“Oh, really? Is that so? Because there’s no way in hell I can believe that!” Al roared, her voice rising with disbelief and outrage. “Do you even understand what kind of situation we’re in right now?!”
“I-I know, okay?! I know! I just… I was trying to create a spell to deal with this whole situation, and the name sort of… slipped out while I was doing it.”
“The fact that you’re creating magic on the fly is already insane, but that name?! Couldn’t you have come up with something better?!”
Honestly? I agreed with her.
We had been in the middle of a tense, do-or-die standoff, and with a single shout—Cock-a-doodle-dooooooo!—I’d shattered the atmosphere into a million pieces. Just like that, all the tension evaporated. The gravity of the moment? Gone. How did it even come to this?
As Al continued her lecture, voice rising and veins popping, I stood at attention like a scolded schoolboy. Meanwhile, the Night King, who had been staring at me in dumbfounded silence, finally snapped back to reality.
“Hah?! I… I was caught off guard by a word I never expected to hear in this dimension, but enough of this! It’s over! My ritual is comple—”
But he never got the chance to finish.
The world changed.
Not gradually. Not the slow fade of twilight into day. It happened in an instant. The night was ripped away, replaced by blinding daylight as if someone had flipped a cosmic switch.
“Huh?”
It wasn’t some poetic dawn blooming softly across the sky. No, this was sudden. One moment it was night, the next it was morning… and I mean full-blown morning. When I glanced upward, I saw a star—not the actual sun, but close enough—radiating sunlight in a blaze of golden brilliance, flooding the world below with its rays.
If I had to assign a sound effect to what I was seeing, it would’ve been something like, “TA-DAA!” That’s how abrupt and dramatic it felt. Like the sun had just made a grand entrance, stage left.
The Night King stood frozen, his eyes wide as he stared at the sky in disbelief. Then, all at once, he started to smoke.
“Gah?! I-It can’t be! Impossible! Why… why has night ended in an instant?!”
The answer, of course, lay in the spell I had just created.
Still under Al’s verbal barrage, I quietly pulled up the description of the magic that had somehow changed the course of everything.
>Celestial Summoning Spell: Cock-a-doodle-doo. A high-level celestial spell that summons a star to serve the role of a sun. Even on planets that exist in eternal night, this magic bypasses all spatial limitations to bring forth a sun-like star instantly. Additionally, the star’s light can dispel sleep and drowsiness in humans nearby.
I stared at the text, deadpan.
No matter how many times I reread the name, it didn’t get any better.
It was such a majestic, over-the-top, magical ability—Celestial Summoning, no less! A spell system that sounded powerful, noble, maybe even sacred. And yet… the name. The name.
Why did it have to be this ridiculous?
All I’d wanted was to make it morning. But apparently, since this world didn’t even have a sun, the only solution was to summon one. That was the logic my subconscious had gone with. Honestly, the more I thought about it, the more concerned I became, and I’m the one who invented it!
Still… that last line was a nice touch. At least it could help wake people up.
Well, mornings make people sleepy, right?
At the very least, with this spell, I’d never have to worry about being late again!
“Hey! Are you even listening to me?!”
“S-Sorryyyyyy!”
Al’s furious voice crashed into my thoughts like a hammer, and the second I looked up and saw her glaring at me with that death-stare expression, I dropped to my knees and bowed so low my forehead touched the ground—an instinctive, desperate apology.
She still looked like she had a few more choice words locked and loaded, but after a sharp inhale, she forced them down with a heavy sigh.
“Ghh… haaah… Well, I guess the end result was good. Morning came, so… whatever.”
“S-So… does that mean I’m forgiven?”
“I’m not actually mad, all right?” she muttered, brushing her bangs back with a hand. “It’s just… when you clown around like that, it makes me feel like I’m the idiot for ever taking things seriously.”
“I understand completely, and I’m very sorry!!”
Oof. That hit harder than getting yelled at.
Seriously, I could take the scolding, but that look of weary disappointment? That was way worse. Still, I needed her to understand this much:
I wasn’t intentionally messing around. I wasn’t trying to turn a crisis into a joke. That spell? That name? They are honest reflections of me thinking hard and doing my best, which is arguably even worse, now that I say it out loud.
While I kept my head lowered in apology, Saria, Origa, and Zora had already turned their attention skyward.
“Wooow! It really became morning all at once!” Saria said, practically sparkling as she stared up at the now-clear sky.
“Mm… Bright,” Origa mumbled, squinting into the light.
“It’s… it’s incredible! Even on a different planet, the sky turns the same color!” Zora exclaimed, eyes wide with awe.
“It really does!”
“It’s blue…” Origa added quietly, as if confirming something profound.
Then there was Lulune. With the sudden blast of daylight clearing the battlefield, her eyes went bloodshot as she whipped her head from side to side, scanning the landscape like a predator on the hunt.
“With this visibility, I can finally see—! Where is it?! Where’s my breakfast?! Wait… It’s all grass?! You expect me to eat this?!”
“You were a donkey to begin with, weren’t you?!”
Don’t lie to us about not eating grass, you fraud.
And just like that, whatever tension had remained in our group was completely gone. The urgency, the seriousness, the drama were all things we had steamrolled right past. What was left was a chaotic, ridiculous mess of people yelling about grass and morning skies.
Routier, watching from the side, looked completely lost as she took in our group’s complete breakdown of composure. All she could do was stare at us in baffled silence.
“Umm… what exactly happened just now?” Routier asked hesitantly, her brows furrowed in confusion. “It suddenly turned into morning, and now no one seems even remotely tense…”
“Don’t sweat the small stuff,” I replied, casually waving it off. “Morning’s here now, right? That’s all that matters.”
“I-I guess? But… wait. Why did we need it to be morning in the first place?”
“Ah.”
The moment she said it, I froze.
Right… the Night King.
We had all become so absorbed in the absurdity of the spell, the name, the arguing, and the unexpected sunlight that we totally overlooked the major villain. I quickly looked around in surprise and shifted my focus toward him—
“Wh-Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!” The Night King was shrieking. “Why… why is no one paying attention to meeeeee?! Why won’t anyone notice meeeeee?! Someone… help meeeeeee!”
Smoke was billowing from his entire body. He was clearly in agony, writhing on the ground, wheezing, and clawing at the air.
Was he going to be okay?
Not that I wanted him to be okay. Ideally, he’d just… fade out of existence and spare us the trouble. But that smoke made me wonder if it was just magical feedback or if his flesh was literally melting off. If it was the latter… yikes.
I crept a little closer and examined him cautiously. His skin didn’t look burned or melting, at least not visibly. No bubbling, no open wounds. Just a lot of smoke and screaming.
“Phew… looks like he’s physically fine!” I said with relief.
“I AM NOT FINEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Hey, just to be clear, I wasn’t checking on him. I was checking to make sure Routier’s father’s body was intact. The Night King had possessed him, after all. My priorities were in the right place.
The Night King, still wailing, eventually lost strength and sank to his knees.
“T-This… isn’t… how it was supposed… to—”
“Dad!”
Just as his body lurched forward in a collapse, his aura shifted. The moment was subtle, but unmistakable. The darkness that had clung to him like a second skin fell away, and something gentler took its place.
Routier noticed it too. With a gasp, she dashed forward and caught him before he could hit the ground.
And then—
“Mm… where… am I?”
“Dad… It’s me. It’s Routier. Can you recognize me?”
Her voice trembled, tears already beginning to well in her eyes. Her father blinked slowly, then looked at her with a warmth that had been absent for so long. He reached up with a shaking hand and gently brushed away the tears clinging to her cheeks.
“Yes… I recognize you. Of course I do.”
“D-Dadddddd!”
With a cry that carried the weight of everything she had been holding back, Routier broke down in his arms, sobbing without restraint.