I am seriously thinking about Fireballing myself in the face.

(...I mean, I could have just bought the manga, right? But no, I just had to get the anime instead. And that's how I died! You know what I mean?)

Listen very carefully.

(Yeah, what is it? I'm here for you, buddy! My ole' pal! My best friend in the whole me!)

If you continue to talk at the rate that you do, I will literally incinerate myself.

He's blessedly quiet for a full four seconds, which is four seconds longer than his previous silence.

(No you won't. You've got really reliable self-preservation instincts - you won't be able to.)

You keep telling me how smart I am. I'm sure I could find a way without too much trouble.

(Well-)

He makes a 'hmph' sound.

(Why would you want to? I'm not that annoying.)

No. It would be one thing if you were annoying. But you are not simply annoying. You are incredibly stupid.

(That's hurtful.)

I don't care. I literally could not care less than I do right now. You have not stopped talking once in the past seven hours. If I had a body I would have ripped my ears off. If you had a body I would still be Lasering your cold dead ashes, and with a genuine and likely uncontrollable relief.

(Uh, ouch.)

If you ceased to exist entirely it would not nearly satisfy the level of bloodlust that the mere thought of you incites in me. There is no existence that I can conceive that would be less fortunate than the unlivable, unenviable, impossible situation of having to listen to your inane idiocy at all hours of the day.

He's completely quiet.

I have been trying to create a spell that should in all likelihood be easy for me to complete. A simple gravitational inversion. Distort space-time a bit in the right directions, tweak the third and second dimensions a little, maybe maintain an artificial sense of time to avoid nausea. But no. I have been utterly incapable of creating or doing anything in the entire period of the past I don't care how long anymore. Do you understand?

(...Yes.)

Leave me alone.

Allow me to say it again, with extreme prejudice and in a manner that your incalculably infinitesimal intelligence can understand. Leave. Me. Alone. Forever, if at all possible.

(But... I can help you! I promise!)

Can you? You can't rewind time, you can't improve my stats, you can't hold a serious conversation - do you even realize you've been talking about 'manga' this whole time? I don't even know what that is! But you didn't even bother to see whether I knew what it was. I'm sure you could have screened my memories, based on the abilities you've displayed thus far, but instead you simply nattered on for seven hours. About girls in miniskirts doing magic. Normally I would be all for hearing about the exact specifics of their magic, but as it seems to be based entirely around friendship and love I have absolutely no use for it.

I am going to figure out how to bring Lola to the very peak of her potential ability, and I am going to do it with absolute thoroughness and efficiency. Do you know why?

(Wh-)

Because she is willing to help me. Thus far she has been, quite exclusively, the only being in this universe to want to help me. Not you. Not Noah. Not Isaac, or Francis, or that pillbug looking thing she calls her friend. I have a minimal amount of information regarding the world I presently exist in, but bringing Lola to the most powerful position in the world will be an excellent method of obtaining it. Do you understand that?

(Well-)

I don't care whether or not you understand. In fact, I would be enormously and cataclysmically amazed if you had the capacity to understand. How this crappily made system and the universe it's attached to have not yet collapsed into absolute anarchy is utterly and entirely beyond me.

He swallows loudly, and my brain is sent off on a long tangent regarding whether or not the universe has the larynx and esophagus required for the sound.

(Um. Yeah. I think I get it. But, uhhh... I'm not an idiot. I can help you. My brain was rewritten so I could understand how the system works, and so that I could change it if I needed to. I totally get wanting to know more, by the way, but I can't tell you anything. I mean that literally - I've tried to tell you about various things happening around Careolis several times already, but my connection is cut off before I can say anything. I really can't interact all that much with the world past its foundations.)

I took a moment to calm myself, centering my mind and considering the information I had just been given.

What if... can you create a body for yourself?

(Pffft. No. Of course not - that'd be crazy.)

Have you tried?

(...yeeeessss?)

That doesn't sound promising.

(I'll get to work on it. In the meantime, what are you going to be doing?)

If I had shoulders, I would shrug.

I have honestly no idea. However, I've been using mana in some extraordinarily creative ways, if I do say so myself, and I'm detecting some strange signatures. It's as if everything I'm doing - and everything you're doing too, by the way - is being documented and read by some sort of... outside entity. Potentially a large number of them.

(Oh, I know what's happening!)

If you say something stupid, so help me...

(No, seriously! We're probably in a story, like a manga or a webnovel or something. I've read tons of stuff about this - it's called a fourth wall break.)

I consider the concept. Although initially insane, it would certainly explain Isaac's shallow behavior, or Xephyx's inexplicable breakdown.

Under the unlikely possibility that it is indeed the case, the author must not be very good.

(Well, that doesn't seem fair. You don't know how long he's been writing!)

This is still a hypothetical situation, after all. I'm still working on a methodology of observing the unknown watchers, but until then, I'm going to finish this gravity spell.

(All right, then. It's a plan! I'll get to work on making - you know, a body.)

You do that.

And maybe you'll be quiet while doing it.