Audio: Chapter one.

The truck crashed through the wall of the fifth floor of the convention center, sailing straight toward the girl on the stage. Yuki knew her time was up. Truck-kun had finally gotten to her. Any explanation of how it managed to get to her on the fifth floor wasn't important. It was here, and she was dead.

Time slowed down. Yuki didn't close her eyes. She faced Truck-kun head-on. A small part of her was vindicated. She had prepared the locker, the email, and the time-gated delivery. No one believed her when she said Truck-kun was real. Her death would expose the interdimensional serial killer.

Then someone tackled Yuki out of the way. Time resumed its regular cadence. The truck sailed past, and hit the electrical devices behind the stage. The noise was deafening. Smoke billowed out from the crash site.

Yuki groaned, then sat down, face hurting where it hit the ground from the tackle. She looked around. Across from her, a handsome guy also sat, eyes piercing blue, his hair perfectly styled even after the tumble. His eyes widened when he saw Yuki looking at him. A smile blossomed on his face, and he opened his arms wide. "I'm so glad you're—"

Yuki punched the guy in the face. She was so done with this bullshit. She should have never left the house today. She knew it was one of the days she predicted Truck-kun would be active, but she'd been preparing for this convention for months. Now her cosplay was in shambles, her stalker saved her, and she needed to get back home and turn off all the dead-man switches.

Yuki ignored the growing ruckus from the other convention attendees. She got up and dusted herself, then kicked the stalker for good measure. She turned, intending to leave.

The stage was on fire, and dark, brooding smoke billowed from the truck. It exploded, propelling one of the tires straight at Yuki. This time, time didn't slow down. The tire hit Yuki in the head, and she saw no more.

Yuki didn't open her eyes. She had no eyes to open. At some point, she was just aware. She also had no body, even if agony crawled behind eyes she didn't have. The eyes that didn't exist were drawn to a hovering window where strange letters scrolled.

Yuki took stock. She died.

Somehow, Truck-kun managed to get her even after the stalker saved her. Now she was in some dark place with a system window in front of her. She nodded a head that didn't exist. Isekai'ed. Well, it could have been worse. At least now all that effort to compile the evidence wouldn't be wasted. She was curious what would happen when it hit the news, even more so now that she died under such strange circumstances.
But that was in the past, she had a new adventure ahead. At least now, all those hours she spent checking out isekai novels, ice cream, and pizza recipes weren't in vain. She had a list of things to create to get rich fast in this new world, but first, she needed to deal with the system.

"Hello?" Yuki called out with a voice that had no sound. No one answered. That was good. No meddling god or goddess to screw her up in this process. She turned her attention to the system window and noticed something else: there were a lot of messages there.

With hands that didn't exist, she scrolled up and up and up. The messages didn't seem to end. They were mostly the same message over and over again. Strange, was this the broken system trope? She could exploit that.

The translucent system window shimmered, and new lines appeared, this time in English.

Language sample detected.

Calibrating…

Yuki didn't need to wait for long. A god-blessed character sheet popped in front of her non-existent eyes. It had several tabs. She clicked the first, with fingers that weren't there.

Personal info.

Name: —.

Age: Locked.

Gender: N/A.

Race: Locked.

Troubling. Yuki had no name. Age and race were locked. She clicked on gender and set female. She liked gender bender like every sane person, but she didn't want to live the bender; she just liked to read the bender.

Yuki closed that and clicked the next session of her interface.

Attributes.

Points available: 84.

Strength (STR): Locked.

Constitution (CON): Locked.

Size (SIZ): Locked.

Dexterity (DEX): 0.

Intelligence (INT): 0.

Power (POW): 0.

Charisma (CHA): 0.

Seven different stats, the names self-explanatory, but she wasn't sure what Power did. She clicked the attribute in question, but nothing happened.

"Identify!" She called out, to no avail. "System, what power do?" She asked to no answer.

Unhelpful broken system trope. Yuki could deal with it. Would it turn out to be snarky with the log messages as well? She liked those. She hoped it would. After a moment, she added one point to int and sighed in relief when the undo symbol appeared next to the attribute. Good, she could play with her options without wasting the points.

Yuki added points to int. It capped at twenty. No matter how she tried, she couldn't add more. That was a shame. Twenty didn't seem enough for how smart she was. With no other choice, she did the same with the three remaining attributes, which left her with four points and nowhere else to add them. She confirmed the selection and moved to the next tab.

Abilities.

Heroic Trait: Reincarnation.

Heroic Title: Summoned Hero.

Trait: Locked.

Title: Locked.

Nothing here Yuki could change. She tried clicking. It was read-only information, but it shed light on the setting. Summoned hero. Was this a world with a Demon King? She would need to be careful here. A broken system and hero summoning usually meant the system was there to harvest the hero's soul after he completed the quest. Yikes, she would need to be really careful with this one.

Skills and Advanced Skills tab was grayed out, and impossible to access. Which was a shame; Yuki wanted to know what kind of skill the system used. She guessed it would have to wait. That left the last one. With trembling fingers, she clicked it.

Magic.

Tradition: N/A.

Skill: Locked.

Manipulation: Locked.

"Yes!" Yuki danced to music she couldn't hear. The magic part of her system wasn't locked. She clicked on tradition and saw a list of options.

Choose from:

-Sorcery.

-Theism.

-Mysticism.

-Animism.

-Elementalism.

Yuki glanced at the choices, but there was only one option for her. She wasn't sure what Mysticism and Animism were; at least the second one she thought was related to animating things, necromancy or golem, maybe? But Mysticism, she had no clue. Elementalism, she guessed, was the elements. Theism was faith and gods; she wanted no part in that. She clicked sorcery. Bubbly happiness moving in her core. The previous interface came back.

Magic.

Tradition: Sorcery.

Skill: Invocation.

Manipulation: Shaping.

Yuki didn't know what skill and manipulation were but decided it was the first thing she would learn after character creation. She confirmed the choices and a new tab appeared. Giddy energy started from her non-existent toes to the tip of her nose. The new tab read: Spells.

"YES!" She screamed in glee. Time to get those juicy spells! She clicked on the tab.

Choose 10.

With trembling hands, Yuki selected the list. It was long and with no descriptions whatsoever. How was she supposed to know what each spell did? She took a deep breath she didn't need and read the complete list. Her final selection was:

Contract Familiar.

Dominate.

Enchant.

Neutralise Magic.

Protective Ward.

Regenerate.

Sense.

Shapechange.

Spell Resistance.

Wrack.

Her reason was that she needed a healing spell, a dispel magic, some shield, a way to create magic items, etc. She mainly was guessing what those spells did based on the name, but she was happy with the choices. Content, she confirmed the list to see a different message.

Confirm selection?

Yes / No

This was it. Before her death, Yuki had dreamed of having magic, and going on a magical adventure. Days lost in books and fantasy worlds, wishing she was the protagonist, to brave dungeons, slay monsters, save princes or even better, seduce the princesses. Yuki wasn’t a hero, but if her adventure led her to save the world? All the better! One thing for certain, she was going to be the bestest sorceress this world had ever seen! She clicked yes, giddy anticipation for the start of her adventure.

Calibrating…

Error.

Insufficient Attribute points.

"What?" Yuki exclaimed. What was this about attributes? She even had four points she couldn't use.

Calibrating…

Calibrating…

Calibrating…

No matching template found.

Extending parameters.

Calibrating…

That didn't look good. Had she broken the system even more?

Solution found.

Setting race as per heroic reincarnation trait.

Distributing remaining attribute points.

Applying user-defined choices.

Calculating starting skills.

Selecting spawn point.

Setup finished.

That didn't sound good at all. What happened here? Why were her non-existent bones trembling?

Welcome traveler.

May you enjoy your third and last life.

Yuki yelled, but too late. Without ceremony, her consciousness faded, and she saw no more.

FatElf

Uff, I'm working on a rewrite for Twisted Machine released chapters, and have written two arcs for book 2. But the work there is taking a lot longer than I anticipated. Been wanting to write a system novel, which is more silly than serious. So here we have it. No real release schedule cause I'm still bogged down with the other rework.

 

Here is a discord link, if anyone wants to ask questions, chat, or just yell at me. https://discord.gg/pne3CaCUrX

 

For those who want to see, here is the full cover image.