Ryuk's question was like a stone dropped into a deep pool of nothingness. It made no echo, only sank slowly. After clearing away the "obvious filth"? The world that followed would naturally have new rules-rules written by me.
My gaze had long since turned toward deeper, systemic structures. The deaths of individuals, even a systematic purge, only treated the symptoms. To make purification last, I had to change the soil that bred the filth-the international rules and legal systems that the powerful twisted at will, riddled with loopholes yet impossible to break.
My next target was no longer a person.
I opened the notebook, my pen hovering above the page. This time, what I would write was not the end of a life, but an "event," a "coincidence" that would utterly transform the landscape of global financial regulation.
I focused my will, channeling my design into the tip of my pen-a deeply obstinate senior legislator from a major power, who had accepted enormous political donations and long obstructed a key financial transparency bill, would experience a sudden, undeniable "awakening of conscience" and "crisis of faith" while presiding over his final procedural attempt to block it. Before the assembled legislators and live cameras, he would tearfully confess his crimes, produce irrefutable evidence on the spot, and throw his full support behind the bill. Then he would collapse from "cardiac arrest brought on by excessive emotional distress." With his death as the catalyst, the bill would pass at unprecedented speed and by an overwhelming majority.
This was no longer a simple death. It was a direct rewriting of "will," a forcible distortion of "cause and effect." I had pushed the notebook's power into a new dimension.
The mental strain instantly reached a peak. This time, the price was no longer a specific