So here's the thing—
Being a world sucks.
Not in the "ugh, I'm bored and I want ice cream" kind of way. More like "oh no, a desert kingdom just discovered gunpowder and now they're having a festival with flaming camels" kind of way.
I'm not kidding.The camels are on fire.And they're racing.
This is my life now.
Or rather, my existence.
I'm Aki Morizawa. Or I was. Thirty-five. Stressed. Single. Died in front of my office PC from a stroke after getting yelled at for the eighth time that week.Next thing I knew, I was the literal landmass of a fantasy world.
And now I'm watching a boy with anime hair pop out of the sky and break my atmospheric shell like it's a window pane.
So yeah.
Welcome to Tuesday.
✦ The Inbound Idiot ✦
It began like this:
Out in the middle of my southern continent—a scorching desert region I called the "Sunscald Flats"—there was a sandstorm I'd been maintaining for the past three days.
Yes, I can control the weather, kind of. Don't ask how. It's like thinking about blinking, but instead of your eyes, it's clouds. Mostly instinctual. Sometimes it backfires. One time I tried to cool down a jungle and created a micro-ice age. Sorry, frogs.
Anyway, this sandstorm. It was meant to keep some idiot necromancer from finishing a bone tower. The guy kept trying to resurrect extinct beasts by sculpting their skeletons into monuments.
(Did I mention being a world is weird?)
But just as I was about to direct a lightning bolt through his left femur obelisk, something pierced the sky.
Like, literally punched through my atmosphere. I felt it ripple across my entire upper ley field. I felt the scream of my mana layers. It's like getting stabbed in the lungs while trying to hold in a sneeze.
Then… he dropped.
✦ Crash Landing ✦
"OW! WHY IS THE SKY MADE OF BRICKS?!"
That was the first thing he said.
Out loud.
In Japanese.
Which nobody here speaks.
Well—except him.
And me.
I couldn't "hear" the words like a normal person, but the vibration patterns were as familiar to me as a vending machine chime. Which is saying something, because I used to live off vending machines.
Anyway, the boy lay crumpled in a sand crater, sizzling with residual magic, his school uniform torn at the sleeves. Glasses cracked. Backpack… still intact?
Respect.
But more importantly—he glowed.
Not metaphorically. I mean literally glowed.
[Welcome to Veledra, Summoned Hero.]
Yep. That annoying System Window again. A floating magical pop-up only visible to the summoned. It radiated divine energy that I definitely did not authorize.
[You have received: Unique Skill – Sandwalker Sovereign.][Title: "Skyborne Saint" granted.][Blessing of the War Goddess attached.][Initializing World Integration…]
I tried to block it.
I swear I did.
But it was like trying to stop an app you didn't install from updating on your old smartphone. Divine permissions override everything here. It's like admin privileges with infinite root access.
✦ Hero Checklist ✦
The boy staggered to his feet.
Dark brown hair, tousled. Slightly chubby cheeks. That look of "I'm just average but I somehow got picked for a legendary role."
Textbook isekai protagonist.
He looked around, blinking into the dust storm. "Is this… the tutorial zone?"
God, I hated how accurate that was.
He reached into his blazer and pulled out… a laminated copy of an isekai novel?
Nope.
A handwritten Isekai Survival Guide.The title: The Extra Academy's Manual for Sudden Transport to Magical Worlds.
"Step one…" he muttered. "Check for powers.""Step two: don't trust the first hot girl who says she's your destined ally.""Step three: if you're in a desert, dig for water or pray for slime."
…I was offended.
I was not a slime.
✦ Divine Error ✦
Now, here's where things got interesting.
Normally, when a hero gets summoned, the world's laws adapt around them like clothing—making space for their power set and syncing magic flow.
But I'm not a normal world.
I wasn't made to host heroes.I became the world accidentally.So when this kid started syncing… my systems glitched.
And that's when the sandstone sky shattered.
I don't mean the whole sky, mind you. Just a piece of my desert mana ceiling — a natural energy barrier I wove to keep the heat from melting people's eyebrows.
Suddenly—BOOM.
A hole opened. Magic flooded. The sky literally bled golden light.
The sand turned to glass flowers.The cacti began singing.A nearby golem factory exploded into a rain of flying anvils. (Unrelated… probably.)
✦ System Log (Unseen to the Hero) ✦
[ERROR: Summon Sync Overflow][Host Integration Unstable][World Core Consciousness: Active][Initiating Emergency Balance Patch…]
What does that mean?
It means I blacked out.
A whole five minutes passed where my awareness became static. Like tuning into a dead TV channel and being punched by static snow.
And when I came to…
The kid had a freakin' camel army.
✦ Enter: The Sandwalker Sovereign ✦
Apparently, his skill, Sandwalker Sovereign, let him instantly form pacts with sand-based life forms.
In less than ten minutes, he had a battalion of armored camels, a snake that spat boiling sand, and an NPC goblin guide named Trudo.
And they were all building him a pyramid base.
Meanwhile, I was struggling to re-weave my own ley line structure like someone trying to refold a paper crane that caught fire.
"This is so awesome!" the kid cheered. "Trudo, let's make this our capital!"
The goblin saluted.
"Yes, Pharaoh-sama!"
I couldn't even be mad.
The kid was efficient.
✦ Watching from Afar ✦
Up north, in the quiet forest glade where my first dream-sensitive elf girl, Liora, lived… she shivered.
She felt the surge in magic. In me.
"The World God… cried out."
Her mentor, an old druid with a beard made of leaves (don't ask), frowned.
"You mean… he's in pain?"
Liora stood slowly, her eyes glowing softly with the faintest threads of my awareness. She was… special. One of the few born with a soul tuned to my dreaming signals.
"No," she whispered. "He's laughing."
…I wasn't.I was having a mild breakdown.
But hey. Let them think I'm laughing. Better than screaming.
✦ System Glitch Becomes Opportunity ✦
So here's where things got… slimy.
Not literally.Metaphorically.
During the sync failure, something happened.The system tried to bridge me and the hero—as if I were a dungeon core instead of a world. And it left behind a link.
Now, I could hear him.
Not just echo-vibes.
His actual thoughts.
"Huh. The sand tastes like lemon. That's kinda cool."
…Oh no.
"I wonder if this world has a gacha system. Can I summon a waifu next?"
OH NO.
"Wait—is someone there? I felt like… someone laughed inside my head just now."
I went still.
Then I did something extremely stupid.
I thought—really hard.
[You have contacted the Administrator.]
"WHAT?! WHO SAID THAT?!"
[Do not panic. I am the World.]
He froze. "The what?"
[The World. Capital W. I am also having a bad day.]
"…"
"Yo, this is so much cooler than the tutorial novels!! Can I call you 'World-senpai'?!"
[Absolutely not.]
✦ Pact of Mutual Confusion ✦
Turns out, talking to a hero in their head is exhausting.
It takes energy. Coordination. And every word I "send" is like rerouting a waterfall through a straw.
Still… I did it.
And he listened.
"So you're not the system?"
[No. The system was built by higher beings. I'm just trying to keep everyone from dying.]
"Cool. Cool cool cool. Can I still ride flaming camels?"
[Why is that the part you're most excited about?]
We chatted. I learned his name was Tatsuo Hikaru. He was seventeen. A self-proclaimed "isekai prepper." He'd read over 300 light novels and made a notebook titled How to Survive Getting Reincarnated.
It had twelve chapters.Three appendices.And a tier list of "waifu personality archetypes."
Honestly?He was annoying.
But he was prepared.
And more importantly—he was curious about me.
✦ My First Favor ✦
"Hey, World-senpai?"
[What.]
"There's a weird mana storm heading this way. Think you could chill it down?"
I blinked (figuratively).
He'd noticed?
The storm was actually a side-effect of my ley field trying to seal the skyhole. A natural phenomenon only druids and dragons were supposed to perceive.
But he picked up on it. Not visually. He felt it.
That meant the glitch hadn't just connected our voices.
It had linked our awareness.
I focused.
Pushed energy from the canyon leyline, funneled it through a storm duct, and—
The skies cleared.
Tatsuo cheered. "YOU'RE THE BEST, WORLD-SENPAI!"
[Please don't ever call me that again.]
"Too late!"
✦ Meanwhile… The Seamstress Watches ✦
Far above, in a place where even my perception dimmed, she stitched.
The one who turned me into this world.
The Seamstress.
Eyes like constellations. Needles that wove fate.
She watched Tatsuo from a distance, fingers dancing over threads of probability.
"You're quite the variable, little hero," she murmured.
She looked down at me—at my core—still fragmented across the ley network.
"And you, dear Aki. You've just made your first friend."
She smiled.
"Let's see how long you can protect him."
END OF CHAPTER 2
Next: Chapter 3 – The Thread bound Prophet and the Memory Grove