[Traversed: seraph of the end, a certain magical index]
Looking at the translucent spirit bowing before him, Luke felt his materialistic worldview collapse.
He was originally an ordinary 2D-loving otaku artist whose looks could barely rival Yuu Otosaka's. Having just stayed up for two days to finish a manuscript, he thought he'd step out to throw away some trash before returning to submit his work and catch up on sleep.
On the way back, he noticed his shoelaces were loose, so he crouched down to tie them.
But who knew? As soon as he stood up, his hypoglycemia kicked in, his vision went black, and he leaned against a large tree nearby.
The most ridiculous part was that an unremarkable little patch of grass beneath him must have been fed some strange fertilizer.
It grew inexplicably fast and was as hard as iron, piercing right through his heart.
Immediately after, a bolt of lightning happened to strike the tree, electrocuting him until he was about eighty percent cooked.
There was a skewer and cooked meat; all that was missing was the seasoning.
Who was he supposed to complain to? Hogwarts Academy?
When he opened his eyes again, Luke was in this pure white space. Floating in mid-air before him was a young girl with no legs, appearing like a spirit.
From the moment he met her, the thing Luke heard most was'Sumimasen'—which sounded like an uma musume race.
After listening for a long time, he finally understood one thing.
He had been accidentally killed by this girl, who claimed to be the new Golden finger, when she used too much power while familiarizing herself with it.
"So, can I still come back to life?" Luke asked weakly.
Thinking about how he hadn't submitted his finished manuscript yet, Luke felt like ants were crawling in his heart.
The payment was secondary; it was mostly that he had worked so hard to draw it, but no one had appreciated or critiqued it yet, which made him feel uneasy everywhere.
What if the client thought he had ghosted them and posted his CN online to shame him... "I can't. Although your death was caused by my lack of proficiency with the Golden finger's power, the state of your death has already been discovered. Resurrecting you now would be very unscientific."
Luke's mouth twitched.
Was the way I died scientific at all... "But I will compensate you. I provide the following choices for you."
A light screen suddenly appeared before Luke, looking very high-tech, listing 'four' choices:
1. Choose any family in the Main World to be reincarnated into, retaining your memories.
2. Act as the Main Heavenly Dao Agent, possessing the ability to travel between Sub-worlds to experience the romance of human imagination.
3. Tired of it all, let it be destroyed... say goodbye to life.
4. Become a lonely wandering ghost, drifting through the world as a spirit that others cannot see or touch (you can also pervertedly peek at others, oh).
5. Choose one from the four above.
6. Choose one from the five above.
7... Luke looked at the information on the light screen in a daze. He really wanted to become a tsuukkomi alien right now to properly roast this so-called Golden finger.
If you can't think of anything, then don't. You listed hundreds of options, but in the end, only four are valid. It would have been better to just list four.
And of those four options, only the first two are serious. One of the others has you kick the bucket immediately, and the other makes you a ghost ignored by the whole world. None of them look like serious options.
Calming down, Luke raised a question.
"I want to ask, what exactly is this Sub-world? Is it the 'other world' as I understand it?"
"Pretty much, but there are some differences," the Golden finger replied very enthusiastically. "The world you lived in before is the Main World of this dimension. As long as the worlds imagined by beings in the Main World are recognized by a certain number of people, Sub-worlds will be created, existing as appendages to the Main World."
"And every world has its own Golden finger. I am the Golden finger of the Main World, and all Sub Heavenly Daos have to listen to me!"
Luke was somewhat incredulous: "You're actually that amazing!"
"Oh, stop it, even if you praise me like that... hehe, I'm just averagely amazing, hehehe..."
The Golden finger covered her face in embarrassment. "Speaking of which, I really do feel sorry for you. How about this: you can also make one small request of me that isn't too excessive. It can only be a very, very small request, oh."
Seeing her act like this, Luke suspected that this Golden finger might have once served as a doctor in a certain famous pirate crew.
"It's still very impressive. There are so many worlds imagined by humans, and you have the power to manage so many Heavenly Daos. Truly amazing."
Luke didn't praise people much, so he had no choice but to force it. Fortunately, this Golden finger seemed to really fall for it.
"Oh, just a little bit. You're making me blush; it's not as exaggerated as you say."
Seeing the Golden finger take the bait, Luke struck while the iron was hot: "Sigh, I have an eighty-year-old mother above and two kittens waiting to be fed below. What will they do without me?"
These words stirred the Golden finger's guilt again. Although she had just taken office, she still remembered the human suffering described to her by the previous Old Heavenly Dao.
The man before her must have gone through a lot, and in the end, he could only silently carry it all alone.
She remembered the Old Heavenly Dao seemed to have said something important before leaving, but she was dozing off at the time and didn't hear it clearly.
It seemed to be that humans are all paranoid; they insist on tasting dumplings (jiaozi).
She couldn't understand. With so many delicious foods for humans, why did they insist on tasting dumplings? That really was paranoid.
"I choose option two."
After a moment of thought, Luke made his decision.
After all, he had already experienced this Main World. In this era where if you don't grind, someone else will, he had nothing except for his handsome looks.
His only pride, his drawing skills, was now being impacted by AI.
He couldn't just wait to be kept by a rich lady. He had a stereotype of rich ladies: forty or fifty years old, curly hair, sunglasses, big gold chains, leopard-print bags, and big bellies.
Thinking of this, Luke couldn't help but shudder. He didn't want to be a tank driver.
Besides, based on what the Golden finger said, option two meant he could travel through different anime and novel worlds. Isn't that every otaku's lifelong dream!
"Alright, now you can make a request that doesn't violate any principles~"
The Golden finger was true to her word, though for some reason, the'small request' had turned into a 'request that doesn't violate principles.'
Seeing this, Luke had an idea and began another round of playing the victim and forced praise.
This combo caused the little Golden finger's intelligence to drop rapidly, as if her parents had given her an extra chromosome.
In the end, Luke obtained a small portion of the Main Golden finger's source, which turned into a small light screen floating before him.
He now possessed the authority of a Heavenly Dao Agent.
An agent themselves couldn't give orders to Sub Heavenly Daos, but Luke still managed to secure a small portion of management rights over them.
Luke looked at the dazzling array of icons on the light screen, his heart pounding with excitement.
On it were all kinds of novels, anime, manga, TV shows, and movies from the Main World.
As long as he wanted to go to a certain work, he only needed to operate the light screen to complete it.
This Golden finger source, which felt very much like a'system,' also made Luke feel curious.
Upon inquiry, he learned that this was something the previous Golden finger had created by mimicking the systems in human works because they thought it would be very cool!
Well, it was indeed very cool.
But compared to the Main Golden finger herself, this small piece of Golden finger source had no independent consciousness and would follow his instructions meticulously.
"Hmm... I'll call you Miku!"
Luke fiddled with the light screen for a while.
Worthy of being an artist, after messing around for a long time, he sculpted a virtual image for the source, adjusted the audio, and even added a few sets of costumes and skins.
If any other otaku were here, they would surely shout at this teal-colored twin-tailed image, "Holy crap! Hatsune..."
"And... done! Miku, bring up the information for the seraph of the end world."
"All information for the seraph of the end world has been retrieved." An ethereal electronic voice sounded, making Luke feel very satisfied.