In the endless void, Tatsuki felt as if he were standing atop an unimaginably towering peak, looking down at the vast, boundless universe before him.
At this moment, he seemed to become a part of it—something that could genuinely affect the cosmos itself,
grasping and manipulating changes in the universe's makeup… and its destruction.
That was the most direct, visceral sensation he got.
The power of space was enough to shatter the universe's structural framework—effortlessly.
And through the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, the universe's "death lines" were laid bare, along with its endless phenomena and rules, all becoming things that could be killed.
Even if he couldn't casually destroy the entire universe the way he'd wiped out the Swarm Galaxy, given some time, he could still reduce this universe to nothing.
Getting this kind of leap in power all at once left him… strangely unaccustomed to it.
What felt even weirder, though, was that as he sensed the finite within this universe's infinite, a subtle wrongness prickled at him.
He had the odd feeling that even if he destroyed this universe… it still wouldn't truly die.
For that bizarre intuition, he chose to trust it.
Because with three 12-star Apocalypses, and a world where SCPs existed, there was no way this was just some ordinary universe, simple as that.
But he also knew this wasn't something his current strength needed to worry about yet.
Do what you can with the power you actually have.
He wasn't delusional.
He withdrew his gaze, and his spatial perception rapidly folded back in.
"Tatsuki-kun, what just happened?" Yukino and the others all looked at him at once.
Just a moment ago, the power inside them had shifted—Time had suddenly gotten way stronger!
Tatsuki gave a faint smile as he explained, "Nothing serious. I got a bit of a boost. I might need to head out for a while—after school, you can just go on without me."
And with that, Tatsuki vanished.
As for where he went, naturally, it was the Apocalypse Battlefield of the Apocalypse Chat Group.
If he wanted to properly test his abilities, reality was out of the question. But on the battlefield? He could cut loose as much as he wanted.
…
After spending most of the day, Tatsuki finally got fully used to all his abilities.
Vector Manipulation, Zanpakutō Dominator, and King of Time had no qualitative changes.
It was a straightforward boost in output—about the same kind of improvement as the Space Origin at 18 hours.
But the Myriad Worlds Mystic Eyes of Death Perception and Space Origin—both now possessed the power to destroy an entire universe by influencing the universe's overall composition itself.
It would take some time, though.
He blew up the battlefield's universe twice within a short period, and both times it quickly restored itself.
Which, honestly, said a lot about how "serious" the Apocalypse Battlefield really was.
As for the Seven Deadly Sins under the Wings of Sin from the Chaos Wings, some abilities targeted individuals, so he hadn't tried those yet.
But after testing Beast Creation, Reality Rewrite, and Eroding Shadow, he found that as additional derived abilities, they were all extremely powerful.
In effect, they weren't much weaker than an S-rank 1v8 ability.
That made Tatsuki feel like the Chaos Wings' potential was far from exhausted.
And it made him even more eager to see what changes would happen once the Wings of Redemption and the Wings of Sin reached a balance.
The only ability that had a true, substantial change was Gluttony.
Based on his current understanding, Gluttony could swallow damn near anything. Gluttony was enough to swallow an entire galaxy.
Unfortunately, the battlefield's galaxies were fake, so he got absolutely no energy from it.
He couldn't wrap his head around how the Apocalypse Battlefield could simulate an entire universe so perfectly—its structure, its rules—yet still have everything inside it be false.
Gluttony's power wasn't just strong swallowing.
It had also gained a new direction of change: its energy refinement had evolved.
At the beginning, the refined energy from Gluttony would only turn into raw energy.
But now, it could also extract and purify energy attributes—turning them into attribute energy.
Its development path was extremely similar to the Apocalypse Chat Group's Apocalypse Furnace.
Raw energy was pure, undifferentiated power.
Attribute energy, however, could be fused into other objects, letting them gain the traits contained in that energy.
And what those traits were depended on what Gluttony had swallowed.
The difference from the Apocalypse Furnace was that the Furnace could only smelt objects, while Gluttony could swallow objects, living beings, and even pure energy matter.
After understanding the ability,
Tatsuki spent more points and time to completely integrate it—until it moved as naturally as his own arm.
...
By now, school had been out for a long time.
Tatsuki was getting ready to leave as well. Before he went, he glanced over the empty campus.
"Huh."
Something unexpected.
A wild bunny girl had just walked out through the school gate.
She looked thoroughly, helplessly fed up.
"It's her again."
Tatsuki felt a wave of familiarity just from the way she was dressed.
The girl he'd noticed once not long ago.
With that outfit… it was probably Adolescence Syndrome.
Tatsuki rubbed his chin, watched her leave, then shook his head and teleported home.
...
My name is Mai Sakurajima.
I'm wearing a bunny girl outfit at school, out on the streets… and yet nobody can notice me.
When is this kind of abnormal phenomenon going to end?
Mai was dressed in an unbelievably sexy bunny girl outfit, strutting right out onto the street, walking straight through the crowd.
But everyone ignored her like she wasn't even there. Not a single person looked her way.
That kind of loneliness was getting harder and harder to endure.
"...Guh!"
She rubbed her stomach as it growled.
The bunny girl walked into a shop.
She picked up a bread roll, went to the counter—yet the cashier couldn't see her at all.
Her expression dimmed. She left money on the counter anyway, then walked out.
On the way home, she ate the bread as she thought to herself.
In truth, besides her own problem, Mai had something else weighing on her.
Not long ago, late at night, she saw terrifying monsters and… psychics.
That night, she'd been out trying to test whether anyone could see her.
She ended up heading home very late.
The experiment failed, and she trudged along the dark road, exhausted and disappointed.
Then she heard a girl crying for help.
After hesitating for a second, she ran toward the sound, but when she reached the street corner… she saw something she couldn't believe.
A monster woman with a whole bunch of mouths all over her body—and superpowers!
One girl blasted the monster woman away in a single breath, while another girl's white mist froze the monster woman into an ice sculpture.
Then a man appeared without making a sound.
And after that, everything she'd seen vanished from her eyes, like it had all been a hallucination.
But she couldn't forget that they were all wearing YY High School's second-year uniforms.
"If… it was real, that would be perfect."
Mai couldn't help wishing it.
Because if psychics really existed, then maybe… they could help solve her problem.