Chapter 1 - Why are there knives under my pillow?
You know the story, I know the story; The blackness, the dark void before my next life starts and trust me, I’m just as fucking sick of it as you are— The system, the dungeons, everything else that we’ve both read, except it actually happened to me and every day I wished it didn’t.
After so many reincarnations it all starts to lose meaning. What does the pain of loss, the cry of victory even mean when you can just do it again. The blackness started to fade away and I came to in a dingy room with a drab kitchenette in the corner and a filthy bathroom attached to it. I swung my legs of the bed I woke up in and stared at my surrounding blearily. The room was tiny with a window by the bedside table that flooded the room with light, making the filth more apparent.
I cleared my throat and called “System.” To the air and waited for the systems panel to materialise in front of me. My name was bold against the system screen’s blue— [Jo Mal-Chin]. My parents expected me to be hardworking considering my name meant ‘persists to the end’, but crypto and an unhealthy amount of gambling reduced me to where I am now. My name was especially ironic this reincarnation because I had decided to give up in this life. Next to my name, the system screen displayed how many reincarnations I had gone through, the number 1001 gleaming next to my name.
I felt a lump in my throat and put my head in my hands, leaning against the wall for support. A thousand fucking times. The lump in my throat grew hotter and bigger, and before I knew it I was sobbing. Nothing I build lasts, no one I know remembers me and I always win in the end no matter what happens. I had a wife in the thousandth reincarnation. A family. A son. I was seventy when I died, surrounded by grandchildren, but now I was back again, sitting in my underwear in the same disgusting motel room. A failure of a Korean immigrant, whose parent were disappointed in him and whose siblings ostracised him.
After an hour and regret and tears I decided to move on. I always did, one way or another. Standing up from the creaky bed I walked to the kitchenette to make a cup of tea. 10 minutes later, I sat back on the bed, sipped my tea from the cracked mug and glanced at the clock on the bedside table. 3 more minutes before it started. I sipped the tea softly in the silence, enjoying my last few moments of peace. No matter how many times I reincarnated, these precious few minutes where there was no system and no monsters felt special to me.
I placed the now empty cup on the bedside table just as the notification came in. “Congratulations, you’re mythos has been selected for the tower selection program! To know more about what this entails, swipe right!!!” In previous reincarnations I had smiled cockily wile saying something clever like “Just on time…” but now I was too tired for any of that. Reaching under the pillow I pulled out the kitchen knife and turned just as the giant flying bug monster smashed through my window. I know what you’re thinking, why do I have a knife under my pillow? I don’t know anymore I’ve forgotten, that’s the best explanation I can give you. I must have been weird even before the apocalypse happened.
The creature buzzed and tried to stab me with it’s pincers, but I stabbed in the eye-socket just as it flew towards me, using its own momentum to kill it. It went down squealing, but I calmly pulled the knife out and stabbed it between the wings, its weak spot. It gave a few more twitches, spouting blood in torrents, and died on the floor. I reached up and wiped its green blood off my forehead just as the system dinged [Congratulations! As the sixty ninth player to kill an entity termed as ‘monster’ you have obtained a bonus of 300 coins!!!]
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
I fucking hated the systems exclamation marks, but I still smiled at the message. I had, over countless reincarnations, figured out the exact second where I would get the sixty ninth kill and the small victories always seemed bigger than defeating a demon lord or a field boss.
I walked to the door of the basement and called out “Shop.” as I reached for the door handle. [Welcome, sir. As the first person to use the Shop you have gained a bonus of 400 coins!! What would you like to buy today?”] My eyes flicked past nonsense like the ‘Angel’s Blade’ and ‘Cthulhu’s Orb’, most of which was out of my price range and called out “Purchase Walther PP firearm.” The 7mm pistol appeared in my hand, with the sound of a cash register and the Shop closed with a cheerful ‘Ding!’ Often times, especially in the early days, a gun was better than a sword or a bow. I swung open the door and blinked at the sudden sunlight that stabbed into my eyes. On the road, a car careened off the road trying to avoid another bug, and just as it hit the tree I raised the pistol without looking and fired two shots into the hallway just as the door next to the room I rented swung open. The couple that walked out of the room had barely a few millisecond to stare around them in horror before the bullet I shot embedded itself in the skull of the wife.
The second bullet had hit only the husband’s thigh and he screamed out in pain, writhing on the floor. I looked over at my botched shot and clicked my tongue in annoyance. The man looked at me terrified and the last thing he saw was me giving him a thumbs up and a smile before a third bullet blew his eye and consequently, his brain, apart.
I know, I know, How could I kill a happy, harmless couple like that? How very villainous. Please, spare me your morality. The man becomes in servitude to a vampire and the wife becomes a serial killer who eats human hearts to get more powerful. No a bullet in the head is practically a gift to them. I brought the shop up again with a flick of my wrist just in time to see the notification [Congratulations! You are the sixty ninth player to kill the human female!!! Congratulations! You are the seventy third player to kill a human male!!! You have been awarded 800 coins!] I clicked the shop icon and bought some more ammo for 50 coins.
Another car hit a tree and by now the road was a veritable maze of explosions and bug monsters tearing up the landscape (and people) around them. I reached the stairs and jogged down them to reach the room belonging to the motel owner. Ringing the bell, I waited for the owner to show up and didn’t even bother waiting for the door to open, I just shot him through the tinted window embedded in the door. Swinging the unlocked door open I stepped inside to collect my ‘insurance’.
You see, this life I decided I was going to laze around, do what I wanted in leisure just to give a giant middle finger to the system. And to do that I needed to find someone else to do whatever the system wanted me to do. That’s where my insurance, Hobie, came in. Hobie was about 13 right now, but the kid was a genius. By the time he was fifteen he built the first high level human created spell, Mass Teleport. He was a mage rivalled by no one and He was the first guy who I was going to make do my work for me.
I strode into the hotel room and saw him standing inside an inner bedroom with his hand over his head terrified by the gunshot. “Heyyy!” I walked over and gave him my most dazzling smile, but the kid wasn’t buying it. Fucking hated children. “So the situation outside is kind of complicated so why don’t you stick with me, hmm?” He flinched and I couldn’t for the life of me think what made his so scared. I sighed and ran my hands through my hair, losing my patience. “Fuck this.” I grabbed Hobie by the collar and pulled him, kicking and screaming onto the road. Now to meet my second insurance plan.
Siddharth Madurai was an upstanding immigrant, everything my parents wanted me to be— caring, compassionate and willing to risk his life to save a family of four even while a swarm of bug monsters threatened to eat him alive. The fucking nerve. He eventually would get the nickname the archer of death and forgive me for thinking that’s a bit too edgelord, but whatever. Luckily Siddharth was good with kids, so I bought a dull knife from the shop, stuffed Hobie under my arm and sliced my way through the chaos to meet my main attraction across the road.