The *Ultra Spicy Lava Curry* was gone. The plate looked like it had been polished by a high grade industrial sander. Ruleus leaned back, patted his stomach with a satisfied thud, and let out a long, airy sigh.
"Man, nothing beats a light snack to get the blood pumping!"
Light snack? That was enough capsaicin to restart a dead star, Ichikawa thought, staring at his own untouched, cooling tea.
The walk back to the academy was less of a stroll and more of a forced march. Ruleus hummed a jaunty tune that sounded suspiciously like a funeral march played at double speed, while Ichikawa plotted forty different ways to transfer schools.
"Hey, Ichikawa-kun," Ruleus chirped, swinging his arms with enough force to create a localized windstorm. "You're really quiet. Are you thinking about the curry? I knew I should have ordered the 'Supernova' level instead of just 'Lava.' My tongue still feels like it's attached to my face. Boring!"
"I'm thinking about my life choices," Ichikawa muttered. "Specifically the ones that led me to this conversation."
"Classic!" Ruleus laughed, slapping Ichikawa on the back. The impact nearly sent Ichikawa's lungs through his ribcage. "You've got that grumpy protagonist vibe down perfectly! Ten out of ten!"
They reached the classroom just as the bell let out a weary, dying toll. As they sat down, Ruleus having physically dragged his desk so close to Ichikawa's that their sleeves were touching, the Ruleus suddenly stopped fidgeting.
His eyes dropped to Ichikawa's hand.
"Huh," Ruleus whispered, his silver fringe casting a shadow over his eyes. "That's a flashy bit of jewelry for a guy who wants to count dust motes. A red band? Bold choice."
Ichikawa looked down at the ring, and for a second, the classroom faded. He wasn't in Ama-no-Gawa Academy anymore. he was back in that quiet morning, listening to Kyoki's voice cutting through the air like a blade.
random ass Flashback:
(("Starting from tomorrow, you will go to school, Ichikawa," Kyoki had said, her eyes pinning him to his chair. "You're going to school with mortals and study with them without causing any trouble. Your father and I... decided to send you to Ama-no-Gawa Academy since you're twelve now."
Before he could protest, she had reached out and taken his hand. Her grip was like a vise, warm, steady, and terrifyingly strong. She slid the red band onto his finger.
The moment the metal touched his skin, Ichikawa felt a sickening thud in his chest. It felt as if a mountain had just sat on his soul. The roaring heat in his veins, the divine pressure he'd lived with since his first breath, didn't vanish. it was shoved behind a massive, leaden door.
"That's ninety nine percent of your powers gone," Kyoki had whispered, leaning in until her eyes glowed with a faint, dangerous light. "The ring is a sinkhole. It eats the overflow so you don't accidentally tear an entire dimension just because you got frustrated. Don't take it off. Not for a bully, not for a girl, and definitely not to show off. If that seal breaks, your power would unleash. And I'm not ready to bury a planet just because you wanted to win a duel. And importantly... never use Divine Magic."))
Ichikawa snapped back to reality. The 'mountain' was still sitting on his soul, heavy and suffocating.
"It's nothing," Ichikawa lied, his voice steady. "Just a cheap ring."
"Liar," Ruleus grinned.
The air in the immediate three foot radius around them began to vibrate. Ruleus was reaching out with his mana, a subtle, invisible probe designed to peel back the layers of Ichikawa's "average student" facade.
I'll just take a peek, Ruleus thought, his silver eyes shimmering. Let's see what kind of monster—
THOOM.
Ruleus didn't move physically, but internally, his world inverted. As his mana touched the red ring, he didn't find a hidden talent. He didn't even find a high-level mana pool.
He found the Sinkhole.
It was as if he had reached out to touch a candle and instead tumbled into a bottomless, silent abyss that transcended the laws of the universe. The ring didn't just block him; it inhaled his senses. For a fraction of a second, Ruleus saw something that sat outside the logic of their world. a cold, ancient authority that made his own 'Time-Space transcendce' aura feel like a damp matchstick in a hurricane.
Ruleus gasped, his head snapping back. A single drop of blood leaked from his nose, sizzling as it hit the floor.
"Whoa," Ruleus wheezed, his face going several shades paler than his hair. He clutched the edge of his desk, his knuckles turning white.
Ichikawa blinked, looking at the sweating, trembling boy next to him. "Uh... you okay? Did the curry finally win the battle for your soul?"
Ruleus stared at Ichikawa. For the first time, there was genuine, wide eyed shock. He looked at the red ring. the leash on the apocalypse, and then back at Ichikawa's bored, vacant face.
Slowly, Ruleus's grin began to crawl back onto his face. It was shaky and a bit manic. He wiped the blood from his nose with a trembling thumb.
"Ichikawa-kun..." Ruleus whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of terror and absolute, fanatical excitement. "I think... I think I'm going to follow you forever. You're way more amazing than my stinky underwear!"
Ichikawa felt a cold chill run down his spine. "Please don't. Please do the opposite of that."
"Too late!" Ruleus cheered, the Good Boy energy returning with a terrifying intensity. "We're destined! Soul mates! Disaster partners! Whatever you want to call it!"
Ichikawa slammed his head onto his desk with a muffled thud. "Mom... you forgot to mention that the ring doesn't protect me from idiots. I'd rather bury the planet than deal with this guy for the rest of my life."
Just then,
Ichikawa looked down at the ring again, and for a second, the classroom faded. He wasn't in Ama-no-Gawa Academy anymore. He was back in the suffocating world of Kyotaru Yuuki.
In that life, he hadn't been a god there. He had been a punching bag. Kyotaru had grown up in a house that smelled of poverty and damp walls. In high school, he was the ghost in the corner. He was tall, clumsy, and perpetually alone. He remembered the dull, throbbing ache in his ribs from being cornered behind the gym. The popular boys used him to practice their kicks because they knew he wouldn't fight back. He had no friends and no one to help him in his miserable life.
But the worst day, the day that finally broke his spirit, was the So called Setup.
He remembered walking into the classroom and feeling a heavy, expectant silence. A group of boys cornered him at his desk, their faces twisted into ugly, jagged grins. Without a word, they grabbed his tattered backpack and dumped the contents onto the floor. Among his cheap notebooks and pens, they pulled out a pair of girl's underwear. They waved them in the air like a trophy for the whole class to see, shouting that they had found the creepy freak's stash.
The confusion was paralyzing. He stared at the fabric, his mind screaming, I didn't... how did that get there? He tried to speak, to defend himself, but the words died in his throat as the girls in the room recoiled in visible disgust. The teacher didn't even ask for his side. He just looked at Kyotaru with pure, cold loathing. They didn't listen to his denials. To them, he was the perverted freak now.
They dragged him behind the school building right after class. The beating was more savage than any he had felt before. They weren't just bullying him anymore. They were punishing him. They used their boots and their fists, mocking his tears and his silence. He laid in the dirt, humiliated and bleeding, realizing.
in this world, some people are just born to be stepped on. He was a bug, and they were the ones allowed to crush him.
That life had ended at a train station...
The screech of the tracks was still echoing in his head when the school bell rang loudly, signaling the start of the afternoon class. The vision of the cold, gray station snapped away. Ichikawa blinked, finding himself back in the sun drenched classroom of Ama-no-Gawa Academy. His heart was still heavy with the memory of the dirt and the humiliation of his past life, but the the red ring, reminded him he was someone else now.
The classroom door opened. Yoshiro sensei walked in, looking more serious than he had this morning. It was clear he was trying to regain some respect after his earlier face plant. He kept his chin tucked and his eyes fixed straight ahead, marching toward the podium with a stiff, military like stride. He was determined not to look at the floor, as if ignoring the ground would stop it from attacking him again.
He reached the front of the room and tried to lean casually against his desk while crossing his arms. It was a move meant to look cool and intimidating. But as he shifted his weight, his elbow missed the edge of the wood entirely.
"OOF!"
Yoshiro didn't fall to the floor this time. Instead, he did a frantic, stumbling dance as he tried to catch his balance, accidentally slamming his hip into the corner of the podium with a loud thwack. He let out a strangled whimper and squeezed his eyes shut, his face turning a deep shade of purple as he tried to play through the pain.
The class fell into a tense silence for a second before the giggles and snickers started bubbling up from the back rows.
Ichikawa jumped slightly in his seat, his eyes wide with a mix of shock and pity. "What the!? Why does he have to fail again?" he muttered under his breath. "Is the universe actually trying to kill this man's reputation or what?"
Yoshiro sensei sucked in a sharp, wheezing breath, his face still a violent shade of purple as he forced himself to stand upright. He slapped the podium with one hand, trying to look like a legendary grandmaster instead of a man who had just lost a fight with a piece of furniture.
"Ahem! As I was saying! Luck is a stat, and yours is currently zero!" he bellowed, his voice cracking only slightly.
He snapped his fingers with a theatrical flourish. Usually, this was the part where a teacher would look cool. For Yoshiro, it was a gamble. A shimmering rift of brown mana tore open in the air above his head, and with a series of metallic clangs, thirty black tablets began to pour out of the hole like oversized hailstones.
"Gah! Too much output!" Yoshiro yelped, ducking as a stray tablet nearly took his ear off.
The tablets didn't float gracefully to the desks. They slid, tumbled, and skipped across the floor. One skipped off a front row desk and smacked into the wall, while another landed perfectly in a student's lunchbox.
"Take one! Pass them back! Don't let them hit you in the face!" Yoshiro commanded, waving his arms frantically to direct the magical overflow (not overflow anime).
One of the black metallic slabs skidded across the wood and slammed into Ichikawa's desk with a heavy thud, vibrating right next to his hand. It was cold, sleek, and looked way too expensive for a school led by a man who couldn't walk in a straight line.
"Ooh, look at that! A Type-7 Mana Reader!" Ruleus cooed, grabbing his own tablet out of the air with one hand like a pro athlete. He started licking the screen for some reason before Ichikawa could stop him. "Tastes like... lightning and disappointment! Hey, Ichikawa-kun, if you break yours, can I have the shiny bits?"
"Don't lick the state funded equipment, Ruleus," Ichikawa hissed, staring at the black screen in front of him.
The red ring on his finger started to pulse. It wasn't a warm, fuzzy pulse. It was the rhythmic throb of a hungry beast that had just been offered a snack. He could feel the ninety-nine percent seal straining as the tablet tried to sync with his aura.
"Alright, listen up!" Yoshiro shouted, finally standing straight now that the rain of tablets had stopped. He pointed a shaking finger at the class. "All you have to do is place your palm on the center of the glass. The tablet will drain a tiny, microscopic amount of your mana to calculate your ceiling. If the screen turns Blue, you're a genius! If it's Green, you're average! If it turns Red..."
He paused, a dark shadow crossing his face.
"If it turns Red, you're helping me scrape the gum off the cafeteria floor with your fingernails! Begin!"
The room was suddenly filled with the low hum of magical activation. All around them, screens began to glow.
Ping! Green.
Vring! Green.
Doo-wop! A bright, shimmering Blue erupted from the desk behind them.
"Ha! I'm strongest!" a student cheered, only to be silenced by Yoshiro throwing a piece of chalk at his forehead.
"My turn!" Ruleus chirped. He didn't just place his hand on the tablet; he slammed it down like he was trying to crush a bug.
The tablet didn't just glow. It screamed. A blinding, pulsating Silver light exploded from Ruleus's desk, so bright that the students in the front row had to shield their eyes. The screen didn't just show a number, it already started to smoke.
"Whoa! I think I broke the Genius setting!" Ruleus laughed, his silver hair standing on end from the static. "Hey, Teach! Does '
Melting the Hardware count as an A-plus?"
"Ruleus! Stop overloading the sensors! Those cost three months of my salary!" Yoshiro wailed, clutching his head.
Ichikawa looked at his own tablet. He felt a cold sweat dripping down his neck. He looked at Ruleus's melting screen, then back at his own. He just had to be Green. He just had to be a boring, invisible, average student who wouldn't be forced to scrape gum or destroyed the entire planet.
Slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs, Ichikawa reached out. His fingers trembled as they hovered over the black glass. The red ring hissed, a sound only he could hear.
Just one percent, he prayed. Just give it a tiny, tiny crumb of power.
The moment his skin touched the glass, the hum didn't start. The Sinkhole didn't just take a tiny amount of mana.
The tablet's screen didn't turn Blue. It didn't turn Green. It didn't even turn Red.
The black glass simply... went darker. It turned a shade of black that seemed to suck the light out of the entire classroom. A low, vibrating growl started to echo from the desk, and the temperature in the room plummeted ten degrees.
"Uh... Sensei?" Ichikawa whispered, his face turning slightly pale. "What does it mean when the tablet starts vibrating like a chainsaw?"
Yoshiro sensei stopped wailing about his salary and squinted at Ichikawa's desk. He leaned in so close his nose was touching the black glass, which was currently humming like a hive of angry bees.
"What in the name of the Goddess is this?" Yoshiro whispered, his eyes widening. "It's not Blue. It's not Green. It's... it's the color of a burnt toast in a dark alleyway. Ichikawa, did you sit on this thing? Is your butt made of lead?"
"I just touched it, sensei!" Ichikawa shouted over the vibrating roar of the tablet. "Is it supposed to be sucking the light out of the room? My pen just rolled toward it and vanished!"
"Wait! My eraser too!" Ruleus cheered, leaning over and dropping a piece of rubber near the tablet. The black screen gave a tiny slurp sound and the eraser was gone. "Amazing! It's a literal trash can! Hey, Ichikawa-kun, can it eat my homework? This is the best magic ever!"
"It's not magic, it's a lawsuit!" Yoshiro shrieked, grabbing his hair. "That's a void-error! Do you know what the school board does to teachers who let students create mini black holes in the middle of a Tuesday? They send them to the dragon pits! I don't want to be dragon food! I haven't even finished my limited edition figurine collection yet!"
Yoshiro grabbed a ruler and tried to poke the tablet to turn it off. The moment the wooden ruler touched the screen, it was instantly vaporized into sawdust.
"My lucky ruler!" Yoshiro wailed, falling to his knees in a dramatic, soul crushing pose. "It was a gift from my grandmother! Why is the universe so cruel to a man who just wants to live a quiet life and occasionally slip on a pencil!?"
"Sensei, focus!" Ichikawa yelled, his desk now physically rattling against the floor. "The desk is starting to hover! Do something! Use your high level teacher magic!"
"Right! Magic! I am a professional!" Yoshiro stood up, his face turning serious for exactly half a second. He began to chant a complicated, ancient spell, his hands glowing with a bright brown light. "O Great Spirits of the Earth, calm this restless device and—"
He tripped over his own shoelace mid chant.
"GYAH!"
Yoshiro face planted into the side of the desk. His brown mana didn't hit the tablet; it hit the legs of the desk instead. With a loud CRACK, the desk legs turned into solid stone and became five times heavier, slamming the whole thing back onto the floor with a bone-shattering crash.
The black tablet let out one final, pathetic burp and the screen went blank.
The entire classroom was silent. A single cloud of dust drifted over Yoshiro, who was still laying on the floor with his face pressed against a stone desk leg.
"I did it," Yoshiro's muffled voice came from the floor. "I saved the school. Someone write a letter to the principal. I deserve a raise. Or at least a new ruler."
Ruleus poked the now dead tablet with a finger. "Aw, it stopped eating things. I was about to see if it would take my socks." He looked at Ichikawa and gave a thumbs up. "Ichikawa-kun, that was incredible! Your mana is so weak it actually broke the laws of physics and turned into a vacuum! That's a total zero! You're officially the most pathetic person in class! I'm so proud of us!"
Ichikawa stared at the dead tablet, his heart finally slowing down. The red ring on his finger was cool again, sitting there like nothing happened.
"A zero, huh?" Ichikawa muttered, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. "Yeah. Let's go with that. I'm a total, pathetic zero. Totally average. Nothing to see here."
"Average!?" Yoshiro barked, finally peeling his face off the floor. He stood up, a piece of gum now stuck to his forehead. "You just vaporized school property and nearly opened a portal to the shadow realm! That's not average! That's... that's gum scraping duty for a month! Both of you! Ichikawa for being a void anomaly and Ruleus for licking the hardware!"
"YES!" Ruleus cheered, jumping up and down. "Gum duty! The ultimate bonding experience! Come on, disaster partner, let's go find the stickiest table in the building!"
Ichikawa slammed his head onto the stone heavy desk. Mom... I tried. I really tried.