(Part 6) Kazuma knows reality better than you

It was getting late into the night. Kazuma was sitting at his desk, trying to write down all the rules he had learned over the last few days, trying to understand his new ability as much as possible. He had changed a lot of people to get this information, but he didn't necessarily make their lives worse. In fact, he would even hazard to guess that a lot of them now live better lives because of him.

That’s when he strangely felt a wind blowing from behind, prompting him to look behind. He was sure he had closed his window shut, but now it was open again. When did it…

“Hello there, my powerful partner.” A familiar voice rang out from his room, as Chris’ head popped into his view upside down, the rest of her body hanging from the ceiling. “I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in. Heh.”

“Ha. You are always welcome. Even if sneaking into my room is a bit of a perverted move~” Kazuma grinned, sitting back down on his chair. 

“As if you haven’t done your fair share of perverted moves recently, Mr ‘no one in your party is allowed a breast size below mountain’~” Chris retorted. 

“Welp, you got me.” Kazuma shrugged with a smile, then looked at Chris again. “What brings you here?”

“I thought we might exchange a little bit of information today. It seemed like as good a time as any.” Chris said, still hanging upside down with no apparent desire to go the rightside up. 

“Sounds like a good idea.” Kazuma nodded, grabbing the notebook on the table and opened it up. “I did a lot of experimenting to narrow down all the rules and edge cases I can think of. Some results are quite surprising. Interested?”

“Oh heck yeah.” Chris declared excitedly, to which Kazuma chuckled.

“Alright, then let's start.” Kazuma started to read. “The name of the skill is ‘I know reality better than you’. It's an ability that triggers when a certain activation condition is met. The basic activation condition is ‘If someone makes a statement about themselves AND I immediately after reply with ‘No, I don't think so’ AND make a statement that contradicts the other's statement, then reality will change to make my statement true.’ That's really the simplest way I can put it.”

“Yeah, and not really something new for either of us.” Chris shrugged. “It’s a complicated ability that can do pretty much anything if you can get into the right situation. Or the right conversation.”

"Exactly. However, there are a few additional rules that definitely seem like they would be on the fine print of my ability sheet, if it was written down. Let me tell you all that I have found so far, because I had to test them individually.” Kazuma nodded, his expression going more neutral. 

“The best way I can put this first rule is ‘intention matters, truth doesn’t’. It doesn't matter whether someone lies to me or is telling the truth, as long as their intention is to inform me about something, I can counter them.” Kazuma said, then held up a finger. “But as soon as the intention becomes ‘I want to be countered by the ability’ or ‘I am just saying it because someone else wants me to say it’, my skill is pointless. That indirectly also means that I can never realistically counter myself, since… you know.”

“Hmm…” Chris thought for a little. “Doesn’t that contradict the challenge we did where you had me loving hanging upside down?”

“Kinda.” Kazuma said, also thinking hard. “The thing is, you were surprised when I actually countered you. As in you didn’t expect me to actually pull it off. So while ‘I want to be countered by the ability’ does not work, I think your mindset was closer to ‘I can’t be countered by the ability like this’, which apparently does in fact work.”

“Hmm… Nono, I see where you are going with it.” Chris nodded slowly. “It does sound like that conversation in particular just was a very weird case. Anything else?”

“Lot’s of them.” Kazuma looked back at the notebook. “One question I had was ‘Can I alter objects?’ and the answer is all sorts of weird.”

“The basic answer is yes, but the level of control I have over it is very limited sometimes. I couldn’t really find a good rule of thumb for that yet. For example making someone into a guild receptionist did alter the guild. They now had official paperwork and everything they needed to work there. But trying to give them triple the pay of another receptionist didn’t work. Saying that someone has unlimited coffee at home doesn't work, but turning their breasts into neverending jugs of perfect coffee does…”

“Haa…” Kazuma sighed, while Chris just watched in silence. “The best explanation I found was ‘If it's part of the person, I can change it with accuracy. If not, I can change it, but have no control over it.’. But really, for this one, I am really just grasping on straws.”

“I see. So it seems that if you want to have something, the easiest way to get it is to make another person produce it.” Chris pondered, to which Kazuma agreed. 

“Yeah. I have also realized that I can't really kill anyone with my power. I can make them into things, but they would then just become… living things.”

“Living things?”

“Yeah, like I turned someone into a painting on a wall because I wanted to know. But that wall was more like a golem that could lie down to become a wall. And the painting was also fully moving. So in essence, even though I turned him into two objects, he just became two living objects.”

“Fascinating…” At this point Chris was fully immersed in the ability, so Kazuma continued. “Another thing that is quite curious is that the reality shift makes the ability almost impossible to notice. Even when I turned Darkness into a centaur in front of Megumin she didn't notice. When I flipped the gender of some ruffians no one said a word. There are only three people I found that were able to notice the changes.”

“Who?” Chris asked curiously.

“Aqua, you and me.” Kazuma stated flatly. “I feel like I make sense since I am the guy who has the ability. And Aqua kinda makes sense since she is a goddess and all, and therefore seems to be immune against a lot of those sorts of magic. But why you get to remember is a bit of a mystery to me.”

“You turned Aqua into a goddess…?” Chris asked, her worry very much justified in Kazuma’s eyes.

“Nono, don't worry about it. Do you know why this ability doesn't seem to affect you? Or at least you remember the stuff?” Kazuma sweated, trying to shift the topic somehow.

“Hmm… I have a hunch, but nothing concrete. And it’s kind of a personal secret.” Chris spoke, thinking a bit more. “Do you have any theories?”

“Not really. For me it looks like you two were just arbitrarily chosen as immune. And at least one of you two is reliable, that has to count for something, right?”

“Ahaha…” Chris laughed weakly. Yeah, it was pretty clear that Aqua was a questionable partner at the best of times. “Anything else you found out?”

“One more thing.” Kazuma moved on, away from the useless goddess. “I can give skills to others, but skills need a lot of details to be what I want them to be. If I don't specifically mention the details, then the details will be filled in in a way that the skill would work. For example, I gave Darkness the ability that when she laughs, whoever hears it needs to tell the truth.”

“Sounds powerful.”

“It absolutely is, but there is one flaw in that. The way I said it, there was no ending condition. So in order to not make the skill make sense, it was changed to whoever hears her laugh needs to tell the truth for as long as she is directly looking at them. And breaking eye contact breaks the hypnotic state.”

“How did you know that is how it would work then?” Chris asked, to which Kazuma chuckled.

“I didn’t. Darkness did and she told me. The reality changed so that she always had that skill, so it wasnt news to her and she knew exactly how it works.”

“So the fastest way for you to find out is just to ask them?”

“Exactly.”

“Fascinating…”

There was a bit of silence between the boy with the book and the upsidedown Arachne, both thinking a bit. Kazuma then spoke up again. “And yeah, that is pretty much everything I found out about the ability so far.”

“You seem to have tried quite a lot for someone who only had the power for a few days.”

“I was trying a lot of things.” Kazuma shrugged, then leaned forward. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me everything you have found out.”

“Hmm… That's the thing…” Chris mumbled, pulling her notes out of her cleavage. “I am pretty sure you don’t need tabs on Megumin or Darkness anymore, and while there are a lot of people in Axel, there aren’t really all that many here where I would say that you should give them a punishing visit.”

“Yeah, that bit with those two was pretty much only because I wanted to change them on that day. I kinda met them myself over the day again anyway.”

“Yeah, that’s why I didn't report back. It just really just seemed pointless.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Kazuma nodded, then looked back at her. “But I bet you have something juicy. Otherwise you wouldn’t have broken into my room in the middle of the night.”

“I might have found something else that you might deem interesting…” Chris giggled, the crawled close to Kazuma.

“You know how there are legends that the gods summon heroes from another world to aid us in our quest against the demon king?” Chris asked, to which Kazuma groaned.

“...all too well sadly…” He replied.

“Well, don’t ask me how, but I might have found a way to use that very same technique those gods use to send you to otherworlds as well.” She continued, her voice becoming much quieter the more she talked. “Although it does have its limits and it isn’t quite perfect, with that…”

“No, I don’t think so.” Kazuma immediately interrupted, his face having lighted up from the possibility. “You didn’t find a way to travel to different worlds. You always had that ability and it's next to perfect. You never miss your mark, always return and can take people with you. That is just a skill you have.”

“Woah!” Chris reeled, her eyes blinking rapidly for a few moments before they slowed down again. “That was something… That just felt like I was forced to learn a skill from one moment to the next. I guess being able to remember how it was before isn't always a pleasant thing.”

“But this is what you wanted, right?” Kazuma asked with a smirk. “That's why you worded it so awkwardly. For me to be able to use my power on you.“

“Uhm… not exactly. I really didn’t think of this at all, but I will admit that it's easier than the way I intended it. Ahaha~”

“Perfect! Then let's meet again tomorrow.” Kazuma declared, standing up from his chair. “You should go and test out that new skill of yours to make sure you have a handle on it, and tomorrow we will test it out together. You in?”

“Heck yeah.”

And with that, another fistbump was given, in the middle of the night, by two people whose heads were rotated in the completely wrong directions to each other. And yet the glee in their actions could be felt throughout the entire building.

Both couldn't wait for the havoc they could cause in other worlds…

—

Knowledge is power. Knowing yourself is half the battle.