Prologue

Void.

As far as I can tell, that's where I am right now, surrounded by nothing. There's no sensation, no thoughts, and I can't remember how I got here. All I remember is going to bed one day and then...nothing. I'm here, wherever here is. The passage of time is impossible to track as well, so I can't even guess how long I was here.

But eventually I feel something, a presence approaching me. Or at least, I think it is. I can feel something from a direction I don't have a reference for and it's slowly getting stronger. The feeling continues to get stronger until it suddenly stops. For a while, nothing changes, but then I feel a burst of heat-

Sensations flood into me. Like a switch has been flipped, I can suddenly see and hear and think again. Though I still don't seem to have a body, and around me was void. Except for right in front of me, where there's a woman in a skimpy pink outfit, pink hair, and a large pair of iridescent wings. She was a fairy, but not just any fairy. I recognized her as Kyu, the Love Fairy.

"Aw hell yeah, I knew I could do it," Kyu exclaims as she pumps her fist. "You should be able to hear and see and talk and junk now."

"Uhh. Hello?" I speak tentatively, unsure of my new capabilities. My voice sounds like it should to me, so with a bit more confidence I decide to ask a question. "Where am I right now? How did I get here?"

"Good questions," she replies, nodding her head in what I could only assume she thought was a wise manner. "For the where, that's easy. You're in the space between realities. There's usually not much out here. I mean, there's not all that many people that can even enter here. So when I saw a soul just floating around in here while I was going to a new world to check out, I decided to come check it out. As for the how…" She shrugs. "Honestly I was going to ask you that. I don't think I've ever even heard of a soul just wandering around out here."

"The last thing I remember is going to bed," I reply while I process everything. First, the multiverse is real. Easy to accept, I was familiar enough with the idea. Second, I had somehow ended up in the space between realities. That was less easy to accept, but there wasn't really much I could do about it, so I just stored that away for now. Third... "I had no idea Love Fairies travel the multiverse. Or is that just something you can do Kyu?"

Kyu looks surprised. Oh right. She never introduced herself. Oh no wait now she's looking excited why is she-

"Oh man, you're from one of those realities where a bunch of other realities are pieces of fiction right?" How the hell did she guess that- "You guys make the best clients ever. No hand-holding needed and you get the biggest harems. Well, if you end up in one of those 'fictional' realities anyways. Otherwise you guys can be pretty challenging."

I see. Well. Alright then. She's daydreaming now. Or maybe remembering? I decide to speak up again. "I'm not sure about all that, but yeah I do recognize you from a dating sim game I played once."

My words bring her attention back to me. "Yeah, that makes sense. And if you know me, you probably know a bunch of others as well." Her look turns thoughtful before she seems to come to a decision. "Alright, I'll tell you what. I'm currently between clients, and I think I can help you out, so what say you and me take a multiversal trip and find some chicks to fuck?"

Of course those are her priorities. Not that I really disagreed. Nor did I have a lot of options. "Getting out of this void and a harem?" I say, excitement in my voice. "I'd be an idiot to turn that down. Though if possible, I'd rather not have to play a match-3 game."

Kyu snorts. "Is that what you did in the game? Nah, fuck that. That system is for losers who just need to get laid. It wouldn't even help get you out of this void." She holds her hands out to me. "Nah, I'm gonna set you up with something a bit better. Not as optimized for dropping panties, but a hell of a lot more flexible, and before long you'll have gotten laid more than that chump did with that bejeweled rip-off."

Her hands encompass me, which causes me to notice holy shit she's so much bigger than me. I guess a disembodied soul isn't very large. "Now," she starts. "This may feel weird."

"Weird bad or weird good," I ask nervously.

"No idea!" was her far too enthusiastic reply. "Remember, the safe word is 'banana'!"

I start to reply but before I can an indescribable jolt runs through me. Was this how it felt to have your soul messed with? I can't say I'm a fan. It's not exactly painful, but it's unnerving. Thankfully the feeling only persists for a few short moments before fading away. I let out a sigh of relief, an act that feels strange when I don't have a body.

Gamer system initialized

Wait, the Gamer system? Oh hell yes, that was leagues better than some puzzle bullshit. "Kyu, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship."

"Damn straight it is," she says. "Now come on, let's get you a body."

Character Creation initialized

The screen that opens up is large. Very large. This is going to take some time.

-x-

I don't consider myself a very vain person. My looks are my looks and that was pretty much all the effort I put into thinking about them. But I decide that, presented the opportunity to mould my looks however I want, I might as well put the effort in. Unfortunately, Kyu wanted to make me into her idealized boy toy, and that slowed down the process a lot. But after two hours of back and forth, we finally settle on something we both liked.

Honestly, due to all the compromises, my features are fairly average. My height is only 5'8". My build is a bit on the slim side but not all that much. I don't have a lot of muscle mass to speak of but Kyu said that was based on my stats anyways so that will change. At least there isn't much fat either. My face is handsome, but somewhat adrogynous leaning. I initially wanted something more manly, but Kyu insisted that adrogynous was cuter and would attract more girls, and this was the compromise.

My hair's pure black. Kyu wanted to change it to white or something, but it's locked in above even her ability to change. She doesn't know why, and neither do I. My hair wasn't black before I ended up here. I wanted to go with silver eyes, because silver is the best eye color, but Kyu is adamant that silver eyes with black hair would be too boring and monochromatic, so my eyes gold colored instead. I have to admit, they contrast well with my hair.

"Ugh, character creation always takes too long," Kyu complains. "Come on, let's hurry up and finish up with the game stuff so we can get this show on the road."

<Classes available>

<[Warrior][Rogue][Mage]>

Hmm. How do I wanna play this? On one hand, Magic. But on the other hand, well, Gamer. Just about any class is going to shoot me up to ridiculous levels of strength, and I'll be able to max out a lot of classes. So really, it comes down to what I think is best for my first class in order to gain strength and survive. Playing with magic was enticing, but mages are a bit too squishy and a bit slow to ramp up until your mana pool and regen get up to snuff. Though that can be mitigated depending on the type of mage.

"What type of Mage classes are available?" I ask Kyu, since she was the one controlling the system.

"Just Mage," she answers. I blink. What?

"What?"

"Yep, just Mage. Those three classes are all you've got right now. More advanced subclasses are only unlocked once you max out one of those three. Though once you max out one of them, you unlock subclasses for all of them, so you can max out Warrior and then choose a more specialized Warrior, Rogue, or Mage class."

That's...unfortunate. "So wait, what is the bog standard Mage class like?" I can guess for the other two, but a generic mage could go a lot of different directions.

She shrugs. "A little bit of everything really. It's like an introduction to magic and the types of magic there are. Good for gamers who just wanna play with magic without specializing, but doesn't reach the same peaks as any of those specializations. The same is true for the other classes as well, though I guess they don't have as many subclasses. There's only so many ways you can specialize a Rogue."

While in general I like a jack of all trades route, that's when my life isn't on the line. So while magic was tempting, I'd rather choose something that was specialized.

So Warrior or Rogue. Both offer me early survivability; Warrior in terms of defense and health, and Rogue in terms of stealth. Rogue also offers more utility.

The logical choice is Warrior. You can't go wrong with the classic sword and board. But if I was being honest with myself, it just wasn't appealing. Warrior is just so...boring.

Rogue though. I'm the sort of player who makes a new Skyrim character and they inevitably end up a stealth archer, no matter how they started. Stealth is just too busted and too fun. And even in games without stealth, I always prefer dodging attacks rather than just tanking them. It took more skill and practice, but was a lot more fun. And the utility of a Rogue class would offer me more options than just "kill things good", even if it wasn't as much as a mage.

"We'll do Rogue then," I say.

"Ooh, we can do some panty raids," Kyu croons with a lecherous grin as I watch the Rogue option be selected on the menu. "Or better yet, we can steal them directly off of girls. That would be pretty hot."

"I thought you were more about seducing girls than stealing their panties?"

"I'm a girl of many interests," she smugly replies with a hand on her chest.

Before I could reply to that, I'm distracted by the appearance of a window in front of me.

<------>

Axton

Level: 1

Class: Rogue(1/100)[0%]

Race: Human

HP: 90(1%/second)

MP:110(1%/second)

SP:80(1%/second)

CON: 9

STR: 8

DEX: 13

INT: 11

WIS: 12

CHA: 10

LUK: 12

<------>

"Who the hell is Axton?" I ask out loud.

"That's you, silly," Kyu giggled. I shot her a look and she shrugged. "Your old name was boring. New you, new name, you know what I'm saying?"

Sighing, I decide not to push it. I wasn't all that attached to my past name anyways. Once again I'm distracted by the appearance of a window.

--<Skills Added>--

[Gamer's Mind] - EX

Protects the Gamer from mental and emotional manipulation, trauma, and status effects.

[Gamer's Body] - EX

Grants the Gamer with a body of infinite potential and growth

[Observe] - EX

Displays information about the target.

[Dungeon Traversal] - EX

Allows for entrance and exit into a Dungeon, as well as teleportation between safe rooms

[Sneak] - Lvl 1(0%)

Reduces visibility and sound created by movement, allowing for stealthy traversal. 1 SP/second

--<>--

"Just one Rogue skill-" I start to ask before a new window appears.

--<Trait Added>--

[Void Touched]

Your soul has been marked by the time spent between worlds

Unknown effects

--<>--

"Kyu. What the fuck is this?"

"Looks like you're so much of a freak that not even the system knows how you got out here." She giggles like she didn't just call me a freak. "It's probably not a big deal. Just your soul being affected by being out here in a way that the system hasn't seen before. You seem fine so it'll either be nothing or a good thing. Or soul cancer or something. Whichever."

"Soul cancer," I deadpan.

"Relaaax, it's probably not that. If it was harmful the system would likely be able to tell already."

"That's really reassuring," I say sarcastically with a sigh. Whatever. If it becomes an issue I'll figure it out somehow. "Alright. What's left? Picking a world to go to I guess?"

"About that," she says, averting her eyes. "I maaay have been poking around while I was waiting for you to finish up your character creation and totally on accident picked and locked in your first world."

…

Excuse me?

"How the hell do you accidentally pick and lock it in?" I ask while trying to keep my cool.

"I don't usually use this system," she whines. "And it's been updated since the last time I did, everything's rearranged. I was just trying to see more info about it."

"Please tell me it's not something awful," I plead. A window appears.

<World Selected>

<Highschool DxD>

Okay. I can work with this. Not the best case scenario, but certainly not the worst. There are some scary motherfuckers there, but there are paths available for starting out small and then working my way up before I have to deal with them. The main issue is I had only ever read the manga and a bunch of fanfic, so my knowledge of the plot is pretty fuzzy. But I know enough in general to get by. And on the bright side, it has the biggest damn cast of eligible waifus who can basically all kick ass, which is a pretty big positive in my books.

"Okay. That's not too bad. Dangerous, but a lot of cute girls. This should be fine."

"That's the spirit champ!" Kyu cheers. "Bonus, since it's a bit more dangerous than some of the other first world selections, you have a few more Hunies to spend on customizing the world."

"Hunies?"

"Normally they're called Credits or something dumb like that but fuck that, I renamed them Hunies. They're a currency you can earn and spend on changing a world before you go to it. Normally you'd only get a few for free, but for choosing a world of mid-tier danger, you get a nice little chunk to play with."

"Alright. What are my options then?"

"Let's see." Her eyes unfocus. "Oh wow. There are way too fucking many. There's no way I'm gonna let you waste a bunch of time looking through all of these. Screw that. Just tell me what you wanna do and I'll see if it's in here."

What did I want to do? Well I only had two real goals. Survive, and acquire waifus. For the first, there was the gamer system. For the latter, well, I had a veritable bounty to choose from. So getting rid of any obstacles in the way of that should be a priority. But first things first.

"Is there anything that provides me an identity as a Kuoh student?" I ask. Having a paper trail and a reason to be in Kuoh would help me survive and get closer to the main cast.

"Yup. There's a handful. Everything from a second year transfer student with a small apartment, to a bigshot with a mansion."

"Lemme guess, the mansion one is hella expensive."

"Oh yeah. But it's got some really nice features. A gym, spa, personal theater, sex dungeon, the works."

That all does sound nice. But unfortunately, I have to turn it down. Too many important things to get that I suspected would cost me a lot.

"Just the apartment. I'll change that to the mansion if I end up with enough points after the important stuff. Next, I need to remove some competition. How many options are there for getting rid of Issei or Saji?"

"Ooh, brutal. That's hot," she smirks. "Let's see. I can make it so they never existed. Or just make them mundane and irrelevant. Both are pretty expensive though. You could only get rid of one of them, though it would leave you with enough to upgrade to the mansion."

Hmm. That's less than ideal. Saji and Issei are the male centers of Sona and Rias's peerages. Getting rid of them would leave them ripe for the taking.

"Ooh wait, here's an option," Kyu interrupts my thinking. "Since this place is an ecchi anime world, there's a big discount on gender bending. I can genderbend both of them and still leave you with points enough for another decent change."

Huh. Rather than get rid of them, turn them into eligible targets for me, and no longer obstacles. It was efficient. "I like it. Do that. Great idea Kyu."

"It's what I do," she says with a smug grin. "What else do you want? You can't get the mansion anymore, but you could get a nice suburban house with a secret configurable basement."

There was a nagging feeling in the back of my head. Something Kyu had said earlier. 'Ecchi anime world'. That gave me mixed feelings.

"Is there anything to make the world more lewd?" I ask. "I mean. Highschool DxD is already pretty lewd. But it pretty much never goes past seeing some tits and maybe some light groping. All tease and no satisfaction. And that's not gonna be enough for me."

"Ooh, I like the way you think," Kyu says with a grin. "Yep! I've got the perfect one. Upgrade the world from an ecchi anime world to a hentai anime world. Doesn't seem like it'll devolve into just all sex at the drop of the hat, but that'd be too easy anyways. Nah, this just puts sex on the table, and makes everyone just a bit more open to casual sex stuff."

"And I can afford it?"

"You've got exactly enough to cover it."

"Do it. If I'm going to risk my life then I may as well get laid doing it."

"Hell yes. Best. Client. Ever."

A new window appears.

<World customization complete>

<Initiate travel? Y/N>

"Well. If that's it then," I say. "Let's get this show on the road."

"Wooooo!" Kyu shouts. There's a burst of sensation, and then I immediately lose consciousness.