Classic Escapist Fantasy! Multiversal Magician CYOA! Animu Elf Oppai! Uuooogh! But wait, I'm not the only candidate?! Why's there, like, so much chaos and absurdity all over? And then there's the drawbacks of my build too... I might've, like, totally gotten too greedy, ya know?
"... If you were going to limit things so hard like this, why not use a different gamebook, huh?" I drawled. I wasn't frustrated exactly. I just found the idea of an arbitrary unfamiliar set of restrictions on already threaded grounds tedious.
The strange being I was conversing with shot back an unexpected reply in a mocking tone. "Lol, lmao even. I've seen your past builds with this very CYOA, Mr. Planeswalking-Synchronizing-Sun immortal-Senshi-Finality-Herrscher-Conduit-Angelic-Wizard-Godking. That's not even the most ridiculous build you've made. Lol. You can't help yourself, can you?"
"Lmao? What are you? Some gen alpha brat? The sheer lack of creativity in your form gave me red flags from the beginning. Void black humanoid with spatterings of starlight is as generic as they come for cosmic entities. It was cool when Alien X did it, I nearly went to sleep when Garou did it in One Punch Man." I viciously ran my mouth. The words spilled like a community tap in a rural village. I wasn't even being malicious!
"..."
"... Sorry." I hedged, quickly realizing I may have casually insulted someone who could think me out of existence. My anus shrunk into single digit micrometers from trepidation.
"Hmph! You have three minutes to make your build." The strange being huffed and turned to the side. Simultaneously the holographic interface that presented the Magic Multiverse Mayhem CYOA hovered up to my eye level.
Oh hell naw. "Aww come on, don't be mad. I was just shooting the shit, friendly ribbing. Your presence is just that amazing. I was already relaxed enough to banter despite only knowing you for a minute or two."
"One hundred and fifty seconds…" They replied. Inspecting their nails all the while… even though they didn't have nails.
"Sheesh…" I muttered.
I've played with this CYOA, once or twice before, several months ago so I had some vague memories on relevant choices to speed things up. Quickly browsing through the introduction, I opened the categories. Target; …me. I spent a moment to actually think about this but in conclusion... there were two ways this isekai could go, power fantasy or gritty grim tale. If it's power fantasy then I wanted that and wouldn't hand it over to anyone, if it was a tragedy… well it would be very immoral to drop that fate on someone else wouldn't it?
Difficulty; This was interesting because the only option available was Normal. Every other option was grayed out. Annoying. I'd have gone straight for the Why Though? option. The option that gave nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine values to both Point and Magic. Basically? It was creative mode. With it I would pick every single thing I thought was vaguely useful or just plain cool. I guess that was why those options were unavailable in the first place. No matter. Even on a low budget I'm confident I'll fill this CYOA and still end up as an overpowered freak of nature.
World; That too was entirely grayed out. Couldn't even open the section.
"Uhh… Nebulous entity of wish fufillment? One of your categories are broken?..."
It scoffed.
Without changing their position they replied, "It's not broken, it's part of my Scenario. You are 'Adrift'. If you get my drift~ hue hue"
That was.... a terrible pun. If I remember correctly 'Adrift' was basically the random 'who knows where you will end up!' choice out of dozens upon dozens of specific World options offered in the Choose Your Own Adventure prompt.
"Eh hem!" The Strange Being fake coughed while there... demeanor for lack of a proper term that left me with the impression that they were embarrassed. "I decide what world you are being sent to. You aren't the only player you know~"
Ah… what the fuck? Man… this is… I took a deep breath to calm myself. Compartmentalize, Thomas. I had only three minutes. I moved on to the next category but simultaneously a question from the Strange Being stole my attention.
"Choose a letter from A-Z. Each one represents a potential world I'm dropping you." They had stopped inspecting their nonexistent nails now. One arm was folded while the other cradled their jaw in a thinking pose. Hmm… their appearance had changed, I didn't know when or how that happened but now they wore some old fashioned but stylish baggy robes and a black pointed hat. The attire was reminiscent of a witch. Their face was still a featureless void but there were no star-like pimples embellishing their form.
Pick one letter huh, I'm guessing this relates to the selection of worlds? Well in that case it would be better to pick off a letter that wasn't likely to have been picked. I doubt I was the first individual to have gone through this scenario. I was given the full alphabet as my options. So under those assumptions it would be reasonable to conclude people who pick the same letter go to the same worlds.
"Is that right?" I asked the Strange Being. Not bothering to waste time to vocalize my thoughts. I'm pretty sure my thoughts were an open book to them, in fact it's possible th-
"Is that right?" They said while twirling their first finger in a peculiar manner about their face. W-were they picking their nose?
"Hnnnnrg." I grunted. This time I was actually getting a tiny little bit frustrated. I took my time and carefully articulated my assumptions to the Strange Being.
"Yes, picking the same letter as other players drops you in this same place. Now choose, you're wasting your time!"
Ok, ok. Hmm… the least common letter in the English language was letter X wasn't it? Though people use it a lot to make things sound special or unique so even if it was the most uncommon, it might not be the least popular.
To be frank I'm not sure why I find the idea of dealing with other CYOA players upsetting… Actually I do. I'm intuitively using myself as I baseline, sure I've never had unfathomable arcane powers before but I've had fantasies. Fantasies that were not always well… moral. I wasn't a person of stalwart moral fiber or unbreakable will, I had no idea of what having godlike powers would do to my psyche. For that reason I couldn't place faith in the virtue of strangers.
"I choose the letter Y." It was fairly out of the way as far as letters go. Hopefully whatever World I get sent to isn't too crazy.
Next category up is Multiversal Magic; This was pretty much the gimmick of this CYOA. Magical powers that would let you jump across Worlds. For which… uh I will come back later, Multiversal Magic would be extremely useful, likely indispensable but powerful options in this category weren't necessary, whatever points I had left after accumulating power would determine my pick. So far I had twenty five and twenty two digits in magic and points respectively.
The next category was Scenario; Events that you could implant upon whatever works you were thrust on to provide more points. Normally there was a lot of scenarios, over a hundred, that was how I got points to pull off Magicborne-Persona-Kamen Rider-Anodite-Karcist-Campione style builds.
However the main limitation imposed by the entity was I couldn't pick Scenarios to boost points wantonly. There was only a single scenario already preselected. Multiplayer. What a load of batshit.
I sighed and opened the Magic System category. Finally the wizard superpowers selection. It had dozens upon dozens of options. I couldn't waste too much time. Quickly I flitted through to the Marvel comics and DC magic sections. I needed to be truly overpowered and comics usually had the stuff. There was a bit of a snag however since getting overpowered seemed close to forty points. You could cut corners and get things cheaper but those invited risks that I wasn't at all comfortable with. For example I could go straight to Homo Magi and pick Conduit to become akin to Timothy Hunter. Conduits or Openers were strong, I very vaguely remember, emphasis on vague, one being able to create thousands of universes with a thought, in a bid to escape pain as they were being tortured.
….tortured. Yeah, that 'evade the price of magic' option was probably there for a reason, I would also like to pick Real Magician to boot things up but cost was already racking up.
Marvel's Three Fold Path wasn't much better. I think the strongest option was Chaos Sorcerer, which wasn't all that expensive. About twenty seven points including the prerequisites. Although I wasn't too sure if a Chaos wizard was as strong as an Opener. Also you had to throw down with God of Chaos, Chthon, at some point in the future. Nah, I'd pass. The remaining options in that subsection were also pretty lackluster.
I closed both subsections and quickly skimmed through the Magic Systems list. Magicians from To Aru, Valkyrie from Honkai Impact and Paracausality from Destiny. These were crazy magic systems easily comparable to the comic stuff. There was a slight temptation to open up Lovecraftian Magic. I crushed it. No need to bother, I wouldn't have the balls, this isn't the time for curiosity.
I opened all three sections to evaluate my options. Hmm… I expected a bit more from their unique sections but it was… serviceable all right. Already I found myself dismissing Honkai Impact. It had unique things that I could scarcely get from other options, the spacetime shenanigans and resistance that was common in their high end combatants was enviable but you could probably get better stuff elsewhere. Their versatility was middling and the raw power ceiling was not much to write about. Planet scale effects, I think. Yeah, if you couldn't compete with late DBZ characters in raw power, go home.
Paracausality was… not much better than Valkyrie actually. Except maybe for raw power? I opened the unique ability subsection. Hmm… 'immune to reality warping unless directly focused on you' from Risen was tempting but too vague for me to trust my future in.
To Aru. Very lackluster. Where are the special right arm options? Magic god options? Phase entity race change? I frowned. There was Index Librorum Prohibitorum for only fifteen points. Something like that could propel you to the heights of the top combatants in the setting. To give some perspective there's a guy who casts an actual Big Bang as a spell while exponentially increasing the power by orders of magnitudes with each casting yet he's bottom feeder among the very strongest of the setting. I haven't caught up in a while but last I heard there was this argument in their subreddit about a bunch of new characters stated by the narration to be 'more omnipotent' than the last despite being not as domineering visually. Classic light novel brain rot.
I want some of that please. I made my first magic pick. In comparison John Pen Mode was nothing to write home about. It merely downloaded all the knowledge into my head when I could already get said knowledge from the grimoires. Spells like Fear, Intercept, Deconstruct, are things that could easily be developed after perusing the grimoires. Grimoires in To Aru are semi-sentient magical artifacts that are nigh indestructible and are willing to spread their knowledge to the extent of forcibly branding a victims mind and soul with it.
I didn't need to spend points to upload the knowledge into my head. The book would gladly oblige me on its own.
I just needed time. A whole lot of time and ungodly levels of skill and I'd approach To Aru super magician levels of power. There were options to mitigate that. I'm sure of it. I also needed something that would make me moderately strong right off the bat.
I closed the Magic System category and opened Magic Power. This main difference between this category and the former, was basically that this was the section for magic traits that the prompt creator didn't think deserved an entire subsection unto themselves. Abilities here were purchased in one go. There were a lot of interesting options I'd pick if I wasn't on such a tight budget with my future on the line. Shard of Adonalsium was especially tempting, if I remember correctly the foundations of the magic system was based on Plato theory of forms. Hacks. That could be a crazy as hell cheat, the personality distortion didn't sound fun though. Sigh.
I moved on to the Combinations and Upgrades category. Nothing was available. What a waste of time. I opened the Perk list. Quickly I sifted down. Adaption… hmm. I picked that and the upgraded 'unique ability' version. The Adaptation perks let me pick up any powers I encounter in the multiverse, given some months in a setting. With some proper multiverse traveling ability I could craft my powerset anyhow I wanted, shoring up any weakness eventually. I picked Tooth and Nail, it's basically the classic 'protag comeback against all odds' trope distilled into a perk. I'm not main character material but this would make me one I guess. Savant Syndrome, a perk to make me super ultra talented with magic. 'Most intelligent of geniuses' it said. A perk that would go the distance in mitigating the sheer skill cliff of To Aru Wizardry. Absolute Effect, a perk that would let my magic ignore innate resistances and immunities. That shit just sounded unfair to be on the other side of.
After a moment's consideration I picked Remembrance. I was specifically avoiding any form of mental pollution or anomalous interference to my psyche. Tooth and Nail notwithstanding. In the first place I... Had always considered myself as a person who did best under pressure. Tooth and Nail was an upgrade to that part of myself. I didn't think the Perk would rewrite my personality in any form or make me stop being... me. So it got a pass.
Remembrance? It was a perk that provided memories of a past life. Memories that solely enhanced my base skill and experience with using magic. It was sketchy but it got a pass too for me. In the first place I wasn't spoiled for choice. In To Aru even the genius among geniuses often took decades or centuries to get to the height we see of them at upon their debut into the series. I had invested a lot into long term growth but depending on the World I was dropped in, I could be facing mortal perils resulting from being exceedingly weak relative to the casual combatants of the setting.
Christian Rosenkreutz was one of the craziest magicians in the To Aru setting. Both in the literal and the awesome sense of the word. He was undoubtedly among the most skilled fighters in the setting, if not the very best. Somehow he is capable of battling a host of cosmic warping wizards while having the physical stats of a normal human. Keeping fingers crossed, no matter what exact power level I start with, I'd punch way way above my weight class with this madman in my deck.
I closed the perk list. I didn't pick a Mental Fortress, Shrouded or Soul Shield. Those were the bread and butter of magicians within To Aru. Attacks and countermeasures concerning those were abundant within the setting. I could manage without CYOA perks. Probably.
In the end Perks made up the bulk of my purchase. Well... It only made sense. Without Scenarios the bulk of my budget had to be sourced from Drawbacks. Drawbacks only offered digits in Points not in magic. You could convert digits from point to magic but the rate was two ratio one.
Also it's extremely likely that Perks are fiat enforced. Unlike the abilities from Magic Systems which might be limited to the setting they came from, Perks were CYOA exclusive themselves. The same CYOA that superseded every system it offered. Therefore Perks superseded everything in the system at the very least. Probably.
My gut churned in displeasure and dread. I was making a lot of 'probablys' here.
I went into drawbacks. Malus to myself for the sake of points. "God on high," I whispered. Reading carefully on each, I started picking, even if I was short on time here, picking maluses without reading was just asking to be posteriorly violated by Murphy.
Wanted, Hunted, Handicapped, Secrecy, Reviled, Rough Start… May You Live In Interesting Times. It will only last twenty years, I consoled myself. Bizarre, Pipsqueak, No Place Like Home, Geas…
My hand shook as I tapped the next option. U-u-ugly. Who cared about appearances anyway? I could do without them. What's two decades in front of an eternity of potentially unlimited cosmic power? To buttress that I took the boosted version, Grotesque. Cringing all the while.
I panted. Yes I was being dramatic but the pain was real, not any form of physical agony but an emotional one. Coalescing my mental strength I pushed forwards. There's nothing else I could compromise with, fortunately. I absolutely refuse to compromise my mental faculties. Things like Amnesia, Forgettable, Arcane Mark, Disconnected were dismissed from the running for solely that failure. That's effectively suicide as far as I'm concerned. Blood Magic and Defiling Magic would limit my mystical capabilities which I don't think I even had enough in the first place, all those memory loss options were basically personality death to me, no way. Parker Luck was just dumb. Fiat enforced tragedy upon tragedy? No thanks.
Hmm… my gaze rested on the Item section. I must be running out of time now. Quickly I just skimmed down until I saw something interesting. The Eye of Agamotto and the Time Stone. I picked those options. Thank fucking god. A perfect safety net.
I moved back to the Multiversal Magic category. Hmm… my digits were limited at this point. Despite being on such a tight budget I picked Handyman Saito, costing basically I had left. It was perfect for me, maybe weak in the grand scheme of things but it was a very good foundation. It also came with a bonus of high level divine magic, which apparently could resurrect the dead. If I were booted to some grim derp world that would be as valuable as a pond of gold.
Leaving me with only one digit in magic.
I went to the Item category. Nothing really relevant I could get with my remnant points besides a Spell Crystal. Which was apparently an artifact that could store a spell for a single use. I bought it, probably useless but hey those points were paid for with my suffering. I'm using every single bit.
Am I missing something? Curiously I opened Companions and Tower. There wasn't anything immediately worthwhile in companions. I can get friends the old fashioned way, thank you. Tower had a dingy little shack for free. I picked that. Wait, that reminds me. Quickly I opened the perk list. Body Modification costs zero points. Though I was faced with disappointment when I couldn't pick it.
"Hey, why did you gray out Body modification? Are you stupid?"
The Entity turned towards me. Pausing in their nail inspection. When did they resume that? Were they doing that all this while? The idea sent shivers running through me. It was somewhat uncanny, like seeing NPC behavior in real life.
"After picking Grotesque, Handicapped, Pipsqueak, etcetera. You expected to be able to design your own body? Are you stupid Tom?"
"..."
"You have practically given me free reign to do whatever I like to your new body!" They added. They sounded excited about that. I felt a wisp of dread well up within me.
I winced. "Temper justice with mercy?..." I'm not even sure what I'm saying anymore.
The catalog disappeared.
"Hey… I wasn't done…" I needed to crosscheck this thing thrice over, brainstorm other potential builds, reshuffle points...
"Yes you were. Also you nearly took ten minutes for this whole deal! You should thank me for my graciousness!"
Urk. Ten minutes. Well at some point I reckoned I was taking a while but I stayed optimistic in denial about things. "Thank you for being so gracious." I replied genuinely.
Which seemed to throw them in a loop. I couldn't read their facial expression properly though so I might just be mistaken here.
"Uuuuuh huh. Whatever monkeigh. Go to fantasy land, get a harem whatever, entertain me."
Authors Note: meh, just trying my hand at magic multiverse mayhem while exercising my infantile writing muscles. I don't even have a specific setting pegged in mind yet. But I do want some junk food tier anime fantasy. So Eminence in the shadow, Misfit of Demon King anime, Mushoku Tensei and the likes are potential. Hopefully it's something that someone somewhere enjoys.
Personally, I would have tried to take Annihilation Maker from DxD, since there is no true hard limit for it. For all intents and purposes, you can literally create creatures that have all the powers and perks from the CYOA. You want Toaru powers? Just make a creature that can grant you that. Want DC or MC powers? Make a creature that can do so. You want a mobile wizard tower? Make a creature that can create such a thing, or just make a creature that essentially acts as a wizard tower.
Personally, I would have tried to take Annihilation Maker from DxD, since there is no true hard limit for it. For all intents and purposes, you can literally create creatures that have all the powers and perks from the CYOA. You want Toaru powers? Just make a creature that can grant you that. Want DC or MC powers? Make a creature that can do so. You want a mobile wizard tower? Make a creature that can create such a thing, or just make a creature that essentially acts as a wizard tower.
Well earlier on I played around with annihilation maker a lot when I was constructing this character.
The thing is while Annihilation maker is described as having the ability to create any monster with any capability you can imagine, I looked into what it does in series and I found out the creator uses it to create an army of anti type monsters that nearly destroyed their world.
Now this is clearly a classic case of anime characters with broken power not being a proper munchkin, but when you think about it why would he need to munchkin when he can 'create any monster from imagination'? Why not create a monster stronger than any being on the planet, right off the bat? Is it that there are some power so strong that they can't imagine? But in the first place he can imagine ending the world. That was the purpose of his army if monsters. Why can't he create a monster so strong it can end the world with a flick, no need for type advantage or numbers. Just a god beast that blows the underworld to smithereens?
Notably Annihilation maker isn't even the strongest gear. Naturally there must be some hidden limitation limitations to it. Probably a stamina limitation. That's what usually limit sacred gear users from their full might.
I guess we could probably munchkin this minor issue by creating a monster with the ability to improve your stamina but at what rate and time would that be needed for you to get to cosmic proportions of power? Maybe you could create a monster to manipulate time and rate of power gain? But would that be within your stamina bar? Now there are all sorts of unknown limitations and mechanics. It isn't reliable. We can't trust that it would ever get us to the level that big bangs are like novice spells.
Actually it might not have all these issues. One minor paradigm about Jumpchain and CYOA rules is that they are treated as described in text not as the original narrative might be based on. Since Annihilation maker is described as this in the CYOA.
Annihilation Maker, also known as Demonic Beast Creation, is a high-tier Longinus with the ability to create any creature that the possessor can imagine.
Then it might just be able to take us to the heights we imagine. The thing is though, would you bet your future on this assumption? If you were in that same exact situation would you bet that you get a special no limit version for yourself rather than a copy of the original thing?
Thus problems aren't just limited to annihilation maker. There's a bunch of interesting powers too that I dismissed because of that. In the end it just felt safer to put the hopes on a system that already has a reliable tried and tested path to cosmic powers.
Especially when the system even has ' spells that do anything you can imagine' at low levels of skill too. Well, with certain caveats as well.
Alchemy (錬金術, Renkinjutsu?) is a branch of magic, traditionally associated with turning base metals such as lead into gold and creating an elixir of immortality, with the true goal of simulating the world.[1] A practitioner of alchemy is called an alchemist (錬金術師, Renkinjutsu-shi?). With it...
