And, as usual, I have no clue if this thing's undercooked or burnt to a crisp straight from the author's kitchen
(???)
Do you know what it feels like to suddenly remember your past life?
It's like someone kicking open your bedroom door while you're asleep, blasting your skull with a shotgun, then reviving you with high Lv D&D resurrection magic
only to walk away whistling like nothing happened.
That's how it felt when the memories slammed into me. One moment I was a perfectly average twenty-something, living a perfectly average life.
Next, BAM!
An entire previously lifetime, filled with every anime, game, meme, and story I'd ever known and read, exploded across my brain like a badly-timed download torrent.
With that, a dreadful realization set in: If I really was in one of "those" worlds, I'd better figure out which one… before it figured me out.
So, I did what any sane person with a modicum of intelligence would do. I opened my trusty Asus Laptop, pulled up a search engine, and started typing. After all, if I were in a high-fantasy world, I'd have noticed people slinging fireballs at the grocery store by now.
The laptop's date read May 10th, 2011. That narrowed things down.
First stop: Kuoh Town.
The search results came back with nothing. I let out a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck in Peak Oppai Brainrot Central. I still had flashbacks to those cringe-worthy Union Academy-Tier Wattpad fanfics where self-inserts think make the entire harem of various characters in various settings as well as bashing MC and taking various characters out of context because they don't understand or hate them, where they are thrown into a cooking cauldron that would make even a swamp witch vomit at the sight of it.
"Seriously," I thought. "What kind of lunatic believes having some half-baked meta knowledge means they can just waltz up and strike a deal with the president of all Devils? As if the fate of an entire world would hinge on a teenage boy yelling 'Oppai' at the top of his lungs like he's unlocking Super Saiyan mode."
Pass.
Next: Academy City.
Again, nothing. Just a bunch of articles about science fairs and scholarship sponsors.
"Too bad," I muttered to the screen. "I'm average, and way past high school age. They'd just laugh me out of the building."
Still, if only my memories had come back five years earlier, maybe I could've coasted through school a little smoother.
Oh well. The rice had already become porridge. I just had to make sure the porridge tasted good.
Good news: not Index or any "God of Magic". My odds of being vaporized by a stray magic beam just plummeted.
Next up: Misaki City.
Search results: normal. A coastal city, seafood, summer festivals, just tourism brochures. Three normal searches. Maybe the fourth would be safe too.
So, I typed in: Fuyuki City.
The screen filled with headlines.
"Fuyuki City Fire: Hundreds Dead, Hundreds Missing."
"Unexplained Gas Leak Rumors Continue."
"Strange Lights Reported Over Mion River Bridge."
"…You've got to be kidding me."
My stomach dropped. To anyone else, this was just another odd and tragic news story. To me? It was ground zero for history's bloodiest magical death tournament. And here I was, armed with nothing but a heavy Asus gaming brick.
Good news: the last Holy Grail War ended in 2004 as far as I know.
Bad news: I had no clue which 2004 Holy Grail War it was.
The vanilla Stay Night version? Or the apocalyptic DLC that leads into Grand Order?
On instinct, I immediately typed Chaldea into the search bar. Before the results could load, a cheerful ping echoed from my speakers. A notification popped up in the corner of my screen.
New Email Received.
"What now? A newsletter from the Fuyuki Tourism Board? 'Come visit our scenic gas-leak memorial!'" I muttered, my hands shaking. I nearly deleted it without looking. Nearly. But then I saw the sender....
Starbearer ✦
Subject: Welcome Gift Attached
Hey. If you're reading this, it means my email finally reached your universe. Before you delete this, here's a link and three random gold tickets, your starter pack for the Chaos Gacha.
Why am I doing this? I could play the usual R.O.B. line and say, "I'm bored, entertain me," but no, you could say this is just a help for the future
You'll think this is a prank, but you know you'll click anyway.
Good luck. You'll need it.
My cursor hovered over the email. "Starbearer." The name meant nothing and everything. It felt like a username plucked straight from the depths of an online forum, a handle for some cosmic entity who browsed the multiverse instead of social media.
This was it.
The classic trope : The R.O.B. (Random Omnipotent Being) intervention. I had just been complaining about other SIs falling for this, and now here I was, staring it right in the face. The sheer, unadulterated irony was enough to make me want to laugh, cry, and then throw my heavy Asus brick through the window.
But he was right. I would click. What other choice did I have? In a world about to be neck-deep in Servants, Magic, and potentially world-ending calamities, and Mecha like a lot Mecha, a mysterious "welcome gift" was more than I had any right to expect. With a deep breath that did nothing to calm my nerves, I clicked the link.
My hand trembled as I hovered over it. Everything about it screamed sketchy phishing scam, the kind that would turn your bank account into Monopoly money. But… the sender had been right. I always click.
So I did.
[CHAOS GACHA: 3x RANDOM GOLD PULLS]
Good luck, Kael Rukmono!
"...Oh great, even the cosmic slot machine knows my name. That's not ominous at all."
then I point my mouse pointer towards Roll
My screen didn't change. Instead, a shimmering, impossible vortex of light and sound erupted from the center of my room. It was like a visual representation of a slot machine spinning at light speed. Then, with a final, deafening DING, the screen displayed my prize.
Rolling Random Gold Ticket
Dreadons Gaming Chair
| Elite Item |
Calamity Mod – An incredibly powerful floating chair that is a marvel of technology. It has more calculation power than even the strongest supercomputers, can fly at supersonic speeds, and generates forcefields to protect its user. The ultimate gaming chair.
A box resembling an Xbox console appeared, and when I pressed the Xbox symbol, it instantly transformed into a chair commonly used by professional CS:GO athletes or gaming YouTubers.
"A chair?" I said aloud, my voice flat. "Out of all the possibilities, I pull a gaming chair? An Elite gaming chair? What is this, a sponsored item from the abyss?"
I stumbled forward, my earlier sarcasm completely obliterated by sheer, unadulterated shock. After rereading the text on the laptop screen, I realized my mistake.
"This isn't just a gaming chair... This is a WMD. This is endgame gear from a game mod where people fight Lovecraftian horrors for fun." I ran a hand over the cool, impossibly smooth alloy.
"It's better than NASA's supercomputers, has a powerful force field that can withstand attacks roughly equivalent to anti-tank weapons, and 'supersonic speed'? This thing probably does fractional-luminal journeys in its sleep!"
Then I muttered, "…Well, at least I can finally run the Crysis series at max settings."
The wheel spun again.
Rolling Random Gold Ticket
[Your Laptop]
| Rare Item |
Your trusty laptop from back on Earth, still connected to the same internet you had back then. Doesn't matter where you are now, the connection never dies.
Instantly, my Asus laptop became as bright as if it had received an upgrade from the Minecraft Enchantment Table.
For a second, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or start demanding a reroll. But then it clicked.
"No, wait. This isn't just a normal laptop. It's tethered to Earth's internet. That means unlimited data. Stock markets, scientific papers, archives, even stupid cat videos at three in the morning."
"Alright. Sounds stupid. But stupidly useful. I'll take it."
"And this... this is the key," I murmured, the strategic implications slamming into me.
"A connection to the 'real' world's internet. To the wiki. I don't have to rely on my spotty memories. I can pull up the full, detailed schematics for every piece of tech on that chair. I can research the Terraria Calamity Mod lore for every function this thing might have that the Gacha description didn't list."
I leaned back and grinned.
Then came the third spin.
Rolling Random Gold Ticket
Tinker – Minimization
| Rare Ability |
Allows you to build, construct, and design contraptions or machines that are minimized and smaller versions of existing technology. Hyper-compact nuclear reactors that fit in an apartment, building-sized supercomputers shrunk into a laptop, and so on. No loss in quality, drastically reduced energy consumption.
A painful torrent of knowledge entered my head. After a moment of enduring the pain, I looked back at my laptop. For a long moment, I just stared at the text.
"So... let me get this straight," I said to the empty room, my voice giddy. "I can take the technology from the super-advanced gaming chair... and miniaturize it. I could build its systems smaller. I could build a phone with the processing power of this thing. I could put a forcefield generator in a wristwatch. I could... fit a hyper-compact nuclear reactor in my apartment to power it all."
"Okay, I officially pulled the NEET Trinity." I tapped my desk for emphasis. "One: the throne of gaming. Two: a permanent Wi-Fi tether to Earth. Three: the ability to shrink apocalypse-level tech into carry-on luggage,"
"Oh man, I think I'm going to live well with this,"
I said enthusiastically before something reminded me again.
"So I'm in a Type-Moon world," I muttered, leaning back in my new Dreadons Gaming Chair. The luxurious leather molded perfectly to my back. "And there's a good chance it's the Grand Order timeline."
I tapped my fingers on the armrest, a quiet rhythm of contemplation. The Fuyuki Fire. The news headlines. The potential for a world-ending apocalypse. All of it.
But then, my gaze drifted back to the laptop on my desk.
The laptop that was now, according to the gacha, a Rare Item with an unending Wi-Fi connection to Earth. And then there was the chair itself. An Elite Item with more computing power than any normal supercomputer on the planet,I still don't know if this can match 1/100000 of the computing power of the Mooncell.
I could even see a tiny, almost invisible port on the side, a perfect spot to plug in a USB which I can use to mirror my laptop to gaming chair.
I thought about the Holy Grail War. All the drama, the fighting, the backstabbing. And for what? To save the world?
A cynical grin spread across my face. "Nah."
"Why should I get involved?" I asked the empty room.
"They've got a whole organization for this. A Master with the luck and Charisma Rank: EX, and a demi-servant Kouhai with a giant shield. And all the Servants they could ever need. They're literally built for this. It's their job. I'd just be a liability."
I leaned forward and started typing on my newly-upgraded laptop. The keyboard's keys felt impossibly smooth. I was a gamer, a geek, a guy whose idea of an epic quest was a 100% completion run, not an actual life-or-death battle.
My goal here wasn't to be a hero. It was to be a NEET.
I pulled up Steam, and my eyes lit up. With my "new" laptop, I could run anything. I mean, anything. I could probably boot up every single game on my account simultaneously and not even break a sweat.
"No, I won't save the world," I decided, a mischievous glint in my eyes. "But I'll make sure I'm the most comfortable person in it."
I took a moment to admire my haul. The chair, the laptop, the ability to miniaturize world-ending technology. The "Tinker" skill, I figured, was my trump card. If things went truly south, I could just shrink a nuclear reactor into a power bank for my laptop and play until the end of the world.
I opened the Steam Page. "Sorry, Chaldea," I whispered. "I've got a high score to beat and many Games to 100% complete."
"Oh, look, Silksong has been released." I said, looking at the release date of Hollow Knight Silksong.