The universe rewards effort with results, but it rewards absolute power with free time. That was the maxim of Jonathan's new doctrine. If you were weak, you had to run, sweat, and bleed for every breath. But if you possessed a multiversal compiler within your soul, physical effort became a surgical tool: used only when strictly necessary, and then returned to the drawer of apathy.
World of Axel – KonoSuba Universe
The Adventurer's Guild was unusually noisy that morning.
Mu, the twelfth avatar, sat at a corner table with his head resting on his crossed arms. His breathing was slow and rhythmic. On top of his head, Byte—the stray cat he had adopted as a secondary thread—slept peacefully.
Kazuma Satou, on the other hand, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"We need a normal vanguard!" Kazuma shouted, slamming the table. "Someone who can take hits while Megumin charges Explosion and Aqua does… whatever it is she does!"
Megumin puffed out her chest proudly. Aqua was busy performing cheap water tricks in the corner for a few copper coins.
Then a shadow fell over their table.
A tall woman with a stunning figure, blonde hair, and heavy armor stood before them. Her cheeks were flushed and her breathing was uneven.
"I heard you're looking for a crusader for the frontline," she said, her voice trembling with a strange mixture of nobility and deeply unsettling eagerness. "My name is Darkness. Please allow me to join your group. I will be your human shield. I don't mind if monsters strike me, trample me, or humiliate me by covering me in slime! I will endure everything!"
Kazuma paled and instinctively leaned away.
"She's a pervert… a heavy-armored masochist. No. Definitely no."
"Please!" Darkness begged, leaning forward onto the table and making Kazuma recoil. "Use me like a dirty rag if necessary!"
The noise woke Mu. He opened one eye and looked at the blonde woman trembling with anticipation.
Target Lexical Analysis (Sage Core):
Class: Paladin (Crusader). Defense stats: abnormally high. Attack accuracy: absolute zero. Psychological profile: irredeemably masochistic. Mu, if you accept her, you will gain an immortal meat shield. You will be able to sleep twice as much during missions.
Mu yawned and lazily lifted his head. Byte let out a protesting meow as he was disturbed.
"You're hired, blonde. Kazuma, accept her paperwork."
Kazuma stared at him in horror.
"Mu, are you insane?! She'll ruin the party!"
"A shield that enjoys getting hit is a shield that never complains," Mu reasoned flatly while rubbing his eyes. "That means fewer monsters looking at me. That's logistical efficiency. Welcome aboard, Darkness. Try not to moan too loudly during battle—it gives me a headache."
Darkness turned toward Mu. The absolute indifference in his eyes—an icy gaze that evaluated her not as a woman nor as a hero but as a simple, useful block of concrete—sent a shiver down her spine.
In the crusader's distorted mind, Mu's total apathy translated into the coldest and most dominant disdain imaginable.
"T-that look…" Darkness whispered, hugging herself as her face turned red. "He treats me like a mere utilitarian object… it's wonderful!"
Mu blinked.
"Kazuma, I regret this. Fire her."
"No! It's too late, she's already in the party!" Kazuma cried.
Before the argument could escalate, the town bells began ringing with frantic urgency.
The guild receptionist, Luna, shouted from the counter:
"Attention adventurers! The harvest has begun! The flying cabbages are approaching the city!"
Thirty minutes later, on the plains outside Axel's walls.
The sky was darkened by a green swarm of cabbages the size of beach balls flying at high speed. It was a seasonal event, but the cabbages struck with the force of rocks. Adventurers ran everywhere with nets and swords, trying to catch them before they crossed the walls.
Kazuma swung his sword uselessly.
Darkness ran straight into the swarm with her arms open, taking direct impacts to the face and stomach while making noises so embarrassing that Kazuma had to cover his ears.
Mu had found a comfortable tree.
He sat in the grass, crossed his legs, and placed Byte in his lap.
Sage Suggestion:
Cabbages are worth ten thousand eris each, Mu. If you catch none, you cannot afford the inn's premium breakfast. And I enjoy the salmon they give Byte.
"Materialists. All of you," Mu sighed.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't run.
He activated Eta's Observation Haki (Kenbunshoku). His mind expanded, mapping the trajectories of hundreds of cabbages within a fifty-meter radius. To the Sage's cognitive acceleration, their chaotic flight looked like slow motion.
Mu raised a hand and pointed two fingers toward the sky.
He used the skill points on his Adventurer Card to activate Basic Wind Magic, but injected Theta's Nen control syntax into it.
He didn't create a gust to destroy them.
He created a net.
Thin threads of compressed air shot from his fingers. Guided by his mental radar, the threads wrapped around the cabbage stems mid-flight.
With a subtle twist of his wrist, Mu redirected the inertia of fifty cabbages at once.
They spun through the air, losing their deadly speed, and fell gently into a massive pile stacked perfectly half a meter from the rock where he sat.
He had not broken a sweat.
He had not stood up.
Nearby, Darkness—covered in scratches and cabbage leaves—froze.
Her breathing halted as she watched the scene.
Mu was petting the cat with one hand while the other made tiny, bored finger movements, forcing the sky to surrender its harvest at his feet.
The precision was diabolical.
The attitude was that of someone casually crushing ants.
"Even nature surrenders to his absolute indifference…" Darkness whispered, her knees trembling with a mix of warrior admiration and newly awakened romantic masochism.
Kazuma dragged a small net with three cabbages and saw the green mountain beside Mu.
He fell to his knees.
"Mu… you're a god. You're the only true god in this group," Kazuma cried, ignoring Aqua shouting insults in the background.
"I'm just someone who hates running, Kazuma," Mu replied calmly. "Go collect the reward. I'll take a twenty-minute nap."
The contrast with Kuoh City in the High School DxD universe could not have been greater.
Kappa sat in the back row of his classroom beside the window. The math teacher filled the board with equations, but Kappa had been sitting with his eyes closed for half an hour.
Inside his jacket, Ignis—the baby dragon—slept warmly, hidden by Sage's magic.
Suddenly a shadow blocked the sunlight.
Kappa slowly opened one eye.
Akeno Himejima, vice president of the Occult Research Club, stood beside his desk. Her smile was dazzling—elegant, seductive, and dangerous.
"Ara, ara," Akeno purred, leaning slightly forward to offer him a generous view of her cleavage. "Sleeping in class is a bad habit, Kappa-kun. You might miss something interesting."
The entire class—especially the boys—watched with murderous envy.
Kappa yawned.
No blush. No stutter.
"The Pythagorean theorem hasn't changed in two thousand years, Himejima-san," he said lazily. "I'm not missing anything new. Do you need something? You're blocking the breeze."
Akeno blinked.
Her smile faltered for a fraction of a second.
Rias Gremory, seated a few desks ahead, observed quietly.
After the alley incident the night before, she had ordered Akeno to investigate him. But Kappa's records showed nothing—just an average, boring student with no trace of demonic power or Sacred Gear.
"President Rias invites you to the Occult Research Club after school," Akeno said, leaning closer again. "We have tea and cookies. And perhaps… some fun."
Inside Kappa's jacket, Ignis stirred.
The baby dragon was hungry, and Akeno's magical aura smelled like lightning.
Ignis let out a tiny growl—inaudible to humans but not to a high-class devil.
Akeno's eyes sharpened.
"What was that?"
System Alert (Sage Core):
Ignis requires elemental calories. If you don't feed him soon, he may bite the demon girl's chest because it smells like lightning. That would be logistically disastrous for your school reputation.
Kappa remained calm.
Using his asynchronous connection with Iota, he channeled a microscopic spark of Ki and magic. He picked up a piece of chalk from his desk.
In Akeno's eyes, the movement was simple.
But something impossible happened.
No magic circle. No chant.
The chalk changed at the atomic level, becoming a dense sugar crystal infused with neutral energy.
Kappa casually slid his hand into his jacket and fed the dragon.
Ignis immediately calmed down.
"My stomach growled," Kappa lied expressionlessly. "I skipped breakfast. Tell your president I appreciate the tea invitation, but extracurricular activities interfere with my nap schedule."
Akeno stood frozen.
Her demonic senses had felt a spatial distortion far beyond anything she had ever encountered—compressed into the boy's fingers for half a second.
"You're… a very peculiar boy, Kappa-kun," she said quietly.
"And you're very noisy. Excuse me."
Kappa rested his head on the desk again and closed his eyes.
Akeno returned to her seat and glanced at Rias.
Rias tightened her grip on her pen.
She was not going to let a mystery like that fall asleep in her territory.
In trying to avoid trouble by being lazy, Kappa had just secured the absolute attention of the local underworld.
Deep in the Orcus Labyrinth of the Arifureta universe.
Iota was not sleeping in a classroom.
He sat comfortably on the back of Fenrir—the massive shadow wolf—under the glow of magical crystals in a cavern.
Iota was reading an old journal written by a renegade alchemist while Fenrir mechanically tore apart a pack of mutant scorpions approaching them.
"Left, Fenrir. That one smells like venom," Iota said without looking up.
The wolf dodged the stinger and decapitated the final monster.
They had reached the sealed chamber.
In the center of the cavern stood a massive crystal surrounded by ancient magic circles. Inside it, suspended in eternal sleep, was a blonde girl.
The vampire princess, Yue.
Fenrir stopped before the seal.
Environmental Analysis (Sage Core):
Magical sealing structure detected. Type: Divine Restriction. Designed to repel brute magical force. Standard heroic protocol requires blood sacrifice and life-force overload.
"The heroic protocol wastes time and energy," Iota replied.
He stepped toward the glowing barrier.
The runes hummed in warning.
Inside the crystal, Yue slowly opened her crimson eyes.
She expected a desperate hero or a raging monster.
Instead she saw a bored boy with glasses and a slightly slouched posture.
"The glow of your crystal box is annoying," Iota said calmly. "I'm going to turn it off."
He summoned no weapon.
No magic.
"Black Syntax," he thought.
Gamma had forged it in steel. Iota applied it to his fingers.
His hands wrapped in Armament Haki and Nen aura. His will became cut.
He didn't strike the crystal.
He simply inserted his fingers into the air where the streams of magic intersected.
To an observer, it looked like he was pinching light.
To the Sage, he was unplugging the gods' source code.
With a soft snap—
the mana flow collapsed.
The divine runes flickered, suffered a syntax error, and shut down.
The crystal shattered into dust.
Yue fell forward.
Iota stepped forward and caught her before she hit the ground.
Not out of romance.
Out of logistical calculation.
"Blood on the floor attracts undead monsters," Iota murmured while adjusting his glasses. "Cleaning up is a hassle."
Yue looked up at him.
His eyes held no fear.
No lust.
No ambition.
Only a quiet, immeasurable structure of power.
"You… who are you?" she whispered.
"Iota. And this is Fenrir."
He gestured toward the giant wolf sniffing her curiously.
"Don't bite me, vampire. I don't have patience for bloodborne diseases."
Instead of being offended, Yue smiled.
Her first smile in three hundred years.
In a labyrinth of betrayal and despair, this absurdly powerful and utterly lazy boy felt like the most solid anchor she could imagine.
Iota sighed.
Sage Core:
Congratulations. You have acquired the vampire princess. I recommend obtaining a larger mount. Fenrir will complain about the extra weight.
"The weight doesn't matter if she knows large-scale destruction magic," Iota reasoned while climbing onto Fenrir and helping Yue up in front of him. "If she destroys the monsters, I can sleep during the return trip."
The Architect's neural network continued absorbing the multiverse.
Threads of destiny tangled with his laziness—
but the foundations of his empire were becoming unbreakable.