Chapter 1 – The End of Cheats, or Reborn as I Am
When I came to my senses, I was sitting on a stone-paved road.
People’s feet passed by busily at the edge of my vision.
No one paid any attention to me.
No—more precisely, it felt as though they couldn’t see me at all.
I tried to stand up and grimaced as pain shot through my knee.
“Ah…”
My voice echoed with an unsettling sense of reality.
This wasn’t a dream.
The moment I understood that, something cold dropped deep into my chest.
I looked around.
Stone buildings.
A man with a sword hanging at his waist.
Children dressed in ragged clothes.
No matter how I looked at it, this wasn’t modern Japan.
—Another world.
The words surfaced naturally in my mind.
To be honest, for just a moment, I felt a flicker of hope.
Maybe here, I could start over.
Maybe I could finally be on the side that gets praised—without effort.
That shallow fantasy lasted only an instant.
A shout rang out from down the street.
“Hey! You’re not done yet!”
I turned to see a thin man pushing a cart being kicked away by a burly soldier.
The man fell, then desperately tried to get back up.
No one around them intervened.
As if this were perfectly normal.
I took a step forward—
—and stopped.
The reason was simple.
I was scared.
I knew I couldn’t help him.
I knew that if I spoke up, I’d be the next one to be beaten.
So I did nothing.
And yet, I couldn’t look away either.
…I see.
This world is not kind.
Bitter.
Painful.
And suffocatingly closed off.
If I had to describe my life in a single phrase, those words would fit.
My name is Mario Yamada.
My parents named me with the hope that I would “live by truth.”
In cruel contrast to that lofty wish, my reality lay at the bottom of the mud.
“Damn it… damn you… damn you!”
I kicked the wall of my room and screamed.
That rage was directed at a past that should have ended decades ago.
I was weak.
Not particularly smart.
The man reflected in the mirror was the final form of an unhealthy, slightly overweight nobody.
I had been at the very bottom of the school caste system since kindergarten.
The decisive blow came during elementary school lunch.
The class ringleader, Onishi, had laughed and said:
“Hey, Mario, you like mushrooms, right? It’s your name, after all! Hah!”
That day, when they forced every mushroom from the class down my throat, my heart died.
After that, I dropped out of society called “school” and spent over a decade shut inside this four-and-a-half-mat room—my tiny kingdom.
There was nowhere I belonged.
…Except inside this screen.
“Hyahaha! Die! Die! Die!”
The popular online game APEX.
My real skill level was mediocre at best—Gold rank, maybe.
But with the “high-end cheat tool” I had begged my mother to buy, I became a god.
Professional gamers.
Streamers with tens of thousands of fans.
All of them were nothing but dust before me.
Auto-aim bullets mowed down enemies effortlessly.
“I’m the strongest…!
There’s no one in this world who can beat me!”
I could only prove my worth by trampling on other people’s efforts.
My heart pounded violently with excitement.
Blood rushed to my head, and my vision flickered.
Snap.
Suddenly, all sound vanished from the world.
“…Huh?”
The screen was swallowed by white light, and my consciousness sank into deep darkness.
“…Are you awake?”
A clear, transparent female voice pulled me back.
I opened my eyes to find myself in a pure white void.
“Where… am I?”
“You are dead. A stroke caused by excitement during gameplay.”
The beautiful woman standing before me—the goddess Inanna—delivered the verdict in a cold, emotionless tone.
“Wait, seriously!?
Then this means reincarnation, right!? Yes!
Make me a super handsome guy who’s insanely popular this time!”
“That is not possible. You lack the necessary points.”
She rejected me without hesitation.
“What!? Why!? I’ve been bullied my entire life!”
“Yes. Up until recently, you had accumulated ‘sympathy points.’
Had you lived out your lifespan normally, your wish could have been granted.
However… at the very end, you used cheats.”
I was left speechless.
It was just a game, wasn’t it?
“No.
You avoided effort, ruined others’ enjoyment, and indulged in harmful behavior.
That corruption consumed all of your accumulated virtue.
This is simply the result of your own actions, Mario Yamada.”
Her cold gaze pierced straight through me.
“With your current points, the only option is reincarnation with your appearance and abilities unchanged.”
“No! I refuse!
I don’t want to live like that again!
…Wait—another world! That’s fine, right!?
Send me to a world with magic or something!”
“…Very well.
Souls that die before their natural lifespan must live out the remainder elsewhere.
However, there will be no cheat abilities, and no harem.
You will simply continue living—exactly as you are.”
“I don’t care! That’s fine!
If it’s another world, I’ll dominate anyway!”
I was ecstatic.
This fat body.
This NEET mindset.
With the stage of another world, surely they would all become “special powers.”
I clung to that baseless delusion.
“Understood.
…I wish you the best of luck.
This time, until the day your lifespan truly ends.”
Inanna’s fingertip touched my forehead.
As my consciousness faded, I dreamed of a glorious future.
Ultimate magic.
Beautiful girls kneeling before me.
A shining destiny as a hero named “Mario.”
—Never realizing it was a one-way ticket to hell.
