Prologue: The “Protagonist” Finished His Training, and Now He’s Kind of Crazy

It was a space full of books and bookshelves: a study, perhaps, or a library. But if that’s was what it was, there was something strange about it.

The books had been treated with total carelessness. Those that couldn’t fit on the shelves had been stacked into piles with no rhyme or reason. Even some of the bookshelves themselves had been knocked over.

At a glance, one might think the place was long abandoned... but this place was alive. This place had a master.

Atop one carelessly piled stack of books sat a girl.

Her name was Ende.

Her hair was red, and she wore a high school uniform.

She was reading a book, as she always was. This particular book was about a subject she had been very interested in lately: the Divine Vessels War.

The Evil God who was trying to destroy the world and the Outers who enjoyed watching the world as observers were natural enemies. Thus, the Outers and the Evil God had fought, and the Evil God had lost. But the Outers, who could never quite take anything seriously, hadn’t been satisfied with his destruction.

They had sealed the Evil God and split his body up into individual parts known as the Divine Vessels. In that way, even if the Evil God was sealed, he would never fully lose his ability to influence the world.

Thus, the Evil God cast bait.

He set rules: if the Vessels were brought together, he would revive and grant any wish.

The Divine Vessels would take hosts that were humanoid beings, bequeathing them power. Then they would resonate to communicate their location to the other hosts. These hosts would fight each other until one stood victorious; then the Evil God would revive only to be sealed again.

That cycle had repeated over and over again, right up until the present day.

Now, the Divine Vessels War Ende was participating in was reaching its final stage.

The book Ende was reading was describing what had happened so far. This was Ende’s ability: to cause descriptions of current events to be written in her books.

According to the book, five major factions had Divine Vessels. Though generally, even if you lost a fight and had your vessel stolen, as long as you were still alive, you could get a chance to take it back. The only thing that mattered was having all the Divine Vessels at the very end, which meant there were probably other contenders besides those five waiting in the wings for a chance to seize victory.

“Of course, it would be hard to challenge a Divine Vessel host without having a Divine Vessel of your own,” Ende murmured.

“But I effectively don’t have one myself, do I?” A brazen voice interrupted Ende’s monologue.

“I expected you to take an hour, but I think you finished it a little faster than that,” Ende said, but as there was no clock in her library, she was going completely from her gut.

Ende looked up from her book.

A boy was standing there, the label “Protagonist” hanging over his head.

This was Ryoma Takei, the participant that Ende had chosen so that she could meddle in the war. He had a trait that caused him to be caught up in all sorts of strange incidents, as well as the ability to resolve those incidents as if he were the protagonist of their stories. He was, in effect, an avatar of plot convenience, and she had decided to make use of this.

“You’ve grown a bit savage, haven’t you?” Ende commented.

It had taken Ende a minute to even recognize him. Though his physical appearance hadn’t changed much, he seemed like a different person.

The place Ende had sent Ryoma for training had effectively been a psychological realm where he would fight mock battles. It was only natural, then, that his physical appearance hadn’t changed, since he hadn’t been affected physically.

What was different was the way he carried himself. There was an aura of violence about him that made him seem like a different person.

“Like it’s not your fault that this happened,” he sulked, suggesting he had been through an extremely rough time.

“I told you before that your Divine Vessel wouldn’t be of any use to you,” she said.

The ability of the Divine Vessel that Ryoma was playing host to was ridiculous: it gave him the ability to see the number of books a person had read in their lifetime hanging over their head.

It was difficult to imagine it ever being useful in combat; the absolute best Ende could think of was that if you ran into someone with a power-stealing ability, you could temporarily confuse them by making them steal it.

“Yeah, I’m definitely convinced of its uselessness now,” Ryoma agreed, suggesting that he actually had tried to make use of it. If he’d been forced to resort to that, she thought, the trial he’d been through must really have been a grueling one.

“So, were you able to find a way to win?” she asked.

“Have you ever thought it was strange that when good and evil fight, good always wins?”

His response sounded like a non sequitur, but Ende decided to engage him anyway. It might have some connection to what Ryoma had worked out in his training.

“It’s a bit of a cliché, but isn’t that more of a history-books-written-by-the-winners kind of thing?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said. “Think about tokusatsu, anime, light novels. You run into situations where it feels weird that the protagonist wins, right? There are lots of things the good guys can’t do, while the bad guys can do anything. As long as they’re not held back by morality, they should dominate easily. But the bad guys never go through with it. Why is that?”

“Oh, is that what you’re getting at?” Ende said. “Well, that’s the reason I chose you, after all.”

“Yeah. The world is designed to conform to the protagonist. The enemy won’t use an attack the protagonist can’t bounce back from, and even if they attack them early in the story, they’ll always find a reason to leave without finishing them off. The kidnapped love interest usually gets off unscathed, too.”

Ryoma was a protagonist, an avatar of plot convenience. The purpose of the training was to get him to realize that, and it seemed to have worked.

“No matter how strong the opponent, or how desperate the situation, it doesn’t matter. Even if they’re a million times stronger, even if they have the power to blow out the sun, even if they’re so strong they can inspire terror with a single glance, that’s all just background noise. It has no effect on who wins.”

“Well, desperate situations are popular in stories nowadays, but people do get rather tired if they drag on for too long,” Ende said. “So, what does determine who wins?”

“In the end, whoever the writer wants to win will win. That’s all it comes down to in the end.” Ryoma was brimming with confidence. He must have thought he had glimpsed the truth of the world.

“Ahh, this has gotten a bit weird. I think we’ve gone in a meta direction,” Ende said.

Ryoma’s deduction was a misunderstanding that Outers and those who learned about worldviews commonly fell into. Ende compared the various worldviews to stories herself, but to her, that was nothing but a metaphor. She had never thought that by thinking of the world as a fabrication, and yourself as a character in that world, that you could deny the world itself.

There shouldn’t be any way to deny it. It was just like the story of the butterfly’s dream.

“Well, never mind that,” she said. “If you’re aware of your ‘Protagonist’ status, that’s impressive by itself. Now what, concretely, did you acquire?”

“Oh, you mean these?” Ryoma held out his hand and murmured something. Five cards appeared in his hand.

“Wow. You awakened an Outer ability?” she said. “I see. I guess it is protagonist-like to awaken mysterious abilities when it’s convenient.”

Ryoma was not, precisely, an Outer, but he certainly resembled one. He could exist outside of the destiny he’d be born into, and get involved in the destiny of others without realizing it.

“Plot convenience doesn’t mean that the story always proceeds in ways convenient for the protagonist,” he told her. “It means, more precisely, that events will conveniently occur to move the story in the direction the writer wants it to go. Which means I don’t actually know if things are proceeding in my favor, do I?”

“That’s true,” Ende said. There are unlucky protagonists out there where nothing they do works out, and they always end up at rock bottom. So how do you use those cards?”

Ende looked and saw that all the cards had the same pattern to them. They probably had two sides.

“These are event cards,” he said. “They let me choose what’s going to happen next.”

As he spoke, Ryoma pulled out one card and released it into the air. The card glowed, then disappeared, and it told those standing there what had been written on it.

“Event: Little sister Shiori Takei is killed by Enemy X.”

Ryoma released another card. He ended up with five cards again, which suggested that after he used one, it was restocked.

“Event: Big sister Kotori Takei is killed by Enemy X.”

“Event: Childhood friend Mio Morikawa is killed by Enemy X.”

“Combo Event: All close friends and relatives are killed.”

“Special Event: Anger-based awakening.”

“I see,” Ende said. “So you can actively meddle in the story. But this seems a bit drastic, killing off all your leading ladies. Not that I’m one to talk, seeing as I sent you down that road...”

“Huh? What are you talking about? I didn’t kill them.” Ryoma looked at her in confusion.

“Huh? Is that how it seems to you?” Ende felt a moment of hesitation upon realizing the degree to which she seemed to have broken him. She had been hoping he’d pick up a certain degree of determination, but he’d gone so far that it seemed to have had the opposite effect.

“My sisters and childhood friend weren’t leading ladies, they were just bait to make the story more exciting,” he explained. “Besides, if I ever need them, I can just trigger a resurrection event, right?”

It was a statement that called his protagonist potential into question, yet Ende smiled. She was a bit anxious, but it was unlikely that any monster could beat someone who had shaken off his restraints to this degree. If he could use his protagonist advantage to its fullest, there was a chance he could win the Divine Vessels War.

“But ‘Enemy X’ and ‘awakening’ and stuff... it’s all a bit vague, isn’t it?” Ende asked.

“Eh, the details can be filled in later.”

Perhaps those were the sorts of details that were filled in later. Right now, they existed in a state of infinite overlapping possibilities.

“Well, it’ll be a little lonely without any love interests around,” Ende said.

“I have plenty of love interests, though.”

Ende thought he must be referring to the many girls he’d saved during his long career.

“Why do I need to haul around that old-fashioned group with me?” he added. “They were fine for what they were, but I can’t have them butting in all the time. Besides, a new love interest always shows up when it’s time for a new arc.”

“Hmm, it might sound a little strange coming from me, but are you sure about this?” Ende asked. She wondered if she’d driven him too far. It was like his personality had completely changed. It was hard to imagine him as a protagonist anymore.

But perhaps that was only natural. After all, he’d been forced to die tens of thousands of times in the course of less than an hour. It might have been too much to hope that he’d remain sane.

“Ah, well. Maybe that’s what it means to become strong. By the way, do you remember our original objective?” Ende asked, feeling a bit nervous now. Now that Ryoma had so much power, he might not care about the Divine Vessels War anymore.

“Of course I do. I’ll gather the Divine Vessels, make my wish, and get myself a peaceful, normal life where nobody bothers me.”

She had a feeling he’d gone too far to ever return to a normal life now, but it would be no use to point that out, so Ende decided to continue. “Well, good. By the way, have I told you about Yuichi Sakaki? He’ll likely be your strongest opponent, so you should beat him first.”

Ryoma barely seemed to be listening to Ende as he examined his five cards. He seemed entirely focused on picking his love interest. “Why’s that? Does he have some really great Divine Vessel?”

“He’s an ordinary human, just a kind of dangerous sort,” she said.

Having lost Soul Reader, and with no Divine Vessel hosted in him, Yuichi didn’t have any special powers. But if one got mixed up in his sister Mutsuko’s world, there was a very good chance that they could lose before they even figured out what was happening.

“I’ll pass on the serial killer,” Ryoma said dismissively. “How can a serial killer even be a love interest? And a web novel author? Do they make love interests like that now?”

“There’s been demand for creative types for a while,” Ende said. “Now I wonder... am I included in those?”

“There’s no demand for bossy tomboy love interests,” Ryoma said.

“How insulting. In this one instant, you’ve made a few enemies, you know?”

“Let’s see, a vampire?” he mused. “That’s silly. Way too cliché nowadays. Out of these, then, I guess I’ll take this one.”

Ignoring Ende’s grumblings, Ryoma tossed a card into the air.

“Event: Love interest appears. A hero girl falls from the sky.”

“Heroes and falling from the sky are both pretty cliché too, but there didn’t seem to be anything better.” Ryoma laughed dryly, and the effect of the ability activated immediately.

A black hole opened in the ceiling of Ende’s library.

A girl fell from it, and Ryoma hurried to catch her.

“Amazing... it really takes effect that quickly?” Ende was impressed. When an Outer controlled destiny, they basically had to nudge the related entities into place over time, but Ryoma’s ability was completely direct, influencing the principles of causality themselves.

“Huh? Where am I? Who are you?” The girl looked all around her.

“Who are you? None of this makes any sense!” Even Ryoma, who caught the girl, seemed confused by her sudden appearance.

“Hmm? Maybe he’s crazy after all,” Ende said to herself.

Ryoma had lost all of the menacing atmosphere that had been hanging around him previously. It was as if he didn’t even remember manipulating events. It seemed his mental state really had become unstable.

“Anyway, we’ve gotta run!” the girl cried. “That’s the exit to the dungeon, but I don’t know how to close it, and monsters are coming out!”

“Huh?” As Ryoma stared at her, dumbfounded, something else dropped from the ceiling.

It was a child with dark red skin and horns on his head. He was followed by several other strange creatures that could only be described as monsters.

Ryoma let out a cry of surprise, and, still carrying the girl, ran off at top speed.

“Huh? Did he just run off without me?” Ende hadn’t foreseen this development at all.