ESSENTIALLY CREATIVE

I do not own Harry Potter or any other recognized works of fiction.

This fic is dedicated to Crossedge who managed to decomplicate the [Get Creative!] system, and wrote an amazing Essence fic as well. This fic is inspired by his works.

Thanks also to Triggerhappy Jabberwocky and all the authors of the various Essences in the Essence META CYOA, and to TroyX and AsTheGlassMelts for the Head Start CYOA.

Final thanks to my beta reader PercyPendragon3 for correcting my many, many mistakes.

Besides the sites I normally post on, you may contact me on:

Shiro's Gaming Omniverse: discord.gg/wd3tUYWVCd

Of Fiction and Fuckups: discord.gg/68gAdfsTE4

With that out of the way, let's get to the story.

Prologue

This story begins like all other Isekai stories do; with a death. Mine, to be precise. How, you ask? Just hold on a minute. I'll get to that. Eventually.

My name is Ryan Verde, and my life positively sucked.

Being born an orphan in a country like the US may not have sucked as bad as if it were to be in a third-world country like say, Somalia, but it sucked nonetheless.

On top of it all, I had very little going for me; skinny, weedy, below average looks, above average intelligence. In short, The Nerd. Prime bully bait.

I don't need to tell you that kids and teenagers can be crueler than the worst CIA, KGB or Mossad torturers for you to understand, do I? At least, If it's any consolation, I wasn't locked in a locker with worms, garbage and other stuff. Taylor Hebert had it worse, but that's not much to write home about.

Anyway, my life pretty much sucked until middle school, where I met my best friend.

You know how things work in middle school. The bullies find someone to pick on and then isolate them by running off all their friends, leaving them unable to get help, and everybody seems to subconsciously understand not to go near them. Right?

So there I was, a 12-year-old, in the cafeteria, eating my lunch as fast as possible so I wouldn't starve when the bullies eventually ruined my food when the new girl entered the cafeteria, walked straight toward the so-called "Losers' Table", and sat by me.

Her name was Maria, and I'm not afraid to say that even as a 12-year-old just on the cusp of puberty, she was beautiful; bright green eyes set in a beautiful doll-like face and framed by long red hair. Earlier in the day, when she was introduced to the class and got assigned the seat next to me was the first time I was completely lost for words. If this doesn't tell you I had a crush, I don't know what will.

The fact that she walked up to me in the cafeteria, calmly refusing all the invitations to sit with the popular crowd, then approached me, loner that I was, and shared her lunch with me, just settled everything. That was the beginning of what would be a beautiful friendship.

From that day in seventh grade, we became the best of friends. She would walk with me to school, share her lunch with me, and try to cheer me up when I was feeling down. In return, I helped her study and tried to be there for her as much as possible.

As the years passed and we entered high school, puberty hit, taking my childhood friend from a cute girl, straight past just "beautiful", to a supernaturally attractive bombshell with a curvy body and huge "assets". I don't know how I managed it through my nervous bumbling, but I asked her out in our junior year of high school and she said yes.

I can't properly describe that one year we were together as anything besides pure bliss. I would work part-time and use some of that money to take her out. We didn't really do anything fancy, but it worked for us.

It was during our high school days that she introduced me to the second love of my life: anime. We would sit at her place for hours, binge-watching anime and reading various novels, fanfiction and so on.

Unfortunately, our relationship was not to last as she joined the cheer squad and started hanging out with the typical cheerleader stereotype; fairly attractive girls with very little between their ears, She started to become more like them, slowly becoming more obsessed with makeup, boys, and whatever else those people talked about as we drifted further apart until our relationship couldn't handle the strain.

I was back to being a loner in our senior year and she started dating a dumb muscleheaded football jock whose name I won't even be bothered to remember. The fact that said jock was also my biggest bully was just the icing on the cake. Whoop-de-fucking-doo.

As for how I died, I was limping back home—as much as you can call a church-run orphanage home— after receiving a serious beating from my ex's current boyfriend and all his football jock friends. I was crossing what appeared to be a clear road until the almighty Truck-sama came barrelling down on me at full speed from around the bend. When the truck's horn blew, I wasn't fast enough to react. Damned limp. The last thing I remember is a brief spike of pain and a flash of blindingly bright light.

When my vision cleared, I was standing in a small shop. There were shelves filled with vials containing liquids of all the colours of the rainbow; some glowing very brightly, some absorbing the light around them, and some changing colours. You name it and it was there.

A man stood up from behind the counter. "Ah! A new customer. Hold on a minute. I was just restocking when you came in. Omniversal travel can be annoying. Messes up everything. Wouldn't recommend it."

"Wait. What?" My jaw dropped. Did he just say what I think he said?

The man dusted himself off and rose to his full height, towering over my small 5'7" frame. "So, I don't think I have to tell you that you're dead. There's no way you would've survived being reduced to chunky salsa by that truck."

"Yes. You clearly don't."

"Right. Let's get on with it then. You're dead and all that jazz. Now, normally, you'd be sent on to whatever afterlife you believed in. In your case, Heaven or Hell, but things won't be working that way for you."

"Ok. So how will this work then?"

"Good question. I'm sure you have an idea what all these vials contain."

Oh my God. If this is what I'm thinkingit is, then I hit the fucking jackpot. I'm sure my smile was wide enough to make me seem creepy, but I didn't care. If these vials were what I thought they were, then I was set.

The man smiled at my reaction. "I think you've guessed it. These are Essences. Normally, you'd be able to take as many as you want, but the last person took all of them and conceptually blew himself up, so we're not doing that."

Well, that sucked. "So how're we doing this?"

"I will give you the Blank and one drop of Game Changer. You then have to pick four more, making five. Five's a good number, don't you think?"

Uh... Could this guy even count? "What about Game Changer?"

He shrugged. "That doesn't count since it's effectively an Essence modifier. Tell me what you're picking. The modified one first."

"I guess I can work with that."

"First, I'll go with Skill Creator, and I'll use the Game Changer Essence to modify it."

The man gained an interested look. "And what are your modifications?"

"I want it to work like the [Get Creative!] skill from The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter, but with me receiving LP passively everyday, and the ability to gain LP from defeating enemies, and a low energy cost to create skills."

"That will work. What else?"

"The Skill Creation should be able to create all kinds of skills, not just those from Medaka Box, including Essence skills, and the skills should be upgradeable."

"Ok, then." He took a dropper and dipped it into a liquid that cycled through all the colours of the rainbow, before filling it and placing it into another vial full of gold-coloured liquid. The vial glowed briefly as the liquid settled back down to its original colour. "There. That's done. What else?

"Archmage, Home and Binder. I'm not going to be a loner virgin in this life. I'll take what I want and nobody can stand in my way."

He went over to the shelves and picked up four other vials before placing them on the counter beside the Skill Creator Essence. "Now, before you take your Essences, you have the option of filling out another CYOA. Which will it be?"

I didn't have to think about it much, and since I didn't have enough space for the Essence of the Breeder, there was really only one option. "The Head Start CYOA. It has nearly all the features of the Breeder Essence, and then some."

The man gave me a look for a moment, then suddenly burst into laughter. "Hahahahaha! I like the way you think. Luckily for you, my friend gave me one of these forms last week." He rummaged through the space behind the counter for a couple of minutes before pulling out a glowing blue sphere in a jar labelled 'HEAD START' "Aha! There you go." He opened the jar and the blue sphere flew toward me and into my chest.

My body glowed briefly as a transparent HUD screen appeared before me with the CYOA options. As I filled out my build, the being placed the jar back under the counter, then wrote something in a notebook which seemed to appear out of nowhere.

When I completed my build, my body glowed again, causing the being's attention to snap back toward me.

"Oh, you're done?"

"Yeah. I'm done."

He nodded. "Good. Very good. Here are your Essences."

Suddenly, the five Essences on the counter rose out of their vials and flowed into each other, before becoming a streak that slammed into me with the force of one of Ronaldo's power shots, causing me to stumble backwards as my body glowed white for a few seconds.

"Aaah! That hurt, dammit!" I couldn't help but exclaim.

The damned bastard laughed at me for about a minute before calming down. "Ah, sorry, sorry. Anyway, where do you want to go?"

"Harry Potter. It's simple, short, not too many plot points, and I know the story inside and out."

"Mhm. And the girls, right? All those capture targets."

He read my mind. The girls were the most important reason for me choosing the world, apart from the relatively simple plot, but there's no way I was saying that. All I said was "I plead the fifth."

"Riiiight. Canon or AU?"

There's one waifu I wanted who was dead, so AU it is. "AU where James died, but Lily's in a coma."

He just nodded. "Oh, I like where this is going. Canon character or drop-in?"

"Can I insert as the protagonist?"

"Yes, but then you'd have to kill Moldyshorts yourself."

"I can live with that. How evil is this AU's Dumbledore?"

"He thinks Harry has to die. Very little will change that. And he's not above using potions or mind control, so..."

"Got it. I'll insert as Harry on his 10th birthday. One year of prep should be enough. And all those waifus. Yes please. Besides, the protag is nice-looking enough."

"Alright. You're ready to go, just one more thing before you go."

"Uh... What's that? Is there a catch? Do I have to worry about other jumpers?" I was almost hyperventilating at this point.

"You can relax. We probably won't be meeting again, but don't worry about other jumpers. After the incident with Senior Gamers Shiro and Kuro's fight destroying several multiverses, the Archdeity of Eternity put laws in place to ensure that all reincarnators or transmigrators with out-of-context powers have at least one metaversal barrier between them at all times. As for the catch? It's just a simple request you can ignore. Something you were going to do anyway."

"And that is?"

"Fuck as many girls as you can. Especially Lily. Incest is wincest and all that."

"Ok. That's it?"

"No. Remember that your world travel skills simply won't work until Voldemort is in the ground. Besides that? Have fun."

The ROB waved at me and a kaleidoscopic portal opened and sucked me in as my vision went white.