My name is Karna.
I was born on Earth. Nothing dramatic. No tragic backstory. Just a normal guy raised by two hardworking parents who ran a business. They gave me stability, freedom, and the space to figure myself out. I graduated, became self-employed, and honestly? Life was fine. Stable. Predictable.
Maybe too predictable.
Somewhere along the way, the noise started getting louder. Social media. Debates. People screaming about caste, religion, identity. First it was Hindu vs Muslim. Then it shifted. When educated youth started asking about jobs, infrastructure, real development—suddenly new divisions appeared. Sub-caste politics. New commissions. New labels. New reasons to fight.
I died in one of those riots.
Or at least… I thought I did.
Instead of darkness, I opened my eyes to a classroom.
Seventeen years old again. School uniform. That faded green board. Ceiling fans that made more noise than wind. Regression wasn't something I'd ever wished for. I wasn't miserable before. Just… directionless. I didn't hate my life. I just didn't know what I was building toward. Maybe that's why I worked twelve hours a day after quitting my job for business. Staying busy felt safer than asking what I actually wanted.
Ambition? I couldn't define it. I read fiction sometimes. Watched anime occasionally. Nothing obsessive. Nothing that screamed otaku.
I looked around the classroom.
Faces I once knew felt like strangers. I could remember some—Aryan, the guy everyone called "Monkey." Armaan by the window. Shivansh whispering to a boy with glasses whose name slipped through my mind like smoke. Nearly half the class had faded from memory.
We were on the top floor, same old habit—boys checking over the corridor railing, scouting for teachers like it was a tactical operation.
Then the air changed.
The sunlight dimmed without clouds. Sound thinned, like someone lowered the volume of reality. The classroom stretched—not physically, but perceptually, like depth had been added where there shouldn't be any.
And he appeared.
Not with thunder. Not with holy music. But the air feels heavy.
He introduced himself as a god who had already created, destroyed, rebuilt, and observed more civilizations than we could comprehend. Nothing surprised him anymore. Mortals entertained him for a while—but eventually, even worship gets repetitive.
So he decided to run an experiment.
He'd stolen people from multiple worlds. Not just from single country.Ours was just one batch.
We weren't chosen for virtue. Or potential.
We were chosen because we existed.
His game was simple.
We'd be thrown across multiple worlds—cultivation realms, power systems, hunter societies, war zones. Survive, adapt, evolve. Or fail and be cast into hell of eternal torture designed specifically to break whatever made you human.
The last one standing would inherit a outer God position.
An Outer God.
The rules dropped like patch notes from a toxic game dev. Except this wasn't a game.
"Karma is your reservoir," he droned, his voice echoing with the bored cadence of a CEO explaining a new KPI. "It's the total of every action from all your past lives. Good. Bad. Intentional. Accidental. That is your currency."
A translucent screen popped up in front of me or like everything...
Karna
Net Karma : Calculating…
My chest felt tight.My entire existence reduced to a balance sheet.
Rule 1: You can gain positive or negative karma. The system doesn't care about your ethics. It cares about results.
That wording hit. Results.
Save a kingdom? Points.
Burn it down and create a stronger one? Also points.
"Rule Two. Karma purchases rewards. Abilities. Bloodlines. Weapons. Statistical advantages."
You could literally buy better odds. That's a very special leverage.
"Rule Three. For this first selection only, you may choose your ability using current positive Karma. After this, all future acquisitions can be done using both positive and negative karma .."
This was the "seed round." The only time we had any agency over our build. If I messed this up, I was going into a hostile market with a failing product. Karna thought.
"Rule Four. You cannot stagnate. Complete your assigned objective and move forward. Attempt to remain in a world for comfort, and the System will eject you."
He rattled off the rest—the forced progression, the three lives, the infinite worlds—but Rule Five was the one that truly cracked the room.
Killing a participant grants ten times their total Karma. Plus ten percent of their unique ability.
The shift was subtle but terrifying. I saw Shivansh shift his weight, moving just six inches further away from the boy in glasses. Friendships that had lasted years in that school building were dissolving in real-time.
I'd seen this in business—partners who'd worked together for a decade turning on each other the moment a buyout offer hit the table. This was just that, but with blood.
"Rule Six. You possess three bodies—three lives. Each world will adapt your form."
"Rule Seven. Infinite worlds. Escalating difficulty. The game concludes when one remains—or when someone reaches the Outer God threshold."
"Rule Eight. To permanently eliminate a participant, you must kill them three times and devour their System."
The boy near the back—I think his name was Rohan, but I couldn't be sure anymore—whispered, "So we're starting clean?"