I went through the next several weeks feeling numb. The rest of the attacking anime characters had apparently been traced back to the source of the ritual that had given them form, where the few remaining members of the Dan Ui clan killed the perpetrators. I met up with Jee-Han and helped rescue the wounded and recover the dead, moving on to a different part of the city whenever people started to wonder how we'd kept going for so long or when people started to notice how we could lift more than anyone should rightly be able to. We healed those found buried in the rubble that were still alive but unconscious, then left them for the paramedics. Several times rubble fell on my head or I fell down into a pit full of sharp objects, but I didn't care. Gaia could inflict all the bad luck she wanted on me: I was done. I was going to wrap up and take a damn break.
I checked in with the Hwans and the Cheon Bu and tried to find my mother, but she'd disappeared. I knew I should be heartbroken, but I still couldn't bring myself to care. Those of the Abyss that needed medical assistance were healed whenever I found them, regardless of their previous affiliation. Many of them gave me odd looks, but my dead-eyed stare was enough to discourage questions when I approached with an offer of healing and an aura of pearlescent light shining around me already easing their aches and pains from a distance.
My warehouse had become a small community by the time I returned to it. The former slaves had used the resources I'd given them to live relatively normal lives, and the junk from the various houses and clan compounds that had appeared when the Witch of Slaughter's wards went off with my technique integrated had been passed around until just about everyone had gotten involved in the effort to break the slave spells. Those who were too broken to help had been tasked with menial labor but treated fairly, and I knew there wasn't much I could do to help them aside from try my own healing and turn them over to one of the Abyss clans.
When I announced that it was safe to leave and that with the relief effort still ongoing on missing persons suddenly appearing might go unnoticed many took that as their cue to leave. They brought with them only what they felt they couldn't do without, and my only stipulations were that I wanted a copy of the notes they'd taken when they learned to break the slave magic and any books they took with them. That job went to the discrete print shop and bookbinder that Sung-Ah had originally contracted to create the book versions of my [Holy] manual, which was miraculously still standing. They refused to accept payment when I asked after the fee, which I took to mean that my reputation had finally grown beyond my control. I didn't know that it had done that the moment I healed Sung-Ah. They also gave me five hundred more copies of my [Holy] book, which I just shoved into my inventory via my backpack.
When the rescue workers left and the rebuilding began I went back to school in a relatively undamaged part of the city. They gave me a hard time over my records, but since a lot had been lost in the disaster I was able to finished my degree in only three semesters. Yay. I finished a quest. Note the lack of enthusiasm. No explanation point, you see?
[Quest complete! Continuing Education!]
[You gained a level!]
I absently closed the pop ups when I finished my last test, not the least bit concerned about spending stat points right now. I didn't attend graduation. Neither did most of my class, come to think of it. The country itself was in still recovering from the shock. Even just after the event, news footage of a giant dragon thing appearing over Seoul then disappearing barely merited a comment from newscasters after Naruto had swarmed several locations, a giant fucking tree had appeared in the middle of the street (destabilizing several high rises in the process), etc.
Lots of things had been destroyed, lots of people were dead, and lots more were missing. I actually sought therapy, but had to wait a ridiculously long time to get an appointment. It didn't bother me. Gamer's Mind had kicked in the night of the massacre and hadn't turned off since then. The description of the ability said that normal emotions couldn't exist for more than a few seconds if I didn't want them to, and I didn't. There was too much, and I had to parse it out over time. When the therapist talked to me the first time, I think I spooked him. He said the would have admitted me to the hospital psychiatric ward, but there wasn't any room. The therapy sessions helped, and I spent a lot of time meditating and slowly allowing Gamer's Mind to wear off. I thanked Washu for the ability to turn it off gradually, and got a brief feeling of comfort in return. It was part of the deal, but she was glad to honor it. Ember's presence was a great help, and she'd been very agreeable to as much petting as I wanted both during and after I told her the story of what had happened.
I went home to find that my mother had been found in a comatose state and healed by Sung-Ah. She knew, or thought she knew, what I was now. She no longer looked at me like her son, but like an object of worship. When I tried to explain my motivation for leaving her, that I'd tried and failed to keep her safe, and that I'd basically forgotten about her and my responsibility to my family in the interim she held me as I cried and denied any wrongdoing. We made up, but were never close after that.
When I wasn't spending time with Jee-Han and the friends I'd finally started to make among the Cheon Bu I started using my time to actively search out and destroy the rotten parts of the Abyss that had lead to the Dan Ui and the Auction slaughtering so many people, thus perpetuating the cycle of hatred that had lead to nation-wide devastation. The ones who'd performed the ritual were dead, as were most of the Dan Ui and the employees of the Abyss Auction, but with my growing [Mystical Energy (Sense)] I could detect the use of necromancy, mind control, and a host of other nasty things over the entirety of the Korean peninsula and out into parts of China, Japan, and Russia while meditating on it. It took me a great deal of time to track down the practitioners, but when I did I left behind corpses or people so traumatised they were unlikely to ever repeat their actions. I tried for the latter, and was getting better at persuading those I encountered to "see the light."
Five months after Anime Attack someone had finally had enough of me stomping on what I considered the criminal elements of the Korean Abyss and tried to do something about it. They performed a sacrificial ritual both to lure me in and summon a powerful demon. I smote it with [Holy], telekinesis, and plasma in the sky over the west coast of Korea and ended up suffering horrible diarrhea for weeks. Gaia was displeased, and I just tried to rest and get a lot of fluids.
[By doing something special, you've created a new skill: Holy (Smite)!]
[You have earned the title: Morning Star!]
[By earning a title that spawned a legend, you've earned an extra title slot!]
-
It had been two years since I arrived in the world of The Gamer, and I was making progress. I'd finally allocated my stat points after the demon incident and gained upgrades from [Basic Speedster] to [Speedster] and [Basic Strong Spirit] to [Strong Spirit]. I got [Strong Back] too, which made it possible to carry small car sized objects in my inventory and added a customizable organization and search system. This prompted me to clean out my inventory and actually look at some of the crap I'd accumulated, and there was a lot of it. Almost five billion won, a truckload of soul stones, a small library worth of books (some of which I kind of wanted to burn - An Idiot's Guide to Devil Fruit? Really?), a bunch of old Black Rock gear, some skill books I really needed to get copied then absorb, weapons, clothing, the Shovel of Light, a pokémon I couldn't keep, and more. So much more. Oh, and a self-updating copy of my character sheet. God that was messy.
I dropped the books off at the print shop to have them copied then headed for a park and called on Washu. Time stopped and she appeared sitting on the bench next to me with a bowl of ice cream.
"What's up?"
"I need to get rid of some of this stuff, and wanted to negotiate. Most of it I'll sell, but the godlike pokémon and a couple of the loot items I picked up from Anime Attack are on the table. The pistol, cape, and sword in particular. My starting offer is that I forfeit all of those in exchange for combining my currency perks into something that works on all worlds and making my shovel cooler. And unlosable."
She snorted into her ice cream and moved to wipe her face clean, giggling the entire time.
"You want to to exchange legendary zanpakuto that'll attach to whoever first wields it, a collectible pistol, an enchanted cape, and enough energy to recreate massively powerful pokémon for a cooler shovel and a slightly better currency perk?" She asked incredulously.
"Ummm...yes," I said, a little uncertain. I hadn't bothered to observe the items, since I found the anime they came from distasteful and I already had an amazing sword ability.
"Done! Give me the items and the shovel. Your Legal Tender perk will now be worth a million dollars and be added to your inventory at the start of every jump instead of being a card or reliant on the existence of particular country."
I handed her the items, a bit stunned at her generosity. Everything but the shovel and the PokéBall disappeared when she touched it, and those she examined for a moment before handing me back the now-empty PokéBall.
"So what exactly do you want this to do? You've got a bit of leeway. I can easily bind it to your soul so it always comes when you call no matter where it was previously, but it won't grow with you or anything ridiculous like that after I upgraded your Legal Tender perk. Think minor powers and modifications." I nodded thoughtfully.
"I'd really only intended to ensure it was a genuine holy object, since I'm supposed to be a god eventually. I imbued it with [Holy] energy, but I don't think that counts. I guess...I mean, I like it as a shovel but sometimes that's not really useful. Can you make it shiftable, so I can use it as a shield or something?"
The Shovel of Light turned into a plastic spade and she handed it back to me, then left with a smile. Time restarted while I was staring at the toy in my hand. '[Observe],' I thought at it.
[The Shovel of Light]
This sanctified item is imbued with Wren's [Holy] energy, and can act as a focus for that and any other MP-based abilities he has. It deals additional damage to malevolent spirits, demons, etc. and has a chance to blind or even outright destroy weak examples of such on contact. Finally, the Shovel of Light can transform into any simple, non-mechanical object of similar mass to the original or less but will always be indestructible. The resulting object must be made of common materials and does not gain any additional properties. Wren can call it to him from anywhere in the multiverse, and can choose to show or hide the aura of the item at will.
-
The remaining years in The Gamer universe were mostly uneventful. I got some therapy, sold a bunch of junk, learned how to turn into plants and eventually a whole damn forest, made a ton of money messing around in Instant Dungeons with Jee-Han when he wasn't busy with the enemy of the week, and picked up a lot of ranks in [Tutor] when he started college. I could now create Instant Dungeons where no time passed at all inside, and the skill had evolved at level 100 from [Instant Dungeon] to [Genesis]. It retained all the abilities of the original, but now allowed me to start creating my own little dimensions that would get better, bigger, and harder to destroy the more I worked on them. If I used the skill in conjunction with [Conjuration] I could actually create about a house sized demi-plane now. All of my skills worked better there, and the more I leveled it the more I'd be able to control the environment during and after creation.
Experience-wise, I slowed down a great deal when I hit level 100. Jee-Han had predicted that every time we added a digit to the total level we would need substantially more experience to advance, and Washu confirmed it for me. When I hit level 1000 it would become yet more difficult, ad infinitum. The fact that I didn't have a level cap was really cool, and it finally dawned on me exactly why Washu had forced this as my second jump. Ember thought that the Gamer ability was actually the seed from which Washu planned to build my godhood, and I agreed with her. The comic itself had stated that a low-level Gamer had the potential of a demigod, but I didn't remember anyone ever saying anything more about it.
When I got bored grinding my skills I started in on training my individual stats and refining my control. Between that and simply living my life I didn't really have time for anything else. When the time came to end the Jump all of my stats except strength indicated I was something like forty times more powerful than your average human, and even there it was thirty-six times the average. If you included the passive buffs from my abilities those numbers went up even more, and active buffs were yet more ridiculous. I said goodbye, gathered up my things and Ember, and disappeared from that world.
-
When I appeared in the Warehouse, it was just as I'd left it ten years and a lot of therapy ago. Washu sat down with me over hot chocolate, tea, and a wide variety of other goodies and we talked for ages. When we were out of things to say, she waved open a window that my character sheet in a much neater format than I'd seen it earlier. Another tab contained possible and recommended targets for the next Jump. For some reason Harry Potter was at the top of the list.
"Washu? Harry Potter? Any particular reason why?"
"Several: your [Holy] ability and knowledge of the world would let you essentially destroy the plot right from the outset, you can vastly improve the life of Harry and everyone around him, going there would update the Abyss Library in your warehouse and allow you to refine your magical skills further, and you have the opportunity to meet and talk to Death without actually dying if you gather his items and call me. Setting a few goals will allow you to leave the jump early and get you additional time and abilities for the future."
"Those are all fair points, but I'd really been planning on Ranma for my next jump. How strongly do you recommend I do this one first?"
"Strongly, but not so much that you couldn't take Ranma first. The problem is that I looked at your notes for the Ranma jump and you're going to need to be more magically flexible and better at a few techniques to keep up with some of the more talented characters."
"Alright...so if I want to do this quickly, I should try and limit myself to Harry's first year. My goals will be to completely eliminate Voldemort, get Harry together with Sirius Black as a guardian, cure Remus Lupin so he can take over the defense post, remove the curse on the defense post, and keep Ron Weasley from ever gaining a foothold in the gold trio."
"Why the last one?"
"I hate Ron Weasley as a character. When I try to figure out why it pretty much just comes back to him being an annoying brat who constantly undermines the progress of everyone around him and has not a drop of loyalty in his entire body. Also I kind of think Rupert Grint is fugly."
Washu gave me an odd look at that, but let the subject die and continued on to something else.
"Ok, I told you earlier that you'd be going into this as a Black by blood and you'd either need to take Metamorph or be able to imitate it. Since you've got Transform down to a level where you can make small changes to your Pokémon form along with The Gamer abilities, I'm going to make sure whatever body you start in is related to the Blacks and give you Metamorphmagus for free. If you take drop-in they'll assume you're from a squib line or something. Nobody is likely to see the portrait until you free Sirius and he won't care unless I make you his kids, which doesn't fit the drop-in background. You'll probably be Marius Black's descendent if you go that route, since he was disowned as a squib."
I blinked at all the information, then nodded. That meant drop-in was the best way to go, especially given I was tired of abandoning family at the end of each Jump.
"Washu….I'd planned on playing the Amazon Warrior background for Ranma ½, but I really don't want to do the family thing again and my powers are going to be decidedly non-standard anyway. Can I be a foundling or something and still do that background?"
"Mmmm...sure, that works. Nobody ever said you couldn't customize your background a bit, and nobody's going to stop me from making my own tweaks if I want. You can do the same thing in Harry Potter, but I suspect you've already chosen to go in as a drop-in character."
"Yeah. Let me make my choices and we can get started. Thanks, Miss Washu!" I smiled at her, and she gave me a smirk back. A helpful Jump-Chan was the best kind, and I'd always loved Washu as a character anyway. Her shoulder-puppets started their routine and I started choosing my options for the Harry Potter Jump.
The drop-in background was an obvious choice and left me with an additional fifty choice points for automatically being an impoverished orphan. Washu wandered over and picked Hufflepuff for me, only returning my questioning look with one of her own, and I moved on to perks. Just and Loyal was free, and Memory Spell Specialist was discounted for drop-ins. Dedicated would allow me to study without getting bored, which would be especially useful since it also increased information retention. Clean-Blooded gave me immunity to illness and disease, which in most worlds should include vampirism and lycanthropy since it didn't exempt magical illnesses and diseases. Being able to turn it off would mean I could still acquire those as alternate forms in future Jumps, so I picked it up.
Looking over the rest of the options left me a bit stumped. I already had powers or skills that would build up to or already were the equivalent of Occlumency, Muggle Dueling, Non-Verbal Specialty, Legilimency, The Only One He Ever Feared, Wandlore, Moste Potente Potions, Veela Blood, Seer, Giant Blood, Nullification, and Wandless Magic. Animagus was an alternate form so I had to take it, and I picked an arctic fox since I'd always had a fondness for the creatures and it would be easy to switch between that and my Ninetails form to mess with people. What did that leave me with? Metamorphmagus was selected, locked, and marked free. Parselmouth could eventually lead into Beast Speech for me, so I picked that up. None of the other perks really looked interesting enough to take here rather than try to develop the skill on my own.
The companion and gear options were more interesting. I imported Ember as a companion and glanced at the remaining options. These were drool-worthy. Pensieve, Marauder's Map, Potion Reagents, Goblin Made Sword, Phoenix, Invisibility Cloak, Philosopher's Stone, and Time Turner were all amazing. I'd have to keep them in mind for future jump purchases, since I could only have a few. I could eventually learn to create a pensieve, philosopher's stone, or even a time turner myself, but Marauder's Map, Potions Reagents, Goblin Made Sword, and Phoenix were more difficult.
I eventually settled on Marauder's Map since it was discounted for the drop-in background, leaving me just enough points to pick up a phoenix that counted as a pet rather than a companion. I could get common potion ingredients anywhere, and might be able to purchase a goblin-made sword. Phoenix tears were rare, and there was probably ash from burning days, molted feathers, and other things I could harvest without mistreating it. Hell, if I did this right I could snag the philosopher's stone from the first book without much effort.
I still had points left over and hadn't used any of those I had banked or taken any drawbacks. Speaking of drawbacks...prophecy would allow me to fulfil the damn thing instead of Harry, so I took that. Marked was reduced to 0cp with a note that since I could easily remove it there wasn't any point. Bully Teacher looked good. I didn't give a crap about my grades and it would be easy to have Snape find out I was a Black to justify it. None of the others looked attractive.
Next, I invited Ember over to the console. She was kind of looking forward to getting her own alternate human form, and took drop-in and Hufflepuff to be in my orphanage and house respectively. She also picked Prophecy and Bully Teacher, then had a brief argument with Washu before picking up Marked and Oblivious [1]. When I asked about it Ember simply told me that "rules as written" applied to my companions too and the mark would have a negative impact on her even if I removed it since the orphanage matron would see it. I smiled and asked Washu if I could take it as well, but she refused to give me points for it. I took it anyway, tweaked my wand to import the Shovel of Light, and banked my remaining 250 points for later.
Ember chose the Occlumency, Animagus, Non-Verbal Specialty, Metamorph, and Wandless Magic perks and a Refilling Zonko's Bag to spend the last of her points [1]. She really was a kitsune, wasn't she? We spoke to Washu for a few minutes to establish a background we liked that fell within the rules, then were booted through a portal.
-
[1] : The result of the argument was that Ember being marked would have to come out at some point even if I removed it and Oblivious would only work because of "rules as written" and the fact I'd told her about it. She was still within the drawback cap, after all. Ember's knowledge of Transform also made Metamorph free.
Sorry it took me a while to post this! It's been written for about a week now but needed last-minute revisions and we were both pretty busy, then distracted. On the bright side I've got most of the Potter-verse arc written, but it still needs to be edited.