章 1: Chapter 1
Life is a bitch and half, but she was surprisingly good to me this time around. I was reincarnated into a very well off family, I'd normally even call it rich, though I had recently figured out that being rich was a matter of perspective.
To some, a hundred thousand was a lot of money. To others, having a couple millions would be enough to be considered rich. And to a few, even ten million would be nothing but spare change. I was hoping to become like those few since whoever said that money can't buy you happiness was a dirty fucking liar.
Regardless, my memories of my past life came back to me when I turned ten, a true blessing since I didn't have to deal with the pains of growing up too much. Just had to endure going through puberty one more time… no big deal. My grandparents were the ones that ended up raising me since my parents had passed away in an accident just a few months after I was born.
That was a bit too convenient, and I half expected it to be some kind of plot point for my backstory. Alas, that wasn't the case, and I didn't receive a magical letter when I turned eleven, nor did my grandparents teach me some cool Mystical Art that was passed down in our family. Such a shame.
That had been disappointing, for sure, since I really wanted to be someone special instead of being, you know, your average Joe, but I quickly got over it. My family was still rich, and I was born ten years earlier than my previous life, so I had that going for me. A few good investments here and there, and I would be easily set for an entire lifetime and then some.
Sure, I wasn't a broker and barely understood stock markets, but I knew what companies would end up as behemoths in the future. Even if some of them failed for some reason, I believed I would still make a big profit with my investments. Not to mention that bitcoin should pop out soon enough, and I planned on grabbing as much as I could while it was still dirt cheap.
Still, although there were a lot of similarities, there were quite a few different things on this Earth compared to my previous one. Anime and Manga, for example, were… well, they weren't hot garbage, but they definitely weren't good.
Almost all shounen were all about Youkai, either as the good or the bad guys. Fuck! Even Dragon Ball, which was called Drag So-Ball here for some fucking reason, had Goku as a monkey Youkai instead of him being an alien! I guess it fit, considering it was inspired by Journey to the West, but it didn't change the fact that the anime was still bad compared to the original.
At least the mecha ones were good. They weren't no Gurren Lagann, but they were pretty fun all things considered. Sadly they were a bit too short for my tastes, with only a couple of them having more than a hundred chapters.
Anime and Manga being bad was what led to me checking out the popular comics here. Plus, I also wanted to ensure I hadn't somehow ended up in a DC or Marvel world.
Now those two publishing companies didn't exist here, and I panicked a bit when I discovered this. Those were two death worlds I had no desire to be in as a regular human. However, I later found out there was an amalgamation of both called Pantheon Comics. There were plenty of characters that were from both DC and Marvel, though they were slightly different.
Superman, for example, wasn't an alien here since this world just refused to use that trope for some reason. Like, there were just a handful of movies about aliens attacking the USA! Can you imagine that? Either way, Superman was a God, which, considering the name of the publishing company, made a lot of sense. He was still an overpowered boy scout, so it wasn't that different.
Batman, on the other hand, wasn't a normal human with plot armor dripping out his ass. No, he was a vampire with plot armor dripping out his ass that fought against evil female vampires. Though most of the time, he ended up in bed with them. It was… honestly kind of good.
Spider-Man was also a thing here. Though he didn't gain his powers from a radioactive spider. Instead, he was blessed by a spider God, which kind of checked out considering Spider Totems were a thing in the one from my world.
Surprisingly enough, Spider-Man wasn't fucked over by the writers here. They didn't go out of his way to make his life as miserable as they could get away with. Fuck, they even gave him a harem! A Spider-Man with a stable romantic life and a fucking harem! I thought I was dreaming when I read those volumes!
Though… come to think of it, almost every main character seemed to end up with multiple girls, including the boy scout himself, as bizarre as that sounded.
Either way, Iron Man was the weirdest of them all, and it was, surprisingly, the one I enjoyed the most. Instead of being a genius engineer, he was a genius magician with a frail body. To make up for his weakness, he built a magical suit of armor and used a weird gem for its power source, not realizing that the magical jewel housed the soul of a Dragon. So instead of having an A.I, Iron Man had a horny Dragon as his companion, one that constantly urged him to find new mates.
Now if only the various games around here were as fun as those comics. A majority of them were downright bad and trash talking kids in shooter games was starting to get boring at this point.
Shit, I hadn't even started a new Skyrim playthrough in ten years! And I wouldn't even have the chance to do so because The Elder Scrolls weren't a thing here! This was a true nightmare. Thankfully, I planned to change this in the near future.
See, at the start, I didn't really know what I wanted to do with this new life of mine. The memories of my past one ended just as I started college. I wasn't sure if that was because my death had been too traumatic for me to remember or if it was due to some other reason. Either way, I wanted to become a programmer and work on my own games, that's why I ended up signing for a programming course.
I figured I could continue that dream of mine, though I had no desire to actually make those games myself. I didn't have that much money left from my inheritance after my grandparents passed away, just a couple of million, but I would have a lot more once bitcoin's stock soared in the future. Creating a gaming company should be fairly easy at that point as long as I had the necessary capital.
I could then get to play all of my favorite games after my company recreated them. That was one of my plans, but I also had something else in mind. Something that would ensure that I would always have the money to fund my games no matter what.
You see, I planned on becoming the most vile existence in this reality by doing one simple thing! I would spread gacha games to every single corner of this world!
I had to resist cackling like a madman just by thinking about my evil plan for the future. I was out in public, after all, having just left the gym and was walking towards my car.
Working out was something I made sure to do regularly, not because I was hoping to unlock some special power or something like that. I had given up on that dream a long time ago. No, I went to the gym because I loved eating fast food, and I was a vain little shit that just wanted to look good.
"Excuse me, sir." A beautiful blonde woman stopped me on the way to my car.
"Hmm?" I looked at her with a raised eyebrow, my eyes quickly scanning her appearance. She was dressed in a sleek and form-fitting business suit that perfectly showed off her amazing figure.
"Would you please take one of those?" She asked as she took a single flier from the stack she carried around.
I blinked, trying and failing to understand why a woman as beautiful as her was giving away fliers, instead of, I don't know, working as a model or something like that? She could easily become one of the most popular actresses with her appearance alone. So why the fuck was she giving away fliers? This made no sense to me.
"Sure." I still decided to take the offered flier. Hey, maybe she took a fancy to me! I was by no means ugly, I kept myself in a good shape, and I dressed nicely. She could've very well left her number on the flier, hoping I'd give her a call. So with a little smile, I took the flier, and shit got weird.
A massive book appeared in my mind's eye. The cover opened ever so slowly, revealing the first page. There were only two words written on it, Celestial Grimoire.
I didn't get to ponder exactly what this was as the book moved, the pages rapidly flipping over, not giving me a chance to glimpse what they hid inside them. It stopped moments later, revealing a single page that didn't have that much text on it. Unfortunately, I couldn't really read what was written on it as I was unfamiliar with the language.
World of Darkness: Sorcery - The Flow of Ki - 1̶0̶0̶ C̶P Free
Many people believe that a master of the martial arts possesses more than mundane prowess. That there is a spiritual level to their mastery. This ability is the truth of that belief. By expending magical energy, anyone who possesses this skill may increase their physical abilities for several seconds. Unlike the Paths of sorcery, this form of linear magic only has one level of power. Any improvement is the result of increased mana capacity.
I was momentarily confused until the page lit up in a bright light. Information about Ki, about life force, started pouring into my brain, but that wasn't all as it also unlocked that power within me. A gentle warmth spread through my body, filling me up with energy and making me feel like I could run a marathon even though I had just finished with my workout.
I shook my head, wondering what the hell happened. I looked for the one that potentially caused this and found that the woman was already waking away with a sway in her hips that instantly drew my gaze to her curvy ass. I blinked my eyes before I focused on what was important.
Did she somehow unlock my power by giving me the flier? I had no fucking clue. Though I had an inkling she wasn't the actual cause but the catalyst that caused this change, if that made any sense.
Was it the flier's doing then? There was text at the top of the black paper, promising that it could fulfill all of my wishes. And right underneath it was something that I could only describe as a magic circle from which I felt something weird. I couldn't properly describe what I sensed, but I guessed it was some type of energy, one entirely different than the one coursing through my body.
Did touching it somehow grant my wish and gave me powers? But I was thinking of taking her out on a date and later returning to my house when I took the flier from her. Shouldn't it have granted me something like that instead of giving me the ability to use Ki?
I wanted to chase after her, but she had disappeared by the time I gathered my wits. My attention returned to the flier, and I briefly thought about making another wish. Or attempt to at least. However, I decided not to for the time being, figuring I shouldn't rush too much, especially since I still had no idea what was going on.
Right. I needed to clear my head a bit, so I got in my car and threw my bag on the passenger seat alongside the flier before I drove off, taking the scenic route home, so I could calm down. It was safe to say that it didn't work.
"Where the hell was my letter when I turned eleven?" I grumbled as I threw my bag on the couch once I got home.
The thing that irked me the most was that Magic was apparently real, and I hadn't had the faintest clue for the past ten years. Sure, I understood that the people that used it probably had a way to keep it hidden from the rest of the world, that was a common plot point in most fantasy-esque Earths, after all. However, I was still annoyed at the fact, mostly at myself for not figuring it out sooner.
Nevertheless, my irritation was overwhelmed by my excitement of actually having Magic! Sure, it was Punch Magic but Magic nonetheless! Plus, Ki was quite the flexible Magic System in most… fantasy settings. I really hoped it worked like this here as well. Otherwise… well, I would figure it out if that was the case, but right now, I had some testing to do.
Starting with the basics seemed like a good way to start this off, considering that particular knowledge was forcefully shoved into my head earlier. You know, that was probably something I should've been far more concerned about, but my excitement of having actual superpowers drowned out all of my worries.
"So how do I do this?"
Fairly easy, all things considered. I had a pool of energy inside me, and all I had to do was to pull on it. My Ki burst out of my body, taking the form of a gentle white light that tightly wrapped around me. My physical abilities shot through the roof, and I felt invincible at that moment.
Without hesitation, I rushed around my house, testing exactly how strong I was in this state by lifting any large object I could get my hands on, including the big couch in the living room. I discovered that even though I had the strength to pick it up, leverage was very much still a thing. Thankfully, I didn't break it… I think.
All in all, my experiments didn't last for more than a few minutes, probably no more than five, and it wasn't because I ran out of things to test. Not at all, I had multiple things I wanted to try, to see if I could replicate some of the powers I had seen in various media. No, the problem was that my Ki ran out!
"This is… unpleasant." I frowned at the feeling of emptiness that followed once I exhausted my pool of energy. I wouldn't say that I was tired, but I felt listless. That made sense as Ki was also called lifeforce, and my tank was currently empty. So how do I refill it?
Resting was the recommended way according to the knowledge I gained. But was that my only option? What about meditation? That was a fairly common method for one to restore their energy reserves in most settings. Even if it didn't work here, it wouldn't hurt to try.
And try I did. I sat down and crossed my legs like I had seen so many others do. Then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and hit a massive roadblock.
You see, I had no idea how to actually meditate. Clearing my mind just didn't work because I was still too excited about having actual magical powers. Not to mention that I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
Did I need to breathe in a specific manner for me to absorb the energy from the world? Did Ki even naturally exist in the world? If it did, would sensing the Mystical energy be the first step here? So many questions and there was no one to answer them for me.
In the end, I decided to follow the recommended way of simply resting. Though I first briefly checked myself in the mirror to see if I had visibly been changed in some way.
My face still looked the same, short brown hair, blue eyes, and sharp features. My physique hasn't changed as well. I was fairly muscular, and I didn't look like I was any bigger than yesterday. My height also hadn't changed, and I was still exactly 6 '2.
After confirming I was still the same, I plopped myself on the bed and patiently waited. Not like I had anything else to do. Well, I did, but I was too distracted, my mind swirling with ideas about what I could possibly do.
Eventually, my Ki pool filled back up, taking roughly forty minutes to do so. I immediately started experimenting again, determined to figure out how to use it for something else other than simply strengthening my body. I was certain that it wasn't that limited, that it could do far more than that, but… reality slapped me in the face.
Nothing seemed to work, no matter what I tried to do. I even tried to do a Kamehameha in my own house, despite knowing what could've happened had I succeeded in performing that move. I knew that was a complete smooth brain–no ridges or lumps, no valleys or bumps–move on my part, but I was desperate at that point, wishing I could do something else other than strengthening myself with my Ki. Of course, I failed, just like I failed doing anything else with the Mystical energy.
"Now what?" I slumped on my couch with a dejected sigh.
Common sense told me that this was to be expected. I had just gotten my Ki unlocked earlier today. Expecting to already be capable of world breaking feats was simply unrealistic on my part. If such a thing was even possible with Ki in the first place. After all, this world wasn't Dragon Ball or any of the other ones I was familiar with. Hell, for all I knew, Ki here could do nothing more than strengthen one's body.
I was aware of all of that, and yet, I still wished for more. Sighing again, I looked to the side, where I had thrown my bag when I returned home, alongside the flier that started all of this. I knew I shouldn't, but I couldn't stop myself from reaching out.
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A/N
I might entirely remove the points system in the future as I plan to roll only after certain achievements rather than every 1k words. E.g like first contact with the supernatural world, defeating a Low/Mid/High/Ultimate-Class being, and things like that. Feels a bit more rewarding and not as disruptive to the story. I will probably run out of achievements at some point, but I will figure it out when that happens.
Some Perks will also be slightly tweaked so they function better in-Universe. Like, Ki already exists in DxD in some form, so I felt it was entirely pointless to introduce an entirely different type of Ki. This will make this particular Perk way stronger for being just 100 points as it should allow the MC to naturally learn to use Senjutsu, but it will take some time and a lot of training before he could use it freely.
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