Prologue - Strange Occurence

PLEASE READ!

I AM NOT, AND WILL NEVER BE, AN EXPERIENCED WRITER. DO NOT EXPECT THIS TO BE A 5-STAR AMAZON RATING NOVEL BECAUSE IT IS A FANFIC. MY ENGLISH IS INTERMEDIATE, AND IT'S CRUDE IN SOME ASPECTS, BUT IT'S NOT INSUFFICIENT ENOUGH TO INFLUENCE THE FANFIC AS A WHOLE, SO DON'T BE DISAPPOINTED. I'LL USE GRAMMARLY TO FIX THE MOST BASIC ERRORS, BUT NOTHING MAJOR THAT WILL HAVE AN EFFECT ON HOW I WRITE.

I AM WRITING FOR THE FUN OF IT.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, THIS IS NOT MY MAIN ACCOUNT, I'M ONLY USING IT BECAUSE OF SOME CIRCUMSTANCES I'D LIKE NOT TO DISCLOSE, ANYWAY, ENJOY!

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--------------------{Ernest POV}--------------------

My name is Ernest—not the brightest name my parents could have given me, but who am I to say that when they raised me with love? Oh yes, I am currently 20 years old and unemployed.

...

And single.

Not the brightest situation for me I must admit. Some of my friends are all already in a solid relationship while I sulk in depression in my nicely decorated but simple room.

But here I am, chilling in my gaming chair, leaning both of my arms on the desk with two monitors covering each side space, the computer placed on the far end of the large desk as I managed the RGayB keyboard, a name that my friends came up with.

I know, not a suitable place to put your computer if you ask me. I probably should buy a small table with just enough room for it, but oh well, knowing me, I will probably forget about it like all the other times I remembered about it.

Anyway, I am now playing the new Terraria update while eating some nice and crispy cookies with little specks of chocolate, and my cup of hot cappuccino is still releasing a steady stream of steam that fills the room with its pleasant smell, just as every freshly made coffee does.

Honestly, the update is great, but I wish it didn't take almost 6 months to release it, though I am grateful that there aren't any noticeable bugs. However, the community will now have to wait half of mankind's years of possible extinction for a new update.

"Oh, come on, not again!" I loudly complain as I see one of my screens turn black until my desktop with a very cultured image appears.

A small window pop-up shows itself, showcasing a multitude of errors as I glance at it, furrowing my eyebrows with annoyance.

"Why does the game have to fucking crash when I am in the middle of it? I was so close to the border of the map!" There's nothing more frustrating than watching your painstaking progress completely disappear right before you, and I, just like many times before, got another dose of it.

I was making a two-way horizontal hole to separate the map to avoid the crimson and hallow biomes from spreading when I finally entered hardmode.

The world was set to master mode as I wanted to get all of the exclusive drops, so I ended up dying a ton from mobs, fall damage, bombs, traps, and, for god's sake, even lava, and sometimes unluckily died while drowning in ridiculously generated water caves that had many monsters that spawned when I was still mining some ores.

Not to mention the absolute nightmare that constantly haunts me since I started playing this game, bats.

I wish those things killed themselves by bumping in the walls, breaking their wings apart as some skeleton yeets a hard ass bone at it, ultimately killing the little devil.

*Click*

Closing the crash report, I am once again opening my Discord on my second screen and going straight to the official Terraria server to register a complaint.

That was until I noticed that there was another tab opened on my Opera GX browser.

"Huh? I swear, this program sometimes does weird things; I'm not getting hacked, are I?" I grimaced at that thought. I'm not sure if my part-time job will ever provide me with enough spare money to hire a technician to review my machine.

"..."

*Click*

But, as always, my curiosity got the best of me, so I ended up checking the tab.

When I visualize it, I am faced with a type of research survey, but what caught my utmost attention was its design and the fact that it didn't have a title or name.

There were a multitude of characters originating from animes, novels, mangas, movies, series, manhwa, manhuas, and even books. I recognized most of the display as I am a vivid fan of watching and reading interesting fictional stories, although most of my search history only contained animes, movies, mangas, some manhuas, and manhwas; oh yeah, there was also my fair share of nhent- I mean novels.

"Wait, this black and dark orange design displayed on the survey reminds me of Solo Leveling's system template! Yet, this looks suspicious as hell, but I always liked the surveys from Crunchyroll, so I might as well try this one, but first I'll open up my VPN." Yeah, I'm definitely not getting my information leaked from what looks like a possible scam of sorts. Yep, not taking any chances.

I really should go see a doctor to check if my stupid curiosity is not some kind of chronic disease.

Mom usually spends her hard-earned money on new products that promise the best benefits for her health, and to my abrupt surprise, they always end up succeeding, as she's currently in her forties but looks like a Korean model in her twenties.

Well, she is half American and half Korean, so I guess that's that.

(A/N: Korea has all the beauties.)

But fate decided to give me the finger and slap my face as if I were some rich young master. I was never blessed with the same amount of luck as my mother.

I call it bs, where are the equal rights on that? Am I not supposed to be a better version of my parents? Right, I should stop my seemingly newfound narcissistic thoughts from developing further than this.

Dad was different, though. He is always picky about his purchases and does a lot of research before even coming up to buy something, so he legitimately misses most of the good sales from nearby stores.

Anyway, let's get back to the topic at hand.

After clicking on the "Start Survey" animated button, I was presented with a lot of questions, which didn't ask me for my personal information, so that's a great start.

"It isn't the type of survey where you rate the stories? So I have to fill in my own answer, huh?" How considerate of the fellow human/bot who created this!

1) In which world would you prefer to live?

"Normally, as an unknown but proud asshole, I would respond with the most unknown animes of all time to muck it up, but I will be everyone else's major percentage and choose One Piece!"

2) If there was a way for you to acquire powers, abilities/skills from other worlds, which one would you choose?

"A tricky one. There are many of these that are extremely beneficial, especially in the early stages, but I would choose to have several skills from the Tensura world. Since the question is in the plural and the answer is open to interpretation, I'd like to have a system that allows me to unlock tensura sills under the right conditions."

"As for how the system should look, I'd want it to be similar to solo leveling's design, and with all my body and soul, I want it to NOT be fucking sentient. I hate these types the most. Great Sage is a skill, so it doesn't count, not to mention she's cough waifu cough material."

3) What kind of appearance would you give yourself? Notice: You can choose between the customize option or any appearance listed in our database.

I immediately chose the customize option.

Thus, a small screen appeared where I could input my body measurements and features; I did so and finished creating my dream character with every brain cell I had left after spending most of it doing a 3-hour-long work on the separation of the biomes on Terraria before it fucking crashed.

By the way, I definitely didn't let my chunnibyo side get the best of me in my character creation, I swear!

(A/N: We all know that's a lie.)

Well, I did end up creating the handsome man I always wanted to be and clapping some cakes, but my current body is a little bit too burly to be attractive.

I spent about 6 years in the gym, bulking up my body to the point where I look overly muscular, and I didn't have much time to spend on girls.

But who cares about that? I'm all for the grind; women are temporary while gains are eternal!

Hell yeah, I'm sure I will be blessed in my next life, if there is one, for not being a simp.

4) If you were to choose three EXtremity powers, which ones would you select?

I don't know why extremity is worded like that, but this may be where I choose to have overpowered and godlike abilities.

"Alright, I already know what to put. Heheh, time to abuse the open-answer option. Although it's only a survey, it's lifting my mood about the game crash."

There is a word limit to how much you can write on the answers, but I just need to choose my words carefully, so there's no actual problem.

Are they testing my intelligence or something? If so, that's rude! I passed the final exams with half of the subjects decorated inside my small brain. I know it's not the actual way to study, but hey, I still passed.

Although I didn't manage to get into college with my score...

5) Would you truly wish to be reincarnated according to your previous questions' answers?

Why is it asking me that as if I am going to die by tomorrow?

Oh well, I won't back down just because of how it sounds, so I'm going to answer it with the most positive response I can think of right now with the single brain cell I have left.

"Ye."

What? It is still a confirmation, okay? I will see through this survey until the end. Who knows? Maybe I will win some prize for answering, like a gift card or something similar.

*Click*

I clicked on the finish button, and just like how it appeared, it disappeared with no trace.

"Bruh, I didn't somehow accidentally close it, right? I'm sure that I didn't." I said with a deadpan-looking expression, not believing I was that stupid.

That lasted until I tried to open it back up from the browser history, which is where things started to get confusing.

"What? Where is the link? I'm not in incognito mode."

And then suddenly all my screens went black; my computer running in the background also powered out, scaring the living shit out of me.

"FUCK! I KNEW IT WAS A MALWARE, DAMN IT!" I screamed as I tried to calm myself down and turn on my computer, but I failed miserably because it didn't start humming or turning on.

"Shit, shit, shit! I bought this new computer last month!" I cried with grief for my sacrificed money.

We'll never meet again, old friend; hopefully, you're in the soft hands of a nice and pretty girl.

*Bzzt*

"Huh?" I looked up and saw both my screens get extremely black, as if I were staring at a black hole; it looked like it had sucked the lightning out of my entire room.

"What the f-"

*Ding!*

I heard a strange techno bell resound, and I kept on staring at my screens as they revealed a dark orange text.

[We wish you good luck.]

"Wait wha-" I was once again cut short as a massive black miasma started to pour out of my monitors, blinding me in mere seconds.

"N-NANI?!" I yelled out unconsciously in Japanese since it had become a habit in my anime lovers' friends group to do it when we were extremely surprised.

As it started to get brighter and brighter, my legs started to get dragged into the black miasma.

I started to really panic right now, as I couldn't understand what in the world was happening to me.

"N-No! If I am going to die from this, AT LEAST LET ME DUMP MY DRIVE INTO THE TOILET AND ERASE MY BROWSER HISTORY!!!" I screamed historically in desperation, not willing to let my little brother and parents discover that I'm seeing pictures of- actually, it's best if no one knows about it.

But my struggle was useless; I could only thrash around to get myself out of the black substance that was slowly covering up my whole body.

'You know what? Fuck it. I'm not going to die a dumb death.' I thought as I breathed as much as I could before yelling out my next words with my best bri'ish accent, enough to be noticed by my neighbors.

"KONOO DIO GAAAAAAAHH!!!!" Since I am going to very much die from this, might as well meme out my last words, so that I leave this life with at least minus one regret.

It's better to have a weird, meme'ed out death than a dumb one where you do nothing. I would hate to have a normal death, but I also don't want an excruciating and painful one as well.

*Thud*

Darkness surrounded me, and I was nowhere to be seen in my room, which looked abandoned with no signs of disruption whatsoever. Except for the headset, which landed on the floor with a thud.

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Disclaimer: The narration POV will be richer in detail than the first-person POV, with more intrinsic wording.