Jizi: Readers in front of computer screens—
World Admin (hereinafter referred to as Admin): Readers in front of phone screens—
Together: We missed you all so much!
Admin: This was the special episode of "Fate/Death Night," an interactive program with readers. First, let's read some reader letters. The Dian Niang ID is...
Jizi: Bullshit! The title clearly said this was about me, didn't it?! Why did it suddenly turn into reader interaction? And why are you, who said you'd only appear in the prologue, here?!
Admin: The original text clearly said, "After the prologue, I basically won't appear again." Pay attention to the words "basically"! Besides, this chapter really isn't after the prologue.
Jizi: ...Then how do you explain the first question?
Admin: Ah, that was clickbait... No, it was incidental. We'll incidentally explain a few things about you.
Jizi: As the protagonist, my settings are only incidental? Is this really okay?
Admin: Well, because of certain things someone did at the end of the last episode, the author is currently suffering punishment worse than the eighteen levels of hell, so let's gloss over those details.
Jizi: ...Uh...
Admin: Anyway, let's get to business! Let Cirno worry about the details.
Jizi: Fine... As for the reader letters—actually, they were comments in the review section. Since the author basically replied to all of them, we won't read them or list names here. In any case, thank you all very much for your suggestions and comments. Next are answers to some of the questions.
Admin: For example, regarding the chapter formatting. Hmm, after reading through it herself, the author felt that a huge block of text crammed together really was annoying to look at. But the problem was that, content-wise, that "huge block of text" really was an independent and complete section. Splitting it up would feel a little strange too...
Jizi: That was the author's sophistry, everyone, don't believe it. The real reason is that she's a chatterbox. She feels uncomfortable if she doesn't make simple issues complicated, or else her expressive ability is so poor that she can't explain things clearly and concisely.
Admin: ...(looked at the script in his hand) Uh, could you at least let me finish before tearing it apart?
Jizi: No! It was just a bunch of nonsense and sophistry anyway, so skipping it doesn't matter. Readers already said they didn't want to see a huge wall of text all crammed together.
Admin: Did you forget this book's central theme...
Jizi: If she wants to court death, let her! I want to be a proper protagonist! Since she isn't here right now, I need to hurry up and turn the negative impression she left behind into a positive one. So from now on, the paragraphs will be broken up more. At the very least, no paragraph will make readers think, "A huge wall of text, how annoying, I don't even want to read it."
Admin: Do whatever you want. It has nothing to do with me anyway.
Jizi: Also, readers aren't clear about my abilities—that is, the protagonist's abilities. Hmm, fine. Since they aren't clear, let me explain them carefully. This is a good chance to flesh out my settings as the protagonist too—the mess left behind by that goddamn low-level author still has to be cleaned up by me.
Admin: First of all...
Jizi: As for my abilities, the main one is the Noble Phantasm [Thousands of Delusions] (power-of-YY). Its principle is to use my imagination as an otaku to recreate things I once saw on the other side of a screen, including weapons, skills, tools, and so on. The degree of recreation is determined by two factors: my Mana and my obsession with the original.
Admin: Put simply, it's piracy.
Jizi: Can something Chinese people do be called piracy?
Admin: I-I can't refute that...
Jizi: But just talking about it probably won't make things clear for many of you. Let's demonstrate with actual examples.
(Materialized a Gundam.)
Jizi: Look, everyone. Because my obsession with Gundam runs very deep, I can recreate a Gundam perfectly, one hundred percent!
Admin: This actually consumes a considerable amount of Mana, but here, I set her Mana to infinity.
Jizi: But I've basically never imagined myself piloting a Gundam—call it loving dragons from afar if you like, but my interest in collecting Gundams is far greater than my interest in piloting one into battle—so I can't materialize the ability to pilot a Gundam.
Admin: After all, she doesn't even have a driver's license... She isn't very good at riding a bicycle either.
Jizi: Cough, cough. What did poor athletic coordination ever do to you?! Anyway, that's how it is. Let's put the Gundam matter aside for now and move on. (Materialized a Ruyi Jingu Bang.) Although I definitely loved the Journey to the West starring Liu Xiao Ling Tong, I don't remember it very clearly because too much time has passed. So the Ruyi Jingu Bang I materialized differs too much from the original, and its Noble Phantasm rating is only C-rank. Otherwise, the original Sea-Pacifying Needle would absolutely be an EX-rank Anti-World Noble Phantasm. As for that staff technique, it came from a series of Jet Li movies, such as Shaolin Temple. Since I didn't remember those clearly either, what I materialized wasn't very powerful. Otherwise, with the skills of Huang Feihong and Huo Yuanjia that Jet Li played, Lancer would be no problem at all.
Admin: That's what happens when you watch martial arts movies only for the excitement and don't pay attention to the actual fight choreography.
Jizi: Although what I materialized isn't the original, and is even far inferior to the original—do you remember the two determining factors of this ability? Mana and obsession! If obsession isn't enough, you can use Mana to strengthen the quality of what you materialize. For example, if I pour a huge amount of Mana into the Ruyi Jingu Bang like this... (flash effect) I can get a Ruyi Jingu Bang exactly identical to the original!
Admin: However...
Jizi: Hahahahaha! The original Ruyi Jingu Bang! (Singing) Just crossed several mountains, then passed several rivers, why are there so many rugged hardships?! (Shouting) Take a strike from Old Sun's staff! (Singing) Damn your steeper mountains and fiercer waters, I've suffered hardship and faced difficulty, fought my way onto a road to heaven, broad and vast... (dragging it out) Vasttttt... Fuck! I even played the BGM, so why can't I move it at all?!
Admin: Here's a little fun fact for everyone. The Ruyi Jingu Bang, also known as the Sea-Pacifying Needle, the Sea-Pacifying Precious Iron, or Nine-Turn Tempered Iron, can change size however its wielder wishes. Its weight is—thirteen thousand five hundred jin, or six thousand seven hundred and fifty kilograms!
Jizi: Damn it!
Admin: So stop playing weightlifting over there and come continue.
Jizi: Fine, fine. I'm sure some of you are asking now: since Mana can strengthen things, why don't I use it much in the main story? Let's explain it this way.
Admin: Let's remove Jizi's "infinite Mana" buff now. Then, to make it more intuitive, let's assign her current Mana a value. Let's say 10. (A blue number "10" appeared above Jizi's head.)
Jizi: Why ten... Forget it, let's go with that. But readers, this number is only a conceptual value. It has nothing to do with my actual strength in the main story.
Admin: Hurry up, get to the point!
Jizi: So, materializing a Ruyi Jingu Bang directly through imagination consumes 1 point of Mana—this is only a conceptual value too! Oh, and while we're at it, weapons that have already been materialized can be summoned anytime like a Heroic Spirit's Noble Phantasm, like this. (The Ruyi Jingu Bang repeatedly vanished and reappeared in her hand.) It doesn't consume additional Mana.
Admin: But if it gets damaged by external force... (snapped his fingers, and the Ruyi Jingu Bang shattered into fragments)...
If you think this book is good and don't want to lose it next time, please remember to add it to your bookshelf.
Jizi: Then I have to materialize it again, like this one. (She spent three or four minutes materializing another staff.)
Admin: As for that bow, its construction is unstable and it breaks after one use, so it has to be reconstructed.
Jizi: Tools are different from weapons. Once made, they remain physical objects, and they also have expiration dates. But you can make several at once. Of course, that consumes a huge amount of Mana too. For example, if I get injured and want to recover, it costs 3 Mana. But making a healing potion capable of treating the same injury costs 5 Mana, which really isn't worth it.
Admin: The advantage is that you can prepare them in advance and let other people use them.
Jizi: Going back to it, if I wanted to inject Mana into a C-rank Ruyi Jingu Bang that cost 1 Mana to make and strengthen it to B-rank, it would cost 8 or ⑨ Mana. Strengthening it to A-rank would even cost more than 50 Mana. And this strengthening has a time limit too. After a certain period, I have to inject that much Mana again. That's why I don't use Mana to strengthen weapons.
Admin: Skills work the same way. Like this—let's use a "Kamehameha."
Jizi: Ka—me—ha—me—ha! (She fired a beam thinner than the light from a tiny flashlight, which couldn't even penetrate the floor.)
Admin: That used 5 Mana, but its power was inferior to a casual slash. If she wanted to recreate its original power, it would take at least 500 Mana.
Jizi: So actually, I'm really weak...
Admin: This is when you use cheats. Didn't I give you three ahoge?
Jizi: That brings us to this. An ahoge is actually a Mana storage device, preloaded with a huge amount of Mana.
Admin: If you have 20 Mana in total—this includes both usable Mana and the Mana composing your body—then one ahoge contains 998 Mana.
Jizi: ...I don't want to comment on that number.
Admin: Although it's incredibly awesome, it has restrictions. It's single-use, and it can only be used to strengthen "Thousands of Delusions."
Jizi: That means even if I only use 200 Mana at once, I consume the entire ahoge—the remaining 798 Mana gets eaten by something, who knows what! And it can only be used for "strengthening"—not like it has any other use anyway.
Admin: You need to think carefully about when to use them, though one has already been used on the C route.
Jizi: As for why I was so awesome on the B route and could even use Brother Eight's ultimate move, first, the Berserker class gives bonuses when materializing skills with berserk attributes. Second, I had a lot of Mana on the Berserker route—in places the author never wrote about, I absorbed all of Old Man Matou's Mana. I also went out hunting at night, targeting bandits, thieves, drunks, and the like. And at that point, I wasn't merely absorbing a little life force—I sucked them dry. Later, I activated Eva-01 and ate the seafood Caster summoned. Anyway, I was super awesome.
Admin: Oh right, there's another question that needs explaining. What happened to all those weapons you made in the prologue?
Jizi: Sigh, their quality was too poor to use. The only usable ones were those that appeared in the main story.
Admin: Just how poor were they?
Jizi: Let me give you an example. Look, this is a Tessaiga. (She materialized a Tessaiga in her left hand.) This is a Qiaoxifu-brand kitchen knife bought from the supermarket. (She took out a kitchen knife in her right hand.) Then, like this. (She slammed the blades in her hands into each other.)
Jizi: See? (The kitchen knife was completely unharmed, while the Tessaiga broke in half.) Its hardness couldn't even compare to plastic. In terms of Noble Phantasms, even the lowest E-minus rank would be several times better than it. The others were about the same.
Admin: You're so useless.
Jizi: Isn't it because time was tight? If I had enough time to rewatch those anime I was starting to forget ten times each, then the things I made would at least reach C-rank.
Admin: Well, after saying all that, it was really all the author's scheme. This book wasn't meant to be a protagonist-stomps-everyone power fantasy, so the ability she gave you was only enough to fight a little...
Jizi: That's right, it's all the author's fault!
Admin: Lastly, let's explain your mask. That setting is also rather vague.
Jizi: Well, you can compare it to the Soul Gem in Madoka. The mask is the main body, while the body is something like a puppet. The difference is that both the mask and the body can perceive things. Yeah, that's about it. The mask is related to later developments in the main story, so it's inconvenient to reveal too much. Just make do with this explanation.
Admin: What an irresponsible thing to say...
Jizi: Well, it's fanfiction. As long as it's fun to read, that's enough. Obsessing over too many details is putting the cart before the horse. Actually, the author deliberately kept my strength vague in the main story. Since that caused reader confusion, this standalone chapter was made to explain it...
Admin: I feel like it became even less clear after the explanation...
Jizi: Then I'll explain it again... Anyway, that's all for today.
Admin: Readers in front of computer screens—
Jizi: Readers in front of phone screens—
Together: See you again whenever that may be!
Author: Oh my god, I finally escaped alive... Huh? The program's already over?
Author: Let me check the record... Why does it feel like things got even more confusing after the explanation?
Author: Let me summarize it simply.
The protagonist's ability is piracy. She can pirate weapons, tools, skills, and everything else.
But to stop her from getting too smug, she was restricted. The only things she can use are the few introduced in the main story.
Although the text gave a reason for it, it was really just an excuse the author forcibly came up with to restrict her, so don't get hung up on it.
Of course, there's also one huge cheat she can only use three times. That's it.
Author: Yep, that menopausal old woman has caught up to me. I'm out of here first. Bye.
Before you continue