It was a nameless world. It was completely ravaged by racial wars. Fifteen races created by fifteen gods competed with each other to determine who would be the one true god to rule the world. The war had been longer than anyone, except the gods themselves, could remember. A war locked in a brutal stalemate that had lasted for thousands of years.
Magic flew through the horizon; giant explosions destroyed forests and dried up rivers. Nobody has seen a hint of sun for centuries, and only ash covered the entire parliament. No one knew the blue of the sky and the green of the trees at this point.
In that apocalyptic world headed straight for disaster, there existed a sixteenth race, a weak race that had no choice but to hide in caves from the disaster outside. No one knew its origin or how it was possible for such a weak race, incapable of using even a hint of magic, to have survived for so long. The important thing is that this race will be the protagonists of a story that would change the future of this nameless world forever...
Not that it's important right now.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
That was my maniacal laugh after clipping my third Dhampir's wings today.
I don't even know why I bothered recounting all of that in such a dramatic way. I'm not part of Immanity, I don't miss my old, peaceful, blue-and-green world at all, and I definitely couldn't care less about this world's future.
"Die, you sons of bitches!"
I just came here to enjoy myself.
When did this and my adventure begin? It wasn't that long ago, actually. At least from my human perspective, or at least from a meta-human perspective, and not in the superpowered sense.
My name was… It's not important. Just that I was a girl diagnosed with what I like to call "unnatural addiction to adrenaline." Curiously, though, it didn't start the way most people imagine. According to my mother, even as a baby, I was so still that doctors seriously believed I was dead. I was born without crying at all and was always calm, even as a child.
That changed in preschool. A boy I don't remember, for reasons I don't remember, challenged me to a fight. I may not remember the circumstances, but the pain in my face as I took a punch? The satisfaction of punching back? The blood dripping from my knuckles as they met his teeth?
For the first time I felt it; I knew it; that was life.
Of course, we were both punished by the situation, and on the surface I looked the same afterward, but I could never forget that feeling.
I tried to pick more fights, but I quickly realized that only got me into more trouble. More trouble equaled punishment, punishment equaled isolation, isolation equaled no fighting, and no fighting equaled no life. So I tried to adapt. I looked for happiness in other things. If it was competition, the sheer knowledge that I was better than everyone else that gave me life back then meant I just had to be better than everyone else at other things. That thinking gave rise to an intense competitive obsession.
I started challenging kids my age in everything they were good at. I challenged the fastest to running, the strongest to arm wrestling, the smallest to hide-and-seek, and the smartest to get better grades. I didn't always win, but my pursuit of happiness came with something else:
Obsession.
If I wasn't the fastest? I'd run and run until I outran the fastest. If I wasn't the stealthiest, I'd practice and practice until my feet bled; if I wasn't the smartest, I'd study and study until my eyelids burned.
The feeling of losing, learning, improving, and overcoming was incredible. It was an astonishing feeling to improve every day, to push my limits further every day, and to be the beacon of fear and envy of everyone thanks to my sheer determination.
I continued through elementary school, middle school, high school, and college following this path. Always at the top of the school list, the best in every sport, a seemingly perfect person, capable of doing anything, and yet… I never felt the same way I felt during that first fight again.
Martial arts were a good imitation, an outlet I pursued for a while, trying to imitate even a tiny fraction of the excitement of a real fight. I failed.
The more time passed, the more I realized that even that sense of wonder at getting better every day paled in comparison to a real fight. The same was true of the approval of everyone around me. I had no friends—not real ones, just followers. I tried to get a lover, or two, or three, or four, but I never felt any real attachment, and I think they felt the same because relationships never lasted long enough. Though I must admit, if there was anything like a fight, it was sex. Not only did it feel good, but the competition between the two participants to see who could make the other feel better was exquisite. Of course, I got incredibly good at it, too.
My parents were proud of me, but that stopped mattering a long time ago, so I made up my mind.
This had to change.
Once I started college, I moved out of my parents' house. I had a ridiculous amount of money after working an almost equally ridiculous amount of online jobs. I didn't even need college at that point, but I appreciated the competitive environment.
Once in my new apartment, I continued my classes as usual during the day, but at night? There I found my second home, an underground fighting ring. Two people on a small stage, ready to beat the shit out of each other while showing off in front of a crowd throwing money at them? Yeah, the only thing I regretted about that time was not thinking about it sooner.
Feeling that same sensation from years ago again was indescribable. Even as my opponent's fist was about to rip my stomach out through my throat, I knew: this is where I belong.
The blood, the saliva, the pain, the defeat, the victory, the revenge, the rivalries, the friendships, the glory—it was all I wanted and more.
Fight after fight, loss after loss, draw after draw, win after win. That was my routine for three long years. My grades dropped, I started skipping sports practices, I pushed away my usual lovers, and the incredible amount of clothing needed to cover the bruises only grew and grew. My parents were worried, the teachers were worried, and I was even reported for drug use once, but I didn't care.
Everything I was looking for was in that ring… Until it wasn't.
Don't get me wrong, the fights were awesome. I still enjoyed beating the shit out of any idiot in my path. I didn't give a damn about my parents, my grades, the police, or anything. However, I felt like something was missing.
Each time, my body and mind became better adapted to fighting. All those years of martial arts finally took on a homogeneous, combined form that eliminated unnecessary elements while turning me into an efficient fighting machine. And as always, I got better. Draws became rarer, losses became increasingly nonexistent, and victories began to rain down. At first, it was great, but little by little, the same pattern that had occurred throughout my life returned once again.
I was pushed further away from the group, with fewer challengers, fewer brave players, and fewer people betting against me. My victory wasn't a mystery; it was a certainty, and although it lasted longer than the other things that I practiced, even the fights began to look gray as my opponents could barely touch me.
I was missing something.
My body, my soul, was demanding more, and one day I decided to follow my instincts. It was a fight like any other: another opponent almost twice my size, with massive muscles and a confident smile. Probably someone new to the scene, because of the pitying looks coming from the crowd.
A quick dodge under his right hook, a strike to his knee using my heel, and a strike with my left palm to his exposed windpipe.
With that, normally I would have ended the fight right there, but… I continued. A punch to his ear, a kick to his midriff, another kick to the head inches from the hundredth mark.
The man fell to the ground… I didn't care.
I leapt on top of him and began punching him in the face like a possessed soul. I paid no attention to the gathering crowd, the arms trying to stop me, the screams as blood stained the stage, or even the blow to my head that finally shut down my consciousness. No, I focused only on the ecstasy of finding that last missing piece.
When I woke up, I was in jail.
The man I punched wasn't in the hospital; he was dead. The heat that reputation would bring to the fight club was too much for the owners, so they decided to use me as a scapegoat. I was lucky that they just didn't kill me right there, to be honest.
My parents were saddened by my situation, but I ignored them, my mind still admiring the complete puzzle that was my own psyche.
Before I knew it, I was in prison.
I followed the prison routine without a problem. My body was on autopilot, basically doing whatever I was told at the time. I barely remember it, but I'm pretty sure I had sex more than once during that time, but I didn't mind.
It was during a brutal, out-of-control fight in the prison cafeteria that everything finally clicked.
I slowly rose from my seat in the cafeteria, to the surprise of those who knew me as a broken doll. I grabbed the tray in front of me and, before anyone could react, slammed it with all my might against the throat of the inmate next to me.
He fell like a puppet without strings.
Silence fell over the room. Everyone stared, stunned by how the conflict had suddenly escalated.
I laughed, I giggled, and I sobbed with happiness.
Finally, I felt like everything was complete, and I was, officially, a new me.
The fight only escalated from there, and I welcomed the ensuing chaos. The other inmate's friends ganged up on me; their movements were open, undisciplined, and inefficient. I punished them harshly.
His friends came to avenge the other friends, friends who brought more friends, with more friends.
Before I knew it, I was running all over the cafeteria, dodging arms, keystrokes, shoves, and kicks. I used the tables to gain an advantage over the inmates on the floor and constantly moved to avoid being surrounded. All while dealing my own blows with my tray.
At one point, I stole a knife, and blood started to rain down all over the place. The initially angry or smug looks began to change at that moment. Just as I connected my martial arts classes with real fights in the ring, I quickly connected all my fencing classes with this knife thanks to that experience.
I severed connections in hands, fingers, elbows, armpits, and shoulders. Each slash of my knife rendered a body part useless, and many of the local men and women, unaccustomed to pain, fell like dominoes.
Cut, run, dodge, jump, kick, cut, run, dodge, jump, kick, cut, run, dodge, jump, kick, cut, run, dodge, jump, kick, cut, run, dodge, jump, kick, cut…
Two loud sounds burst my eardrums as I moved on to the next person; I ignored it.
I didn't know where I was in relation to everyone else; I just knew I had to keep going. I had to keep going. And I didn't know how long I did that until at some point my knife couldn't reach anyone.
The lack of resistance stopped me, and I finally managed to look around.
All the inmates surrounded me in a large circle. Many of them had cuts all over them, and their faces were frightened, angry, or malicious, but no one moved from their spot as they continued to stare at me from their position in the surrounding circle.
My gaze fell on the ground, in the center of the circle where I was, and there I better understood what had happened. Two men were bleeding to death on the ground, their caps and blue uniforms betraying the identity of these two individuals: they were police officers or security guards.
And those two sounds from before…
I looked down; two bullet holes filled my uniform with blood like a red waterfall.
The taste of iron began to appear in my mouth; I knew what was happening.
I was dying.
I wished at that moment I'd died a slow death while reflecting on my life in a pool of blood, but the truth is my body had long been predisposed to fainting, and I was only holding steady through sheer willpower. Was I going to miss my moment of inevitable self-realization? I barely managed to close my eyes before falling face first into a pool of my own blood next to the police officers from earlier.
My last thoughts were…
I wish I had realized it sooner.
That should have been the end of my story, but it wasn't.
I "woke up" in a black place; there was no sense of depth or distance in this void. I didn't even know how I was standing in something like that, or if I was standing in the first place. I couldn't see my body at all, but I was unable to tell if that was due to the lack of light or the lack of a body to see in the first place.
Luckily, this suffocating emptiness didn't last long, when what appeared to be a completely visible screen, but for some reason incapable of emitting any external light, appeared in front of me. The way the light didn't seem to affect anything in the room, except for the screen itself, made it seem more like an illusion than a real, physical object.
On the screen was a website I recognized, Waifu Catalog.
During my time of constant self-improvement, I didn't just focus on normal things like sports or studies. Immersing myself in the online world in search of challenges was also normal. For a time during high school, I played a lot of competitive games and even managed to get recruited for a few teams, but I turned them down. One day, while playing a game, someone challenged me to a geeky quiz.
I never turn down a challenge.
I consumed everything I could find: anime, manga, manhua, comics, light novels, web novels, movies, series, everything.
Of course, I managed to win the quiz.
As I delved into that world, I searched forums for more information, so to speak, "underground," and one of the things I stumbled upon was the Waifu Catalog. You could say the Waifu Catalog is a sort of survey where you form the basis for your own fantasy story. The main mechanic is capturing, buying, and selling fictional characters to acquire more characters or to help you on your adventure. The concept was interesting, so I tried it a few times; however, the lack of challenge made me give up after a while, and now there I was, dead, in an empty place with an old website from the past, seemingly ready to give me a new lease on life.
I didn't think twice. Whether it was an opportunity from the devil, God, or whatever, I would make the most of it.
However… Everything was already done!
I couldn't change a single thing; the build was already completely finished. I started reviewing everything, and... it wasn't bad.
The world was No Game No Life before it became a casino planet. It wasn't bad—a world at war is exactly what I wanted—but honestly, I would have chosen a world with a danger level of ten instead of just nine. Maybe War Hammer?
The intensity, on the other hand, is pretty much right up my alley. I especially appreciate the No Skill Framework; I don't want fighting knowledge pumped into my head, thank you very much.
My origin would be that of an Extra, and I had the Company Stamp with Empty Hand. Lures weren't things I found super useful, honestly. I didn't need them on Earth, and I doubt I would now, although seeing what they are... I think I understand the theme: the person who made this wants me to continue.
Looking at my Therianthrope Heritage made it quite obvious, actually: a wild beast. They wanted me to be a wild beast. That honestly offended my sense of taste a little. I may like blood, the adrenaline of fighting, and challenges, but I'm still a girl, a very human one at that.
The Talents were what you would expect for any combat-oriented composition, but the interesting part was the Templates: Lobo and Reid Astrea.
I understood Lobo a bit; I followed the theme the person who made this seemed to be going for. Reid? Not so much. Maybe in personality? Not that it matters; Reid is pretty cool.
I wasn't surprised by the lack of Companions. It doesn't look like it'll be getting a named one anytime soon either; in fact, 90% of the No Game No Life characters with names are a few thousand years out. I'll be long gone from that place before then.
That last thought seems to have triggered something, because just like that I felt my presence vanish from the dark space.
When I opened my eyes, I was greeted by a red sky with ashes falling from the sky.
"Byakko! Wake up! The Dhampirs are coming!"
A smile that showed all my sharp teeth spread across my face.