Previously: You became Mahoraga, with an extremely powerful ability to adapt.
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The pure white space had no up, down, left, or right. Only light diffused gently from every direction, stretching into infinity.
Within this absolute emptiness floated an old-fashioned oak desk that looked entirely out of place.
Scattered across the desk were numerous slips of paper covered in numbers, several badly worn dice, and half a cup of something steaming-which, judging by the droplets condensed on the cup, was probably coffee.
The being sitting behind the desk had no fixed form, sometimes resembling a swirling nebula, sometimes coalescing into a vague humanoid outline.
At that moment, the deity was propping up its chin with three starlight fingers, watching countless world bubbles slowly rotate before it, each reflecting a completely different story and course of fate.
"Boring-"
The deity's voice sounded like a chorus of countless voices, sending ripples through the space.
"So boring-" The deity waved its arms, trailing streaks of starlight. "The hero defeats the demon king, the brave warrior saves the princess, the boy awakens his powers... clichés! Nothing but clichés!"
It suddenly slapped the desk, making the dice bounce across its surface.
"I've decided! Let's change a world!"
Changing a world's course did not require some grand undertaking.
It was like tossing a grain of sand into a precision clock, or placing a stone in a flowing river-the key lay in the "node."
The right person, appearing at the right place at the right time, and then making the right choice.
With great enthusiasm, the deity pulled a handful of dice from a drawer, closed its eyes, and grabbed three at random.
"There are plenty of parallel worlds. Let's just pick one~"
With a light flick of its wrist, the three dice arced onto the desk and spun.
One stopped first-two.
The second wobbled, with five facing up.
The last seemed to struggle a little longer before helplessly settling on three.
"Two, five, three..." The deity rummaged through the scattered slips and pulled out a note with slightly curled edges, bearing numbers and names scrawled in ballpoint pen.
"Jujutsu Kaisen...?" The deity tilted its head, its starlight body rippling slightly. "What's that? A new story I haven't heard of? Oh well, never mind!"
The second roll.
One, two, five.
"Naruto, oh! I know this one!" The deity's voice grew noticeably excited. "Ninjutsu! Sharingan! Tailed Beasts! This one's fun!"
For the final roll, the deity blew on the dice. They spun wildly across the desk before, miraculously, all stopping on three.
"Three, three, three... all exactly the same?" The deity's starlight body contracted, then expanded again. "Is this good luck, or some kind of revelation? Interesting-"
The final slip was drawn. Only one name was written on it.
"Madara Uchiha..." The deity paused, then gave an exaggerated exclamation. "Wow! I pulled a great character! An ultimate-boss-level template!"
It laid the three slips side by side on the desk. Starlight flowed from its fingertips, weaving intricate patterns in the void.
"Now, I'll need a suitable 'actor'..."
"Are you fucking kidding me?!"
In the same pure white space, a young man wearing a loose T-shirt and sweatpants sat on the ground in an extremely undignified pose-no, "floated" above the ground would be more accurate, since the concept of ground did not exist here.
He looked to be in his early twenties, with messy hair and pronounced dark circles under his eyes, clearly in the classic state of someone who had just stayed up all night gaming.
Three minutes earlier, he had still been at his computer, shouting "Engage, engage!" at the screen. The next second, he had appeared in this godforsaken place.
And sitting before him was a... mass... an indescribable luminous entity.
"And that's how it happened," the deity said matter-of-factly. "I rolled dice to select two worlds and one character template, then extracted you, this 'individual,' from countless possibilities. Simple, right?"
"Simple, my ass!" The protagonist-still nameless for the moment-clutched his hair. "What kind of bullshit explanation is that! You just felt like having some fun on a whim!"
"Is that not allowed?" The deity's body brightened. "You're a product of my 'playing around' too!"
The young man opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He slumped down and waved a hand as if giving up. "Fine... then what about my original body? That corporate-drone body that stayed up gaming and still has work tomorrow?"
"Don't worry~" the deity said in an infuriatingly breezy tone. "You're just an independent individual I extracted anew from that timeline, like copying and pasting. Your original life is still going on, completely unaffected~"
"Then what about 'me'?!" The young man jerked his head up. "This 'me' right here! What happens when your game ends? Do I disappear? Get deleted? Like a tool you throw away after using?"
"Yes," the deity answered honestly.
"Yes, my fucking ass!" The young man jumped up, though jumping did not mean much in this space.
"Couldn't you at least comfort me a little? Who's going to help you when you put it that bluntly?!"
"What does it matter?" The starlight humanoid spread its hands. "As long as it's fun, right?"
The young man was once again speechless. He slowly settled back into place, hugged his knees, and fell silent.
Yeah, what did it matter?
This "him" had been created out of nothing in the first place, with no past and no future. His only purpose was to participate in this game the deity had started on a whim.
Once it ended, he would disappear, as though he had never existed.
But...
As long as it's fun.
The thought seeped into his mind like poison.
Since I'm already here, since I already know the truth, since I'm destined to disappear-why not enjoy myself?
Why not take this absurd game as far as it can go?
"It seems... it really doesn't matter," he murmured to himself.
"Right? Right!" The deity clapped its hands-if those could be called hands. "Then it's settled! I'll deal with merging the world settings first."
"What world settings are you dealing with?" The young man raised his head.
"Obviously, I'm deleting the Naruto setting from that world." As it spoke, the deity traced something in the void, countless points of light streaming past like code.
"Otherwise, what's the fun in having two completely different power systems collide? Oh, wait, wouldn't that be even more fun?"
The young man imagined it, but he could not help shuddering when he thought of being treated as an anomaly and then sentenced to death.
"Ah... just delete it," he said weakly. "That really would be a massive pain."
"True~" The deity turned to "look" at him, the rhythm of its flickering starlight carrying a hint of mockery. "At your level, you couldn't handle anything that complicated~"
"Fuck you! Would it kill you not to say that?"
"Hahaha ꉂꉂ(ᵔᗜᵔ*)!" The deity let out a strange laugh, and the entire space trembled with it.
"So, what about a name? Your name in this game?"
The young man froze for a moment.
Using his real name would certainly feel rather embarrassing, and... if he was going to use that template...
"Madara Uchiha," he said. "I'll use that name."
"All right, all right~" The deity nodded. "And your identity? Shall I give you a plausible background? That currently popular template with no mom or dad~"
"You!" The young man glared, but quickly deflated again. "Sigh... just go with that. It's convenient, after all."
He was an "extracted" individual. There had never been any trace of his existence in this world.
No past, no family, no social connections-a completely blank canvas.
"Okay, okay~" The deity stood up-or rather, extended its starlight form upward. "Then, let the game begin!!"
It reached out a finger and lightly touched the young man's forehead.
"By the way~" The deity's voice suddenly turned sly. "Because I think it'll be more interesting this way, I won't be giving you Madara Uchiha's appearance~ I'll adjust your original appearance to... hmm, around fifteen years old. You have to fit into that world, after all~"
"Wait, what-"
Before the young man could protest, the pure white world began to collapse, spin, and dissolve.
Countless points of light flooded his vision, then quickly faded, replaced by gravity, air, sound-
And the sensation of falling.
What a pain... That was his final thought before he lost consciousness.