The games of Nova feature a linear progression with a lot of separate grinds. You encounter one really hard boss, perish, respawn, try again with a different tactic, perish, respawn and try again, over and over until you beat said boss. Usually, they are hard but beatable. Yet, real life is not a game; there are impossibilities which cannot be foreseen. They are just a part of the life proper. You try, fail and try again but you will give up on some. That is why you should know when and how you should approach a hard problem in vitality.


    When you get a nickname, it is often the flaws that are most prominent. If you have a big nose: “Pinocchio”; if you have a big smile: “Kuchisake” – every little flaw, good or bad, will result in some sort of insult becoming your namesake for your friends. Yet, most often than not, the nickname is spot on for your personality, which might be the reason why the nick sticks around. Pinocchio was given because of a body feature yet the person in question happens to be quite the liar; Kuchisake-onna is a malefic spirit killing those who seem to be scared of her, the one named after her is about the same with them conscience of their flaws and very aggressive towards the allegations.


    “The true self never deviates from the only self”; most of the people’s worn masks are almost always transparent to those who know them. It is this quality that separates the liars from manipulators. You can fake an accent and hair easily enough but a complete signature shift… it is difficult, if not, impossible. Yet there are people, the most powerful, that have these kinds of ability. One moment, they are a civil rights activist but in the next, a Machiavellian headmaster. “Well, without sacrifice, you cannot please the gods”.


    Swish and swirl sound about the sky, periodically, among the German short hills. The lines of blue tighten and slack once more as the clicking of clay chirp like a timid sparrow trying its best to upstand to the autumn breeze. Marionetting the Pyromancer clad in black and terracotta, “Why… won’t you… faint!”, says Yuki, having taken off her Ushanka. Dangling the pyro by a tree branch, “I have shifted around the whole of your internal organs, as well as your brain, 4 TIMES! How the hell is Li’s body this bloody resilient? Seriously!”, she says, sitting beside a raggedy man. Opening his palm to release a small batch of serpents, “My reserve has been exhausted to the bone. You can see it, or should I say, hear it, can’t you, that my border is shrinking?”, says Blanc. Springing back on her rear, “Ah, Schei?e... Am I really resorting to asking Alice about this? Oye, Blanc, dial up the Ferne Wiese. Lest you want to smother your once beloved, of course”, says Yuki.


    While the wiffers argue about the rights and wrongs of taking after a vegetative individual, Johann cook up something scrumptious. Halted just before adding salt, “Should I be doing this? I need someone who actually has the ability to balance the salinity…”, peaking through the kitchen door, “Aye, Alice, come here for a moment, please!”, says Johann. In the exact next moment, Alice appears before him. Surprised, “How the hell do you do that? Isn’t it impossible for people to teleport?”, says Johann. Walking to the pot atop the stove, “Yes… But~ I am not traveling at the limit, you see. Far slower, in fact, you do not hear a sonic boom, no? The travel is within such a small scale that the whiplash of the sudden acceleration is manageable. In fact, I only reached an acceleration of about 40m/c² and peak speed of 30m/c, far slower than 343m/c of Mach 1”, says Alice. “So, salt the soup…”, says Johann, giving her the salt jar.


    The table phone rings in the bar-stand. Swiftly coming to the call, “Hello~ Ferne Wiese Bar, how can I help you?”, says Alex. “Oh, mama, …Alice? …To where? …Offset? …Ok. I will then tell Alice to travel NE 73.05° for about 37.8 km… eh~ within about 2 minutes… Ne karoi~!”, talks Alex. Clearing her voice, “Alisa! Lithe called and wants you to be at Blanc’s in 2. North East, offset 73.05, as soon as possible for her!”, she shouts. In the kitchen, seasoning the soup, “Ah~ Well then, I will leave you the rest, Johann”, says Alice, vanishing just as she appeared. Far about the door, “If I do not come back, burn the bloody diary of mine”, she says, as the doorbell jingle slightly in the breeze.


    Landing about the foot of the hill, Alice hurriedly climbs to the top. Muttering in her mouth, “Oh~ this is bad, really bad”, she periodically jumps a part of the journey uphill. Reaching the top and seeing a black mass hung by a tree branch, she relaxes a little. Seeing Yuki and quickly approaching her, “So, why did you call me over?”, asks Alice. Solemnly, “I want you to switch something out for me. Do you see that eerie mask? I want you to unmask that man and reinstall the original mind in his body. It should be somewhere around his head – I can see it. It should be apparent enough, though. The legitimate owner has a Soft-Blaze but that Hündin has a heavy left stream”, says Yuki, pointing to Luyo. Skeptical, “You should have called Illia or Paul or even Rafa for this. I neither can nor want to switch a conscience. Even so, the only time I switched someone’s mind is when Ghost needed to extract an information from a dead body, and we are talking about the Ghost here, a complete anomaly to modern science and mineralogy. He even instructed the procedure from start to finish – I cannot do that on my own.”, says Alice.


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    Clasping his hands, “Well then, what do you need? It was the fastest option to call you, Alice, it was just that. My border, my once bellowed, is dying at the moment so, I would suggest you get to work. I can guide you through Li’s head and, once you can see how to get it, you can switch the outside with the inside, no?”, says Blanc… Making a large ring and filling it with a panel alike the ones inside the cabin, Blanc makes a smaller border around Luyo and connects the display to it. Sighing out a large one more time, “I am not quite comfortable with higher dimensional transactions but, if his theory of conscience is correct, I can exchange the one with the other inside a body… Whether I succeed or not, please call Illiana. I do not want to die like Cassandra…”, says Alice, before inserting slim strands into the Pyromancer’s body. “While she does that, I need to up the Willage of the watch. Oye, stag, give me a minus Avtirk and a tuning fork”, “A bloody what?”, “An Otvyorka or something like that… a screwdriver! Flat head. And a tuning fork…”. Withdrawing from the border, “Okay, the first theory remains unproven. You cannot invert the nerve bearings using the 4^th dimension. You will get short circuited when you convert your material mana to a transitional superposition”, says Alice, shaking her hands to relieve some stress.


    Some jingles of progressing tones resonate in the background. “Time to unravel, then”, says Alice as she detaches her strings and pulls her sleeves back. Eyeing out the pressure points of the outer layer of the nerve bearing, often referred to as CE87 strands, she puts a cuff, a ring, on them. Through the display, DU-20, DU-26, PC-6, LI-4, HT-7 and KID-1 as well as on those connecting the limbs and skeleton, could be seen with a cuff on each. “Left stream… So, I pull clockwise to loosen the fibers. Well then… here we go…”, says Alice as she pulls on the strings wrapped around the rings. All in a single motion, the outer bearing, the conscience of Luyo, lose its grip on Li’s body and he falls limp. But, instead of dissipating completely from his body, the left-stream rapidly shrinks and embeds itself inside Li’s soft blaze. “Well, how lucky you are to do that. 4% chance, was it?”, says Alice as Li starts to wake up. Bouncing to him, in her cat form, and putting the watch on his wrist, in her human form, Yuki lowers the bind dangling Li off a branch. Blanc also does the same with his border and mirror.


    Pulling back the hood of his robe, “Am I… real?”, asks Li. Throwing her hands up in the air in glee, “Yay~ I did it!”, says Alice. Ding… Ding… Ding… “Is this good?”, asks Li, as the watch on his wrist ring in one very high pitch. Patting Alice’s head while sitting atop it, “Yeah, you did good. You did good… Oh, good morning, Li. Or, maybe, good afternoon? Feeling alright? You almost killed Blanc over there if it were not for your grandpa’s arrogance. Got too cocky and got hung like a spider off this tree in its shadow you are sitting…”, says Yuki, as if nothing eventful had happened…


    Inside the cabin, seated around a table, “So, this man that you almost killed is Blanc Pierre Lipinski, or, as we call him, Elusive Na?ve Deer, because he is elusive, na?ve and behaves like a deer. This name was actually given by someone who is now materially no longer with us – Rosa. In fact, her spirit is the border outside this cabin and some of the larger serpents he creates. Kinda similar situation to Willy and San but, instead of given her the ember of his, this stag holds her flame in himself. Kinky stuff that you will understand when you are a little older. And, he has by far the most control over his creations and border in the entire company”, says Yuki, sitting atop Blanc’s head. “Was I too much?”, asks Li, as Yuki springs back to her human form. In her normal judgmental voice, “Too much? In the entirety of my 16 years of existence, I have never seen him accept defeat as easily as that, Li. And, believe me, 220 black-hats have quite a knack for unnecessary destruction. In fact, by the time we finished with them all, after seeing and searching so many of their coats, I have memorized and learned to duplicate them. In addition to what you did to the stag, you exhausted Alice and almost gave her an aneurysm. Do you know how small a nerve strand is? 20 micrometers – 300 times smaller than a single grain of rice. And she had to manually find Luyo’s nerve bearings and manifest a retention ring around each of them with a tolerance so high that some “stable” isotopes break down when exerted torque. Though she had a visual on what was happening but, even so, do you know how hard it is to see the 4^th dimension, let alone transport a matter through said dimension?”, says Yuki, almost scolding Li for being not himself…


    Shining a laser-like light point on the ground, Blanc toys with Yuki for a bit. Moving a mirror like disk in his palm erratically, “First lesson; when getting scolded by a cat: Distract them. Not just a cat, everyone who wants you to feel a bit low. Distract them and have fun whilst doing so”, says Blanc. Laughing at the whole situation, “Well, I can go now, no?”, says Alice. Glancing at Yuki chasing the point, “I do not hear any opposition. Go home and have a hardy meal, Alice”, says Blanc.