni young man.
"Also, what with the villain acting and explanations?! I bet you\'re going to just lie about them! You\'re just satisfying your inner chunni!!" Taking a few deep breaths, Kazuma felt a lot lighter after saying that.
"Are you telling me you didn\'t do that with your gUN and skills?" Leo\'s cold and distorted words slipped into Kazuma\'s ears, rendering him speechless before he felt nothing under his feet.
"....."
"....."
"Long live the king" Feeling the tap on his head, Kazuma raised his head only to see Leo looking down on him as he was falling.
Who knows when there was a large cliff that split this sky-like ground behind him.
"AHHHHHhhhhh…"
Kazuma\'s screams died slowly with the fall until they vanished completely while Leo stared at this scene with a blank face.
"Here, you can have this" Throwing the out of place Rick Astley down the cliff with Kazuma, Leo shook his head and said " I\'m not a chunni... dammit"
"*Sigh* I\'ll just go and play gamES" With those words, Leo vanished from his place like he never was here in the first place, leaving only this blue sky scenery.
"AHHHHHHHHHH!!! Ah, I\'m awake" Better than the last time, Kazuma woke up with a short scream and recovered immediately.
"Kazuma, are you okay? You just fell asleep suddenly" Hearing the voice of the useless goddess, Kazuma scratched his head before he froze.
Raising his head like a robot, Kazuma saw something worse than Lovecraft\'s horrors. Aqua, and everyone around him… Had a Rick Astley\'s face.
The scene was enough to break all Kazuma\'s thoughts that this is reality and turned it into one big scream.
Meanwhile, in the real world.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Ouch!"
"Kazuma?!"
"Why are you screaming?!"
On that day, Kazuma swore to never bring the chunni subject again to that vengeful angel and also discovered how much a photo can cause from horror.