IiS Chapter 01 (Patreon)

My faded consciousness came back into focus as I looked around my surroundings. It’s dark, I’m surrounded by shadows until I look forward. There stood an old man. It was impossible to make out any of his details but I just knew he was old. A flood of forgotten memories comes back to my head. I’ve met this person before.

The blurry face looking at me starts to fade enough for me to recognize his face is smiling as he speaks. “Welcome back Danny boy… It’s been about ten thousand years since we last met, give or take a year or two. So, now you have a choice to make.”

Selectable Universes

Game of Thrones

Mushoku Tensei

Skyrim

Elderia

As he gave me the options more and more memories came back of what originally happened. I didn’t get the choice in the world that was selected the first time as the hundred souls that took part in the experiment all passed on at the same time and got to choose together so Marvel/DC was chosen without anything else being close.

Which world did I choose? As I pondered the situation he explained further. “Well, while I didn’t expect many of you to survive to old age, never in my mind did I think one of you could have become a god pushing against the threshold of the world. It means you’ll get far less help with special abilities in the worlds you select from now on. There will be no way to become a god unless you get far luckier than you did your first-world correction.”

Yea, I wondered what becoming a god did to the path of the world… I didn’t want to become a god again. Even now I could feel the memories of my previous life start to fade as the divinity was stripped from my soul. Humans who became gods fell prey to their inevitable corruption. I did things I never thought I would and only the thought that I made the universe a better place stayed my more suicidal thoughts of what I did in the later years of my divinity.

“Now, every world you pick will have different powers applied to them. If you select Game of Thrones, expect a far weaker set of powers possible compared to the Last World. Instead of super speed, you might be able to get a speed boost for a short period of time. No super strength but maybe becoming two or three times the strength of a normal human might be possible if you select strength-increasing effects.”

I mentally asked him to explain the rest of the worlds. “Mushoku Tensei would be the closest I could come to reaching divinity again. It was possible for me to become the defacto strongest person on the planet if I played my cards right. I could also just get wrecked by Orsted or a follower of Hitogami before I grew into my strength.

Skyrim followed a more realistic version of what would happen if dragons became real in medieval times. It meant that unless they were knocked out of the air they wouldn’t land to have a bunch of melee-loving nords bash its kneecaps. Smarter enemies also meant smarter people as they didn’t have to work around the perimeters of a game but functioned closer to real life. No bugs like looting chests through the floor or item duping. I got the leveling system but if I died I died permanently instead of resetting back. To counteract that I would get more power than I could ever get in the default game.

Elderia was a world very similar to one where a normal isekai story would take place. It was the very last option for me as it would be the only world I’d be going into blind, so unless I had a bigger leg up I’d never pick it first. Perhaps in the future, I would, if I got to pick again after working my way through the other worlds but… Maybe if I ever wanted to just give into the chaos and fuck the world up as much as I possibly could would I choose this one.

I was flip-flopping between Game of Thrones and Skyrim. For one, Game of Thrones had some of the best beauties in the world but… On the other hand… I doubted Aela, Lydia and Serana would look uglier in the real world compared to them in the video game… No, I knew deep down that they’d only look even better in real life.

I left it to chance as I mentally asked Rebirth. “Hey, can you make a coin to help me choose which world to pick?” I made up my mind as a coin magically appeared in his palm. He flipped it in the air and as it twirled I decided. Heads, I go to GoT. Tails, it’s Skyrim time. The coin flipped end over end as I waited with bated breath for it to finally land in his hand. As he opened his palm I finally saw what it landed on… Tails.

I don’t even have to say anything. He had heard my thoughts and knew I had made my decision. Slowly I faded out. When I faded in I was in a familiar cart. It had been a few years since I played Skyrim, I liked to go back and play through it every once in a while even after they put out Elder Scrolls Six and before Bethesda folded as a company before Elder Scrolls Seven dropped. It meant I still knew more than I should going into the world. 

“Hey, you're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border right?” I almost immediately tune out the normal beginning speech as I think about how these guys fumbled the best chance to stop the war from happening by killing the most important person first. If they’d just chopped off Ulfric’s head first then they wouldn’t have this war going on throughout the story.

My default choice was to kill Ulfric, but in this world, I think it made more sense to leave him alive. “Why are we stopping?” The horse thief asked. “Why do you think? End of the line.” We went through the same motions after getting off. Lokir the horse thief made a break for it and was shot down by an archer. As the race selection menu popped up I couldn’t help but inwardly smile at the familiarity of it.

I would normally pick orc or orsimer but now that choice seemed extremely bad. I doubted everyone would be fine with an orc running around. It made me almost want to pick Nord just so I didn’t have to worry about being killed for being different than most people. The race I chose would have several nuances outside of gameplay and combat. The race I chose would also determine my lifespan. If I wanted to live more than a hundred years I would have to pick a mer race. Rather, I’d have to pick an elf. Now, which one did I choose?