I woke up without waking up.
There was no ceiling. No floor. No body.
The first thing I noticed was that I wasn't breathing—and the second thing I noticed was that I didn't feel like I was dying anymore.
That… was concerning.
I tried to sit up.
There was no up.
I tried to blink.
I didn't have eyes.
I tried to panic.
That one worked just fine.
Okay.Okay, okay, okay.
Let's establish facts.
Fact one: I was asleep.
Fact two: I remember going to bed. Phone charging. Lights off. Nothing dramatic. No pain. No impact. No screaming headlights. Just… sleep.
Fact three: I am now here, wherever "here" is, and I am very definitely not in my room.
"So," I said—or thought, because there was no sound—"either this is a dream, or I died."
There was a pause.
Then, very unhelpfully, something appeared.
SYSTEM INITIALIZATION IN PROGRESS . . .
I stared at the floating text.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
Of all the ways to go.
I didn't get isekai'd by a truck.
Didn't get stabbed saving a kid.
Didn't even get dramatic last words.
I just died in my sleep and woke up staring at the most generic system message imaginable.
That, if nothing else, convinced me this wasn't a dream.
Because my brain was not creative enough to make something this lazy.
The text shifted.
ERROR: ADMINISTRATOR CONTEXT UNASSIGNED RECONCILING…
"Administrator?" I muttered. "Okay, that's… new."
I waited.
Nothing else happened.
No tutorial fairy.
No goddess with suspiciously exposed shoulders.
No booming voice explaining my purpose.
Just… me. And a lot of nothing.
The nothing wasn't empty, exactly. It felt like standing in a massive dark room where you knew there were walls somewhere, you just couldn't see them yet.
I took a breath I didn't need and tried to calm down.
Okay. Think like an adult.Or at least like someone who's read too much fantasy.
If this is a system, then there are only a few possibilities.
Option one: I'm a user.Option two: I'm an admin.Option three: I'm about to be erased for unauthorized access.
Given that the message literally said administrator context unassigned, I was going to assume option two and pray option three didn't follow.
"Alright," I said. "If I'm an admin… there should be a menu."
Nothing happened.
"…Status?"
Still nothing.
I frowned. "Open system interface?"
That did it.
The darkness peeled back—not visually, but conceptually—and something enormous unfolded in front of me.
Not a screen.
A framework.
Like the idea of a UI rather than a physical one.
And because my brain is my brain, it immediately filled in the gaps with what it expected.
WORLD SYSTEM INTERFACE Version: 0.9 (Unfinalized) [STATUS] [ATTRIBUTES] [SKILLS] [CLASSES] [RACES] [ENVIRONMENTS] [ENTITIES] [ERROR LOG]
I stared.
"…Wow," I said weakly. "I really am dead."
Because this was every system screen I had ever seen. Clean boxes. Brackets. Tabs. No personality. No flair.
Just brutally, unapologetically generic.
And the worst part?
It felt right.
Like this was how it was always supposed to look.
I didn't design this.
I recognized it.
Which meant—Yeah. Reincarnation.
"Okay," I said, rubbing nonexistent temples. "Let's assume I've been isekai'd as… some kind of system administrator."
That felt insane.
But less insane than every alternative.
I clicked—thought-clicked—[STATUS].
Nothing.
Not an error. Not empty. Just… not applicable.
"That's weird."
Admins usually have stats. Or god-mode flags. Or something.
Unless…
I scrolled.
NOTICE: ADMINISTRATOR ENTITY NOT REGISTERED AS WORLD OBJECT
"…Huh."
So I wasn't a character.
That made sense.
Admins aren't supposed to be in the game.
That thought settled surprisingly easily.
Which, in hindsight, probably should have worried me.
I backed out and opened [RACES].
Now that populated.
Not a lot. Just a few.
- Human - Beastkin - Avian - Aquatic - ??? (Uninitialized)
No elves.
No dwarves.
No demons.
"…This world is unfinished," I said.
That realization hit harder than the reincarnation itself.
This wasn't a complete fantasy world.
It was a work in progress.
Which begged the terrifying question:
Who was supposed to finish it?
I moved on to [ENVIRONMENTS].
Forests. Plains. Mountains. Oceans.
Normal.
Then I noticed something missing.
No underworld.
No hell.
No abyss.
Just… a blank region.
Not marked as empty.
Not deleted.
Just there, like an unused partition on a hard drive.
"…That's not right."
Every fantasy world had one.
Even the bad ones.
A demon realm. A hell. An infernal plane. Something.
You couldn't have heroes without something infernal to contrast them.
You couldn't have summoning without contracts.
And you definitely couldn't have magic systems without a place where all the morally questionable stuff lived.
I hovered over the blank space.
UNDEFINED ENVIRONMENT STATUS: INACTIVE
"…Okay," I said slowly. "So this is where hell is supposed to go."
Nothing stopped me.
No warning. No divine protest.
Just… permission.
Which I took as approval.
I wasn't trying to be arrogant.
I just… knew how this was supposed to work.
Mana existed. Obviously—it was already listed under [ATTRIBUTES], though it wasn't finalized.
Elements existed. Fire, water, wind, earth. Basic starter pack.
Summoning existed as a concept, but not a system.
Contracts existed as a placeholder.
Which meant demons needed to exist.
Which meant hell needed to exist.
Which meant—
"…Screw it," I said. "If I'm the admin, I'll admin."
I selected the empty region.
I didn't "create" anything so much as define it.
Name first.
Because names matter.
ENVIRONMENT NAME:
"…Hell."
Generic. Functional. Done.
Then structure.
Layers. Hierarchy. Because demons always had hierarchies.
Lesser demons at the bottom.Greater demons above them.Demon lords.Kings.Maybe something older at the top.
Did I know if that was optimal?
No.
Did it feel right?
Yes.
So I built it like a mashup of everything I remembered.
Not carefully.
Instinctively.
Demons were defined as entities that:
Naturally accumulated mana
Thrived in high-density magical environments
Could form contracts with external entities
Were bound by rule-based hierarchies
Contracts mattered. That was important.
Demons without contracts were just monsters.
Demons with contracts were plot devices.
I made sure of that.
As I worked, I noticed something strange.
I wasn't coding.
I was thinking, and reality was aligning itself to those thoughts.
Menus updated as I considered them.
Definitions solidified when I nodded in satisfaction.
When something felt wrong, it stayed fuzzy.
When something felt "yeah, that's how it usually goes," it locked in.
"…I really hope no one expects this to be balanced," I muttered.
Hours—or seconds, or concepts of time I didn't have—passed.
When I was done, Hell existed.
Not perfectly.
Not elegantly.
But functionally.
A place where demons could arise.
A hierarchy that made sense if you didn't look too closely.
Rules that felt like rules.
I leaned back—mentally—and exhaled.
"…Okay."
I checked [RACES] again.
- Human - Beastkin - Avian - Aquatic - Demon
There it was.
Like it had always been there.
Only then did it hit me.
I hadn't been given tools.
I hadn't been granted access.
I hadn't overridden anything.
I just… did it.
"Yeah," I said slowly. "I'm definitely an admin."
That conclusion felt solid.
Comforting.
It let me believe there was something above me.
Someone else who designed the system.
Someone whose job this actually was.
I was just maintaining it.
Improving it.
Making it more interesting.
I didn't yet realize how wrong—and how right—that assumption was.
Somewhere far below, in a world just beginning to fill with life, the rules shifted slightly.
No one noticed.
And I, newly dead and accidentally responsible for everything, opened the next menu and thought:
"…Okay, but where do gods go?"