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The Gambler's Guide to Heroism

Bronz_Deck
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Synopsis
What can a former Yakuza, now a gambler, do when he is dropped into a world of Heroes and Villains with a Gacha system containing the endless chaos of the multiverse? He can certainly try to be a hero. Note: I do not own the cover nor do I have any claim over it
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Chapter 1 - Chapter 1: Death & You

If there is one thing you can expect from life, it is the unexpected.

No matter how you live your life, even if you do not do anything to warrant it, life is going to hit your ass with a curveball so hard it alters the course of your life forever.

And I had just been hit with that curveball for the nth time in my life, except instead of altering the course of my life this time, it decided to take matters into its own hands and drive the car off the track.

That's right, I had died.

Though I have to say, the afterlife was way different from my expectations.

What was I expecting? Some kind of hell, by the jurisdiction of most religions, I would be sent directly to the boiler room of hell. But instead of brimstone and torture, I was greeted with a rather... pleasant drift through the great cosmos.

It had all happened so fast, one moment I was alive, and one moment after, I was some sort of ghost floating through an indescribably beautiful cosmic sky after my rather untimely demise. In the middle of everything yet nowhere at all, the infinite scape of the cosmos so close yet so far as I drifted aimlessly without control.

...I guess this counts as some form of torture too? I feel like sooner or later, aimlessly drifting across here will be torture without any proper stimulation or sensation.

How had I ended up here? How did I die?

It's rather simple, really.

I died after sleeping with my Boss's wife.

Now, I admit, I am definitely not a smart person. She was lonely and hot, and I was around. I may have made a mistake in the heat of passion.

...And I may have repeated that mistake a few dozen times in a myriad of different positions, including doing it on his bed.

As you'd think, my boss was not too thrilled about walking into me in his wife.

Well, now that I think about it, also sleeping with his daughter might have made my case worse. Especially sleeping with his daughter and wife at the same time.

Do not accuse me of being smart.

Sleeping with your Boss's wife was ill-advised. Even less so when your boss had connections with the Yakuza.

Especially when you are also working for the Yakuza. And your boss IS the head of the largest Yakuza family in Tokyo and one of the largest in all of Japan.

I definitely would not advise doing something like that. It sounds like a very irresponsible thing to do.

Of course, although I say that, if given the opportunity to do so again, I would do it again without hesitation. I cannot ignore a lonely mature woman in need; it goes against my very nature. It also helps that my boss was a massive asshole; he really had it coming.

Obviously, after seeing me inside of his wife he got a little angry and started shooting at me and ordered the entire family to hunt me down and even put a bounty on my head.

Remember when I said you can always expect the unexpected?

I didn't even die to the massive headhunt for me; I was able to avoid and evade pursuit enough to leave Tokyo for Kyoto where a rival family resided, to stay there until things had cooled down.

Yes, I had in fact successfully escaped from the largest Yakuza after sleeping with the head's wife. But that escape did not last long. How?

I died while getting groceries.

The very last thing I remembered was a cargo truck crashing into me with an asleep driver at the wheel.

I had escaped the Yakuza and died to the whims of fate sending an angel of death made of 20 tons of steel on 18 wheels after me. It was not my reckless life or my past catching up to me that did me in, but the cruel and indifferent whims of fate.

...I'd think it was poetic if I wasn't pissed at the fact that I had done all of that just to get done in by some guy falling asleep on the wheel and becoming a fresh coat of red paint across the roads of Kyoto.

How had my life devolved to the point of having to evade the Yakuza? It was pretty simple. But I suppose I should introduce myself first.

I was Hakari Kotaro, 23 years old. Former Yakuza enforcer, now a smear on the road.

But before becoming a Yakuza I was a complete neet, a shut-in if you will, a pathetic slob of a human being wasting away in misery if you want to be mean about it. Just staying in my room watching anime, playing games and wasting away my parents' life insurance. At least I kept my body in shape since exercise helped me clear my mind.

One day, I was fed up with being a miserable sob, so I made use of my 3 am motivation to go job searching the day after. Of course, with no college education my opportunities were rather limited. But I still decided to reward myself for my efforts by going to the bar to get the authentic getting drunk experience.

There, I met a really pretty and charming older woman in her early thirties. We hit it off, well, more like she hit it off with me as I had the charisma of a dirt-covered brick at the time. But the night somehow ended with me going back to her place and losing my virginity to her.

At the time, I had thought, "Wow, how can a lady this amazing be single?"

Well, she wasn't.

Apparently, she was trying to get back at her husband for fucking his secretary so she neglected to tell me about her being very much married. And this was at a time when I would have cared about her being married too.

And, again, the unexpected. Or, I guess, I should have expected this but he came in on us while I was coming inside her.

...Oh and he was one of the Executives of one of the largest Yakuza families in Tokyo at the time. That feels like a pretty important detail.

By some stroke of luck, I had managed to pull myself out of his wife and knock him out when he tried to attack me.

So I escaped, I put on my pants and left his house without even shoes. Of course he sent out men to look after me for fucking his wife. I didn't expect to be able to see the dawn of the next week because you shouldn't expect that after sleeping with the wife of a yakuza executive and then knocking out said yakuza executive.

Luckily, I was offered a job by a rival family of the family the guy whose wife I slept with was in. Apparently, they took me in as some sort of power move? I didn't know or care, I was not a political person, all I cared about was that I had a roof over my head and relative safety.

Apparently, I was pretty damn good at being a Yakuza enforcer as it did not take me long to rise up the ranks, mostly due to my willingness to take on basically suicide missions without complaint and come out alive. It also helped that I was apparently somehow genetically predisposed to be good at beating up people. Maybe that should have been obvious from how I knocked out a Yakuza executive as someone who barely fought a day in their life but hindsight is 20/20.

Anyway, that was the reason I believed I would be going to hell, I was definitely not a good person even by the loose definition. I killed people, some of them who didn't deserve it; I served as a bodyguard for the scum of the earth, I murdered deserters of the family, and I helped guard drug shipments.

I sold my soul for money and protection basically. Not that I minded it much mind you, this monologue isn't supposed to portray me feeling remorse. If I really felt remorse or guilt I wouldn't have been able to go home after bashing in some skulls and order myself some more anime figurines.

Yeah, I was paid handsomely, enough to live in a luxury apartment owned by the family and freely indulge in anime and games, which were primarily how I used to pass my time.

...If there is something I have learned, it is that you shouldn't make an Otaku a Yakuza enforcer. Because he will take the opportunity to do chuuni shit.

The time when I shouted JoJo catchphrases while I crushed the head of a deserter still haunts me to my grave. Which was right now.

So, yeah, I deserved hell, especially due to using anime catchphrases during work. But I am not there, not that I am complaining about not going to hell, but damn was this place damn boring.

The glamour of the stars had faded after what had been at least 10 hours. There really was nothing here, and I didn't have any sensation in my limbs either.

As I was reminiscing about my life I noticed something heading towards me. It looked something like a bugged spot in reality, a smeared mess of fragmented images and mosaic, before I could think more on it, the giant mass of buggy textures touched me and for the first time since I ended up in this purgatory I felt something.

Pain.

It was like I was getting the most horrible electrocution of my life, as if someone stuck an overloaded taser up my ass. Not only that but I felt the sensation of what felt like millions of ants crawling around my body before it all slowly faded away. Leaving me back in the purgatory without sensation once more, except now there was something different.

A floating translucent black and gold panel floating in front of my face.

[ Host Found ]

[ Adjust Parameters... ]

[ Finding Form... ]

[ Calibrating... ]

[ Complete. ]

[ The Chaos Gacha is online. ]

...Alright, what the actual fuck is this?

First, I get hit by the cosmic glitch, get electrocuted, and now there is something called Chaos Gacha in front of my face?

You know what? I have absolutely nothing else to do right now, so how is worrying about whatever this is going to help me now? Not like this is much stranger than the lack of an afterlife I was in.

Alright, I'll bite. What the hell is the Chaos Gacha?

Of course, I couldn't speak but the panel in front of me seemed to recognise my intent regardless.

[ By absolute pure chance, you have managed to awaken the Chaos Gacha, granting you a new lease on life in another world with its assistance. ]

[ The Gacha will decide your fate. ]

That is far less explanation than I would have liked but I didn't exactly have a choice here, there wasn't a yes or no button. Although I found it hard to believe, I had no reason not to believe the panel in front of me.

Besides, a new lease on life? That sounds nice, at least it certainly beats floating here forever.

So, I'll play along.

You have acquired 3 Gold Random Gacha tickets

World Transfer will initiate once all tickets have been spent.

...Alright, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I understand nothing about either of those. Does this thing have a user manual?

Explanation - Starting Tickets: Tickets allow you to roll the corresponding gacha they align with. The Gold Random Gacha Ticket can give you anything ranging from Items, Familiars, Powers and Skills that are contained in the Gold rank gacha. Simply prompt mentally to roll a ticket.

Explanation - World Transfer: Once all tickets have been spent, you will begin your new world in a random world across all of reality that the user is aware of. Mostly from works of fiction from their world of origin.

...Does that include worlds like Warhammer 40k and Darksouls?

Yes.

Alright then, shit just got real.

So, I was now betting my new life on a gacha. A gacha of all things. As a Yakuza with too much disposable income, I was very well-versed in gambling. But that was mostly Poker, Blackjack etc. not fucking gacha. I only used a few gachapon machines before.

The one form of gambling I had a problem with.

Gacha was the only thing that managed to test my patience and finally smash my phone to pieces after rolling the tenth Mapo Tofu instead of Raikou on Fate Grand Order.

I guess the only thing I can do now is hope RNGesus takes mercy on my mortal soul.

A/N: Hakari is back, baby. And he is as womanising and shameless as ever. I wanted to write and flesh out his backstory better than I first did with this chapter. Zero copy-pasting involved. And now our favourite Restless Gambler is back again with the Gacha, promising chaos.

Well then, without further ado, let's roll the dice and spin the wheel.