She gave the book in her palm a little shake, a loli pacing a corridor carpeted with corpses like fallen leaves—every leaf one she cut down herself.

Frustration had burned into focus, so she ran tests for a long while, like a fox nosing every trap; her body shrugged off harm like rain off oiled silk, and strength, speed, and reflex lit up like wires drawn white-hot.

She also felt it, the power those “animals” swung when they struck, a breath of energy like wind in tall grass—call it mana, the novel kind; in her senses, their mana was a cup of water, and hers stretched out like an ocean under moonlight.

As for the book in her hand, it wasn’t just a book; it was a shield wall against most blows and a hammer when it chose to bite, but that was only its skin, while its marrow was stranger—it turned future happenings into lines you could read, like ink blooming on water, a cousin to foreknowledge.

Pour in mana, and words crawled onto the page like ants onto sugar; all she had to do was read, eyes sweeping like swallows; the only pity was the candle-flame it could see reached no farther than one minute ahead.

Still, in a fight, reading while brawling felt like dancing through rain without getting wet; it was invincible in a way that made the heart drum like thunder in a basin.

Not that the otherworld was all tailwind and sunlight; her body, for one, had slipped a trick on her—one clean-cut man’s frame swapped for a loli’s small shell—and yes, a loli’s frame.

Annoyance flared first like sparks in dry straw, but it stopped short of despair, because the first time she saw that new body mirrored in a lake like a silver plate, the cuteness hit like sin; hair shone sodium-flame gold, eyes burned copper-sulfate blue, and skin went smooth as a frictionless plane from a physics problem.

You don’t smash a perfect figure like that when you’re two-dimensional at heart, so she didn’t argue with fate; she just blew the lake sky-high—don’t ask how—dropped a stone like a meteor, and water exploded like a flock of birds taking wing.

Now the loli wandered a gilded hall like a maze of lacquer and gold, hoping to stumble into a treasure room the way a protagonist walks into fate.

Bang!

Pain prickled first like a nettle, then she realized she’d bonked her forehead against something hard, let out an automatic “Ow!” like a bird pecked by rain, and rubbed the spot smooth as if polishing a peach; no damage, no bruise, just a tear-bright shine at the corner of her eye.

She looked up through that watery blur and saw a giant door, and stamped across its face were six characters that might as well have been neon: The Treasure Room You Want.

…

“So honest? Seriously?!”

Her crisp loli voice cracked like a snapped twig as she flared at the heavens, then she set a small hand on the handle and gave the gentlest pull.

Thud!!

The whole doorway crumbled like stale bean curd, and she didn’t even blink, as if she’d watched this theater a hundred times.

A glance around showed other doors already wrecked like broken teeth along a jaw… emmm, not as if—exactly that.

Whatever. Door’s dead, move on.

She walked straight in, and no alarms howled like wolves, no red laser webs lit the air like spider silk—otherworld rules, sure—but missing the classic “dodge the beams” scene still left a tiny hollow like a popped bubble.

The treasure room’s décor sat heavy with quiet; shelves lined the walls like cliffs, laden with dusty old books furred in gray like winter moss—no one had walked here in ages.

Dead center stood a golden chest like a small sun, and there was no doubt—that was the legendary treasure box, the plum at the heart of the tree.

Didn’t expect treasure to drop into my lap like a ripe fruit this fast—guess I can’t dodge the fate of being RNG-blessed, huh?

Sighing inwardly over her own luck like a monk ringing a bell, she still scampered up with light steps, a pulse of joy skipping like stones across water; she was about to open her very first chest in this new world.

Two pink loli hands rubbed together at her chest like warming dough, as if she could smear the good luck on evenly, then pressed to the lid like seals to lacquer.

“Hup (>_<)!”

The chest opened!

Gold light burst like fireworks!

It appeared! This… this… could it be the legendary—

A mimic.

Hands lunged out to grab her like weeds snatching an ankle, but with cartoon-black lines on her face she lifted her tiny fist like a mallet and swung; the mimic shot off like a cannonball, smashed the wall, and punched a hole clean through like a gopher’s mouth.

She leaned to peer into that bite of darkness; another room lay beyond, holding only five books, their titles clear as carved jade. They read: “Perfect Restoration,” “Okuyasu Nijimura’s Hands-on Guide to Spatial Powers,” “Five Years to Learn, Three Years Invincible—Special Edition on the Fivefold Arcana,” “Ten-Minute Crash Course on Matter Creation,” and, thinnest of them all yet set on the most lavish central pedestal like a crown jewel—“Magic Cannon.”

A cloud crossed her face like a passing shadow, and she muttered things no one could parse, little sparks like “Am I blessed or cursed by RNG?” and “I reject my humanity—I’m becoming some ‘Flower-Mom’ thing,” nonsense ripples on dark water.

Snark was snark, but her hands were quick as minnows; she grabbed Magic Cannon and flipped it open.

First page:

—Believe it or not, just eat this book and you’ll learn it.

Second page:

—The end.

Nothing more.

Her fingers crushed the cover until it wrinkled like wet paper, and she fought the itch to rip it, jaw clenched like ice.

“Eat? Fine. I’m not scared of you.”

If you looked close, her lashes were glazed with a thin mist like dew on reed tips.

—Book-eating dividing line—

After a hard-fought chew that felt like gnawing boots, she lay sprawled on the floor like a beached fish, life leaking out in silence.

Then, like a tide under a new moon, a strange memory flooded her skull; her body moved without asking, a puppet tugged by shining strings, and she raised her hand as a green orb gathered in her palm like a sprouting seed.

Boom.

The sphere snapped into a beam and drilled forward like a comet, and the wall ahead opened in an instant like paper.

She didn’t smile; joy died in her throat like a spark in rain, because the Magic Cannon had been aimed straight at the books in front.

The books were perfectly destroyed, peeled to nothing like ash on wind; all that remained was one lone scrap of a page drifting in the air like a dead leaf, and a copy of Perfect Restoration that had almost been caught in the blast, lucky as a fish that slipped the net.

…

Is it okay if tears fall now?