Telos Karma Meta Gacha

[Third Person POV]

A young boy was asleep on his bed in a small one-story house. Though peacefully sleeping, he suddenly woke with a shocked look on his face. Suko Hajime looked around his room as if trying to confirm he was awake. As he sat in his bed he thought about the dream he had.

*Soulscape* [Hajime POV]

The surroundings were a void-like space. Aside from a white floor that appeared to stretch for infinity, everything was pitch black. Walking forward, I tried to see if there was anything to do in this void.

After walking for a while I realized I must be in a dream. How else would a place like this exist? With that thought I imagined a trampoline appearing in front of me. It might only keep me distracted for a few minutes, but it would be something to do.

Waiting for a few minutes I realized that nothing was going to appear. This probably wasn't a dream then, or if it was maybe a different kind of dream. I decided to keep walking, hoping to come across something.

I eventually just decided to lie down. If I was stuck in this endless stretch of nothingness then there was only so much I could walk before it was pointless. I don't know if this place has an edge or something and I'd rather not spend possible years trying to find out. If I am stuck in this place, then I might as well get used to it.

As I closed my eyes for a few seconds to process what was happening, I was startled when I felt a kick on the sole of his foot.

Opening my eyes, I see a young adult standing above me. The man waved his hand before speaking, "So this is where you were, I was looking around for quite a while."

"Who are you?"

"Well, it's kind of a long story." The stranger said. "If you want the short version I died, and appeared here."

"And the long version?"

"Get comfortable, this will take a while."

-----

The man explained who he was and what happened to him. His name was Carl Roberts, an American and former accountant.

He spent years working for the same company but was fine with it. He was getting paid a decent salary and spent it enjoying himself. He went on yearly vacations around the world, ate foods I'd only heard about, and even had a sports car. He also wasted quite a bit of his money on different media, but he seemed fine with it.

Eventually, he got to the part where he died. He was on the train heading to the city for a day out when two people started fighting next to the tracks. The people nearby tried to stop them, but one person, who was trying to hold one of the guys back was shoved away. That man bumped into Carl and sent him falling on the tracks just as the train arrived.

"Was it painful?"

"Surprisingly? Not at all. It was pretty instant considering the odds of surviving. Though if anything is more of a surprise it would be the fact that I'm here."

"Really?"

"Well, I didn't believe the afterlife existed anyway, so the fact I can remember my death is both fascinating and horrifying."

"So you were unaware of magic?"

"What"

He didn't know magic existed, which is kind of strange given his situation. Even more so with him being an atheist. He was extremely curious about the magic I knew, though I only had brief introductions to the knowledge. While my mother could use magic, I couldn't mostly since her magic was only granted to her because she was a woman.

"So is all magic sexist or is it a bloodline thing?"

"I think it's just a bloodline thing. Aunt Yasaka said mom was a Namanari, a female-only species of Yokai, so I would never have inherited it anyway."

When I finished talking the look on his face was strange. It was a mix of confusion, shock, some joy, even anger. Carl sat there in silence for several minutes, before taking a deep breath.

"So Hajime, I might have some news for you, and it might be either really good or horrifyingly bad."

"What?!"

"I said might!"

"What do you mean horrifyingly bad?!"

"That first depends on how you answer the questions I have."

I tried calming down, but the way he was acting was scary. I took a few deep breaths before nodding.

"First, is this Yasaka a blonde Kitsune?"

"Yes? How did you know? I thought you didn't know about the supernatural."

"Does she have a daughter named Kunou?"

"Yes."

"Shit."

"Language!"

"English."

-----

Carl took some time to think before he opened his mouth again.

"So there's good news and bad news. The good news is that I believe I know what will happen in your future."

"And the bad news?"

"It involves you possibly going through an existential crisis and dealing with said future.

Firstly how I know your future is that I saw it in an anime. With what you told me, I think you live in a different universe from my own, and in my universe, your world is just a story."

"Is that supposed to give me an existential crisis?"

"I mean, what else should? Your world is fake, at least from my perspective."

"And yet here I am."

"I guess so, huh."

"And the rest?"

"Right. Well for starters in your world God is dead."

That's for starters!

"What do you mean God is dead?!"

"During the Great War, alongside the original Satans, God perished sometime after sealing Ddraig and Albion into their sacred gears."

"Thanks for telling me," I said sarcastically. There was no way I could ever reveal this. I may not be a prodigy or something, but even I know that something that important was also likely a secret for people similarly important.

"I've only just started Hajime."

"It gets worse?"

"You have no idea. Although before I say anything else, how old is Kunou?"

"Almost 7, why?"

"Well, in under a decade, the entire supernatural world will be at war."

I'm starting to regret letting him talk now. "Explain."

"To start with, Rizevim, the son of Lucifer created a terrorist group, and Rizevim believes devils should try to cause as much chaos as possible.

There's a faction of humans with 3 of the 4 strongest Longinus who want to kill all supernatural beings.

Rizevim plans to unleash Trihexa, a being as strong as the dragon gods and sealed by God, and have it destroy everything.

Lastly, Rizevim learns of a universe of beings who can kill Great Red instantly and gives them the ability to arrive in your universe."

The more he said, the more I wish he didn't. Any singular bit of information in the hands of one of the factions would change politics everywhere. All of that? It might as well destroy the current order of things.

-----

After taking several minutes, counting to 100 many times over, and taking breaths deep enough to make me swell like a balloon, I was finally calm enough to continue talking.

"So if you know all of that, do you know how it ends? Or at least how to stop it?"

"Sort of. So the biggest problems you have would be the ExE gods. The first contact between universes is between the Red Dragon Emperor and a literal boob goddess. Talking about it would honestly make me sound insane if you didn't live in an ecchi anime world."

It couldn't be that bad.

"The Red Dragon Emperor is the main character and a massive pervert. By the time canon starts, he's peeking into women's locker rooms, and if not for being so important he would likely have been arrested. He's so important even his friends are allowed to stay despite being normal humans."

Or it could.

"Anyway he develops abilities that allow him to be more of a pervert like a spell to remove a woman's clothes and talk to their breasts. And touching or sucking on breasts increases his power by several times."

If I find out who made this world like this I will destroy them.

"His ability to talk to breasts lets him talk to the goddess. Rizevim finds out about this, learns about the ExE gods, and does whatever he can to get them to come."

(A/N That's what she said.)

"So you mean to tell me, that the survival of my world is in the hands of what should be a criminal."

"Yes and no. As I said, Rizevim learns of ExE because the Goddess of breasts talks to him through his boob-talk ability. There are many ways to deal with the problem, though they are all violent in some way.

In theory, if you kill him or somehow prevent him from learning of the supernatural, he can't create that ability, and the goddess will never be able to talk to him. However, if you know anything about the butterfly effect then you know the dangers of messing with the future. There's also the fact that as the main character, he's almost certain to win against the ExE gods, but I don't think you would want to take the risk."

"So I just have to kill him?"

"Maybe. As I said, the butterfly effect is a real thing. Someone else might develop the ability if he doesn't, it's impossible to say what would happen."

"What about the other threats you mentioned?"

"Sorry, but I can't help you there."

"Why not?"

"There is only so much that was mentioned in the manga that could be considered helpful. If there was an easy way to stop their plans they wouldn't have been threats to begin with. Oh, I remembered something. Rizevim attacks Asgard because a Valkyrie named Rossweisse researches Trihexa and ends up giving him information to unseal it.

Sorry if it's not much, but the story was focused on the Red Dragon Emperor. If it wasn't related to him then likely wasn't mentioned. The story focuses on devils, so they never really brought other factions up that much. Even the Yokai were only a small part of the story, and the whole story was set in Japan."

I honestly didn't know what to think after hearing all that. With less than a decade before the supernatural world descended into war, there was little I could do. I could tell Yasaka, but that would just put more pressure on her, and only assuming she believes me in the first place. I could try training to reach that level, but without Yokai magic my options are very limited.

There's physical training, but that would take years to reach a level where I could do something. I could try learning Senjutsu, but the time it would take to learn it is unknowable. For all I know it could take decades, and by then worrying about the future would be pointless. If I had a sacred gear then I might be able to do something, but Yasaka already tried sensing for them and couldn't find anything.

I could always join a devil's peerage, but there are too many problems with that. One of the biggest was that it took decades for some devils to reach even mid-class strength. With my supernatural heritage, it might be faster, but there are still more problems. There's finding a peerage that would help me get enough strength to do something, rather than use me or suppress me. Not to mention devil politics, which are known to be the most troublesome of all factions. Even the Greeks had better politics, and with their gods that was saying something.

Falling from my sitting position to my back, I thought about everything I knew, but each option I had would take too long or was unfeasible. Putting my hands over my face, I screamed into them, hoping it wasn't going to end like this.

__________

Author's Note:

Just to put this out there now, I took the concepts for the story from others specifically 'Meta Essence Gacha' and 'Immortality in DxD' (minor spoilers I guess, but this will be obvious within the next few chapters), and I do plan on putting my own spin on things.

Also, the main reason why I'm posting this story is part of my New Year's resolution. I've come up with lots of ideas, but it's either just a concept that I never write anything for or I start writing an outline, which I then stop doing to focus on the next idea. So I took one of the ideas I had, liked, and just started writing.

My resolution this year is to post at least one chapter a week, and hopefully continue until the end of the year. I might post more often than that, but since I procrastinate everything I don't know yet. This Author's Note is mostly for accountability to myself.

Happy 2025 everyone!