Welcome, traveler!

So, you’ve woken up in a new world-- sometimes after a major tragedy, sometimes not-- with new powers and a promise of adventure. That dark lord sure does look menacing... let’s show him what-for! A corrupt king is prima nocta-ing a townside? Let’s grow in power and defeat him! Corrupt corporations are embargoing your home city or planet in a sea of corruption, violence, and blood? Let’s learn how to code and unleash the AIs with our state-of-the-art neural lace we somehow lucked into! System apocalypse incoming? OMG, let’s grind levels and be the very best (that no one ever was)!

Now what?

Now, you are incredibly, truly, utterly, and totally fucked.

What none of the stories we all enjoy ever tell you, is that once you isekai and defeat your first boss, it’s isekai all the way down.

The first time always has you-- the wide-eyed and hopeful hero or heroine-- defeating, after a long and daunting adventure, the Big Bad Guy. You have meaningful character growth. You learn and grow and change. Everyone lives happily ever after. You grow old, sometimes becoming the ruler in your own right, live long, find true love, and die.

BOOM.

Isekai’d again. This time, the setting might be different but the story line changes little, and you are expected to do it all over again. Your gender and species may change. Technology may change. But being the hero, seeing the distraught common people suffer under harsh rule, OF COURSE you heed the call and do it all over again. PEOPLE ARE DYING, HERO! YOU CAN CHANGE FATES! You avoid the pitfalls of your first life and defeat the Big Bad. Happily-ever-after comes with just a little tarnish, because you truly loved your first love interest in that past life. You miss your kids with the ache of a thousand broken hearts. The second love is hauntingly familiar, aren’t they? Your kids remind you of those children you left behind. But the time comes, and a well-earned death is achieved.

BOOM.

Isekai. The third time, all the towns' people kinda look a lot like soulless NPCs. The Big Bad makes some good points. The tropes, death flags, and foreboding shadows all seem super shallow. You half-ass the victory and retire to be a mountain recluse or rogue space pirate or whatever is apropos for the theme. You avoid anyone who has that same pizzazz that gets your motor going.

BOOM.

Isekai. This time, being the villain has its merits.

BOOM.

A few lifetimes of torturing people. What does it matter? You know that being good for good’s sake will never earn you eternal reward, or any reward, and being a BBG will never end you an eternity in the pit. Sometimes, to change it up, you role switch and go both ways to spice up the run. Chaotic neutral is sometimes fun when done well and with the right set-up. You never have the courage anymore to make connections, because you know all these people that you could love will just be faces that you yearn for in your next life.

BOOM.

Sometimes, you’re the perfect hero with almost precognition who saves everyone’s day, sets up all-inclusive orphanages, and discovers fusion power and makes war obsolete.

BOOM.

Sometimes, you are the undefeatable bad guy with the precognition who sets up an unrelenting dynasty for other horrible bad guys. Gotta keep them crushed to keep them in line, you know. Human rights are for heretics!

BOOM.

There isn’t any escape. Just isekai and people asking you to do the shit you got bored of several thousand lives ago.

BOOM.

Sometimes, you’re a baker in a small mountain town and when the call comes to defeat evil, you see the portents and warnings and tropes just long enough and time it just so to raise the price of bread to make a killing, but not enough to get lynched when it passes. You may spend a few lifetimes perfecting this art.

BOOM.

Sometimes, you are the over-the-top comic character who is on a quest to resurrect your beloved dead puppy by spending the lives of your province via a blood tax for unholy rituals. Nothing matters anymore.

BOOM.

Sometimes, you want to play a gigolo character on a sexy sex path, and you whore your way to greatness.

BOOM.

Sometimes, you eat your own plasma gun/handgun/poisoned dagger when you wake up to your next run, if you just want a moment of solitude in the void in-between.

BOOM.

Sometimes, you set yourself up in a monastery and write bad poetry for a lifetime or ten.

BOOM.

BUT HERO! The gods would never allow this! Lifetimes of struggling misery that would make life cheap doesn’t sound like a just cause in any scenario!

Hate to break it to you, fate-despised traveler, but the gods are just fulfilling their roles as well. No one can save you. There is no end in sight. No rest for the good or the wicked. It truly is isekai all the way down.

This is a story of one cursed soul who, after thousands of spent lives, may have found a loophole to scrabble their way out. Use this as a guide to do what you must to escape this horrid fate if you find yourself on life one hundred thirty and can’t stomach seeing more of the meat-parts of the people who really should mind their own business and not ask anything of you anymore.

As for you, a truly void-cursed being, the amount of sorrow and desolation on your horizon is utterly unable to be prepared for. Take heed of the following, so that you may continue to get through this somewhat intact.

The rules of life the new universes are simple:

-Since species, gender, and sex are all randomized, you may want to get really fluid really quick.

-For good and ill, you remember everything of your past lives. Do what you can to live with yourself.