Prologue - Useless Shady Back Alley World Maker
You might be wondering who I am, but it’s not like you need to know.
My name isn’t really important, especially now that I’m dead, what? You’re wondering how I died?
It was really stupid, in a lot of ways. My day started as usual, being a NEET, I woke up around 2pm on a Tuesday, yeah I know a lot of detail all of a sudden, right? But, bear with me.
Anyway, I sat at my computer after getting out of bed and using the toilet, pressed in the power button to start it up and was electrocuted. I know I didn’t expect that either, don’t computers have fail safes to prevent these things? I guess you could call it my fault I did spill some cola on it the day before, trying to turn it on even after spilling cola on it, a guy can hope it’ll still work, y’know.
The end result was that I died from a heart attack, really should have exercised more, maybe I would have survived getting a few hundred volts sent through my body then. I mean people survive getting struck by lightning, I should have been able to survive getting a little jolt, no. No matter what I say or how I reason it, the facts don’t change that I died like an idiot.
Now, how do I know I’m dead? I’m looking at my corpse right now, is how.
I’m just going to say right now that I am an Atheist, I believe I just disappear or stop functioning when I die, like a flame being blown out or a machine that was broken beyond repair or something. The thing is that I’m not disappearing, I’m transparent and floating and obviously I am a ghost. I’m both surprised and disappointed and I’m staring at my corpse, seriously I should have exercised…
My ‘wide’ corpse is currently hunched over my tiny desk and on my keyboard, at least my computer still works, that’s a relief.
Wait, since I’m a ghost shouldn't I be ‘passing on’ or something? I don’t think I have any strong regrets or anything?
Looking around the room didn’t get me anything, just my clothes left on the ground from the day before, now I’m not saying I keep my room clean, but rather that there really isn’t much in it, my tiny desk that I barely fit under (to be honest it’s not actually tiny I’m just really big, 7 feet tall in addition to being…. ‘wide’.
I bet you’re surprised I’m 7 feet tall (2.13m for those using the metric system), I’m ¼ Fijian my great grandfather was 7 feet 8 inches tall (2.33m), a giant of a man, I never got to meet him though since he died when he was 40 from a heart attack, apparently being really tall is hazardous to the heart, or it’s just a family thing to die from heart attacks, I’m not confident in my medical knowledge so I don’t really know, my computer, my clothes drawer and my bed, that’s all there is in my room, other than a thick layer of dust that blankets over everything because I never clean my room, sometimes I vacuum and change the sheets on my bed, but other than that…
Okay, maybe my room is a mess.
…. I’m just going to say it now, I won’t be attending my funeral, since I don’t feel like I need to experience that.
I spent a day staring at my corpse, my parents knocked on my door 2 or 3 times, probably leaving meals for me, they’ll probably notice when I start to smell. I brought that on myself for secluding myself in my room for the last 4 years, oh well.
I made my way to the front of the house from my room, never mind the doors I just passed through the walls, when I got outside the first thing that caught my attention was that there seemed to be two suns, but when I took a few moments to look at them properly, I noticed that one was definitely the sun, the other was a bunch of circular symbols in the sky that gave off a blinding light, the other thing I noticed was that there were a lot of ghosts around, well there wasn’t a lot, but there was 3, a lot compared to the empty street I was expecting. The other ghosts seemed to be just sitting around happily talking away to one another, it seemed like they each died in gruesome ways, it was a little hard to look at, but I went over to them.
“Oh? You new chubby?”
One of them said to me as I came close to them, I wasn’t really used to this because 4 years ago before I locked myself away in my house, I was actually a very sporty person, I was fit and had some decent muscles, of course none of that mattered to me after all I’m not even upset that I died or that my beliefs were not true.
”Yeah… I just died…”
I really wasn’t offended, at least I didn’t know how to feel at the moment, really.
”Serves you right you pig, now get out of here I'm sick of looking at your disgusting flab.”
One of the other two pushed me down after he said that, bunch of childish ingrates, if this was 4 years ago I’d beat up the lot of them, but after everything that’s happened I really just don’t care.
”Whatever.”
And I got up and left, they shouted insults at me like hateful idiots as I walked away, now I actually do want to attack them, but they’d probably just beat me down, because I'm weak.
I decided to pretend I never ran into those nightmare creature class, bloody abominations of people that those guys were.
Okay maybe I was really angry, but I decided to set all that aside and venture towards the weird symbols in the sky, I felt somehow drawn to it like I should go there, it took a while to learn how to fly, but I eventually got the hang of it after twirling in the air for a while
As I got close to the mass of circular symbols that annoying blinding light died down or I got used to how bright it was and I could see it clearly, it was like multiple magic circles made out of light over lapping each other with a hole through the middle. I suddenly felt like I was being drawn to the middle as I got closer, so I went to the middle and everything disappeared, it all just blinked out and was replaced with endless whiteness.
A message box appeared.
Congratulations on graduating Universal Academy, Gaia branch!
You had been selected for early graduation, once again, Congratulations!
“The fuck?”
You qualify as a Rank:G Creator
Your Creator finances journal and your Creator Support guidebook have been placed in your personal space, please review them as soon as possible.
You graduated. The Personal Management Menu has been unlocked.
You were selected for early graduation. The IMPORT option has been unlocked.
You weren’t greedy. You have received 1000 matter pieces (MaP).
You were lazy. You have received the passive skill ‘sleepy’
You neglected your friends and family. You have received the passive skill ‘Lonely’
You were hated. You have received the passive skill ‘Easily hated’
You have a quick temper. You have received the passive skill ‘Hot temper’
Your left shoulder was permanently damaged. You have received the passive skill ‘Bad shoulder’
You were impotent. You have received the personal title ‘Useless’
You were younger than 80 years old when you died. You have received the personal title ‘Unfortunate’
You were younger than 60 years old when you died. You have received the personal title ‘Unlucky’
You were younger than 40 years old when you died. You have received the personal title ‘Depressing’
You were younger than 20 years old when you died. You have received the personal title ‘Stupid’
You didn’t die at birth. You have received the personal title ‘Unfortunately Born’
Few people saw you when you were alive and those that did, didn’t trust you. You have received the secondary title ‘Shady’
You are a Rank G Creator. You have received the rank specific title ‘Back Alley World maker’
You had fought with your life on the line using strength beyond your body’s normal capabilities. You have re-unlocked the skill ‘Pass the Limit’
You taught yourself how to fight. You have created a Rank:E martial arts ‘Slap-slap-palm Arts’
You are the grandmaster of the Rank E Martial arts ‘Slap-slap-palm Arts’
You have been granted access to your personal space, you may travel there at any time.
You are the lowest rank of Creator
Your current title is: ‘Useless Shady Back Alley World Maker’
You can retrain skills in your personal space at the cost of ‘MaP’.
Before I could voice any more complaints a bunch more message boxes popped up one after another like that. I decided to let all the insulting messages pass, no point getting angry about a message flinging insults at me.
“How do I access my ‘Personal Management Menu’?”
A… A menu instantly popped up as I asked that…
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Name: Anier | Creator : Rank G
Title: Useless Shady Back Alley World Maker
Inventory
Stats
Skills
Remote World Management (RWM)
Options
Extras
Communications
After looking at my menu for some time, I found that in my inventory I had nothing but 1000 MaP, my stats are blank, along with my level and race, looking at my hands I found that they’re just none descriptive grey hands with no details or anything of note other than that there is nothing of note, it was a bit depressing.
Attempting to look at my ‘RWM’ gave me a massage,
World not yet created, you can create a world for 1000MaP from your personal space
Needless to say I’m not going to spend all my money without reading the guide book. Options allows me to customize the menu and message boxes, Extras has the ‘IMPORT’ option, but it was blanked out, I have no idea what it does. Communications was essentially a friends list, I assume it lets me speak with people on my Contacts list without them needing to be close by, everything in that was blanked out except for ‘Add Contact’.
Lastly I open my skills menu, I glossed over all the passive skills, they explained themselves or at the very least I just didn’t care to read them. ‘Pass the Limit’ apparently allows me to double a single stat for a short while, currently not having any stats, I obviously couldn’t use it.
My martial arts came with multiple combos, it was essentially just stuff I’d done in the past, selecting them a video would display of when I’d used them in the past, they’re essentially all palm strike's on the fridge, because I did that whenever I got food out of the fridge... because I was bored, every day for 9 years… some of them were of fights I had with classmates.
Needless to say all the combos were of just randomly made up stuff, mostly useless and ineffective.
After that I decided to try going to my personal space.
“Personal space”
I called out experimentally, I felt motion and then the area around me seemed to dim and a message popped up.
Welcome to your personal space
I looked around to realize I was in a tiny room that looked a whole lot like my room I’d lived in for the last 19 years of my life, except everything was grey and my bed looked like a slab of plastic and my new computer wasn’t any model of computer I recognize. My clothes drawer couldn’t open and was apparently just for looks.
With some weariness I turned on my computer, the screen lit up and without any logo’s or sign in screen simply displayed ‘Personal Space’ before changing to the desktop, on the desktop there were 6 icons.
A blue circle that read ‘My world’ under it,
A blue person that read ‘My people’ under it,
A blue light bulb that read ‘Idea cloud’ under it,
A grey person that read 'Myself' under it,
A blue square that read ‘Personal Storage’ under it,
And lastly a blue window that read ‘Extra-Net’ under it, which I assume was something like the internet.
I opened my ‘Personal storage’, inside I found the Creator finances journal and Creator Support guidebook, selection the creator finances journal, a window opened on the computer screen which showed how much ‘MaP’ I had and how much I’d earned or lost for the month, I’d gained 1000MaP during my early ‘graduation’ for not being greedy and so I had 1000MaP.
I then changed back over to the previous window and opened my Creator Support guidebook, it went over a lot of things, but I’ll sum it up:
Firstly it seems Earth was just a series of test to see what we’d be good for once we ‘Graduate’ as they put it. Second our subconscious is what words the messages and grades us and grants your abilities and titles, though you can also learn skills and be granted titles by others normally, so if you’re getting some pretty hateful update messages, you can blame your own self-hating for that, apparently mine are very tame compared to other people.
I can earn money by working for other creators, if I have a world I gain a monthly income based on my rank as a creator, apparently as a G rank creator I’d gain 100MaP per month, which is essentially very, very little, I can’t even buy food for that amount, not that I run the risk of dying if I don’t eat, but eating is better than not eating.
To gain rank you earn Rank points (RP) by working for another creator, however you also earn rank points by having your world function as a world, of course you gain more if your world is in order and working properly under a system, but you can also earn a lot by having your world in complete chaos, the best way is to balance chaos and order.
As an F rank Creator you can travel to your world as a child and live a life there, it’s generally good for killing time while waiting for you ‘MaP’ to build up.
When you reach rank E you’re able to travel to and leave your own world as much as you like, however when on that world you are as powerful as a normal person of that world, if you die in your world or another Creator's world you return to your personal room.
After reaching rank D you can allocate Heroes in your world and you can hire other creators as heroes, Heroes earn a lot of ‘MaP’ and ‘RP’.
You can also open your world to other creators once you reach Rank C, this allows you to spend less of your ‘MaP’ on the world and also give your more chances to earn more ‘MaP’, but you have less control over what happens in your world, because it’s not just your world anymore. You can join another person’s world regardless of your rank.
As a rank B creator you can order your people to do things, like ‘kill these people’ and ‘Make giant statues of me everywhere’ these kinds of things.
As a rank A creator you can create a false god as a threat for your world to fight, you can also allocate yourself as a hero, though whether anyone believe you’re their creator or not is for them to decide.
As a rank S creator you can create multiple worlds, essentially you become able to make a universe, a truly god tier being, not to mention the ridiculous amounts of ‘MaP’ you’d probably get each month. There’s also a lot of other benefits to ranking up but they aren’t that important at the moment.
The ‘Idea cloud’ is essentially a place where you sell the idea of your creations to other Creators for ‘MaP’, anyone can make something that looks the same, but making it exactly the same is impossible unless they have your ‘Idea’. As I’d thought the ‘Extra-net’ is essentially the internet, there you can visit many different Extra-sites (websites), it’s also where you can connect to other worlds and get in contact with other Creators and find jobs and such.
'Myself' is where I can customize my 'form' and replace and retrain skills, eventually I'll retrain my negative passive skills into useful ones, but for now I'm not going to use my money on that.
There is a world open to all creators called ‘The Market world’ which is a world filled with shops that sell items and equipment for ‘MaP’, generally the Creators that like to focus on adventuring and finding work as heroes can be found there.
Creating anything on your world costs ‘MaP’, also altering the terrain costs ‘MaP’, a lot of ‘MaP’, understanding this I find that it’d be most ideal to look for work with another Creator.
But first I’ll start my world so that I can gain a ‘form’ I don’t mind continuing to be a mysterious grey thing for a while longer, but I’d rather gain a 'form' as soon as possible so I can start working as a hero and raise my rank.
I spent my 1000 MaP and created my world, naming it Verus, I was required to choose some starting options, I selected grasslands as the default terrain, random landmasses, with randomly generated elevation and random weather, I ended up with a pretty okay looking randomly generated world covered with grasslands, of course nothing lived there yet.
I gained my form, apparently your subconscious selects your default ‘form’ for you, my ‘form’ was of a character I played as in a game, she was a powerful wizard that was ¼ fairy, so I suppose I’ll be living as a woman from now on, of course it’s possible to manually change your form, but that costs ‘MaP’ which I don't have any of and I don’t mind living as a character I played as for 4 years.
Though I will admit suddenly turning into a 5 foot 4 inches tall, half-elf looking woman with smooth yet sharp facial features, B-cup breasts, bob-cut Red hair and slightly glowing green eyes was a big shock, I didn’t expect it, it was almost as shocking as when I died.
Okay, that wasn’t funny, I apologize.
I scratched my head realizing I didn’t have money to buy clothes, so I decided to ignore that and sat at my desk, which was now a lot more comfortable to sit at because I was much smaller, there was a world of difference from before, though it still feels wrong, I can’t change what I can’t change. I went to the job board on the Extra-net and looked around for a job, eventually I found a job to work as an assistant to a person of importance in someone’s world, and the creator of that world went by the name ‘Metra’ I first need to visit them and we’ll organize for me to make contact with that important person in their world.
I sent Metra a message through the Job board that I would be interested in their job and we organized to meet tomorrow in Metra’s guest room. Obviously, I don’t have a guest room yet, my space only consists of my ‘personal space’ and ‘My World’, once I have a guest room and money, I can hire people to do jobs for me.
Laying on my bed, which was actually surprisingly soft, I fell asleep.
<--/-/-/-->
The next day I went on my computer and activated the transfer to Metra’s Guest room, it took a minute and a few bouts with motion sickness as I moved at high speed through a field of white and then an incredible decorative room with book shelves and soft looking couches organized in a semi-circle appeared around me, sitting on one side of the couch was a small girl with a cute face, green hair and yellow eyes that had stars in them, she was wearing a sturdy looking brown-green dress and sturdy brown boots. I was of course still naked, seeing this Metra frowned and pulled a grey piece of cloth from nothing and threw it at me.
“What the hell, did you just start yesterday or something?”
“I actually did, yes.”
I put on the grey dress she threw at me while she sighed at my response.
“Well new or not, you should be able to handle my request, it’ll take a few years, but you’ll at least earn enough ‘MaP’ to start your own world.”
“100MaP a month was the deal right?”
“With bonuses for addition activities, the person I’m going to have you assisting will be my world’s next hero, you’ll be their support more or less.”
Metra shrugs and she motioned for me to approach and sit across from her on the semicircle of the couch, when I sat she continued.
“If they die then no big deal, but there will be a penalty of 2000MaP for failing the job.”
“So much.”
I despaired.
“That’s why, don’t let them die until they’ve fulfilled their purpose. You’ll know when the Hero has fulfilled its purpose because I’ll message you.”
Metra did some strange motions with her hands and then a message popped up,
Metra has added you to their contacts
I added her in return and then she continues again.
“Now since you’re a G rank creator, you can’t enter the world forcefully so we’ll have to use a more organic method, you’ll be reborn in the same town as the hero, to replicate your current appearance, your parents will be elves from my world, the only way out will be dying, so just live a full life and earn a lot of bonuses for yourself.”
Metra smiled and took out a contract and pen, I read it over and then write my name on the contract, Metra then wrote hers on it, the contract then split into two copies and she handed one to me.
“With that the contract is complete from your personal space you should be able to activate the contract.”
I nodded.
“Thanks for the job Metra, I’ll try my best.”
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Author Notes:
Hi I am Arukorstza.
I don't really think of myself as very good when it comes to writing but I like writing, so I apologize if my story is/gets boring, but I hope you enjoy it, I'll be posting at least 1 chapter a week, probably 4 times longer than this prologue is.
Editor Notes:
Zeratul here,
I added tables for the titles/abilities/skills gained as well as message pop-ups. I also fixed any grammar mistakes that I found in the chapter as well.
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