"Hello, little soul." Greeted a voice in front of me.
Looking up, I can only perceive a mass of stars in a humanoid shape.
"This must be a dream..." I started since my perception is very off right now.
But when I wanted to move my hand to touch my head, I only saw a transparent tentacle like thing in front of my eyes. It was seen through, so it only blurred out my vision of what it was in front of me.
That experience made my mind sober, and after examining myself, I concluded that I became a transparent yet pale red blob with 4 small members as feet and hands that look like tentacles found in porn manga.
Fortunately, they are relatively short to be truly considered tentacles, yet long enough to be used in daily life as hands and feet.
So that's how a soul looks like.
"It seems your consciousness has awakened to a level where you are capable to make conscious decisions. As you could deduce, you have died because of a cosmic event that was very devastating and unpredictable for the people of your old world." Stated the entity before me.
Turning my gaze at him, I found it genderless, just like it's voice.
But what cosmic event can have such consequences to be devastating and shock my old world?
"The cosmic event I am referring to is of a meteor that crushed on Earth and caving Tokio, the capital city of Japan that you were visiting for the Poke-con or something. I usually skip the names of events that are not really important, but here you are."
Oh, right, I won a trip to Japan to the conference, but it was day one after I spend around 57226 yen in merchandise alone that I blacked out and woke here.
At least I could visit a fraction of that contradicting city that's a mix of tradition and innovation.
"Before letting you recall all the things, you should also know that more than 2 million humans were killed in that event alone, and other 96 million from the resulted earthquakes and tsunamis. It was an event that resulted in moderators and admins like me working overtime to ship most of you to different worlds, so repeatedly going through the same explanations is a chore." Explained the entity.
"I got the gist of it, and I could feel up the gapes thanks to me reading so many Isekai and Tensei stories, so what now?" I asked the entity since the monotone in his voice was a little annoying, just like someone reading a speech from the n time that day.
"First, I'm glad you are part of the ACG community since you could understand this kind of stuff. Second, it depends on a person's belief, so someone believing in God like the catholic/orthodox church would go through judgement and end up in a hell or heaven kind of place, while someone believing in reincarnation would reincarnate for example. However, there is one group that's so messed up that they need to be placed in place so to say, and that's your own group. The ACG community believe in other worlds that they believe to be fictional, and they also have endless fantasies of becoming X or Y in Z worlds and so on." Lectured the entity.
And it is not wrong. Even I have fantasied every time I want to escape reality for a reason or the other, so I make up my own stories of how great becoming a Saiyan or Kriptonian would be, or how cool becoming a knight or mage and adventure in different kinds of setting would be.
Not to mention that sometimes I also want to try different technologies from cyberpunk or steampunk worlds or just becoming an immortal cultivator and live for endless eons while working in refining, alchemy or slaying demons and subduing beasts to become pets while also witnessing entire civilizations being build, developing and being destroyed from within or outside.
This very aspect is something that made me part of the ACG community, and living in a part of the world where this community is very week, it made me enter international forums and torrent website to watch anime or manga.
Even if I know is illegal, nobody will release apps or websites in the country I live so I could watch by legal means, or support the creators even indirectly, so… yea.
Not to mention the incredible fanfictions I discovered in these communities and forums.
But it's also a bummer for being forced to go to international forums, as I have almost zero homies that understood my passion and longings.
Most individuals around me would talk about politics, sports, cars or their work life, but when I try to explain why I would prefer to visit an Isekai world for example, they would dismiss me for being childish.
I could not really blame them since I have almost no common interests with them.
"Before letting you continue your inner monologue, you must spin this wheel. As you can see, on this wheel there are a hundred slices, and each slices have a world's name, a race/bloodline, job/talent, and a person's name followed up by a number." Interrupted the entity.
Looking near him, a wheel did appear, but the names and terms are always changing.
In a slice for example I see Naruto-Uchiha-Anbu-OC-3, but the next moment it becomes Fairy Tail-Human-Dragon Slayer-Laxus-7.
I could only guess that it could be either easy to rigg such a wheel and make me become something that fits their agenda or is made so with the purpose of stopping someone with the unnecessary talent from actually choosing what they want.
But there is also something that made me nervous, as there are also slices that states Modern-Leopard-Zoo mascot-Leo-0, so that should mean that in my next life I could become a simple animal that would become an animal or fish somewhere.
"I could understand the first 4 terms by their nature, but what does the number there stands for?" I asked the entity.
I could only presume it's either number of wishes, lives that I have there, but it shouldn't be since some of them are 0, but it could also be my luck or something.
"That's the number of balls you get for the lottery. If you get at least a 1 there, a lottery machine will appear and after starting it, you will get the mentioned number of balls. Each ball is a cheat that could become a blessing or curse for you. For example, you could get a bloodline, and energy, a skill or even race change, not to mention a system or a sort of immortality for example. It depends honestly, as even I was surprised sometimes for what someone could get." Stated the entity.
If that's so, it means that my unlucky nature could screw me over here.
There are endless combinations that could make anyone something beyond a hero protagonist type, but the opposite is also true.
There are also risks in getting an unbalanced cheat or contradictory and mismatched cheats that would work one against the other.
Not to mention cheats that work perfect in one world, but become worthless in another, like a cheat that makes you Jordan 2 in the world of Fairy Tail. Besides running and sidestepping plus throwing objects, the main cheat, the basketball play, is wasted.
"Skipping over your monologue, please spin the wheel with some effort unless you want to suffer. I speak for experience here, as some of the souls ended up in unfinished or unstable worlds for some reason." Warned the entity.
And that's also good to know.
Let's see, this wheel is kind of huge, so spinning it should take some effort.
Now, spinning... Why did it spin so slow?
I could only hope I end up somewhere interesting since I'm also open for interesting challenges.
But after the wheel stopped, the slice pointed is... AGTFF5586JUOP-Player-Interdimensional Traveler-Yamamoto Oreo-7.
First of all, what kind of world is that?
And what race can a Player be, considering that Interdimensional Traveler is my job apparently?
But it's also golden.
At least I know I will be a Japanese person in my life, and that I will have 7 cheats.
Wonder how having 7 balls would be like, but that's for hentai fantasies, not here.
On the other hand, it's been 5 minutes since my fate was partially decided, and the entity did not react at all.
Is something wrong?
Or is it communicating with someone to find about my destination?
As for the cheating balls?
I think the entity will need to come back to bring up the machine or something.
"Sorry for the delay" said the entity abruptly.
"No problem, where you checking out the reality?" I asked since zooming out like that is not really normal.
"No, I was just speechless. You see, the world you will be going to is a kind of prison world. Originally, it was another version of Earth with similar history, but it was attacked by interdimensional beasts and foreign gods. As such, my true self and a few other friends reversed the destruction and turned the world in a gaming world while using the main culprits as energy sources. As for the world, we turned the gamers and the physically active humans in living and breathing players that can resurrect and such. However, they did not get the necessary time to train from ground up, so we looked at virtual game worlds on other Earths that achieved higher technological level and selected a game as the base model for the system. However, that game was created by Korean fantasy fanatics, the kind of fantasy where magic, aura and divine or demonic energies could be cultivated by individuals but are at the same time incompatible with one another. As such, one would become only mage, only fighter or only a priest or demonic human, without the ability to dual cultivate simultaneously without being of a specific race or having at least a legendary class job. The reason, however, for the choice is how mainstreamed the power up was, and how the level cap was basically non-existent. On the contrary, they recreated the cultivation path typical to these kind of worlds thanks to a reincarnated expert from a similar reality, so the cultivation techniques are real, but very few even tried them with their real bodies. These that did, kept it a secret and only told their families and friends, but in comparison to their game avatars that had unlimited resources, they only got at Olympic level of fitness and extremely healthy. Fortunately for them, however, is that the underground forces and terrorists never even considered playing the games, so they are safe." said the entity.
"You mean to say that I will go to a gamified world where humans get gaming system straight from an actual game based on Korean fantasy worlds?" I asked somewhat speechless.
"Well, apparently yes, but there's more. You see, changing the bodies of so many individuals at once is very hard, so when they become eligible, we send them to a sort of exposition-like space. There, they need to choose an available avatar made based on the game, an avatar that would permanently become their new body. They could, however, change it later, but all their cultivation and skills will be lost, as they would need to train from zero. The permanent body part however, refers to the fact that the body won't be alterable later, so if a player would choose an avatar that looks like a late teen, but they are in their sixties, they faced age discrimination of being pulled over by police or interrogated when they wish to buy tobacco or alcohol as an example. Or when they chose to get a completely different body type that made them recycle or donate their entire wardrobe, as almost nothing fits them on their new bodies. Some of them even chose avatars that are too tall or too buff, giving them a harder time crossing a door or lie down in a bad. There is however, lots of different races too, like angels, demons, or even humans with some animal characteristics, as in having animal tail and ears. They benefit however from sharper senses like that of a hunting dog, but that could also make them face serious consequences in smelly places or at concerts however." continued the entity.
So basically, a world where you could choose a different non-human race from the get-go, while depending of your choice, you could get all sorts of benefits but also consequences.
"Sory for asking, but when it comes to racial characteristics, are the avatars split in White, Black, Latino, Asian and so on, or do they have a particular race altogether?" I asked after remembering how judgmental and hypocrites are the Americans in this aspect in my old world.
"They are mostly a mix of White and Asian, but Black, Latino, Arab and so on races are also options. They are in lesser number since we did not have the time to fine-toon this aspect, and the developers were Koreans, not the American. As such, they did not even consider the Black, Latino or Arabs races when they built the game. They only introduced them in the last update that we used as a foundation, and we did not cross-synced the avatar library later. Neither the other mechanics since the game was fairly complete in mechanics, having the alchemy, blacksmithing, talisman and formations making mechanics quite mature, even for a medium-level world by our standards. That's the result of the formal grand elder that worked for the Martial Emperor Sect for a million years and learning all this side professions for possible insights on how to cross different realms and bottlenecks. Not to mention that that world was closed to a demonic one that created countless cross-invasions between the forces of the two worlds. As such, Taoist and Buddhist sealing techniques-like formations were created using magic, aura and divine or demonic energies, and even cooperation ones where a divine and demonic practitioners used their energies in yin-yang formations. Him being an expert with a long life, used his judgement to improve and create new formations, pill formulas and even discovered new magical symbols and combinations of resources in the process." stated the entity again.
That's a lot more information dump than I expected.
If I would get it right, the reincarnated expert, was a Grand Elder that not only fought demonic beasts and demons in his long lifetime, but also researched pill concocting, formation making, and blacksmithing for the betterment of the world, and post-mortem he reincarnated or transmigrated in a more advanced world than mine and basically imported all of his knowledge in a particular VR game made in Korea?
The odds of that happening are even lower than mine becoming the next pope in Naruto!
"Someone interfered with his reincarnation for him to basically export all that knowledge in the game, right? After all, there's got to be a huge amount of concepts and knowledge that would take decades to even figure how to code and make such a database even if it is something like take ingredients X, Y, Z, M, S and place them in the T cauldron, then set a S temperature for V time then you get A or B pill with C purity because X ingredients needs to be 10 years old for result D and 15 years for result E." I asked the obvious.
"You are partially correct. He requested to find out about the different typed of beasts that can invade different realities just like in his world's case, so the one that took care of him explained that his world's case was a happy one since they are at the medium level of strength and they can defend themselves, but others are directly devoured since they are filled with mortals. He was also informed that the will of a world would try to defend the world by awakening different powers in its inhabitants' bodies, but the awakening itself is often late and messy and as such, many worlds are completely destroyed while the souls of the inhabitants are consumed by the said beasts. He proposed by himself this system after living in such a world for a lifetime where even he was killed in the attack, so he requested this kind of cooperation. That's also why that version of Earth was advanced like that by a 'technological miracle' and how he 'happened' to be in the lead developer's family giving him the opportunity to 'suggest' 'interesting mechanics' and 'lore' to the team, and also how his 'suggestions' where 'greenlighted' with 'no obstructions'." stated the entity with a little too much irony in his tone.
"I understand. Then how was the world gamified besides the players appearance and how where the mechanics implemented?" I asked another important question after processing his information dump.
"Well..." and begone explaining.