When Ren woke up he found himself lying down on grass looking up at the branches and leaves of some giant tree hanging high above him. He leaned forward and saw that Mana was sitting there in front of him looking into her reflection pool. Since Mana had not noticed him yet, he took this chance to look around at the place he had not been able to take in at all the last time he had been here. The most noticeable feature of the environment he could see was that he and Mana appeared to be on an incredibly small island that was completely surrounded by waterfalls -- or rather, one waterfall that created a circle as it wrapped around the entire island. Not to mention that the height of this waterfall -- the sheer height! -- it may as well have been as tall as a skyscraper. The distance from the beachline to the base of the waterfall seemed to be about 50 feet and from the directions he could see (left, right, and behind) if one were to stand in any of these locations (the beachline on the left, right, or behind) then the minimum distance to the base of the nearest part of the waterfall would always be the same distance. It’s as if this place was perfectly designed to be that way, and Ren realized he was thinking about a goddess so that was actually probably the case.

Ren then focused on what was actually on the island. To his left was a small, cute house of which obviously belonged to Mana. There was nothing particularly interesting about the exterior of the house, at least none of which Ren could tell from being as far away from the house as he was. In front of Ren was Mana’s reflection pool and behind that was a massive cliff that took up a majority of the island. It stretched from the beach besides Mana’s house (at a height of about 20 feet tall over there) all the way to the right side of the island where there cliffside became a slight overhang above the beach (probably about 50 feet high). Sitting there bizarrely at the edge of the cliff was the giant tree. The tree was so large that it surely took up the entire surface area of the ground it sat upon at the precipice of the cliff, but what was so bizarre about it was that A. how did the size of the tree not cause the cliff’s overhang to collapse due to its weight? -- and B. the tree would surely have massive roots as well but the size of the overhang was so small that if there were roots then there would be no room for the roots to fit into the ground, causing the roots the stick out of the overhang in order to make space. Yet there were no visible roots. Did the tree even have roots?

Ren had no more time to take in his surroundings, for Mana had noticed he was awake. Mana got up from her reflecting pool, walked over to Ren and sat down in front of him, her extraordinarily long hair trailing behind her.

“How are you feeling?” She asked.

“I feel pretty normal. The only weird thing would be this place.” he said as he looked around at the waterfall and tree again.

“No.” she said. “I meant how are you doing after all you’ve experienced? Do you remember what happened?” Ren tried to think back to what had happened before he blacked out, and then he remembered -- he remembered the week he had spent in Tye’s world -- the week he had spent with his “best friend” Sal and the events leading up to Sal’s death. Most of all, he remembered Finite and his murderous aura.

“Yeah, I remember the entire week.” Ren said as if he was in pain. “But why just that week?” he asked. He thought about the uneasy feeling he had every time he tried to think about his past. He knew that it existed, that was because of the familiar feeling he had from things such as his apartment, school, and Sal.

“You only remember that week clearly because that world was only actually there for a week.” she explained.

“What?” Ren questioned.

“What Tye did was that he took the people from your world, recreated your world, and then put everyone from your world back into the world at the exact same age they would’ve been in your world, but for everyone to be put back in at the same age then they need to have memories to believe that they have lived in that world the entire time. It would be a shock if you had just woken up in that world at the age of eighteen with no previous memories right? And then why the same age as before? Well if he just took all the souls from the original world and made everyone infants then that wouldn’t really be a world would it?”

“Wait, but why not just create new people? Why does he need the souls of the people from the original world?”

“New souls cannot be created.” she stated. “Only through the process of natural life can souls be created. Even I do not have the power to create new souls.”

“What?!” Ren said, surprised. “This goes back to last time again, too. You said that you can’t stop Tye, and you just said that you don’t have the ability to create new souls. If you’re a god, then why do you have these limits?”

Mana sighed before she began her explanation. “Some of the reason comes from the Goddess of Willpower who came before me. Of course as a goddess I should have the ability to control my own world, protect it, nurture it. That’s the way it should be, but the goddess who was in my position before me placed a certain limit on my ability to interact with my world. Take a look at this.” she said as she snapped her fingers. Across the reflection pool appeared green light in the form of jail cell bars. Mana brought Ren over to the reflection pool to show him these prison bars. “These bars were created by her and are bars that no one, not even I can break. I hate to say it but she was the most powerful goddess the world has ever seen. The chances I’ll ever break through may as well be none. I won’t give up of course and I am always searching for a way to break through, but as things are now they prevent me from going into your world personally. Without being there in person, I can’t stop Tye from doing what he wants.”

“Wait, but you brought me here. How was it possible for you to do that?”

“Oh, that?” she asked. “Like I said last time, I fished you out of there. Imagine that while your world was being rebuilt by Tye it was nothing but an aquarium of souls with a small leak in it. You just so happened to find the leak and make it here. There was nothing I actually did to interfere with your world besides peer into it from this reflection pool.”

“I see…” Ren trailed off as he began to accept what Mana was saying about herself being powerless to help him. Mana looked at Ren’s acceptance and saw that she could move on to explain the second question he asked.

“As for the ability to create new souls, that’s a rule set by the one above me. I have no say in that, and what I mean about the one above me is the one we gods refer to as a god. In short there are humans and their worlds, these worlds are ruled by gods such as me, and the one ruling over us gods we just simply call The One.”

“But why the restriction? Why not allow you to have full control of the life you create in your world?” Ren asked.

Mana chuckled. “The reason is that perception is power!” she said confidently.

“Yeah… what do you mean by that?” Ren asked as he stared at Mana with a confused expression on his face.

“Last time you were incredibly confused when I told you that every human has the power to change the world, but now I’m here to explain how that’s possible.”

“Yeah, that’d be incredibly helpful.” Ren replied.

“Have you ever wondered if there was ever something more to your world? Say, have you ever wondered if there were something such as a monster in your world, or maybe there was a time in which you really wanted to use some kind of magic spell?”

Ren answered unhesitantly, “Yeah, of course. I’ve often found myself thinking, ‘Wow! It’d be cool if I could just use magic to make myself faster, or so that I could use a teleport spell,’ and as for things such as monsters -- yeah -- I’m glad no monsters exist.”

“But what if I told you both of those things did exist in your world?”

“Huh?” Ren was almost offended by this question. No, of course there weren’t monsters or magic in the old world. He was sure that everyone had attempted to shoot a fireball from their hands at some point in their life and some of them even shouted it at the top of their lungs having fully believed that a real fireball would come out of their hands, but all those people were left with disappointment because magic did not actually exist.

“Tell me. If you had to give me the odds of whether or not magic actually existed in your world, what would be the logical answer to give me?” she asked with a smug look on her face.

This was easy for Ren to answer. “One hundred percent.”

“Wrong!” Mana exclaimed. “For someone so smart you should’ve thought about this one a bit more, Ren. You said one hundred percent but that’s not based on logic, that’s what you believe. The odds cannot be one hundred percent.”

Cannot be one hundred percent? Ren questioned the reasoning in his head. Is magic possible? The answer should be no. For as long as there has been history there has been no use of magic, none. A person can believe with all their heart that they can use magic, yet still fail in the end. Is that not enough to prove to people that magic does not exist?

“You’re forgetting the counter point: if no one has ever seen or used magic, how can one prove magic doesn’t exist based on that? Couldn’t that mean that someone may have used magic and no one ever knew? Could it be that people in your history had used magic but the historians at the time who wrote the history books did not actually know that magic had been used? Doesn’t that mean there’s at least one possibility that can never be disproven?”

Yes, what she was saying was absolutely true. How could the unknown be disproven when there was no way to scientifically verify its existence in the first place. The argument was so similar to the one he had about Jonathan, that he questioned how he couldn’t see the answer before.

“Yeah. I see now.” Ren was visibly frustrated with himself for letting that concept slip past him.

Mana smiled at him. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve been through a lot already so I’m sure your thoughts are a jumbled mess.” She paused before she continued with her explanation. “The existence of magic cannot be disproven because you humans have no way to scientifically prove that it exists or doesn’t exist. As a being living inside of a world you don’t control, it is an answer you would never be able to come across on your own. However, you have me to answer this question: magic does indeed exist in your world.” Mana anticipated what Ren would say next and continued explaining. “You want to know how? Simple. A person can only use magic if they believe one hundred percent that they can use magic.”

“But that doesn’t make sense.” Ren interjected. “If that’s the case, then why can’t every person who tries to cast a fire spell do so? Especially for those at a young age. They’re so young that they can hardly differentiate between reality and fiction, surely they must believe that they can use magic one hundred percent.”

“Even so, they don’t believe one hundred percent. It may be close -- they might even believe ninety-nine point nine percent that they can use magic -- but without having seen it firsthand they cannot believe one hundred percent.” Mana raised her left arm into the air with her palm facing towards the sky and said one word. “Fireblast.” she said. Ren watched, stunned, as what could only be described as a bolt of flame being propelled into the sky, eventually dissipating into the air. “Magic is real,” she said as Ren’s head lowered, jaw still dropped. Ren’s view refocused on Mana as she continued, “And that will be the basis you will use to understand this: any being can do whatever they want so long as they will it to happen. It all begins with your perception and cognition.”

Ren began to understand the situation. If this was true then this meant, “So Tye’s perception of the world was changed by something, and that change in perception caused him to believe that he could one hundred percent alter the world. Am I right in that deduction?” he asked.

Mana was surprised. She knew from her time watching Ren in his own world that he was smart, but for him to have caught on so quickly was fantastic. “Pulled yourself back together have you?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Ren responded. “Before we move on, I have to ask. Do you have any idea what caused Tye’s change in perception?”

She put it bluntly, “I have no idea. Before Tye changed the world I spent my time monitoring points of interest daily, but Tye wasn’t one of them.”

“Points of interest?” Ren questioned.

“Those -- those aren’t important.” she stuttered as she dodged the question. Mana turned away from Ren. “Now’s the time. I need to ask you formally, Ren.” She turned back around. “Ren, the person at the forefront of this disaster. Now that you know that I am unable to revert your world to its previous state I must ask: are you willing to take back your world?”

Ren thought about his enemy for a second. Tye, his best friend who had suddenly become insane and gained the power to alter the world at will. Would he have to fight him?

“What exactly does that entail?” he needed to hear the answer to affirm his thoughts.

Mana stared into Ren’s eyes as she said this unhesitantly, “You must kill Tye.”

Ren couldn’t help but frown at the thought. He had so many memories with Tye because he had grown up with him. She wanted him to just give up on helping him return to normal and go straight to killing his best friend?

“The reason?” Ren questioned.

Mana knew exactly what was going through Ren’s head. “It’s simple. Tye has gained powers that no human should, so as a goddess it would normally be my job to return the world to its proper, balanced state. The way I would do that would be to remove him from the world, permanently. However,” she appeared sad as she continued to speak, “without the ability to fix the world firsthand, the task must fall to you.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Ren thought about the Tye he knew before he went insane then compared him to the one now. Was there a way to save him? Or should he be saved?

“I think I’ll have my answer once you tell me this: what happened to the people who died in the last world and how many?”

“The people of that world were the reused souls of your world. Their deaths mean that they can never return to your world because their soul no longer exists in that realm. As for the number?” She tried to think about the people she had seen killed while she could do nothing but watch over Ren. “Everyone in the mall...” she trailed off as she thought the idea may be too shocking for Ren to hear, for that was no small number. Her voice had been too quiet to hear so Ren was unable to make out what she had attempted to say. She then began again at a volume Ren could hear, “The only ones who died in that world were the rebels in the mall and Sal, so fifty-one people.”

What is true evil? How can one determine if another is truly evil? This question has plagued Ren ever since he first met Jonathan on that rainy day, and it continues to plague him even now -- except that he never would’ve thought he would be asking that question about his best friend. Determining if one is evil? Isn’t that the same as asking if magic is real? There’s no way to actually prove its existence or nonexistence; then how does one prove that someone is evil other than through their subjective beliefs? -- and what did Ren believe? Was Tye evil? Was Tye still the good person he knew at heart? Of course Ren wanted to believe that there was still goodness in Tye’s heart, but there was no current evidence to make him believe so. Tye had killed people, many people -- people who were probably all good people leading innocent, everyday lives -- and they had all been killed. So what was Ren’s conclusion? He failed to reach a strong conclusion for he didn’t want to believe that Tye was evil, but in time… he would.

“I--” Ren struggled to get the words out, “I will.” he said, in a voice that sounded very unconvinced. He clenched his fists, then stood up. “What do I need to do?” he asked.

Mana gave him a faint smile, knowing that the decision must’ve been a hard one for him to make. “Tye has the power to alter the world at his will, making him a formidable foe -- not to mention that Tye also has his elite force of killers, the executioners, one of which you’ve already met; therefore, it is my job to ensure that you are capable of defeating any foe you face. There is one problem that comes with this.” Mana stared at Ren again with the same serious face she had given him when she told him that Tye must die. “As you know, Tye gained powers greater than any human should have -- in other words his powers are godlike; or rather, far too powerful. You need to understand that the power we all possess -- the power to use magic, the power to use abilities, the power to change the world -- these are all possible because of our willpower.” Mana inched closer to Ren and held up his pendant in her palm. “When you begin to perceive that you can do anything with your willpower, you will eventually reach that state that Tye is in. In other words --”

“I’d need to die.” Ren cut her off because he saw where this was going. Mana nodded. Ren looked down at the pendant, “And what’s this pendant have to do with all of this?”

“This pendant is the manifestation of your soul.” she replied.

“The manifestation of my soul?” Ren questioned.

“Yes. In other words it is a tunnel connecting your soul to the physical realm. The reason for this is that it gives your willpower one point in which it can flow from your soul: it provides me with a way to put a limit on the amount of willpower you use in a fight. Thus giving me a way to protect you from gaining too much power…” she trailed off. Ren thought this was a brilliant solution to the problem she had presented, but he could think of a certain situation in which things became questionable.

“When I regained my memories, in that instant, the pendant broke. What does

that mean if the pendant broke?”

“Yes…” she said softly. “That was your willpower breaking your limiter. The amount of willpower you created at that moment was too much energy to pump through the tunnel, forcing it to explode. While that does mean that you can break your limiter with willpower, removing the protections I have put in place, it was because you used that much willpower in that moment that you also broke free of Tye’s hold.” Mana smiled softly. “Willpower is a very powerful force after all.”

Ren stood there, for all he could do was stand there. So much information was thrown at him at once, so many details -- so much weight! -- and it was all up to him. He looked at Mana, who continued to smile at him softly. She knew how much all of this was and was obviously trying to be considerate in the way she presented all of this information to him, but this was her problem wasn’t it? As a god, wasn’t it her problem? After Mana’s soft smile continued to stab at Ren’s heart, he knew there was no way he could call it her problem. There was nothing she could do from the start. She was just an innocent bystander in all of this who could do nothing but watch from the sidelines. As a person who had lived in that world -- no. As the person who lived there as the best friend of the one who destroyed the world, wasn’t he more accountable than she was? Ren grimaced at the thought.

“I will!” he shouted suddenly, startling Mana.

“Wh-where did that come from?” she stuttered.

“All of this talk, all of this explanation, the pain of feeling that something more

could’ve been done, the pain of feeling helpless, the responsibility of saving the world. It’s pissing me off!” Ren yelled.

“Wha?” Mana questioned where this sudden attitude came from.

“I’m tired of being helpless and going with the flow of things: asking question after question. I’m done standing around. If there’s one thing I’m going to do, it's to return the world to the way it was! Therefore, I will!”

Mana’s confused expression turned into laughter. “It’s great to see you so motivated, but I really have no idea where that came from. I took you as the cool, calm, and collected type not the type to just burst out like that.”

“Let that just be a show of my resolve. Is it wrong for a person who’s ready for something to show just how ready they are?”

“I guess not.” she laughed. As she laughed, her extraordinarily long hair lit up like a light and blinded Ren. He held up his hands in front of his eyes to block the blinding light. When the light disappeared he lowered his hands to see that Mana’s hair had been shortened into a ponytail that stretched down to her mid back. As Ren was about to question how this happened, Mana began to say, “If you’re so ready, then I guess it’s time to begin your training, Ren. Get ready, because while I may appear to be a cute, innocent girl on the outside, I think my training is going to be pretty intense.”

Instead of questioning her hair, Ren’s attention was caught by her challenge, “Oh yeah?” he questioned. “Bring it on! I’m ready!” he yelled. Mana smiled back. This was the first time Ren had ever seen this smile from her. It was a smile that wasn’t a smile of happiness. It actually appeared to have a more sadistic undertone to it of which Ren wasn’t aware of at the time, but he would quickly learn that Mana’s training was indeed intense...

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Character File

The Goddess of Willpower: Mana

Age: 18

Eyes: Green

Hair: Extraordinarily long, green

Height: 5’ 7’’

Clothing: A cute dress

Information: the goddess of Ren’s world. While she is a goddess, she cannot restore Ren’s world due to very specific reasons. While Ren may not fully comprehend these reasons (and some may still be unknown to Ren) Ren must accept what Mana says because she is his goddess.

----------------------------------------

One week. That was the amount of time Mana said she could put into training Ren. Tye had already recreated the world by the time Mana and Ren had begun their training. Ren questioned how Tye could do it in the matter of minutes he and Mana had spent talking. Mana said this was most likely because Tye made minimalistic changes to the world he had made. There must’ve been something Tye viewed as fundamentally wrong with his world and chose to remake it. But why only one week to train? If Tye continued on his path of experimental world building, then world after world would be created along with death after death after death until eventually… no souls would remain; therefore, Ren had to go into the world and defeat Tye as soon as possible.

What were the skills Mana was going to teach Ren in order to defeat a monster like Finite or a person with the ability to rewrite the world such as Tye? The first thing Mana needed to teach Ren was how to use his willpower.

“Willpower can allow you to do anything you will, this is the main principle you need to remember.” she said. “But the question is how? If you think about situations you had in your world, like attempting to use magic, then we have already come to the conclusion that situations like those require a change in perception that allows you to accept the reality that magic does exist. I have already shown you a magic spell: fireblast, the bolt of flame I shot into the air earlier. If you attempt to use it, you will be unable to.”

“Wait, but now I’m aware of its existence. Shouldn’t I be able to use it?” Ren questioned like a good student.

“You have the ability to use it, but no idea how to do it.” she explained. “Think about it. In order to move your arm, electric currents are sent through your muscles causing a reaction. For every effect that occurs there must be a cause, and what is used to activate a magic spell?”

To Ren the obvious answer, as it would be to any fan of magic, would be some kind of magic energy such as mana. “Mana is used to activate magic spells.”

“Correct.” replied Mana. “You need to be able to control the flow of mana in order to use magic, but how would one who has never used mana before use mana? For that matter, where does mana even come from?” She left no time for Ren to think about this question, instead giving him the answer right away. “Our souls generate willpower, and we can transform that willpower into mana. You might just say that willpower is mana.”

“So to use mana, I would use the willpower generated from my pendant.”

“Exactly, and to use that mana you need to realize that each time you will a spell into reality you are converting your willpower into mana.”

“That’s a bit of a convoluted set of steps, but I think I get it. In short, I need to generate mana to use the spell and that’s done through me willing that to happen.”

“That’s right.” Mana responded.

“Sounds easy enough.” Ren said confidently as he aimed his right hand up and yelled, “fireblast!” but nothing happened. Ren stood there with his hand in the air.

Mana laughed, “You’re not going to get it first try! You don’t know how it feels yet!” Ren lowered his hand and looked over at Mana.

“Is there anything that indicates if I’m doing it right?” he asked.

“Yeah. Your pendant should have a green light appear if willpower has been fed through.”

Ren looked down at his pendant. “Eh? So if it doesn’t light up then that means I couldn’t even get the first step right?” he thought to himself. Ren tried again and again to fire off one fireblast. He couldn’t get his pendant to light up a single time, until eventually…

Ren sighed and looked down at his pendant. “Really? I can’t will it to happen? Don’t I want it to happen? Isn’t that enough?” he thought. Ren grabbed his pendant and began to wish really hard that he would be able to fire a fireblast.

Mana saw how hard he was trying and knew she had to stop him. “Ren, wait.” she said calmly. “I know you’re getting a bit frustrated but if you stop there and continue to attempt to will mana into existence then --” she stopped herself as she began to sense a strong presence of mana. Ren had been generating mana because he had removed the final step from the equation. He stopped to focus on turning his willpower into mana, but he was generating too much, at this rate--

“Fireblast!” Ren yelled as his pendant shattered covering Ren in willpower as if it were a bright green fire. Ren had shot an extremely large fireblast into the air, way larger than the one Mana had previously shot. Ren watched as the fireblast eventually dissipated into the air and he realized what had happened. Mana sighed as Ren looked back down to look at her. “Well, uh. I did it.” Ren said with a look of someone who had been caught doing something they weren’t supposed to. The green fire around Ren disappeared as the jewel in his pendant reformed.

“Well, I guess you know the feeling now. Just… turn it down a bit this time.”

“Y -- yeah.” Ren stuttered. With a bit more practice Ren became proficient at firing a fireblast without destroying his limiter. This meant that he had successfully learned one of the four spells that Mana planned to teach him. The next three were basic elemental spells: freeze, a spell the causes whatever is being touched by Ren to begin to freeze over; waterburst, causes water to appear out of thin air and create a burst effect as if someone had set off an explosion underwater causing the water to explode outwards (the direction of the burst being opposite of Ren and the velocity being enough to knock an opponent over if it’s fired at point blank range); and gust, a wind spell that generates a strong gust of wind. Learning these four spells took up the majority of that day’s training session. The last thing Ren needed to learn for the day was --

“I’m going to teach you a nifty trick to end today with.” Mana said with a smug smile.

“A nifty trick?” Ren questioned. “What could be more impressive than magic?”

“What about --” she paused for dramatic effect, “this!” she yelled as light appeared in her hand in the shape of a sword, and that light faded away starting from the tip of the sword, revealing a magnificent, shiny silver sword. Mana smiled as she sheathed her sword in a sheath that Ren didn’t even see her make. The sword then rested on her left hip. “Pretty neat, right?”

“What was that?!” Ren asked excitedly.

“I used my willpower to create this sword and sheath. It’s the one ability I’m going to teach you. You’ll have the ability to create your own gear, like a combat outfit. You wouldn’t want to wear that school uniform into combat, would you?” Ren looked down at his clothes, he hadn’t realized that he was wearing his Valenthia High school uniform. He wanted to ask how and why he was wearing his school uniform but decided it would be best to keep learning about this so called “ability.”

“Ability?” Ren questioned. “Is that different from using mana?”

“Yes. An ability directly uses willpower, but is a more advanced technique. To do this, you need to have a strong visualization as to what your sword looks like, and you can do this to change your appearance as well. It’s the same technique I used to shorten my hair into this ponytail earlier.” Ren thought back to the bright light he saw and how her hair had been shortened into a ponytail. “What I want you to do is to create your own sword and outfit. This will be your homework for tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll begin training you to master the sword. Although you already have experience from SwordTours don’t you?” The word “SwordTour” sent a chill down Ren’s spine.

“That… was a while ago.” Ren said softly. He hadn’t been in a SwordTour since his last year in middle school. The thought brought up bad memories. Ren used to be good with the sword, so good that he was even offered to go to Valenthia High on a scholarship if he took part on their school’s team, but in the end he declined the scholarship yet still ended up going to Valenthia High.

“Don’t worry!” Mana said enthusiastically. “I’ll take your skills and make you a master in no time!” she yelled. “All you have to do is get your gear together. Think you can do that?” she asked.

“Think of gear and then will it into existence, huh? Sounds easy in theory, but as I experienced earlier, may not be completely easy.” he said, thinking of all the times he yelled fireblast without successfully casting a fireblast. “I’ll do my best!” he concluded.

“That’s the spirit!” Mana yelled as she snapped her fingers and all of a sudden it was nighttime. Now that Ren thought about it, he knew nothing about the world he was in right now -- not even if there was a day/night cycle. He guessed he found out his answer to that question due to the fact that Mana just manually changed the sky from daytime to nighttime, but there was still a lot to find out about the world Mana lived in. However, there was no time to think about what kind of world it was. He needed to visualize what kind of gear he wanted to make. No, the question was: where was he going to sleep?

Mana was already walking in the direction of her house when she turned around and asked him, “Are you coming or what?”

“Oh. Yeah.” he said as he followed Mana into her home. The room Ren stepped into was a small room that was obviously for one person. To the left was a small kitchen with an oven, fridge, sink, and cabinets hanging on the wall above them. The kitchen was also accompanied by a small table with two chairs. To the right was a couch, a chair, and a small coffee table. On the wall opposite the entrance was a singular door that Mana then led Ren into. She turned on the light and Ren saw that it was one large room with only a large, comfy looking bed in the middle. “Wait, one bed?” Ren questioned as they walked into the room.

“Yeah, what about it?” Mana asked innocently.

“Well,” Ren became flustered and began to stutter, “y-you see, um. If there’s one bed… a-and two of us, um. Doesn’t -- doesn’t that mean…” Ren trailed off and looked away from Mana. Mana continued to stare at him with a blank face until eventually she realized what was going through his mind.

“You idiot!” she yelled as she high-kicked Ren in the jaw. “I’m a god! I don’t need sleep!” That was the last thing Ren heard before he fell into a deep sleep.