THE CURSED GAMER

Chapter 498: The Overlay; the Merge of Dreams and Reality

—

Beyond the temporal field of the omniverse, the Feminine Side of Beyond Omnipotence sat on a cosmic throne. Her eyes glued to the hologram screen ahead, she watched Kimi and the red-skinned Neji share a look as they both teleported away.

“Yes! He succeeded!” Kurai cheered from She Beyond Omnipotence’s lap, who let out a laugh and watched the screen with a satisfied grin.

“Aww, he sure did,” she said. “And he did it the most right away too. This was the only correct answer in his situation; he managed to salvage the situation by making Maestro Myth return too. The two possibilities are in enough sync now.”

“So it seems,” Kurai frowned at her and said, “Even if there were so many changes, none of them matter since the result was his ‘death’ in both possibilities. Though in one he died for real, but in this one it’s a setup.”

“So cute~” The woman older than eternity raised Kurai to the air and grinned. “You’re so much smarter now, a decade of watching omniversal TV paid off, it seems.” It had almost been a decade here, nine years to be specific, as Raki was too bored to sit and watch every little thing, and used artificial intelligence to speed up the scenes where it counted.

Still, nine years was double that of Kurai’s age. She spent a lifetime watching TV. She’s been too spoiled by the Entity.

Raki rubbed her cheeks with Kurai’s. “I wanna keep you with me. Will you stay? I’ll gift you so many things.” She looked into the cat’s golden eyes with her own, silted golden eyes. Her own cat-like smile was a contrast to Kurai’s bored lips. “Such a cutie. Stay with me?”

“Never. You’re weird.”

“How rude. I’m hurt.”

“I do not give a fuck.”

“Don’t curse, your father will blame me,” Raki shrugged, not minding that a little kitten just cursed at her. She liked it more rather than the scared state Kurai carried herself with in the beginning.

“You deserve it. One day Papa will beat you up,” Kurai said, huffing in arrogance.

Raki laughed and snapped her finger at the hologram and it sped up. “Anyway, let’s finish the movie. When it reaches the Interlude, I will have to paste this possibility into the current timeline and merge this with the other possibility. Ugh, so much work.”

Kurai focused on the screen too, her vision zooming into the screen.

“How long till we reach the present?”

“Hmm, like a few millennia. Be patient.”

“Use your Omnipotence and give me a solid number.”

“Nope, too boring.”

“Ugh.”

And so, the two girls chattered while the screen moved fast, winding up a couple thousand years in mere hours.

* * *

Neji studied the Primordial for a century, to make sure he could pull off his impression of the Red God when the time came. Thankfully, by having absorbed the Primordial, he had received the Red God’s memories too. They helped pull off the act much more.

“Ohn~”

So he knew that the Primordial didn’t have much of a sex appeal these days; he did have them in his younger days, and as a God King his bed skills were nothing to scoff at, but sex seemed to have gone boring for him after eternity. So he hadn’t bedded his wife in a long time.

Neji changed that the moment he returned to [Nowhere], Primordial’s home, where he threw Eurynome on the bed and ravaged her like a beast for two years.

“S-someone is excited today~” she moaned under him as he blew her back out, pulling her hair and fucking her in ways a God Queen shouldn’t be.

“L-looks like you loved feeling your blood pumping after a long time,” Eury moaned and said, but Neji couldn't care less about her yapping. He loved fucking the woman who thought she was making love with her husband.

There was a certain forbidden pleasure in hate-fucking her like a bull, knowing that she thought she was making love with her husband. How much he wished he could show his real face to her and watch her expression change.

….

Neji enjoyed her for a whole month. Now they were in the grand bath, as big as a planet even by the Primordial’s size. He stood in front of a mirror, staring at his reflection with a soft smile on his expression,

Red skin, four arms, four golden eyes, and majestic long white hair. Right now he looked like a fucking monster, but he couldn’t lie, it felt great to steal his enemy’s identity.

‘You're not half bad anyway, dude,’ Neji thought at his reflection. The technique used to pull off this transformation was on a grade that nobody could see through; currently, in all of the Omniverse, Neji was the strongest, so he could fool everyone.

“What are you doing there~?” Eurynome yawned as she looked at him from the water. She swayed her body in the water, her ass peeking and jiggling at him, as she invited him. “Come over already, I’m dying waiting.”

Neji smirked and walked over to her. This was so much fun.

…..

After enjoying Eurynome in the bath for a few days, Neji decided to move on to the other pleasures the Titanic God-King’s life provided. Although the Primordial rarely relished in all the pleasure sources his realm had to offer, as he had tasted them all already in the last eternity, they were new to Neji.

Despite how strong he was; he hadn’t tasted these pleasures. For the last century, he had only worked and worked; Leveling Up was his only goal in life. Now, he had orgies to slip into, otherworldly foods to enjoy, the greatest games—marvels of technology and magic—to play and beat, rest in ways unimaginable before, have the greatest beauties serve him tea, and all the other mundane yet grand things. He didn’t plan to miss any of them.

While it might be suspicious to a few if he were to suddenly regain interest in these things, Neji had the excuse that—after reaching near death, he regained interest in the mundane. An enlightenment, if you will.

As for the problems in his life? Enemies? Struggles?

Nothing. There was nothing of that sort. Neji was the strongest now. He had nobody that could challenge him. He had only a life to enjoy—a waiting game to play. He used Kimi’s information source, which she had collected from the part of herself that she had sent to the future, to keep the overall history of the omniverse the same as the other possibility.

He just had to wait, live life lavishly… while his girls believed him dead and suffered… and wait until Neji of the other possibility was born.

A few millennia passed, and that incident—the start of the Domino Effect—Neji, the Gamer, was finally born. 

There was a small problem, our Neji, the Neji 2.0, couldn’t spectate the childhood and other stuff of this new Neji 1.0. He was only allowed to follow Neji 1.0 after his fated death by his mother who pushed him off the boat and into the shark’s mouth. Apparently, it would mess with things too much if he viewed anything before that, or at least that was what the Beyond Omnipotent said.

Still, Neji confirmed that the part of Kimi who was sent to the future came and pretended to be Lucille for years. Neji 1.0 died in his first life and entered the Wheel of Reincarnation.

It was time when our Neji, Neji 2.0, the one who had returned with Icons, sat on the edge of his seat to play more actively in this game of chess.

* * *

[First Person Point of View – Neji, as the Primordial]

I watched everything as Neji 1.0 met Fotia in the Wheel of Reincarnation. I read my other possibility’s head and watched him wonder why a Goddess with a fiery temperature had been locked there for so long.

Of course, he had no way of knowing that the real Primordial had put her there as a form of punishment after he found out that she hid my identity because of stupid love.

Unknown about the grand scheme of this omniverse, Neji 1.0 received the Gamer System, which prompted Fotia to call forth me, the fake Primordial, to handle the situation.

One might wonder why she did that; why did she hate the Gamer System if she was in love with the First Gamer? I read Fotia’s mind and realized that she was angry at poor Neji for another reason. She hated that a kid was trying to replace the man she loved; how cute.

Not that it’d ease the life of this Neji in any way. Using Future Sight, my guess was on the spot. The narrative of Fotia’s story in Neji’s head will be the same in the future because everyone else will tell him that the First Gamer raped Fotia, and Fotia will not care enough to clear those accusations.

But that’s in the future, in the present, Neji 1.0 received the [Indestructible] Status Effect just like me and survived the encounter with the fake Primordial, aka me. Before being teleported away, I use a part of the real Primordial’s soul that’s been a part of me for a long time, to curse Neji 1.0.

Then, Neji reincarnated in the Hero Academia world.

…..

For the years to come, I and Kimi worked to make sure that everything went the same as the other possibility. Starting with the ‘Letter from First Gamer’ in his inventory.

After 15 years in that world, Neji 1.0 met Nawab, who had been in a serial reincarnation for eons by then, and the woman went crazy over him, just like in my world. He defeated her and then after that, he faced his own Battle of Gods.

This time, I gave Fotia the Status Cutter that had been in my inventory all along, instead of making a new one from my soul.

Yet, the Battle of God ended precisely, with Fotia dead, and so I went to that world to erase it out of existence with a Primordial Genesis Breath.

Neji 1.0 ends up in Void, gains the Voidmancer class, and meets Lady Luck. Then he was sent to Naruto, where after a couple of months, he found Rumi. Later, he was sent to Fate Grand Order, Babylon, and rescued Ryukyu there. Finally, he ended up in DxD, where he found leads to Kimi’s existence, the Kimi Dolls, but he couldn’t exactly find her.

In the end, Neji defeated the Beast 666, Trihexa, and gained Nigh Omniscience.

Then Lady Life, who’s been imprisoned all this time, all to my heartache, visits DxD with Lady Luck and Nejire. Neji and Nejire finally meet again, but it doesn’t last for long as the group is dragged into the first Battle of Abstracts.

Neji in this turn too remains but a spectator, an extra, as the girls fight, and then I, as the Primordial, enter the battle and kill Kimi, the Director of the Last Act.

Of course, I don’t actually kill her. In truth, I hid her in the depths of the void; but for all this reality cared, she was dead— until I would bring her out again and reality would realize that it’s been scammed.

Later, I watched as the enraged Neji 1.0 was dragged by Godmother to the Dreamweaver’s Fortress as well as Lady Luck and the fusion of 10 girls, called Eclipsia. Inside the castle, I watched from afar as Neji met the Kimmidoll, and then later, when he decided to go meet the Beyond Omnipotents, Lady Luck kissed him in an attempt to increase his luck, even if it meant sacrificing herself.

In this timeline, everything was the same as mine—except Neji didn’t have Kurai, and no Icons either. That was the rule that I knew about the first possibility, so I kept that just as.

“Well,” I shrugged my shoulders. “Let me go through this once more, but from the enemy POV,” I said and brought my army to the Dreamweaver’s Fortress.

….

– Boom!

I destroyed a part of the fortress’ outer wall with a wave of my hand. My eyes watched the inside where I watched all of Neji 1.0's senses scream. Of course, he was stunned hearing the sound of explosions coming from the direction they entered the castle. 

It was an enemy attack. One I was familiar with but from another point of view.

“I told you to not run!!! Lili, come out!” From outside the fortress, I let out a primal roar and threatened the Godmother, who blinked at the distant voice before laughing it off.

“Ah, stupid bastard. So persistent. The Primordial God is here.” The Godmother of All Demons prepared for battle and said, Neji 1.0 too got into a battle stance. “He isn't alone. This isn't good. I don’t know where we can hide if not here.”

“I-”

“I have an idea. Neji needs to go.” Lady Luck said, grabbing him by the collar. The situation was tense, they were sweating, but she managed a smile at him. I found that cute. How sweet of her. “I'm not sure how effective it will be, but unlike ‘fate’, ‘luck’ is still a concept on the higher scale of things. As in, the scale of those two Outerversal entities. This should help even a little. Use this well.”

“Luck, what-”

Lady Luck leaned in. Her lips pressed on him, and Neji's body glowed. An immense amount of luck essence poured into him. Last time I called it ‘Lucky Vibes’ – for the lack of a better word – which was cute.

Lady Luck’s body let out a golden steam, and cracks formed on her existence. Neji immediately tried to push her back, but she didn't budge; Lady Luck was still stronger than him. Her power, her existence, streamed into his body to empower his luck, while her body began to grow smaller in size.

– Boom!

I destroyed another part of the wall and began to walk inside. My eyes were still focused inside the castle, as my yells and explosions went closer; I was walking deeper into the castle.

Last time, I wondered why the Primordial wasn’t shooting his breath attack, and although I’m still unsure what the real Primordial was planning by that, I knew why I wasn’t doing it. I didn’t want to kill my own people.

I watched as in seconds, Lady Luck was the size of a Barbie doll. Yet she didn't stop. Neji's eyes shot towards the Godmother in a call for help, who sighed and stepped forward. She flickered a finger between their lips; they were immediately separated and Luck was thrown to the ground.

I smiled in nostalgia as I watched the same old scenes unfold. A while later, I watched a system prompt appear in front of Neji 1.0’s eyes.

[I am sorry, Master. It's done, I’ve sent a false report.]

Neji growled. He looked at Eclipsia and Godmother, pointing at Luck. “Then at least take care of her, alright? She might not be of any help to you right now, but don’t let her die!”

“We won’t let her die,” Eclipsia replied in a ripple of multiple voices. She picked up Luck and gently put her above her hair.

– Boom! 

“Lili! Come out!” My voice boomed out, I was only a few rooms down the halls. I opened my maw then, and the sound of me warming up my beam filled the area.

Godmother stood in front of Neji as they faced the door. They watched as the Primordial Genesis Beam blasted the roof above them. Now they could see the outside world, but it was no longer what it was a few minutes ago. Instead of an ever-shifting landscape, they were greeted with nothing. In the wake of my rampage, only the void remained.

There were no colors anymore, and all sound died when I entered the room. My hulking red figure was the focus of the world. The plants that God Mother nurtured died out, the room began to break down. 

Only I remained, as did my wife, Eurynome Celestine. She stood in the distant sky of the void, with an army of other dangerous entities standing behind her.

Neji 1.0 and his girls were cornered.

“Ah,” Godmother’s eyes locked with Eurynome who was kilometers away from her. “I know who found me here. Annoying las,” she growled, but her guess was false. It was me who found them here because I knew where the Fortress was. I stood right behind the door frame.

I, wearing the mask of the Primordial, grinned, my eyes locking with Neji as my lips slowly formed each word. “There you are. This is your end.”

Before I could ‘end’ Neji, however, a notification in front of Neji 1.0’s eyes cut through my speech.

[The Beyond Omnipotence Entity has summoned you and your Familiar.]

[You'll be teleported right away.]

“Shit! They're calling me now-”

As Neji's words hung unfinished, he vanished in a flash of light, leaving the three women staring at the empty space he once occupied.

….

“If this was a novel,” I muttered, “The next line would have been: one moment, he stood on the verge of another clash with the Son of Void, and the other… he kneeled before something much greater.” I, the red-skinned giant, muttered to myself in a bored tone as if this was a novel. “But that didn’t happen, it seems.”

The world had come to a halt the moment Neji 1.0 vanished, everything lost color, it was gray. I was the cause, of course. I was waiting for SBOP to take action now.

It was time. To turn this dream world into reality.

When I, Neji 2.0, as the Primordial God, crashed into the Dreamweaver’s Fortress, just in time for Neji 1.0 to make Sisty reach out to the Beyond Omnipotents, in time for him to get whiffed away—where he was fated to return to the past too, but without Icons—I was making history. I had just run the First Possibility by manipulating everything.

But Neji 1.0 did not actually reach the She Beyond Omnipotence, he just… disappeared. His possibility had happened already, after all, that’s why I was here, I just helped complete it officially. I only ran this reality this far to make it match my reality. So as to make it possible for the Beyond Omnipotent woman to overlap and merge the two possibilities into a singular flow of timeline.

So the moment he teleported out to be sent somewhere else, his existence disappeared, and the history aligned. Everything… fell into place.

The Puzzle had been solved.

* * *

[Third Person Point of View]

“Bahahaha!” Raki laughed as she watched the Omniverse come to a stop in the hologram. All the light in this possibility lost color and Neji, the false Primordial, met her gaze.

“He’s so good at this,” Kurai raised her nose in the air and said proudly, while Raki forced herself to stop laughing for too long.

“He isn’t bad,” she said. “Now we’re at the final page. High time I merge this with the main source.” Raki raised her hand toward the hologram and pinched her finger. The screen folded like a book.

With her other hand, she snapped her finger to produce another screen that showed the original timeline, where the real Primordial had just walked inside the Dreamweaver’s Fortress as well, and the world was paused just as Neji had vanished. She did the same pinching motion at this screen, and it folded like a book too.

“Well, there is a bug,” before finishing the job, she said, “but it should be fine.” She held both her hands in the air and clapped them together. The two books rushed into one another and slammed into each other with an explosion of shimmering light.

To a mortal’s mind, this was equal to a big computer folder with countless files being replaced with a folder exactly the same, but with a handful of files different. Only much more complex, on a beyond cosmic scale; on an outerversal scale.

“Let’s see,” Raki released her hands as the book unfolded into a screen, “how this plays out. Keep your eyes wide, kitty.”

* * *

“Shit! They're calling me now-” Neji's words hung unfinished because he vanished in a flash of light, leaving three women staring at the empty space he once occupied.

The moment his body vanished, a shimmer of otherworldly light filled the omniverse. But it was invisible to the naked eye of everyone; everyone but the Primordial, and Godmother.

The ‘Primordial God’ staggered slightly on his foot as his entire existence experienced a change. The Godmother’s reaction was a bit more dramatic, she fell to her knees and let out a scream as she held her head.

Eclipsia and Lady Luck went still, taking a fighting pose. They assumed the Godmother was attacked in some way, that’s why she’s suffering. It didn’t do their morale any good seeing their strongest rendered in that state.

In the sky, Eurynome Celestine stood in front of a hundred spaceships. She wore a frown of confusion seeing Godmother in that state; she could feel that her husband hadn’t attacked her in any way. Why was she on her knees? She also hadn’t missed the slight staggering of ‘the Primordial’.

The Godmother breathed heavily for a whole minute as Eurynome came down from the sky, flying into the fortress through its broken rooftop. She stopped near her husband and looked at him, “What’s going on here? Where did the Gamer go, and why is she acting like that?”

Before ‘the Primordial God’ could answer her, the Godmother began to laugh from the floor. She laughed like a maniac as she looked at Eurynome, and then at the ‘Primordial’. She wore a grin wilder than any as she failed to repress her laughter. “This is so funny.”

The ‘Primordial’ was slightly confused at this too. With a raised eyebrow, he asked, “You remember?”

“I remember everything,” the Eternal Samsara stood up. “Prima and Neji are the same, huh? I see. Well, to be more specific, I just received two different sets of memories in my head out of nowhere the moment that boy vanished. It took me a minute of crying to connect the dots.”

…Nobody else seemed to realize the merge, not even Eurynome. Yet, this woman did. Just what was she that she maintained both memories despite the Beyond Omnipotence handling the situation?

“What is going on? Honey? Wai?” Eurynome asked, sounding a little nervous now as she began to note the change in her husband’s expression.

“Welcome back,” the Godmother of All Demons smiled up at him. “Neji.”

Eurynome’s head snapped to scowl at Godmother, and then back at the ‘Primordial’.

“Mu… muahahahahaha~!” The False Primordial, Neji, threw his arms into the air and let out a booming laugh toward the sky. “Muahahahahaha!!” Of course, just when the merge happened and the Primordial and Neji’s presence fought for who should remain, his soul was the one that stayed, since he was far stronger than the Primordial now. He was not only the King of the Void, but also the King of Creation.

Eury opened her mouth and scattered backward, falling to her ass as she crawled back with a fearful expression on her face. Eclipsia and Lady Luck exchanged glances, unsure if their eyes were playing tricks on them or not, while the Godmother began to laugh along with him.

“E-e-everyone!” Eurynome called forth her army as she pointed a shaking finger at the man whom she’d been calling ‘husband’ for the last few millennia. “Kill this masquerade!”

The Gods at the spaceships hesitated, but Eurynome’s loyal subject trusted in her words and leaped at the False God a second later. Class 1 Entities, and a Class 0 too, leaped at Neji with the intent to kill, but it took a wave of his hand as time slowed down and he dealt lethal attacks against his opponents under an attosecond.

When time regained its momentum, those Gods turned to dust and Neji gained a level.

[Ding! Congratulations, you have gained 1 Level.]

[You have reached Level 123,110]

That was his first level in hundreds of years; after killing the Primordial God and gaining about 20,000 Levels, he had rarely leveled up. The Omniverse wasn’t strong enough to let him hoard levels like in the past, at least not as fast as before anyway.

He was too strong now.

===

Name:      Neji Hado

Age:          2,345

Level:       123,110

-

Class:       [Prince of Eldritch]

Subclass: [Masquerade of Chaos]

Race:        Celestialdraconicsapien

Title:        Celestialsapien, The Cosmic Enigma

-

HP:               804.01 × 10^6/804.01 × 10^6

SP:                804.55 × 10^6/804.55 × 10^6

MP:              806.85 × 10^6/806.85 × 10^6

-

STR:            788.890 × 10^3

END:           804.010 × 10^3

DEX:           804.550 × 10^3

INT:            806.850 × 10^3

WIS:           801.050 × 10^3

CHA:          752.095 × 10^3

LUC:          786.050 × 10^3

-

HP REG:    321.604 × 10^6/minute

SP REG:     321.820 × 10^6/minute

MP REG:   320.420 × 10^6/minute

Stat Points: 0

===

He stood at the pinnacle of power, how could anyone hurt him now?

“Haah,” Neji shrugged as his body transformed, changing shapes for the first time in a thousand years. His bulky frame slimmed down, turning into a lean form, with skin reflecting stardust, and white hair flowing like a lion’s mane. His eyes were not red for once, they were blue and bright, as well as the triangle light on his chest.

Everyone here, other than Eclipsia, recognized this form. Two thousand years ago, they saw Neji fight the Primordial exactly in this form, and end up dead. Yet, here he was.

“There is no way…” Eurynome crawled on the floor as he met his wide grin. In a face that only had blue eyes and lips, lacking any other features, it looked extremely creepy to the God Queen.

“This…” she said, “this has to be a nightmare…!”

“It is not,” from behind her, a voice spoke. Eurynome’s crawling came to a stop as her back hit the legs of someone. She turned her head around and faced a smiling woman who sent chills down her spine. “Hey, it’s been a while,” the Director of the Last Act smiled.

Eurynome let out a screech of horror, while the Gods in the spaceships finally decided to take action, fully realizing that their Primordial God had been replaced, as they came down to take revenge. The area turned into a battlefield, but Neji didn’t even bother to take a look at them. One wave of his hand… and they turned into cosmic dust.

The victory fell on Neji’s lap.

**

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