He had always been fascinated with the idea of death, or rather, the idea of ends. Things needed to end for new things to begin. He had also never feared death, he felt no need to, if there was an afterlife of some kind, as many religions assured, why would one? If one would be reincarnated after death, there was no need to fear it as well, sure, some argue that you could lose your memories and maybe even who you are, and should therefore fear it, but if that was the case, then you would not exist anymore, parts of you, maybe, but not you, so you would be unable to care, so why care to begin with?

  The last option, the one he had always found the most likely, was that you simply stopped existing upon dying. As Steven Hawking said, ‘There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.’

  There was just one problem, he could think, and he was reasonably sure that he was dead, a bullet in the head would do that to you.

  He continued ignoring the screen that had popped up sometime while he had been thinking, there was no countdown on it, so it wasn’t relevant yet.

  He didn’t blame them, his death had been fast, it had stung for a moment, but that was it. Had they tortured him, then he would probably have been annoyed and gotten revenge if he could without unreasonable amounts of effort, but as it stood, there was no reason to.

  Ok, so the screen was now electrocuting his mind, that was annoying.

  Pain was annoying, just as stupid people often were, or people who couldn’t accept that you didn’t believe what they believe, or doing something, ok, not always the last thing. Reading could be fun, and gaming could as well, so long as you could see progress, and if that meant grinding for a few weeks for a single upgrade on an armor then so be it.

  That reminded him, if his family went against his wishes and did bury him instead of selling his organs on the black market and then donating his body to science, no need to waste resources and money, he hoped they at least wrote ‘Praise the grind’ on his tombstone.

  The pain had finally stopped, that was nice.

  Where was he anyway? A form of time existed since there was a form of ‘before’ and ‘after’, but space, that he didn’t know, he had no body, which meant he couldn’t perceive anything. Except for the pain the screen had caused earlier.

  Maybe he should read it, he didn’t have anything better to do after all, and he didn’t know how long he could stay sane enough without any outside input at all.

  Once he had finished reading, the message simply vanished, only to be replaced by a second only moments later.

  Then a much smaller screen popped up above the old one.

  The creator of this system clearly had absolutely no interest in designing it, the messages were of low quality, and they hadn’t even bothered to remove the creation notes. But that was nothing he could change, and hey, he got a system, he wouldn’t complain so long as it wouldn’t hold him back.

  As for a name, he didn’t plan on using one he had already used, there was no fun in that, so he needed to think of a new one. The first options he discarded were names of worlds of fictions, while that would have been cool, other possible reincarnators would possibly recognize the name, and anonymity would likely come in useful.

  But if he wasn’t going to use a name of a character he liked, what name would he use?

  It took him quite a while, but at least he didn’t have to come up with new names, he had taken literal hours to search for names in the past, either because he wanted the perfect name for his character, or because literally every name seemed to have been used already and he didn’t want to add numbers or misspell a name.

  At first, he had wanted to use ‘Delaine’, but then he remembered that he may end up in a medieval world, and having no family name could be a sign of low status there, and he didn’t know if they had some way to access the system.

  But instead of trying to think of a family name, he went a completely different route. Sometimes names had power, especially when Fey or empathetic magic were involved, and he was reincarnating with a system, so he wasn’t about to discount their existence. So instead of choosing something that would normally qualify as a name, he went with something more like a title.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  From now on he was ‘Nylarthog, the Lord of Unholy Entropy and Languor’.

  If he had a body Nylarthog, the Lord of Unholy Entropy and Languor would be holding his stomach from laughing, this name was so edgy and reeked of eight-grader syndrome, it was great, he should have tried using eldritch names earlier, they were hilarious.

  After he confirmed his choice, both screens went away and a new one replaced them.

  No boons, that wasn’t unexpected, boons were something granted after all. The traits also seemed fairly accurate, even if their description was quite off most of the time, but they were likely general anyway, and not for him personally.

  Next, he got a so simple character creation menu that it wasn’t even funny anymore, well, except for the fact that he could choose any color as skin or hair color. Next to the menu, there also was a 3-D representation of the character which he had created, and it was fully customizable so long as it was still within acceptable ranges for the selected race, and he could also only alter the outward appearance, so no changing where nerves went for higher efficiency, or even changing where the nerve connected the eye to the brain to remove the blind spot. But one could not have everything.

  He still took his sweet time though, while the race was an easy choice, human, even if the humans were one of the physically weakest, he didn’t know how being of another race could maybe influence his mind, or if there was maybe discrimination going on, sure, there could also be discrimination against humans, but he thought that reasonably unlikely, humans bred like weed, but not only that, even if humans tended to fight among themselves, if there was a larger enemy, they would target them.

  The ‘us against them’ mentality was something to behold.

  Not that he thought that such discrimination was too likely to be extreme, it seemed somewhat pointless to reincarnate someone, just for them to die almost instantly.

  Then there was that he at least somewhat understood humans, having to try and understand a completely different culture, yeah, he noped right out of that.

  In the end he decided upon a human of average height, black hair, lithe body-build, optimal for running away and hiding, and average and easily forgettable face.

  Sure, he could have made himself a beauty, but that would only grab attention, and he had no desire to be raped.

  Next up was a bio creation, something which he had to be careful about because if he gave himself too many advantages in it, it would not be accepted and he would be assigned a random one, and since one could include likes, dislikes, social standing and many other factors in it, that was not something he planned on risking.

  As such, he went with a very simple backstory that went about so:

  He was a random, reasonably talented, healthy citizen, he could read and write, had a job that made him enough money to get by if he didn’t waste it. His family was dead, killed in a robbery gone wrong. He was not quite outgoing, and was neither particularly liked, nor particularly disliked in the community.

  This should cover most important things and since he formulated it generally, it should also fit into probably any world. There was also a reason he hadn’t included mathematics into the bio, he was way above average in it, math also wasn’t exactly limited to one place so long as the beings were humans, or close enough to it, they would have a form of it, even if maybe called differently. And since he could read, he would also know numbers, and converting them in case of a non-decimal system wouldn’t be a problem.

  That was nice, now he only had to hope for some good ones.

  That was, he wasn't sure, the first could certainly become extremely useful, the second one maybe not so much, but he wouldn't complain, it was a system that so far seemed to only bring advantegous.