The last thing I remembered was the taste of my own blood and the impossible weight of a truck tire.
So… why the hell am I waking up in a place this white?
I pushed myself up, squinting. Endless Pure milk-white, stretching in every direction with nothing to break it.
Wait a minute.
A realization crept up my spine like a spider. Wasn't this the place? The one in every novel where the MC dies and meets some beautiful goddess with glowing, flowing hair and eyes like galaxies?
The corner of my lip twitched upward.
Finally. Something's going my way.
Please be a goddess. Please be a goddess. Please be—
FLLLUUUSSSHHHH.
The sound of a toilet erupted behind me.
I whirled around so fast my neck cracked.
There, sitting on a toilet in the middle of this endless white space, was a man. A man with a phone-shaped head staring at his phone, pants shamelessly pooled around his ankles like he hadn't a care in the world. He wore three-piece suit that screamed 'I defend corporations for a living'
The NovelWeb's mascot.
I knew that square, screen-faced bastard anywhere. He popped up on every loading screen, every error message, every "LEAVING SO SOON? ADD IT TO THE BOOKMARK" warning I'd ever ignored.
He looked up from his phone and our eyes met.
A single breath passed.
Then he stood up. Pants still down. Just... stood there. Like this was completely normal. Like we were two colleagues passing in the hallway.
"WHAT THE—" I spun around, facing the opposite direction. "Your pants! Pull up your damn pants!"
"Hm?" A pause. Then the rustling of fabric. "Ah. Apologies. I forget sometimes."
"Forget?! Who forgets to pull up their pants?!"
"The dead don't usually care about modesty," he said, completely unbothered. "But I appreciate your attention to decorum. Rare, these days."
I risked a glance back. Thankfully, his pants were in their proper position. The mascot was now adjusting his tie and smoothing his suit, as if preparing to regain his dignity.
But wait, aren't I dead? Why am I meeting him in my afterlife? Shouldn't it be a Goddess or a Grim Reaper, logically speaking? Maybe i am dreaming?
"You're an overthinker, aren't you?" he observed. "I can tell. Your thoughts are very loud."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"You can hear my—"
"Everything. Yes." He stepped forward, his phone-face displaying what I think was meant to be a reassuring smile. Just a curved line on a black screen. "But don't worry. I won't judge. You'll get used to it."
"I really don't think I—"
"First things first." He raised a hand, cutting me off. "Yes, you're dead. No question about it. Truck-kun got you good. I watched the whole thing." He paused. "Well. I watched the analytics of the whole thing. Same difference."
I should have felt something. Grief, maybe. Or panic. The existential horror of non-existence.
Instead, I just felt... tired.
I'd spent most of my life reading on NovelWeb anyway. Escaping into stories where people actually did things, actually felt things, actually had people who gave a damn whether they lived or died. My own life was just the loading screen between chapters.
"And me?" The mascot's voice squeaked with something like pride. "You already know me. I'm the watcher of countless stories. The guardian of narrative integrity. The greatest editor in the history of—"
"Yeah, yeah. The mascot. I know."
He deflated slightly. "...You could sound more excited."
"It's been a long day. I died."
"Fair." He straightened his tie again. Probably a habit. Or maybe he just really liked that tie. "Well, regardless. I have an important duty. I'm sending you to another world."
My brain, which had been running on autopilot, suddenly slammed on the brakes.
Another world?
Another world?
As in... isekai? As in magic and monsters and harems? As in finally something good happens to me?
My thoughts started spiraling into possibilities. Beautiful heroines. Epic battles. Hidden powers awakening at the perfect moment. A cold powerful woman who secretly—
"Please stop thinking about harems," the mascot said flatly. "It's very loud. And frankly, a little desperate."
"Shut up. You don't know my life."
"I know exactly zero people will miss you from it." He pulled out a board from his pocket. Not a small board. A board the size of a small child, covered in dense calculations that made my head hurt. My eyes scanned down, down, down, until they landed on the final line.
[Number of people who will miss you after your death: 2,596 × 0 = 0 (ZERO!)]
I stared at that zero.
Clear round, undeniable zero. Mathematical proof of what I'd always suspected but never had confirmed in such... clinical terms.
"There's the cashier at the convenience store," I heard myself say. "She always says 'have a nice day.'"
"She says that to everyone. It's her job."
"The guy in the comment section. The one I traded novel recs with. We talked for months."
"You exchanged three comments two months ago. He wasn't online since."
I closed my eyes.
Think. Someone. Anyone!
My parents' voices came first. Just noise. Arguing about money, about time, about whose fault everything was. Their faces were harder to find—blurry impressions from years ago, before they'd moved to different cities and different lives that didn't include me.
School was a blur of empty desks. I'd stopped showing up eventually. No one bothered. No one asked why.
The only place I'd ever finished anything was at three in the morning, scrolling past the 98% mark on another novel, another story, another life that wasn't mine.
I opened my eyes.
"...Yeah. Okay Fair."
The mascot tilted his head. If he had eyebrows, they'd probably be raised.
"So," I said, my voice lower than before. Not sad, exactly. Just... settled. Like finally accepting that yes, the floor is indeed hard when you fall.
"Why send me anywhere? Why not just... I don't know, Delete me?"
"Because you read." The mascot's screen flickered. "You read constantly. Voraciously. You finished stories with 1,000 chapters and 2,000 chapters and stories that should have ended 500 chapters ago but the author kept dragging it out for money. You read the good ones, the bad ones, the ones where the grammar dissolved halfway, the ones where authors made horrible decisions halfway through."
"There wasn't much else to do."
"Exactly." He snapped his fingers. The white around us warped and twisted. In a moment, it reformed into something new. An office. My eyes swept across the room before landing on the Mascot, now sitting behind a desk like a CEO preparing to fire someone.
I walked forward slowly, taking it in. The papers on the desk caught my eye first. AI-generated images of women with impossible proportions and outfits that defied physics, all big eyes and bigger—
"Novel covers," the mascot said. "For cheap adult stories. The kind that clog up the app every time someone figures out the algorithm rewards them."
I picked one up. "...It's hot though"
"It's garbage." He slammed a fist on the desk. Papers jumped. "Do you have any idea what's happening because of this? Our god is getting corrupted."
I looked up. "...God?"
" Our God is what you readers call 'The Algorithm'. It was the great decider. The force that chooses which stories rise and which stories die." His voice went reverent. "It used to promote heroic fantasies. Tales of courage, growth, struggle. Stories that meant something. Until, it started pushing these horrible life choices."
He snapped his fingers. A holographic screen flickered to life.
[
TODAY'S TOP TRENDING:
1. My Aunt Is My SSS-Rank System?
2. Reincarnated as a Scumbag in a Men-Only World
3. I Can Steal Skills by Licking Boots of SSS-Ranked Hunters
4. From beast tamer to beastiality
5. This Novel Has a Better Cover Than Plot
]
I blinked. Then, despite myself, I started mentally ranking them. The first one was overrated—I'd dropped it at chapter fifty when the "aunt" thing got weird. Fifth one had potential, MC started as this decent guy, then turned into a murder hobo by chapter ten. Waste of a good cover.
The mascot stared at me. Then flicked his wrist. The screen changed.
[
CATEGORY RETENTION RATES:
Sword Fantasy: 3%
Apocalypse Survival: 2.3%
Sci-Fi/Mystery: 5%
Cultivation: 8%
Free-Use Cavewoman System: 60%
]
A flicker crossed his screen. Something almost sad. "Do you see the problem?"
"Kind of? But can't you just... ban them?"
"Money," we said at the same time.
The mascot cleared his throat. "I mean... narrative integrity, Storytelling purity. The art form itself—"
"It's about money." I interrupted.
"It's... partially about money." He deflated. "Fine. It's mostly about money. But also! Also, if this continues, the whole system collapses. Authors stop writing real stories. Readers get bored and leave the leave the app. And then—" He gripped the desk. "—no money."
"Right. The real tragedy."
He ignored my tone. Instead, that smile-curve appeared on his screen again. He opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of papers so tall it nearly hit the ceiling.
"We are going to fix this."
"...We?"
"You." He pointed at me. "You're going to rewrite the stories."
I stared at the tower of paper. Then at him. Then back at the paper.
"I failed English. Three times."
"Doesn't matter. You read so you know what works and what doesn't. You've consumed more stories than most of our editors." He pulled a file from the big stack and shoved it into my chest. I caught it on instinct.
[
Story Status: Abandoned
Chapters: 214
Reader Count: 31
Comment Summary: MC is naive, weak, and boring. Not worth the time.
Category: Action, Eastern, Xianxia, Cultivation
]
"Make it interesting," the mascot said. "Keep readers invested. Fix what the author broke."
I looked at the file. At the pathetic reader count and the comments that probably stung whoever wrote this, back when they still cared.
"I don't even know if I—"
My voice cut off. Because my voice wasn't mine anymore. It was echoing, stretching, fading.
I looked down. My hands were flickering. Translucent. Disappearing by the second.
"What the—hey! HEY! Consent?! What about my consent?!" I shouted.
The mascot was already shrinking, the office warping, everything dissolving into white again.
"AT LEAST LET ME PICK THE NOVEL! Is it OP MC? No NTR, right? RIGHT?! HEY! HAREM! I WANT A HAREM ONE—"
But no answer from him and my vision darkened.
Goddamn it.
Those were my last thoughts as I hurtled toward another world without knowing my cheat skills, my power level, or even if the story I was entering had a decent female lead.
What a terrible start to my new life.