My first thought was: Wow, the respawn animation in this game is weirdly realistic.
My second thought was: Ow. Everything hurts.
I groaned, and the sound was real. It wasn't coming through a headset. It was vibrating in my own chest. I tried to open my eyes, but the light was crazy bright, like someone was shining a flashlight right in my face. I squeezed them shut again.
Okay. Not a game. Getting hit by a truck is, surprisingly, not a feature in Arcane Summoners Online.
So, I was dead. Bummer.
But if I was dead, why did my head feel like someone had used it for batting practice?
Slowly, carefully, I managed to pry my eyelids open. The world swam into focus. I wasn't in a hospital. I wasn't in heaven, or hell, or whatever. I was in... a bedroom. But it wasn't my dorm room.
The walls were made of rough, dark wood, like a log cabin or something. A single window let in the blinding sunlight, showing a view of a bright blue sky and trees that were way too green. A gentle breeze drifted in, carrying the smell of pine needles and damp earth. It smelled... clean. Way cleaner than my dorm, that's for sure.
I sat up, my body aching all over. I looked down at myself. My hands were... smaller. Paler. My hoodie and jeans were gone, replaced by a simple, kinda scratchy, beige tunic and brown pants. I felt my face. It was smoother. The bit of stubble I was so proud of was completely gone.
I looked like I'd been de-aged a few years. I was probably sixteen again, maybe seventeen at most.
"What the hell?" I whispered, my voice cracking.
Before I could have a full-blown panic attack, the wooden door to the room creaked open. A woman walked in, carrying a tray with a bowl on it. She looked to be in her forties, with kind eyes and brown hair tied back in a simple bun. She was wearing an apron over a plain dress. She looked like she'd walked straight out of a fantasy RPG's starting village.
She saw me sitting up and her face broke into a huge smile. "Leo! You're awake!"
She rushed over and put the tray on a small bedside table. The bowl was filled with some kind of steaming, lumpy porridge. My stomach growled.
"How are you feeling, sweetie?" she asked, putting a hand on my forehead. "Your fever finally broke."
Leo? She called me Leo. Okay, at least my name was the same. That was... something.
"I... uh... where am I?" I managed to ask.
The woman's smile faltered a little. "You're home, of course. You've been asleep for three days. You gave us all such a scare. Collapsing like that during training."
Training? Home? None of this was making any sense. My brain was still stuck on the image of the truck headlights. I didn't collapse during training. I got turned into a pancake on asphalt.
This had to be one of those isekai things, right? The trope was so overdone in manga and webnovels, but there was no other explanation. I died, and now I'm in a new body, in a new world. It was the only thing that fit.
And if this was an isekai world...
"Mom?" I tested the word. The woman beamed. Okay, so she was my new mom. Good to know. "What... what day is it?"
"It's the 14th day of the Green Bloom month," she said, looking a little concerned. "Are you sure you're alright, Leo? It's your sixteenth birthday."
My sixteenth birthday. The age when every isekai protagonist ever awakens their super OP, god-tier power.
A slow grin spread across my face. Oh, this was gonna be good. I was a gacha god in my last life. A master of systems and mechanics. Whatever power this world gave me, I would master it. I would break it. I would become the strongest, just like in the stories.
"I'm fine, Mom," I said, my voice full of a confidence I didn't know I had. "I'm better than fine. I feel great."
For the next few hours, I played the part of the dutiful son, eating the lumpy-but-surprisingly-tasty porridge and letting my new mom fuss over me. I learned that my full name was Leo Miller, my "dad" was a retired adventurer, and we lived in a small village on the edge of a huge forest. Most importantly, I learned that in this world, people formed contracts with magical beasts, becoming "Beast Tamers."
And the Awakening Ceremony, where sixteen-year-olds discovered their innate taming ability, was this afternoon.
It was perfect. Too perfect.
Later that day, I stood in a circle with a bunch of other kids my age in the middle of the village square. An old man, the village elder, was chanting something in a language I didn't understand. My heart was pounding with excitement. Was I going to get a system? A skill tree? The ability to tame legendary dragons from birth?
The elder finished his chant and slammed his staff on the ground. "Feel the flow of mana! Embrace the power that is your birthright! Awaken!"
A warm feeling spread through my chest. It was like drinking hot chocolate on a cold day. Then, a light glowed in front of me. It wasn't a physical light, though. It was... inside my head. A screen.
'Yes!' I screamed internally. 'A system! I'm the main character!'
A line of text appeared on the screen, written in a clean, simple font.
[System Initializing... User DNA confirmed. Mana signature registered.]
[Welcome, User Leo Miller!]
[Please enjoy the Beast Tamer's Gacha System!]
My grin was so wide it probably looked stupid. A gacha system! They gave a gacha system to me? It was like giving a supercomputer to a rocket scientist. I was going to be so OP it wasn't even funny.
[Beginner's Gift Pack detected. Would you like to open it?]
[Y/N]
I mashed the mental 'Y' button so hard I almost gave myself a headache.
[Opening... Congratulations! You have received: 10x Free Pulls!]
[May the RNG Gods bless you!]
Ten free pulls! This was the tutorial summon, the one that always gives you a high-rarity character to get you hooked. I bet I was about to pull some S-Rank wolf or griffin. Akane Tanaka, the snooty girl from the rich part of the village who was always showing off her fancy "Moonlight Fox," was gonna lose her mind.
"Go to the Summon screen," I thought, my excitement building.
The screen changed, showing a big, flashy button that said "Summon x10." The banner art above it just showed a bunch of generic-looking beasts. This was the standard banner. Fine by me.
I hit the button.
The screen went dark. Ten comets shot across my vision. One was silver, two were blue, and the other seven were just plain white.
In gacha terms, that was bad. Really bad. Silver was probably R-rank, blue was maybe UC-rank, and white was... common. This was not the OP tutorial pull I was expecting.
The comets landed one by one, revealing my new "beasts."
[Slime]
[Slime]
[Slightly Bigger Slime]
[Walking Mushroom]
[Slime]
[Rock]
[Slime]
[Walking Mushroom]
My eye was twitching. This was a garbage pull. A literal trash fire. The two blue comets were the Walking Mushrooms, and the single silver one was the "Slightly Bigger Slime." The grand prize of my awakening. The rock... was just a rock. It didn't even have a rank. It was just... a rock.
My epic fantasy adventure was starting with a pile of slime and a pet rock.
I looked around. The other kids were starting to summon their first beasts. A boy next to me got a "Wildcat," a cool-looking feline with sharp claws. Another girl summoned a "Wind Sparrow" that was already zipping around her head. Akane, of course, already had her Moonlight Fox, which was preening like it knew it was better than everyone else's starter monster.
And me? I had nothing. Just a screen in my head full of disappointment.
Then, I saw it. A tiny line of text at the bottom of the summon screen. It was so small I almost missed it.
[Pity Counter: 10/90]
My despair vanished, replaced by a familiar, obsessive fire.
They hadn't given me an OP hero's system. They'd given me a trash-tier, free-to-play gacha game.
I started to laugh. It was a quiet, slightly unhinged sound. The other kids looked at me like I was crazy. My new mom looked worried.
They didn't get it. They saw a failure. A kid who awakened and got nothing.
I saw a challenge.
The game was rigged, the rates were garbage, and my starting luck was in the toilet. It was perfect.
"You just made a big mistake," I whispered to the system in my head, a grin spreading across my face. "You have no idea who you're dealing with."