[System activating...]

[Booting up character creation...]

Grant was somewhere else. He floated adrift in absolute nothingness, even the void around him having faded away. He existed as a mere consciousness, an amorphous blob of thoughts.

"Just my luck." he thought.

...

Well, "it thought" would be more appropriate, considering disembodied consciousnesses didn't have genders. Actually, on that same path, just "thought" would do the trick, or maybe even no word at all. He wasn't a "he," or an "it," he wasn't anything at the moment. But for the sake of clarity, let's just use "he" going forward, alright?

Grant wished he had a hand to slap his nonexistent face with.

All he had to do was write a shitty isekai story. Call it "Reincarnated as a Sexy Spider Woman," slap some anime tits or a loli on the cover, rake in the views and likes, and then plug the stories he actually cared about in the author's notes. But no, he had to seethe about it in the middle of the street and get decked by a sixteen wheeler going way above the speed limit.

[Character creation active... please choose a form.]

Thousands of figures flashed through Grant's mind in a scrolling line. Somehow, despite lacking eyes, he could process the images as they flew by one by one: tall, well-muscled copies of himself clad in OP armor, little girls, and strange monsters - some of which were just little girls with animal ears.

An hour later, the voice came back.

[Please choose a form.]

"No." Grant thought that thought as hard as he could.

He was not going to be reincarnated. Never. And if he had to exist as a formless collection of thoughts being bombarded by an infinite row of boring isekai protagonists for all eternity for that not to happen, then so be it.

[Please choose a form.]

"No."

[Please choose a form.]

"No."

[Please choose a form.]

"No."

[Just please choose a form, alright?]

"Nuh-uh."

[Pleeease choose a form!]

"Nah."

[Pleeeeeease choose a form!]

"Not feeling like it."

[Please, please, please choose a form!]

"Hmmm..." he pretended to consider it. "Nope."

[Preeetty please with a cherry on top?]

"Just fuck off already!"

[Hey! If you're gonna be mean then I'm not gonna give you a choice!]

The thought of being turned into a little catgirl loli made Grant want to throw up, which was doubly impressive since he had no stomach at the moment.

"Alright... I pick myself."

[Huh?]

"Just myself. Exactly like I was on Earth."

[B-but... isn't that a little bit... boring?]

"You said I could choose, I didn't realize I was limited by what entertains you."

[How about an OP mage? Wouldn't that be fun? "Reincarnated as an OP Mage," nice ring to it, huh?]

"No, no. I just want to be regular ol' Grant Flincher. Not OP, not a little girl, not a monster, not a dungeon, none of that isekai bullshit."

[You're a real jerk... but fine. Have it your way.]

[Form Finalized...]

[System active...]

[Entering Generia...]

glenn-fletcher

So I was totally intent on just leaving this as a goofy one-shot type deal, but I just kept having ideas and writing more, so here we are! It's going to have a plot and such but still be very silly and not 100% sensical. Unlike most of my stories I actually have an ending in mind, and I'm thinking this'll maybe last close to twenty or so chapters?

As you can probably tell, I'm not writing the biggest chapters for this story. They'll be from 500-1000 words each.