Firebrand - Chapter 15: In the Maelstrom

The hearse with the weird odor slowed to a stop before the entrance. The sound of pebbles could be heard bouncing on the ceiling. There were footsteps coming from the corridor, and there seemed to be someone sawing next door. The door knob to the room rattled slightly, and the faucet in the bathroom kept dripping even though it had been screwed shut. There was a rubber ball that rolled on its own underneath the bed. Wet footsteps started to surface one after another on the floor. At 3 am, Chen Ge held a cleaver in his hand as he hid beside the room heater. The call he was trying to make was finally answered. “Landlord, is this what you meant by ‘the house can be a little crowded at night’!?”

One day, the majority of humanity had a collective thought.

‘I wish the world would just collapse.’

And then, that wish came true.

“Hey, Yoshi-kun. I think you’re——”

Hearing that voice for the first time stopped me in my tracks. On my way home from school. On the playing field of our junior high, and at the bookshop in front of the station. And then in the empty lot where the white cat slept. Shiina Yuki, the strange girl who somehow knew all about me, always approached me like that.

We laughed, cried, got angry, held hands. Again and again, we repeated those disappearing memories and ephemeral promises. That’s why I never knew. I never knew the value of Yuki’s smiles or the meaning of her tears. Nor even the singular sentiment behind her many ‘Nice to meet you’s.

This is a captivating, heartrending tale of meetings and partings.

[Climb the Dimensional Tower and have any wish fulfilled by the gods themselves!]

Enters Josh Malum.

He was feared on Earth, but in this new world, he is but a Fallen. One that is forced to Climb. If it wasn’t bad enough already he is also Classless, something that is unheard of in the Tower. Yet none of it phases him.

«You think I should be despairing? Why? Is it because I’m classless? They offered me so many classes, I simply refused them all.»

Sacrificing the many worlds is a small price to regain what he once lost. To all the deities that stand in his way:

F… ⎧ᴿᴵᴾ⎫