Ultimate Gacha System: Reborn As A Mob in My Favorite Game

Chapter 132: The Door

Klaus let out a slow breath through his nose.

’Right of conquest?’ he thought bitterly. ’What a load of bullshit... It doesn’t care about justice... It doesn’t care that Ryoki tortured a woman for centuries, or that he was a parasitic coward... It just cares who is left standing at the end of the bloodbath. The universe really is just a rigged game.’

Beneath the introductory text, a scrolling list of absolutely absurd, game-breaking skills populated the screen.

Klaus scanned the options with his jaw slightly dropping at the magnitude of power being offered to him.

This wasn’t choosing between a ten percent boost to sword damage or a slightly faster mana regeneration rate.

This was like a dead god offering him the keys to the universe on a silver platter.

He looked at the first major option.

[Aegis of the Fallen]

Description: Generates an impenetrable, autonomous shield of pure Soul Mana that automatically reacts to any hostile intent within a hundred-yard radius. The shield absorbs all incoming physical and magical damage, converting it into raw stamina for the host.

Klaus stared at the glowing blue text.

It was an auto-shield and the ultimate defensive crutch. If he took this, he would literally never have to dodge an attack again.

He could just stand in the middle of a battlefield, let armies wail on him, and sip a cup of coffee while their weapons shattered against an invisible wall.

It was the perfect skill for a coward... which he was though.

’I mean let me look at more options first to be honest, there must be something else there...’ Klaus thought, swiping his finger to scroll the massive blue menu down.

He looked at the next major option.

[Spiritual Domination]

Description: An active mini-domain skill. Allows the host to completely, forcefully rewrite the memories, loyalties, and foundational personalities of any mortal entity whose mana core is weaker than the host’s. Subjugated targets will experience unquestioning devotion to the Soul King.

Klaus felt a sudden spike of disgust coil in his stomach.

’Mind control?’ Klaus thought, Of course a self-righteous, arrogant prick like Ryoki would have a skill that literally let him rewrite people’s brains to make them loyal.

’Not that I hate it but it’ll just make my life blander at this point, besides at this point, I’m still a Wizard Apprentice, a Second class one for crying out loud... there are a lot of people stronger than me...’

It also reminded Klaus of every single trashy novel he used to read back on Earth.

The ones where the protagonist got off on enslaving everyone around them, building a brainwashed harem of hollow flesh puppets who just nodded and smiled at whatever stupid thing the main character said.

’Fuck that,’ Klaus thought.

He hated that trope.

What was the point of having companions if they didn’t have the free will to tell you when you were being an idiot?

What was the point of loyalty if it was programmed by a prompt? He looked at Mirela and Anya standing beside him.

Their loyalty was there... It came from the different experiences that they shared together... that was what made it real.

He would rather die like a dog in the dirt than turn the people around him into brainless obedient lapdogs.

He violently swiped the menu down again, instantly dismissing the skill.

He kept reading.

’Oh this is the skill that Bastard used on me...’ Klaus thought.

[Necrotic Wave]

Description: Unleashes a tidal wave of absolute decay. Instantly dissolves all biological matter and magical constructs within a designated radius. The scale of the wave is directly tied to the host’s mana output.

Klaus remembered that one naturally.

It was the exact same devastating flesh-melting area-of-effect spell that Ryoki had used to destroy the obsidian arena floor during their fight.

It was a literal nuke.

If he took this, he could wipe out entire armies with a wave of his hand.

’This honestly isn’t a bad choice!’ Klaus thought, he could become a walking weapon of mass destruction.

Nobody would ever dare to cross him and he could level mountains probably but it was quite messy.

’Is this what happens to everyone who gets this class?’ Klaus wondered. ’The world just throws god-tier sociopath abilities at you until you eventually lose your humanity? Regardless, I think this one isn’t too bad... I want to see more options.’

He pushed this one to the side.’

Klaus kept scrolling, dismissing option after option.

He just wanted something practical and something that didn’t make him feel like a piece of shit.

As Klaus scrolled further down the massive list, nearing the very end of the registry, his glowing silver eyes suddenly locked onto a specific entry.

’Ryoki’s domain isn’t even here... The hell...’

The text for this skill wasn’t glowing white like the others.

It was pulsing with an incredibly ominous silver aura that seemed to actively draw the blue light away from the rest of the tab.

It didn’t sound like a combat spell... It didn’t sound like a defensive buff and it most certainly didn’t sound like a crowd-control mechanic.

[Soul Configuration]

Description: The ultimate manipulation of the inner domain. Allows the host to bypass the standard linear progression of spiritual integration. Grants the authority to forcefully alter, edit, and reconstruct the very architecture of harvested souls, granting them physical density and independent manifestation within the waking world. Warning: Extremely high mana cost as utilization of this skill requires mastery over the soul.

Klaus stopped scrolling as he stared at the pulsing silver text.

His mind instantly flashed to Valeria.

He thought about the tiny, bratty, Chibi Crimson Sharpshooter residing in the dark confines of his chest.

’Is it possible to reconstruct her soul into a body or something like that?’

He thought about the roaring, crackling Lightning Spirit.

The chaotic elemental that had saved his life against Ryoki’s necrotic wave... It was an entity of pure energy, reduced to acting as a glorified pacemaker inside his ribs.

’Sure I pissed that dipshit off but it wouldn’t mind having a small body, right?

Right now, they were nothing but ghosts.

They were prisoners bound to his core, only able to manifest when he poured quite an amount of energy into their spectral forms.

They were basically highly advanced summons.

But with this skill...

Klaus’s breath hitched. He read the description again, analyzing the specific phrasing.

Granting them physical density and independent manifestation...

He wouldn’t just be summoning ghosts anymore.

He wouldn’t just be temporarily giving them enough density to fire a phantom gun before recalling them.

He would be a literal architect of life.

If he took this skill, he could rip the souls he had harvested entirely out of his inner domain.

He could use his own acquired divine mana to build them entirely new permanent physical bodies.

He could pull Valeria out of the dark and give her a real body, real lungs and a real life so she could help him out more.

He could give the Lightning Spirit a physical vessel to inhabit.

He could take the hundreds of trapped souls rotting inside his chest... the bandits, the guards, the monsters and instead of treating them like a disposable meat-grinder, he could reconstruct them.

He could forge an actual army of elite warriors that walked the earth beside him in broad daylight.

It was resurrection.

It was taking the worst darkest part of his class... the fact that he fed on the dead and flipping it entirely on its head.

’Fucking hell...’

It was the ultimate undisputed power of a true King.

Klaus didn’t hesitate. He didn’t look back up at the auto-shield or the nuke.

He didn’t care about the warning regarding the extremely high mana cost as he had a god’s battery flowing through his veins now.

He could afford the price.

...Probably.

Klaus reached his right hand out.

His calloused index finger pressed directly against the pulsing ominous silver text of [Soul Configuration].

The mental confirmation clicked into place. He accepted the terms.

CHIME!

The sound wasn’t a standard high-pitched digital notification neither was it the cheap ding of a level-up screen.

It was a massive and deafening toll of an ancient cosmic bell.

The sound was so heavy that it seemed to vibrate directly through the very marrow of his bones.

It felt like the entire universe had just stamped a seal of approval on his soul.

The brilliant blue system tab violently shattered into a million fragments of digital light, dissolving into the air.

The radiant blinding white light illuminating the runes of the Endless Tower completely vanished, plunging the massive ground floor back into darkness.

In the exact fraction of a second the chime ended, Klaus’s entire vision and the world around him went pitch black.

...

"Ugh, I seriously have to stop pressing glowing system buttons without reading the fine print."

Klaus groaned internally as his consciousness drifted through the absolute suffocating pitch-black.

He was exhausted.

His physical body had completely shut down the exact second he confirmed the selection for the [Soul Configuration] skill and the massive blue system tab had shattered, the radiant light illuminating the Endless Tower had died, and he had simply dropped.

He had expected to just pass out.

A nice dreamless comatose state while he figured out what was going on... but sleep was always a gamble.

Sometimes it was just a blank screen, and sometimes it was so bad you wished you had never closed your eyes in the first place.

This was quickly turning into the second kind.

’Of all the things my brain could conjure up after beating a god, why this?’ he thought bitterly, floating in the dark.

The darkness around him wasn’t just an absence of light.

It felt viscous, like he was submerged in a tank of freezing motor oil. He couldn’t move his arms or legs, mostly because he didn’t currently have them.

He was just a exposed point of awareness suspended in a void.

Who had it the worst in any of these fantasy worlds?

Some would say the regular mortals, the NPCs who lived their lives completely unaware of the absolute monsters fighting wars in the shadows.

Others would say the side characters who showed up just to get slaughtered to prove how dangerous the villain was but Klaus had a different answer right now.

It was the guy who finally managed to win the rigged game, only to realize the world wasn’t done screwing with him yet.

"Ah, for fuck’s sake," Klaus’s consciousness complained. "I can barely stay sane as it is after busting my ass in that snowy hellscape, fighting a centuries-old parasite, and getting stabbed through the shoulder. And now, on top of all that, I have to deal with whatever absolute horror the skill decides to throw at my subconscious? That really is the cherry on top."

He tried to force himself to wake up.

His head was foggy, and his thoughts felt like they were moving through thick mud.

The mana cost of acquiring that new skill must have completely drained whatever reserves the integration had given him.

That was when he saw it.

A small, single flicker of light appeared in the absolute center of the darkness.

It wasn’t a comforting light... It was a tiny erratic ember of pure blinding white energy.

’It’s not Soul Mana?’ Klaus thought.

He watched it with his nonexistent eyebrows raising.

Every single combat instinct he had right now screamed at him to run, to get as far away from that tiny spark as possible but before he could even attempt to pull his awareness backward, the spark detonated.

It erupted into a massive roaring wildfire.

The flames weren’t red or orange... They were a blinding pure white...

The scale of the inferno was incomprehensible.

It stretched out for millions of miles in every direction, completely incinerating the thick viscous darkness that had been suffocating him.

The heat hit him a second later.

It felt like someone had shoved his soul directly into a blast furnace.

It wasn’t simply the burning flesh but rather it was burning his sense of self.

The roaring of the flames was deafening, sounding like the overlapping screams of a billion different voices whispering ancient secrets.

"What the fuck?" Klaus went stiff. "Did I accidentally trigger a self-destruct sequence or something?"

The second the thought crossed his mind, the apocalyptic wall of white fire slowly began to part.

It pulled back on both sides, creating a long narrow perfectly straight path through the inferno.

At the very end of that path, standing entirely alone in the blinding light, was a door.