Leo exhaled slowly. 'Guess it's time to pick my poison.... Or whatever this is.'
Plethora of options scrolled in front of him like a divine app store.
Each one had a name, a percentage, and in some cases—warnings.
[Path of the Void Herald] – Compatibility: 43%]
Too low-level for the host
[Godseed Ascendant – 58%]
[Dreamforged Pilgrim – 66%]
[The Lightbringer – 92%]
And then...
[Actually Satan – 100%]
He blinked. "Huh."
That was not subtle.
Leo chuckled dryly, rubbing his jaw remembering. "Actually Satan? What kind of naming is that?"
He wasn't religious. Never had been. Back home, his mom used to pray five times a day.
He robbed a liquor store on Christmas Eve when he was seventeen.
Got away with it, too.
Then came the draft.
War.
He got twenty confirmed kills and one stupid death—his own—because he was sleeping when a missile slammed through his barracks.
Twenty-one years old.
Dead in his underwear.
Now this.And gods—actual gods—this world had all of them.
Pantheons like celebrity gossip columns.
You couldn't throw a stone without hitting some "divine emissary" or sacred beast's tail.
So seeing a path named Actually Satan with 100% compatibility didn't even surprise him as much as it should've.
'…Why the hell is that the one I fit best with?' he muttered, staring at it.
[SYSTEM RESPONSE: Host possesses a pre-existing curse.]
[Matching parameters: 100%]
He froze. 'Wait. A curse?'
[Identified: Curse of #### – Etch of the Unmade Prophecy]
Leo's heart skipped. His throat dried.
'You're saying I was cursed before I got this system? What the hell does that even mean?'
[Clarification: Etching is non-malicious. Soul mutation classified as external influence. Effects include:]
[ — Shaping of soul into anti-narrative structure]
[— Enables rejection of predestination and divine imprinting]
[— Grants latent temporal precognition via chaotic echoes]
[— Resists soul classification by divine and infernal systems]
Leo took a half step back.
That vision he had earlier....
That wasn't the system.
That was already inside him?
"Is this thing the reason I'm a match for… that?" he asked, glancing again at the [Actually Satan] option.
[Confirmed: Etching increased resonance with creation/destruction archetypes.]
[Path is ideal match.]
He whistled. 'So I've got a curse that turns me into a blasphemous demiurge, and you're calling that harmless?'
[Etching status: Passive. Supportive. No observed degeneration. Classification as 'curse' is technical.]
Leo stared at the path again.
[Actually Satan – Compatibility: 100%]
-The denial of divine narrative.
-The inheritor of forbidden truth.
- The architect of what should not be.
What scared him most was that it didn't feel scary at all.
"…That's the weird part," he said aloud. "I should be terrified."
Instead, he just felt… aligned. As if a gear inside his soul finally clicked into place.
There was a whisper of other options—[The Lightbringer] was almost shining with promise.
The kind of name that made sense.
A path someone could be proud of.
But pride wasn't what got him here.
He hovered his thought over the dark sigil.
[You have selected: ACTUALLY SATAN]
[Path Lock Confirmed. Initializing Core Abilities…]
[— Immortality of Concept: You exist so long as the idea of you exists]
[— Temporal Immunity: Cannot be altered or undone by time-based events]
[— Soul Fracture Immunity: Damage to soul repairs itself through anti-narrative logic]
[ {Echoforge: World Fragment Bloom}:
uses broken fragments of destroyed materials, ideas, or laws to forge new constructs: weapons, companions, worlds, or rules. Each creation carries an echo—a memory or spirit of what was broken. Can evolve these echoes into full, independent systems or beings (e.g., a shattered justice system becomes a living sword of judgment).. ]
[ {Logos Erasure } : Anything fully understood—even abstract things like laws, immortality, or personality constructs then they can be unmade.Upon comprehension, choice to disassemble or negate its structure, bypassing durability, protection, or divine will can be made.]
[ {Unnamed strike}: An absolute strike. Ignores all defenses. Unblockable. Unseen. Costs everything for a moment.]
[ {Truth Layer: Reverent Gaze of Yggdrasil}: You see through illusions, motives, divine lies, and systemic misdirection at a glance. Allows the host to See the plane of information.]
The screen flickered for a moment.
[ CAUTION: TRINITY-SCALE HAZARD DETECTED]
[ Abilities in Question:
{Echoforge: World Fragment Bloom}
{Logos Erasure}
{Truth Layer: Reverent Gaze of Yggdrasil} ]
[Synergistic Threat Profile: HIGH- — CATASTROPHIC POSSIBILITY]
[The combined usage of these three skills may result in existential instability, cognitive fragmentation, or complete universal collapse.
The synergy between absolute observation, total comprehension, and constructive echo-weaving is profoundly volatile. ]
[ Listed below are specific emergent threats:
[Subconscious Narrative Collapse]: Echoes created from fractured concepts may absorb subconscious intent. Observation through the Reverent Gaze may solidify imagined or feared constructs. If erased with Logos, the host may unknowingly erase real world anchors, including aspects of their soul.
[Conceptual Bleed]: Seeing the truth of all systems while crafting from broken laws and erasing with precision creates a risk of bleed-through—reality layering upon itself. Multiple versions of the host may accidentally spawn or overwrite each other, destabilizing causality.
[Recursive Soul Failure]: Erasing a concept holding your current self-identity (e.g., guilt, purpose, name) while simultaneously forging a replacement without clear barriers can result in recursive loops or personality overwrites.
[Unmaking Reality]: Comprehending the metaphysical scaffolding of your world through Truth Layer and choosing to Erase or Echo-Forge atop it can unmake time-space logic, divine order, or even the very concept of "existence" as currently defined.]
[System Advisory:
These abilities do not scale linearly.
The system CANNOT shield, restore, or reset the host from self-inflicted conceptual destruction/Damage.
Progress must be made with meditation, layered understanding, and ironclad self-awareness.]
Leo looked at the screen with one eye twitching and thought, 'Well, that's not crazy at all...way to go with encouragement.!'
Still, suspicion lingered in his mind. Why give me all this power for no reason?
The system, as if reading his thoughts, responded flatly:
[You are a Priority-One individual. You are expected to face top-level powerhouses just below Level 0. This is the first and only time the Multiversal Charter will assist in growth of your abilities. The power to form these abilities already exists within you. The Charter only shapes them.]
Leo frowned. "So you're saying I already had this potential?"
[Correct. The Charter simply carves what is already there. Like chisel to stone.]
Leo rubbed the side of his head, trying to process the data dump he'd just received.
"That's… a lot to take in," he muttered aloud.
Hah. That's what she said.!
He cracked a smirk. If nothing else, his sense of humor was still intact.
'Alright,' he thought, exhaling. 'So how does this whole recruitment thingy work, anyway?'
[ The Charter's purpose is to transport you to a designated world and assist you in identifying and advising potential recruits. While it will provide guidance, the selection, persuasion, and involvement in the process are ultimately yours only.]
Leo froze....Silence.
Then, slowly, like a bootleg robot rebooting after a power surge:
"…Ho… lee… fuck."
He stared at the system message like it had just handed him a flaming chainsaw and told him to babysit a toddler with it.
Wait. Does this mean I have to go out there? Like, in person? Risk my own limbs?
Approach strangers?
Convince them to join what essentially sounds like a cosmic startup cult?
And not just that—talk to them?
The horror didn't hit all at once.
No. It crept in like a slow-building tsunami of social anxiety and existential dread.
A full mental shutdown began to unfold.
Leo's eye twitched.
In the theater of his mind, a million little Leo clones were sprinting around screaming, knocking over furniture, setting papers on fire, and throwing themselves out the windows.
He imagined it.
Him, nervously approaching some random knight or warrior or probably a literal dragon.
"Hey… uhh… wanna join a mysterious force that operates outside your understanding of mortality and physics?"
They'd look at him like he had just asked if they believed in lizard people ruling the kingdom.
The thought alone made him want to dig a hole, crawl into it, and scream for the rest of eternity.
Why couldn't it just be like chat group system?
Click "Yes"? Great.
Welcome aboard.
But no....Now it was on him.
The guy who made two friends across two lifetimes.
And one of them was a bird.
Leo's face twisted into a grimace as the realization sunk deeper.
I can't even ask for extra ketchup at a restaurant without rehearsing for two minutes.
And now I'm supposed to recruit people into an organization that may or may not make me sound like a lunatic?!
He buried his face in his hands and let out a muffled groan that sounded like a dying walrus.
Leo peeked between his fingers at the glowing interface.
"…Maybe if I wear a hood and speak in riddles, they'll just assume I'm some kind of prophecy guy," he mumbled.
No response.
He sighed.
This was going to be a disaster.
---
Leo sat hunched over his desktop, the screen casting a pale glow over his face in the otherwise dark room.
The computer whirred like an asthmatic walrus, the fan threatening to give up the ghost any second, but Leo typed on.
Click-clack.... Click-clack.
His fingers danced over the greasy keyboard as he whispered aloud the line he was writing:
"The Demon Lord knelt before the boy as the boy asked 'You are... my father?'"
He paused.
Squinted.
"…Okay, that's either genius or absolute garbage," he muttered, scratching his head with the back of a pencil.
It was 2009. In this world, Sword Art Online hadn't dropped yet.
Re:Zero wasn't even a draft, Mushoku Tensei and Tensura were years away.
The goats of the isekai genre were still grazing in obscurity.
And Leo?
He was ahead of the curve.
Or so he liked to think.
While other reincarnated folks shamelessly plagiarized full plotlines from novels, manga, and anime they'd seen in their past lives, Leo had a little thing called… dignity.
Or at least a vague, morally convenient version of it.
Sure, he was "heavily inspired" by a dozen different stories, and occasionally a line or character would sound suspiciously familiar, but he told himself this was homage.
Not theft.
He had always wanted to be a writer in his previous life.
Spent more time worldbuilding and scribbling in notebooks than actually socializing.
But fate—bless her unpredictable, chaotic heart—had taken that ambition, chewed it up, and spat it directly onto his face.
And yet, even now, with the weight of multiversal duty pressing on him, Leo found himself doing what he always did when overwhelmed: Writing.
Creating.
Escaping.
Except tonight, it was harder than usual.
His mind was buzzing from all the system revelations.
Dimensional travel, recruitment, potential death, social interaction—ugh.
It was like someone had installed a blender in his brain and hit purée.
He tried to focus on the story.
On the adventure.
On the dumb protagonist who made terrible choices like abandoning his son.
But then a thought hit him mid-sentence.
"Wait... what if someone I try to recruit ends up being like this guy?"
He looked at the screen.
Leo leaned back and sighed.
"Oh God," he groaned, rubbing his temples.
"I might die in some of the dumbest ways in existence...."
Still, he placed his hands back on the keyboard.
His brain was exhausted, the hour absurdly late, but he needed this.
"'Father… can we still go fishing like we used to?'"
Leo stared at the line for a full thirty seconds.
Then, with deadpan exhaustion, he whispered:
"…What the hell am I writing? This is absolute dogwater..."
---
BEEP BEEP BEEP—
Leo jerked upright like he'd just been tasered.
His head snapped back so fast it nearly fell off his neck, and for a second, he had no idea where he was.
His computer screen was black, humming faintly in sleep mode.
A sticky note had glued itself to his cheek sometime during the night, and his neck screamed in protest as he straightened.
"Goddamn it," he groaned, groggily slapping the alarm clock to shut it up.
"One day I'll die and it'll be to this alarm… calling it now."
Sleep crust still decorating the corners of his eyes, Leo stumbled toward the bathroom like a zombie.
Five minutes later, a semi-human version of him emerged—teeth brushed, hair reluctantly tamed, and the shirt he was wearing not the one from last night, which counted as a win in his books.
As he grabbed his bag.
"Caw!" Ronan called sitting beside his headphones.
"Shit! Ronan, you're a lifesaver," Leo muttered, doubling back to his desk.
He slung the bag over his shoulder and trudged downstairs the bird perched on his shoulder.
The scent of toasted bread and something vaguely egg-shaped greeted him.
His mom turned from the stove as he entered the kitchen.
"Oh, just in time! I was about to call you down for breakfast."
"Thanks, Mom," he said, plopping into his usual seat at the table.
He blinked around, realizing something. "Where's Dad?"
"He got called early," she said while flipping an omelet with concerning precision. "Emergency at the factory."
Leo frowned. "Emergency? Did he leave early?"
"There was a fire, apparently," she said casually, like she was talking about a particularly annoying weather report. "He left around 2 a.m. Didn't even take his tea."
Leo froze with a piece of toast halfway to his mouth.
"...A fire?"
"Mmhm.."
Leo paused.
"Right, cool. No big deal," he mumbled, standing up and brushing crumbs off his pants.
"Gotta go."
"Don't forget your lunch!" his mom shouted from the kitchen as he opened the door. "And cut down on the coffee! It's not healthy..!"
"Yes, Mamaaa," he called back, already halfway out the door.
The morning sun was just beginning to peek over the rooftops.
Ronan cawed.
The world looked deceptively normal.
'But Leo knew better.'
As Leo stepped out and his shoes met the pavement, something snapped.
His pupils dilated like pinholes in the sun.
A sharp breath escaped him—short, involuntary.
The world around him dimmed.
His irises flared—like molten gold brighter than before.
Then the vision hit him.
Not clean, not ordered.
Not coherent like before.
This one was chaos—raw and jagged.
Blood.
Buckets. Rivers. Walls of it.
Fire roaring.
Debris flying through the air like shrapnel in a war zone.
Voices screamed.
Some cried.
Some shouted orders.
Most were unintelligible, but one voice cut through—
His father.
Alive.
Talking to… someone? A silhouette—blurry and inhuman.
Their conversation was muffled, like it came from underwater.
Leo couldn't make out words, only the tension.
The pressure in the air.
Then—snap.
A light arrow, radiant and sharp, shot straight into his father's shoulder.
Before Leo could react, the one who shot it was engulfed in flames, unholy and blue, their body twitching as they screamed—high-pitched, inhuman, a wail that felt like it clawed at the edges of Leo's mind.
Then— Nothing.
The vision cut off like someone had slammed a door in his face.
Leo stood on the sidewalk, chest rising and falling, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple despite the morning chill.
His eyes slowly returned to normal, the yellow glow retreating like a ghost into the depths of his soul.
He blinked.
Twice.
"…The hell was that?"
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Power Stones and Reviews please