[https://i.imgur.com/pLODXZx.png]
Kalender the Candleheart
Antithesis to a Harem World
A Story by KeeperAbra
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Platonic harems can’t exist. That was what the others thought, but Minimine gambled on it. Her home was unraveling from a power the others once thought harmless—playful, even. Now, however, it was a disease to which even a hero or saint could easily fall. Just any typical choice wouldn’t work here.
She needed a soul with experience as a man, with the mental fortitude to resist the temptations of the flesh, and a spirit to overcome challenges. Most had the latter, but to resist their own nature … it was a tall order, but non-negotiable.
In the great beyond, where stars go to die, the wakes of transiting souls passed under her fingertips. She touched a thousand of them at once, and a thousand more in the next moment. Many of them had histories and potentials as Heroes and Saints, but she didn’t need them. She needed this one.
She plucked it out like a child would a fish with a small net.
“Where am I?” the soul asked, its voice instead a song. There was no sound here, only truth.
“You are aware that you have died, yes?” Minimine said. The beauty of the calm and cool of the morning dew radiated from her words, impressing upon the soul.
“Beautiful… ‘Died’ ? Ah…” The soul’s color faded slightly. Something within it frayed. “Why do I feel this way? I don’t know why I feel…this way.”
“The core of your memories has been left behind in the place you have left. Some vestiges linger, but they will soon fade away,” Minimine answered. “For your benefit, I have made adjustments so you may remember broad strokes of your world. Otherwise, the sculpt of your soul is still as it was the moment you died.”
The soul didn’t understand. It had no faculty to, but there were knots within and outside itself. “Why am I here? Miss…”
“I am the Vice-Goddess of Reincarnation, Minimine.”
“Miss Minimine—no, Goddess Minimine—wait, Vice-Goddess?”
“The Chief Goddess of Reincarnation, my sister, Maximine, is on…extended leave. ‘Minimine’ is fine.”
“Huh. Neat.”
Odd choice of words, Minimine thought. “With that said, I require a ‘Hero’ of sorts. I am sure you are familiar with the concept?”
“A hero…like, someone who fights a big scary dude to save the world? Can I pass on that? Sounds rough.”
What a blunder, for her plans to save the word to be foiled right at the moment of inception!… but, there’s yet to be hope! “Hear me, first. It is not the same thing, and it is not even the same title. What I will ask of you will not be as ridiculous as defeating the demon king. Truly, sometimes I wonder how Maximine has the gall to think a human can defeat a Demon Lord—”
“Yes?…”
Minimine recomposed herself, even while her self-concept was still flashing rainbows. “H-however, Gaia is more dangerous than Earth, so you will have to earn some amount of power, no matter what you do. What I ask of you will have you earning just a bit more. You must—”
The soul hovered in trepidation, inching ever so slightly as if leaning forwards. However, she wasn’t to finish her words.
“Ohoho! What’s this?”
An arrogant voice broke the sky in parts like ceramic fissures, and with the sounding of a death gong, down spilled a purple haze, splashing against the clouds and turning them into stone. Minimine’s own divinity, her very authority over this space, kept the haze at bay, but she was only a Vice-Goddess, not one with enough power to close the fissure, at least not while she was also expending power to keep the soul anchored here.
The intruder, undeterred, stepped through a crack, one long leg after the other, until he was before them. For this god, the pleasures of the world were law, and he donned upon himself the concrete form of a human, hiding all manner of devilishness and depravity beneath its skin. He hovered, standing on an invisible board, one hand on a gold-rimmed monocle and the other on his hip. He took off his feathered fedora and took a bow, before looking up with a grin.
“Where are my manners!” He had a voice, and it shook this space. “I am ######, the ###### God!” His eyebrow twitched. “Oh? Of course, my name would be censored anywhere that’s not my domain. Well, too bad!”
Minimine pushed her divinity all the way, trying with all her might to cram the pest back into its cage. ######, however, budged just an inch.
“Why, I see what you’re trying to do here, Minimine dearest—rather, should I say Mini-mine? You’ll be mine just like your sister, after all! Aha-ha!—actually, how do you pronounce it? I’ve been meaning to ask … ah.”
He turned a pitiless eye towards the soul. A premonition struck Minimine, and she hurried to bring him down to Gaia before ###### could accomplish whatever it was he sought to do here.
“[Blessing of Reincarnation: Champion]! Find a temple dedicated to me or Maximine! Now, be off!—”
“[Blessing of the ###### God: Like Moths to a Flame]. Have fun, little one.”
Minimine’s eyes twisted in horror, even as she sent the soul down to Gaia. With more of her power freed, she put all of it into kicking ###### back into his domain.
With the Domain of Reincarnation secured, but reeling, Minimine turned red and gray for the trouble brought to her Champion. “I’m sorry—your fate! I’m so sorry!”
Any of the goddesses or gods who were watching afforded just a smidgen of sympathy for her, but all of disdain for ######. This happened all the time, however, and they could not, in all their power, do anything about it.
***
He woke up in the middle of a forest, back against the grass, and a break in the canopy above welcoming him to a new world. He stretched his fingers, feeling for the grass. It was green, rich, but itchy. His mind was empty.
He sat up, taking a few deep breaths before crawling to the edge of a nearby pond, confirming his reflection. His body was fully-formed: a young man with a head of dark-blue hair, a Caucasian face, and with a quick inspection, he was most assuredly a man, equipped even with what might be this world’s fashion for men: a tunic, trousers, and sandals. The sandals didn’t feel quite right in this terrain. The forest floor was damp, and he could feel the grass and leaves tickling the sides of his feet. Hopefully there weren’t mosquitoes this time of year.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the last thing that happened. His memories felt like they’d been tossed into a blender and served back to him as a smoothie. Someone—‘Minimine’ had told him to go find a ‘Temple to Maximine,’ which he hoped wasn’t as ostentatious as it sounded. He wouldn’t walk into a nice place wearing whatever he had on him at the moment. In any case, besides the mild headache and disorientation, gaining a sense of clarity—a clearer picture of his purpose in this world—was what he needed right now.
“In this world”—he remembered his last one, but not clearly. He had a mysterious, trivial knowledge of all the things and places, but no details about his supposed prior life. It just felt like memories of a dream.
“Even if I don’t remember my first life…I’ll make the most out of this one!”
That’s when a transparent panel appeared in front of him. It was a floating, zero-thickness panel that overlapped with his vision, as if it was just seen by one eye and not the other. With a thought, its background turned blue, and the letters turned white. With another, its background turned completely clear, and the letters, a phosphorescent green. All the same, the layout could be changed at will. He settled with something simple enough.
***
Name:
Age: 17
Occupation: Champion of Reincarnation
Lvl: 1
Race: Human
HP:
MP: 10/10
[Skills]
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
All-Language Fluency (MAX)
[Companions]
Minimine (Flagged)
Vice-Goddess of Reincarnation
Affection: 5
[Blessings]
[Blessing of Reincarnation: Champion]
You have been chosen as a Champion of the Domain of Reincarnation. It’s like being a Hero, but a little bit more flexible on the work hours. You gain immediate access to magic, and you level up immediately each time you defeat an opponent 5 levels higher than yourself; the standard XP system is locked from you. Gain additional skill points per level.
[Blessing of the ##### God: Like Moths to a Flame]
You are a young man with a bright future ahead of you. Anyone from little girls to millions-year-old deities will instantly hold favorable impressions of you at first meeting without rhyme nor reason. Unlocks the Companion System—get that Affection to 100!
***
It’s just about what was expected—except for the errored-out HP and the yet-to-be-entered name. There were more things to be said about the “Blessings,” like how Minimine’s Blessing sounded a bit cobbled-together. It says I have immediate access to magic, but where is it? He elected to deal with the more pressing concern: his namelessness.
Certainly, a name was absolutely more important than raising a goddess’s flag. He just didn’t want to think about that for a while.
“What’s a normal-sounding name around here, I wonder?” he wondered aloud. First impressions were important. He didn’t want to accidentally make up a foreign-sounding name just in case he’d landed in a country that regarded all foreigners as spies, or something crazy like that.
He wasn’t even sure if his current appearance was considered local to the area. Hopefully the language skill he got wouldn’t be afflicted with a foreign accent—but that’d probably be asking for too much, wouldn’t it?
His first order of business was to find civilization. There looked to be some foot trails around where he appeared, so there might be a town nearby—
“Halt right there!” A woman’s voice boomed, and much too close for comfort. He turned around, and from where the forest started, not 10 meters away, a squad of five knights emerged, having cut their way through the bushes.
Instead of knights, they were more like witch hunters. Two of them were burning incense from censors hanging from their waists, and all of them wore plate armor that was plastered in what looked like talismans tacked on with wax seals. All of them had weapons drawn: three with swords closer to him, and the other two at the rear with a crossbow and a spear.
Ascertaining whether they were out to kill or capture, he peered through the thin slits of their visors, clamped down shut and ready for battle.
“Don’t make eye contact!” the squad leader at the very front shouted. “Zerena, Alki, move to his sides!”
Fresh sweat dripped from his cheek. He could still vaguely recall being arrested by police in his previous life, so he knew what to do. “U-uh, can I know what’s the problem?” he asked as calmly as he could manage.
A few slips of talismans from the knights closest to him burned up, spooking both him and the knights. For a moment, the knights all froze in place.
“Sound off!” the squad leader shouted. “Successfully resisted!” “Resisted!” her squadmates all replied in turn. Wait, they’re all women?
For the knights, their resistance holding up meant that they had room for negotiation. However, a certain idiot needed to learn to shut up. “You!” The squad leader pointed at him with her sword. “Starting now, do not speak unless permitted! Any step away from where you stand will be interpreted as a hostile action and we will cut you down as such! Nod once if I am understood!”
No Miranda Rights around these parts, huh? He quickly nodded once, though he was surprised, deep down, that he wasn’t as nervous as he ought to be in this situation, chalking it up to being literally just “born,” in one sense of the word. The reality of this world wasn’t quite hitting him yet.
“Seldi,” the squad leader ordered, “Appraise him.”
The spear knight at the back rested the butt of her spear on the ground before staring at him. One of the paper talismans on her armor burned up, causing the crossbow knight beside her to shift uncomfortably, but she soon lowered her spear again.
“He’s a Cursed Reincarnator!” she announced. This confused the man himself, since he didn’t have a [Curses] section in his stats—but he figured, looking through his [Blessings], that being an unwilling womanizer was probably the closest to a curse that he had. He simply just wasn’t that type of guy.
Though, it was a little bit weird to be treated like a walking time bomb if the only effect the “Blessing” had was to make a bunch of girls feel nice about him out of nowhere. Wouldn’t it be straightforward to just—just maybe—reject them all gracefully?
It would surely be annoying, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. The existence of the [Companions] section probably also meant a bunch of benefits or stat upgrades down the line for anyone considered his “Companion”—who ostensibly would be a girl who liked him to some degree—so the overall benefits were actually pretty good.
Friends have crushes on friends all the time, so none of it looked like some weird, flag-ridden, fate-sealing thing to him. He’d just take care of any of his Companion’s feelings, clarify their positions, and they’d still get the upgrades—not a bad deal!
“Listen well, Cursed One,” the squad leader continued, “I permit you to answer the following question with three words, maximum: How long have you been in this country?”
He didn’t even know what country this was, but anyway, “Five minutes.”
Paper talismans started burning up. It didn’t matter all that much, since each knight had dozens, but they winced all the same. The talismans were obviously protecting them from something that was coming from him, but he was really miffed that he didn’t know what, exactly, that was.
The squad leader, meanwhile, stood still.
“Leader?” the sword knight beside her asked.
“I’m only thinking. This does not make sense. To be this deep inside Lyrica within five minutes…” She eyed him up and down. He could have only gotten this far if he was incredibly powerful, but none of them would still be standing here if he were.
Her next best guess, accounting for the man’s apparent confusion—no, it was more like he was dazed—was that he was likely reincarnated just now, and in this very place.
That didn’t make sense. Matured reincarnations were only ever sent down to the Isles of Rem far to the south, which could only be reached by crossing two other countries’ borders. She had no choice but to conclude that this was an extraordinary event.
“Everyone, hear me first,” she started, “It is not likely that this man is powerful enough to be this deep into Lyrica without the Royal Detector’s heed. Seldi, this man’s status is undoubtedly sorrowful, is it not?”
“That is so.”
“Then, the most reasonable, and no doubt extraordinary, circumstance is that he was reincarnated here, in this very place.”
This earned nervous shuffling from her squadmates.
“By this reasoning,” she continued, “we will forgo protocol and bring him straight to the Inquisition. Any objections?”
‘Inquisition’? That sounded kinda bad to him, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad organization in this world. Not like he had a choice, anyway.
Her squadmates didn’t protest. She ordered the two swords to watch closely, then she approached him with wooden cuffs.
The moment she came within a meter of him, all the talismans on her armor burned off in a flash that engulfed her.
“Leader!” “You bastard! What did you do!”
The guy was panicking. He had nothing to do with this! “It wasn’t me! I’m not moving, I swear!”
With that many words from his mouth, half the talismans on the other knights burned off. One of them fired their crossbow, but before it hit him, a sword swiped it from the air.
“Leader?!” “Jyn!” “Shit, she’s been charmed!”
“Quiet!” The squad leader, her armor now covered in squares of black soot, brandished her sword towards her fellow knights. She turned her head slightly to the guy, however—
“And you! The more you speak, the more you place them at risk!”
Two swords tried and failed to cut the man down, parried both ways by their squad leader.
“Gah! Jyn is too strong!” “You bastard, let go of her this instant!”
The guy was gonna say something, but this Jyn girl said something about his talking making things worse—well, it was making things worse for the other knights. It probably wouldn’t double down on Jyn, right?
“Jyn, right?” he whispered. “So if I whisper like this, it’s fine?”
“Tsk. Y-yes. I find your courtesy disgusting, however…even if you’re not actually that bad—shit, fucking charm effects.”
“Look, nothing’s doing it for anyone here, so at least tell me. What’s the best way to defuse this situation?”
Going by what she’s been remarking, he’d already figured out the insta-charm stuff going on, all the while quietly cursing the guy who’d burdened him with this mess. Turned out the Blessing of the ###### God was nasty stuff.
Jyn trembled for a while. Her knights were still at a loss, but they’d picked up on her conversation with the guy. She spoke in a volume that everyone could hear. “T-the charm effect of the curse m-means that I’ll try to act in your favor. I-if you just—”
Something was stopping her from saying it. Did the charm effect also stop her from actively saying anything about how to dispel it? He figured the compulsion effect was stronger, though. “Just say it,” he whispered.
Jyn winced. “Thank you—shit, was that the charm or a real thank you? A-anyway, i-if it’s in your interest to get arrested, s-so the Inquisition can sort this out, that would be splendid for everyone’s well-being here!”
“Before that…are the Inquisition people nice?”
“Inquisition policy is to dispose of violent offenders.”
“And non-violent ones?”
“They are isolated for research. H-hearsay is that they are put on an island full of only men.”
Ah. That’s a bit sad.
“A-as for your case, you seem to be an extraordinary one. I can only imagine that protocol will be subverted in favor of…more flexible reasoning.”
He only had bad options. He could use Jyn to fight off the other knights and retreat, only to be hunted for days on end. She’d also mentioned a “Royal Detector,” whatever that was, but it sounded a lot like they’d always know where he was as long as he was inside the country. With his sad Level 1 stats, and lack of information, there was nowhere he could run.
Above all, he was just much too law-abiding to resist authority. “Sounds great!” He slowly moved his hands to a ‘Please cuff me, officer’ position. Jyn turned around and found him grinning with his wrists ready to be clamped.
“You’re a strange one—wait, was that a charm effect, too…”
Thus, this was how he got arrested and put in solitary confinement on his very first day in this world.