203: The Cursed Gamer?

Master4thWall

Chapter 203: The Cursed Gamer?

—

He honestly thought that was the end of him.

But as it turned out, he didn't die.

He was neither awake, nor asleep, but he knew he was living.

Whether it was the Omniverse's Will, or Lady Luck pulling some last miracle, whatever it may be, he somehow managed to live.

Neji didn't know how long it had been, though. Just that he was in this… calm, tranquil, and peaceful state for a very very long time.

He was getting more and more worried though, as time passed. His girls were all in other universes, and time was different for each of them. He might have spent a month or even years in this state, but his girls on the other hand might have spent centuries (or seconds) in their place.

Luckily, before he could go crazy from all this anxiety, after an unknown period, he woke up suddenly, jumping from his lying spot.

There–

"Oh, you are up."

–He came face to face with a… girl.

"What's wrong?" She tilted her head at him.

Braided white hair, cosmic blue eyes similar to his, and two bright blue earrings. The girl looked a bit too similar to himself, like his sister- or twin, even.

[Image Here]

…Just who the hell?

"...Me from another timeline? Ah, God perhaps?" Neji answered her previous questions with his own. "No wait, are you that dude, the One beyond Omnipotence?"

"Well, no." The girl denied with her expression bland. "I am your System."

Neji immediately sighed. "Awww…"

But that reaction, the girl didn't seem to like it.

She frowned. "...Why do you sound so disappointed?"

"I mean compared to meeting the ripoff one above all, this is kinda… you know, less exciting?"

The System, as she proclaimed, furrowed her brows and pondered over his words. "That… Yes, indeed, certainly-"

"I am joking." Neji quickly stopped her before she could reach some weird conclusion. "How do you not have a sense of humour even though you have been with me for 16 years? Or more, if we count the duration of me being unconscious. I vote impostor."

"..."

The bit of doubt that Neji had about- if this was truly his System's personification or not vanished as he watched her silent reaction. She was always like this, since the start.

Ah, she. That's right, as his existence grew more refined, the system became more alive. So was it good to call her a she now? Neji didn't mind, of course, all Gamers deserved a system waifu.

"Hey, question," he was curious about something though. "Why a girl exactly? I mean it's always a girl when it comes to this. I would expect something else from you since, well, remember when you talked about how you don't have a gender?"

The girl went silent.

"Yet, of all things, now you chose to become a girl? Hmm, interesting choice."

"That…" it seems AIs could also get flustered. But then again, she surely wasn't an artificial intelligence, at least not at this point. She looked quite real to him. "That's beyond the point… You should be more worried about your situation at hand."

Though at least she was good at changing subjects, he will give her that. Because truly, he should be worried about his… surroundings.

It was dark. Unnaturally so. In fact, there was no light, no colour, no nothing around them. Only Neji and his female counter were present in this dark realm.

In this void. 

"This is the void?" 

"You catch on fast. Yes." The girl nodded. "The huge explosion made a wormhole, a gate to the void, and we just so happened to get sucked in at the moment. Though we are on a different part than the entrance you created while fighting the Goddess 153 years ago-"

"Wait, hold on for a moment." Neji grew anxious. "How many years?"

The girl gave him a reassuring nod at that. "153 years, but you don't have to worry about that. [Void] has less influence over reality depending on how deep you're within in, and in our case, we are quite very deep inside, maybe even the deepest part of it. At this part, time is nonexistent, not even a millisecond has passed in the true most place in reality, [Nowhere], the place where Primal Gods reside."

"Pheww, that's a relief." Neji sighed at the good news. "Though, wow, you know quite a lot of stuff, huh. Void, Nowhere, and so on."

"These data were mostly collected by my predecessor, the old system." The girl said. "I have yet to collect much since you have spent all your life in a single world."

Neji shrugged at her words before sitting in a more relaxed posture, listening to her attentively now that he knew time didn't matter. 

Though a part of her words caught his interest. "You mean you weren't with the previous gamer?" His question met with a shake of her head. "Damn. Count me surprised."

"You don't look surprised."

Neji chuckled at that. "I mean I can read the situation, you know. On the first day we met, you sounded like nothing but a Robot. Then, as I grew up, your voice changed. You started to sound like a child, then a teenager, then over the last year, you gained this slightly seductive tone in your voice that comes out of you without your will." As he said that, she flinched. But he continued. "You grew up with me,  hit adolescence with me. You changed with me. That's a long time for me to grasp the situation. If I had to guess- you are what, made from my subconscious mind?"

The girl, who was sitting relaxed before, looked slightly scared. "Uh, I never knew you knew… Um, about your last Question, you are kinda on spot."

Neji smiled. "Now you got me interested into this. So, hey, what's up with the Gamer System anyway? How does it work in its root?"

She tilted her head once, thinking for a moment before she started speaking. "Well, the Gamer Power turns its host into its core, its source. You are a self-sustaining being, unlike even many higher beings since a lot of them depend on an outside source."

"Uh-huh."

"But, even though you are your own source, you need a converter to channel this power in a rhythmic pattern that allows the use of skills and all the other gamer features. The converter is the System here, aka me. In short, I am the manager, you are the owner."

Neji listened to her carefully as she kept explaining.

As it turned out, the reason why the previous gamer and Neji didn't have the same 'System' was that the Systems would slowly form their own personalities, as this one did. In such scenarios, if the current Gamer were to die, the System might not serve the next one with its everything as it might be too attached to the old one.

It might even try to resurrect the old gamer within the new one, if things came down to it. Apparently, many System users across existence had faced similar scenarios with their AIs.

Though this kinda made Neji more pissed off over the Creator of the Gamer System, the OBOP.

After the previous gamer's death, if everything, even the System Ai, were to get reset, why did the restrictions not? 

Bunch of bullocks.

He will get back at whoever that omnipotent bastard is someday. Though he wouldn't vow to kill him or anything, in case that person was eavesdropping and got pissed at his thoughts.

At last, the girl explained how the "System" is created from a copy of the new Gamer's subconsciousness, at the same time receiving the old system's memories, as its personality is then modified in a way that'd be of most optimal to the Gamer.

"Damn, we are soulmates, created for one another." Neji was touched.

"...That's because we are made from the same soul."

"Don't be so technical." He ridiculed her lack of humour. "Wasn't Adam and Eve kinda similar? Speaking of which, as you know I have the Eyes of the Lord with me, which in a sense makes me Adam." He leaned over, grabbing her hands. " in that case, darling, would you like to be my Eve-"

"Please don't give me a nickname like that." The AI didn't seem amused. "It's overused."

"Aha, true, you got a point there." Neji nodded in understanding, backing off for now. "Though, now that you confessed your feelings, you do need a nickname. Calling you 'System' sounds weird after this talk." He pondered over his words for a minute before parking up. "Ah, I know. How about Sisty?"

Unlike how he expected, she didn't look unwilling at the offer. She rather tilted her head cutely.

"But that sounds too much like 'Sister', no?"

"I mean we are kinda like siblings, twins even." Neji shrugged. "We even look the same."

"..." After a second, she nodded, smiling sweetly. "Alright, it's decided then."

Neji leaned over, the sudden gesture making the girl flinch this time. Then he whispered in her ears, a casual warning. "Not to ruin the mood, but I am into incest, in case you forgot. Just a pre-warning because I don't want a redo of the Nejire arc."

"..."

This time, she did blush. Neji was satisfied with the result of his teasing, so he backed off.

"Now, about something more serious," Neji sat down, touching his head as he tried to feel his cat ears, but was unable to. He didn't have his ears, nor did he have his tail. "As I thought…"

Kurai wasn't silent in his mind, unlike he thought. She… she just wasn't there. It made sense, it had been 153 years after all. Of course, the Fusion had been cancelled by now. But… she wasn't beside him, why was that?

After how everything went wrong earlier, he had a bad feeling about this.

Fuck.

"About Kurai…" he trailed off, worried, as he looked at Sisty. 

Could it be that the Fusion somehow got cancelled at the last moment just before he ended up in the Void, and so Kurai was left in that burning place?

"Don't worry about her, she's safe. I just had to put her inside your inventory." To his relief, Sisty confirmed in a gentle tone and flashed him a hologram of Inventory.

He didn't know what he would do if Kurai perished because of him, even though he knew he had no control over the situation.

"After the fusion ended, she would have perished into nothingness in this void if I hadn't acted quickly."

While he was grateful for her quick judgement and help, her statement got Neji's interest.

"Wait, why am I not perishing then?" He wondered aloud. "I was thinking maybe Void isn't the same as what I read in fiction in my previous life. Since the last time I opened a gate to it, there were clearly ghostly creatures inside it. But now that you said that… I am curious, what is this place and why am I not disappearing?"

"The void in itself is a paradox." The girl answered immediately. "It is said that a void is 'filled' with 'emptiness'. Which is contradicting, as those words oppose each other. That's why no living being can stay alive in the void, because they can't withstand paradoxes. But you, master, are a Singular Being, who is immune to mere paradoxes."

"Ah, yes, I remember. But shouldn't Kurai be Singular too, she's a mini gamer, no?"

"She's your familiar and party member, yes, but no. She's yet to become singular, you… well you are special." Sisty explained, Neji assumed that must be because he was a true Gamer and not a party member. "Also, even if she were to be fine inside the void, I couldn't keep her here because in the last century and a half… something truly weird was happening to you."

That made Neji frown.

"Did you know, the Primordial God is a Voidborn? Meaning he's someone born within the Void, of the void, from the void."

"...No, I didn't know. But now I do."

That was ominous. Why did she suddenly change the subject? Was she implying that the Primordial God could come here, find him, and then butcher him?

"While dozens or so singular beings exist throughout the Omniverse, they can only 'withstand' paradoxes. On the other hand, all of the few existing Voidborn can manipulate and destroy these paradoxes." The girl explained as Neji tried to understand what she was implying. "In the entire existence of things, the Primordial is the oldest of all the other Voidborne, he's the first, the one born from the deepest part of the Void."

Neji frowned when she went silent. "Hey, I know he is strong and all, but you know this sounds like you are praising him rather than warning me about his power."

"That's because I am praising him."

"..."

"I guess it's better to say I am praising his powers? Yeah, that's more accurate." The girl smiled. "Master. Do you remember the details of- the Curse of the Primordial? The part where it explained how it's cast?"

"I think so, yes." Neji nodded. "The Primordial used a part of his Divine Soul to-"

Neji froze.

He was starting to see where she was going with this.

The Primordial's soul.

Suddenly, he had good hope for this conversation.

She smiled. "Good. Then do you remember the notification from your recent battle? Namely- ``A crack has formed on the curse’s defence`` -that one."

Neji was getting restless. "What are you trying to say, exactly?"

"Master," She leaned over, looking into his eyes. "The crack in the curse's defence allowed the Void around us to sense and recognise the soul that the curse was constituted of, the soul that belonged to the first Voidborn." She grinned at his face. "It was like a mother meeting her baby boy after a long long time, happy but in a twisted way. The Void tried to embrace the soul, but once it failed because of the curse being intertwined with it like a rainbow of colours, for the last century and a half, the Void peeled apart the curse. The curse resisted, but it ultimately got torn apart and finally embraced its mother."

"..."

Neji was silent, even as the truth sank in.

"You are really lucky, I must say." The girl, Sisty, sat back, smiling. "You should deeply thank that lucky Lady someday, master. She did her best, her absolute best to allow you a fraction of her power, when she pushed you away back then."

Neji thinned his lips, calling out for his status, but it didn't appear.

"Na-ah." It seemed the girl had… more to say. "After freeing the Primordial Soul, the Void and it embraced each other, like a river meeting the ocean. However, they didn't mix entirely, and the soul left an empty husk behind."

An empty husk it might be, but it was still the soul of the Voidborn… Neji could almost see the greed in his own eyes.

He also answered a question he had for a while. Why was a Prime Goddess, the daughter of the Primordial no less, so scared of the Void? When he created the gate to the void, his intention wasn't to scare her, it was just to make her movements wiggle so that he can use Wrap to use her own attack against her. But when he opened the Gate, she genuinely seemed frightened, scared even.

Now he knew the reason. The Void wasn't kind, it rather might have been more dangerous to her than other people, since she was the offspring of the Voidborn but didn't have any Void abilities, meaning she couldn't control her void bloodline, so she wouldn't have faced the same fate as her father's disconnected soul.

Sisty snapped her fingers and boxes of text formed in front of him.

"I tried my best, master, and managed to put the Gamer's dominion over the husk. Therefore turning it into, well, something useful I guess."

Useful…

She called this just useful?

[A secret class has emerged!]

[The Class, "True Voidmancer" has been created.]

[Would you accept the Class Change?]

[Y/N]

Neji clicked yes, immediately. However, cool-sounding it might be, but Void powers were too cliché for him to get overly excited over it. Neji was rather more joyous about… something else.

Something that left him feeling a sense of… freshness. The sense of getting a huge load off his shoulders.

```The Void peeled apart the curse-```

His curse was torn apart. The Curse of the Primordial was… not there anymore.

In other words—

"Ugh… this is unexpected." Neji was lost for words. "It's surreal."

He wasn't a Cursed Gamer anymore.

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~The Cursed Gamer - End of Volume 1~