chapter 1: Nightmare
So I was on my way to McDonald you know the usual, then I got mother fucking t-boned by this drunk driver and died. the worst part was that it was 12:30 pm you know, mid-day. my guy got drunk in the middle of the day and killed me. just my luck. if I knew that this was going to happen I wouldn't have gone to school because now my education is useless.
In terms of education I was studying computers and programming, and I was doing fairly well you know between 70%-90% depending on my class. you may think wow he is so good, nah it's not like that I cheated on some parts when I didn't feel like working and the rest came easy. I've been looking at programming stuff since I was like 14ish so yeah, oh, and they were more basic classes, not the advanced stuff yet. oh and did I mention I was 21 when I died so plenty of information was gathered to make classes a bit easier.
In non-class time I played video games. what? did you expect me to say I was a super genius that had 500 friends doing parties every day wasting money like no tomorrow because I'm rich? he'll no the economy here is trash I'm barely in the middle class and that's thanks to my dad that's been caring for me while I go to school which I will be eternally grateful to him for. if I had a dad that kicked me out once I was 18 I would simply not be able to go to school.
Also, my favorite game was dark souls and because of that, I'm kind of scared since like 99% of people who get reincarnated go to their favorite game of anime or whatnot I hope that's not where I'm going...
Anyway, enough about my past let's get to talking about Mr. R.O.B. here. Have you ever seen FMA and seen god, I think he was called "the truth" or whatever. that's what this... person looks like so just white with a black fuzzy outline. honestly pretty cool.
"Soooo I'm dead and I'm about to get isekaied, right?"
"Yes"
"Alright just to make it clear are you the same god as in Fullmetal Alchemist"
"Yes, though I like being called "The Truth" or Mr. Truth"
"Ok, cool cool just wanted to make it clear, also why me?"
"You see the world you call Fullmetal Alchemist and your "real world" is just separated by a door and not long ago a disturbance got through the door which caused an anomaly. Note this is the first time this has happened and caused an actual death. which is you by the way, which means you are really unlucky but since it's the first time I decided that I will send you to your favorite series..."
"oh no..."
"...dark souls"
"... fuck, do I get a choice?"
"No"
"shit"
"What you do get to choose is the difficulty of your multiverse"
"???"
"so in essence, every verse has a difficulty assigned to them,
easy,
medium,
hard,
expert and,
nightmare also called realistic,
generally, people don't get to choose what difficulty they get put in since R.O.B.s only have access to a limited number of worlds and usually keep the harder ones for people they don't like.
But I'm different I can choose the difficulty since I live outside of your 3 dimensions. Hell, I can even change the difficulty of a multiverse if I wanted to. Let's not get into that just yet. You still following?"
"Yeah..."
" Ok good. One interesting thing about this is the ranking up."
"The what?"
" So, this is kind of complicated so try to keep up ok?"
" Alright"
" In an easy difficulty world, it's "easy" to get to the level of a god and to become "4d" but the thing is, you're not actually that strong you are only at "4d" strength for an easy level multiverse, meaning once you go to a medium difficulty multiverse your will at best be like an extremely low-level god, like, just born level of a god. this is because of the reward-to-effort ratio. the more effort you put into something and the more difficult it is the higher the rewards come from it. since an easy world is, well, easy there isn't much reward from it. still following?"
"... I think so"
"So this keeps going for every level of difficulty, "4d" strength will be the equivalent of just born god in the next rank. this goes until nightmare/realistic difficulty. after you attain "4d" strength in a nightmare world you truly become a 4-dimensional being you can erase an omniverse at will if you wanted to, or create anything, you get the gist. so any reincarnator that got a wish fulfillment story just went to an easy world with hax basically so at best they can destroy their own multiverse and make another one at easy difficulty but only while they are in an easy multiverse because once they go to a medium level multiverse they are stuck there until "4d" level where they then have the strength to break out of that level of multiverse and do stuff at medium level or bellow. so if you ever read any story where they become strong real fast that's why they are stuck at basic bitch level basically since most if not all of them will stay at that level."
"Alright then that's good to know, will I get any wishes?"
"The low the level of the multiverse the more wishes you get at ease you get 5 and nightmare 0. One thing though is you do get a specific system at Nightmare. this is more for convenience than anything else it reads your status and allows you to travel to your desired universe since your not just going to remain in dark souls forever after you "beat the game" you can then leave. normally you would just get dropped in a random world if you used your own powers or one that is close to your own depending on the method but with this you can choose where to go."
"... Is there a reason you had to explain that it's not like I have chosen nightmare difficulty you could have just said "you get a custom system on nightmare" and be done with it."
"So what difficulty are you choosing?"
"...nightmare..."
"HAHAHAHAHAHA I KNEW IT THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN TO WATCH. "
"Also why is it referred to as "Realistic"."
"Ok, so many games have a difference between gameplay and lore. this is to make the gameplay fun instead of "ok I'm dead in one hit". Basically to make it fun not torture."
"Oh great... Ugh this is going to be a shit show, isn't it. what if I didn't pick nightmare difficulty?"
"Oh absolutely, and I would have just ended you since that would be boring, also you're going to wish you didn't choose that. but on the plus side, you get to live again and once you meet someone from a different difficulty they won't even be able to touch you"
"I'm just going to ignore the fact you would have just offed me for not choosing Nightmare. So I'm going to meet "players" as well."
"You will but very few, and even fewer that will even be able to touch you. there are trillions of "players" which are spread over an infinite number of multiverse and you are the only one that has started in a nightmare world. the hardest world starts have been expert and even then they are rare, but literally, no one has even had the opportunity to start in a nightmare world since only people that have completed a nightmare multiverse can send someone to a nightmare multiverse.
To date, there are only 9 people that have completed nightmare difficulty and none of them started in a nightmare multiverse meaning only us 9 can choose to give a nightmare start to someone and even then the people have to choose to go to a nightmare world. so yeah extremely unlikely.
the highest difficulty start was myself which was the only expert, the other 8 started in a medium or easy world which leave an entire level gap making me the strongest of the pack by far.
And back to the reward-to-effort thing since you are starting in a nightmare world you will need much more effort than the rest of us that have completed the challenge, meaning your potential is greater than anyone else since you need to put more effort in than the others since they start the nightmare world as a low god.
if you complete the nightmare difficulty and become 4 dimensional, you will, by far, be the strongest person in existence, stronger than all of the people who completed the nightmare difficulty combined. except maybe me."
"When do I start?"
"...now!"
"what? Oh shiiiiiii..."
a black void enveloping me was the last thing I remember before finding myself in a prison with text on a floating purple box simply saying...
"Welcome to Darksouls"