A man in a thick hoodie had been riding his bicycle through the gray city's streets for hours. Taking odd twists and turns in a manner that would have hidden him from most prying eyes.
The streets were baren.
For miles on end there wouldn't be a single observable person. In fact, at the edges of the city's contours, there was simply nothing there.
But the man didn't know this, nor did he pay any mind to it. Being out of college for a while now, his days had recently fallen into a strange thing of cycling for hours, retrieving his hidden belongings, and then finding some secluded place to sleep.
It's in good fortune that he hasn't gone completely broke. Continuing this lifestyle of his is something he can do for some time before being forced to accept some circumstances.
A sub-optimal, worthless way of life. But at least it's free.
A message notification rang from his phone.
[MarfedFae]: "Dude we haven't talked in a hell of a long time, how you doin"
[Mael]: "Two weeks specifically. I think I'm doing relatively fine. So, my bad if I haven't been able to talk."
[MarfedFae]: "k wut I actually meant was "Where have you been for the past two weeks n why haven't I seen you at all""
[Mael]: "You're talking like you're my mom, but alright."
After typing out a bunch of long-winded messages such as the multitude of places he's been at, the troubles at home, and how he's been deliberately avoiding people's eyes on him.
[Mael]: "So, due to some personal disagreements with family, I decided to move out, so I'm kind of roaming the streets, kinda. Luckily I still have my job."
After that, it got sat on 'seen' for twenty minutes.
There was a stifling emotion coming out from the man when he looked back at the things he wrote.
But right when he was about to put his phone away, another notification rang.
[MarfedFae]: "Bummers, wanna stay at my place till you get things figured out or naw? If you say yes imma remind you that it's dirty n you might have to tiptoe here and there also no loud sounds pls."
And so, the conversation went on from there, but only after he similarly left [MarfedFae] on seen for the same amount of time.
About half an hour later, the man was in front of a house with a large duffel bag right next to him.
As instructed by his friend, he took out the key hidden under the matt and entered. Eventually navigating his way into a guest room.
From the sight of it, the room had clearly only ever been used when parties got too crowded.
Empty cans, bottles, discarded clothes and various pieces of trash covered most of the floor. Dust had accumulated in the corners, and the bed—or really the sole mattress—was heavily stained to a point where you couldn't even notice its original color.
Taking a deep sigh, he sat on the floor; placing the duffel bag right beside him.
To be frank, he can't exactly recall how he ever grew such a deep friendship with this person.
When he took out his phone to check the gallery, there wasn't a single photo of the individual. Opening the auto-recorded calls under that number, there still wasn't anything substantial.
Scrolling through his messages, however, there were some lifesaving graces he gave. Even so, when looking at it from the man's own perspective, he still wouldn't invite someone like himself into his own home.
He likes to see things transactionally.
The amount of favors he did lead to a total of 800 points, making his friend indebted to him by 800.
Now, letting him into their house was worth 1,000.
That left him owing [MarfedFae] 200 points.
Someone within the debt range of 100-1,000+ was likely to become an eternal burden for life, so generally, allowing such people anywhere near your vicinity was not advised in the slightest.
Though the latter part should be a little bit different for him. It does explain why not a single saved memory is available for this person.
Regardless, night had arrived, and there wasn't much left to do but sleep.
With his hood pulled tight, he eventually drifted off.
[Name: ???]
Looking around in a pitch-black room(?) with only a white screen in front of him, the man figured that there's a good chance he's going to experience things 100x worse than being homeless after this.
Maybe slavery?
It had been abolished for almost two hundred years in many countries, but there's no doubt that it still existed in some niche areas.
Or maybe his organs would get harvested? Honestly, he'd prefer the latter. At least he'd die quicker. Probably less painfully, too, assuming his captors were even a little humane.
If he's in the former, he can go for a mutual kill with one of his captors once he's given the slightest lick of freedom. But then again, if he were the captor, he'd be hypervigilant around his slave. A kamikaze attack probably wouldn't work.
The man let out a sigh(?) that made no sound.
Never ever, ever put yourself in a compromised situation. But nobody bothers applying this sort of thing until it happens to them.
Figuring it'd be best to not speak, he stayed still and thought of what he could've done.
Shouldn't have entered the house, shouldn't have trusted anybody, should've scouted ahead, remind somebody else, called… He went over it again. Then again. Each mistakes piling onto another until there was nothing left to retrace. Then, there was a backwards tilt.
The man recognized the sensation yet could not understand it. It felt familiar in a way he could not place, as though he had experienced it before—but not before.
Drugged was the first thought that came to mind, but when that thought arrived, the alien vertigo vanished. And after a few moments of silence, it returned.
Fortunately, this was a glaring thing to realize. So, he thought to keep his mind preoccupied.
To do that, he directed it towards the future. Then another tilt emerged that was almost a direct inverse from before.
It was quite difficult to describe, really. But to put it in simple terms, "I haven't experienced this yet—but somehow, I already have.". Unfortunately, this form of vertigo refused to disappear no matter how hard he tried to occupy his thoughts.
At least it remained 'illusory.' But he simply had no way of quantifying what that meant.
It's a question on where things went wrong in his life. Was it the 'fake' sense of attachment he gave out to everyone? He couldn't exactly claim to be the most internally upright person, but the kindness he'd given everyone around him had always been genuine.
Everyone he considered a friend had been honest with him. He'd only been betrayed once in his entire life, and even that had merely been a disagreement over something. Afterward, he'd made sure never to put himself in a similar position again.
"So why am I here?"
Suddenly, he let out a violent scream and flailed around on what he thought was solid floor before standing up a few minutes later and apologizing.
"Um, sorry. Could anyone tell me why I'm here?"
The screen's glow turned a bit fiercer.
[Name: ???]
Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm. What was his name again?
The white screen then grew bright enough to practically blind him, but he just realized he couldn't close his eyes as it'd make no difference. Moving his head only moved the screen with him.
"Mael…? My name is Mael." It's a name he used mostly online or in games. Maybe if he seemed delirious enough, they'd accept it?
[Name: Mael
Talent: Simulator]
"What?" Before Mael could think, a large block of text slowly replaced the words.
[Simulator: Customization available with points.
Current state:「 」
Restriction: Time.
Boon & Banes: Immediate application upon selection/deselection.
Points: Final value must be ≥ 0.
Current Points: 1000
Boons:
Status Display Cost: 1 Pts
Strength Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}
Intelligence Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}
Constitution Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}
Dexterity—]
"Close." The only light available in this void vanished.
"Open." And it popped right back out.
[Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}]
"Close." The screen blinked out.
"Oh." Huh. No, wait. This isn't his imagination, right? Has he been drugged? No way. Nobody is going to waste something this advanced on a random person. This is awakening, this is definitely awakening.
No, hold on, he probably died, or turned nonexistent. In most light novels with a system, wouldn't this be a prelude to transmigration or reincarnation? Then with Boons, Banes, and Point allocations…
"A real life CYOA?"
Before falling into any more assumptions, Mael looked down on his body to see something. Naturally, there was nothing. This place, if you could even call it that, doesn't contain any light to see by.
So Mael chose to check his body by experimentation.
Spending a few minutes running, Mael noticed a strange thing. He could clearly feel that he's moving, but it seems like the physical properties of movement itself don't seem to be involved.
The deeper he delved into it, the more ethereal his body seemed to be. But throwing caution to the wind, he continued thinking about his physical existence until he could no longer feel his body.
Eventually, he thought, "How am I still standing?"
And so Mael fell.
He screamed for a minute or two, outstretching hands he thought were already gone. By the tenth minute of his descent, he had calmed down and had many, many realizations.
He opened the screen once more.
[Perception Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}]
[Charisma Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}
Friendliness Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}
Luck Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}
Resistance Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}
Adaptability Display {MISSING REQUIREMENT}]
"Scroll up! Scroll down! Freeze!", Nothing happened. It seemed the screen could respond to "Open" and "Close," but nothing else. After shouting out several other commands and getting the same result, Mael eventually figured that perhaps it wasn't responding to words at all. He focused on the screen and imagined an invisible finger dragging it downward.
It scrolled.
He did it again, then again, and before long he was doing it almost absentmindedly. The imaginary finger became hundreds of them as he experimented with different ways of interacting with the screen, even expanding his vision in unconventional ways so he could play with it more.
Eventually, though, the novelty began to wear off, and Mael shifted his body and vision back into what he considered their normal state. He continued scrolling, expecting to eventually find the Boon that was supposed to affect the interface, but the Stats section was absurdly long. He had already spent what felt like an hour going through it, and there was still nothing.
According to the introduction, there should have been something here.
Yet the screen kept going.
He continued scrolling until, without warning, his body turned into multiple fingers and the screen shifted away from the Stats section altogether, stopping at [Intelligence Module].
This had happened before.
In fact, it had apparently been happening for several days now, which made little sense considering he could only remember being here for a couple of hours. The thought lingered for a moment before his body and vision changed again, returning to the monstrous form they had taken before, and the screen went back to the beginning of the Stats section.
The same thoughts came with it, following the same progression they always seemed to, until Mael's perception eventually settled back into what he believed to be his normal progression. Only then did he notice the haze that had gathered over his thoughts.
Despite having only just been in the future, his memories of it were already becoming as ethereal as the vertigo he had experienced before.
He didn't understand it. Before, thinking about his future gave him an indescribable sense of vertigo. Now, it gave him an indescribable sense of memory. How was that supposed to work?
The only reason he could tell with relative accuracy which time he was in was because of how he felt. His present was calm, his future dull, and his past active. Though there's a very glaring flaw in this form of thought. But what more can he do?
At the very least the haze Mael is feeling isn't supernatural in nature, it simply feels like he crammed himself full of knowledge without time to adapt. This sort of thing would be solved with sleep. But with the system describing him as nothing, and knowing neither his future nor his past having slept, he doesn't want to find out what that'll lead to.
"Close." The screen vanished
"Open."
[P--]
Before it could finish typing, Mael began typing random strings of commands that were all tied to [Buying all boons].
He felt like this thing functioned almost like a computer so surely one of his guesses would be right.
[Points: -∞]
It worked!
Something inside of Mael blanked out before a sense of wrongness assaulted him.
Like blood being siphoned from veins he didn't know he had, the loss came fast and silent.
He couldn't describe it as pain, more accurately like parts of himself were slipping loose, falling into a void that had no bottom. In an imperceptible amount of time, this area of nonexistence took something away from him.
An odd intuition came that told him he'd be the same as what's around him, and everything outside him.
Could this be what ego-death feels like?
[Points: 900]
Mael's mind cleared up and the screen refreshed its words, noticeably faster than before.
[Get things done before having fun, please.]