Canon Fodder

CHAPTER 200 RUNNING LATE

“Holy hell,” I mumbled as I stumbled into the red room. “That was a deep one.” Whatever had been done to my mind to keep me stuck to the girls was quickly passing. Like a fog leaving me I wasn’t nearly as desperate to be by their sides anymore. 

For weeks I had been telling myself I needed to go, but there was some sort of hold that the world had put on me. The 3 girls anchoring me there as the challenge came ever closer. I received a new notification. 

“Hell yeah,” I said. Looking through my status screen I decided on Ability. I really wanted the Psychic Resistance too but my Abilities were stronger. I clicked the reward and a new notification popped up. 

“Fuck,” I mumbled, my heart pounding in my ears. The clock ticking down second by second I forced myself to calm down. I had a whole hour. I pulled up my Status Screen. 

I slowly made a plan for which to use for my Challenger Slots. Passive Skills was out until I figured out how to get a Challenger Slot for that set. First was Abilities then. I needed Chakra. That was a given. It could make me stronger, I could make water and other things. My chakra would be weaker if my body was weaker, but it was still required for a lot of my skill sets. 

Originally I had thought Chikyugi, but that couldn’t help me in a fight. All the skill did was gave me the hearts on my junk and allowed me to use the Lust Element more easily. There were plenty of people that could use the Lust Element that did not have the Chikyugi. I would probably lose my larger dick, but I could potentially change that with Epitome in other worlds. I didn’t think Chikyugi would be needed for a fight. 

The only abilities that I felt would be useful would be Give and Take Quirk, Conqueror’s Haki, and Berserker Mode. Give and Take had the evolution of letting me absorb kinetic energy or reflect it back. Though I wasn’t as experienced using it in a fight, it would potentially be as strong as it was currently. Thus I needed that. 

Left was Conqueror’s Haki and Berserker Mode. Conqueror’s Haki allowed me to have stronger Haki. I was sure Haki became stronger the stronger you were, so that meant it would be weaker if I didn’t have my World Lasting Physique. But Observation and Armament would be a godsend, weak or not. 

I had played with Berserker Mode. Thinking of things that made me angry also made me stronger. But there was the risk of blacking out. There were too many what ifs to think about. I decided to move to Bonuses. That was easy, I wanted Tough Organs. It made my skin and all my other organs thicker, able to take more damage. I left the risk of my challenger using psychic attacks, but I wasn’t too worried about it for this first challenge. 

Last was Challenger Item Slots. My Chikyugi Necklace was useful, but if I didn’t have the Chikyugi skill or my huge chakra reserves I wasn’t sure if I could use it to the fullest. Also since I didn’t know if I would have enough chakra I needed the Seastone Jitte. I could create water through it more easily, and use it as a weapon. 

The Gantz Armor was a given. It would make me stronger, and provide defense. The real question was did I want my Jitte or the Full Heal. If I could take the Full Heal then I could be losing and have another chance to continue. Basically a second life…but I was one of those idiots in video games that kept the important stuff for the end game. This was the first challenge. I needed to save the Full Heal for something. I wasn’t sure what, but it wasn’t this. Maybe if I got another Item Challenger Slot I would change my mind. But for now I needed a way to make my deadly water easily, and make my body stronger. Attack and Defend. 

My Challenger Slot ideas ready. I did something that I had been putting off. Clicking the World Choice a window popped up. 

I meant to do this weeks ago, but then I got caught up in the One Punch Man narrative. I hoped this was what I thought it was. I clicked Y. The list was massive. Hundreds of names and titles. I poured through the screen as it kept going and going. I looked to see if there was anything I could do with the names. Turns out I was able to swipe them and get rid of some. 

I went through line by line. Eliminating those names I didn’t recognize. Then focused on the list trying to memorize everything. 

These were all the possibilities I knew something about. I focused on Manga first. These are all the foes I could face. I had to watch out for Mob Psycho 100. Hell, Pokemon too. What if someone got a Pokeball Item? I would be screwed if someone caught a Mew or something. 

There were just too many. One thing I did notice was there were no Gundams. For all I knew you could open doors later though, so I might have to watch out in the future. There was also something else glaringly obvious. There was porn. 

Harem, Moral Reversal, Mind Break, Tentacle. That meant that somewhere in the hallway outside was a smut themed door. That may have been something I chose. Maybe they let me choose other doors. Either way it looked like there were perverted doors in the halls. Probably some amalgamation of all the weird hentai out there. I moved them out of the way, focusing on the possible worlds that could be in Manga. 

I moved to Manhwa. This one was much more concerning. Korean comics had one theme. A guy getting super strong super fast. There were some minor differences like did he return from the past, or was there a leveling system, or whatever. Either way if you were the protagonist you were pretty much set. 

The big thing I had learned in my time in manga was you usually were not the protagonist or close to him. I could try Solo Leveling but there was no way to know if I would be close to the main character to steal his cheat of leveling up. But in the world you could awaken as someone strong right out the gate, then I could try to get the World Lasting Physique and build my strength from there. 

These worlds weren’t an automatic cheat. You could be a beggar in one world, then another a king. Honestly, I was really glad I had chosen the Memory Meld skill. I had woken up in Naruto already knowing how to use chakra. There were issues with it of course, like I got stuck in the drama, or had feelings for people, but still, it was helpful. 

I shook my head, time was ticking and I needed to focus. I memorized the list and threw out the smut.

I moved to Comics next. The list was a lot shorter than the others. I guessed mainly because Marvel and DC were combined into their own universe. There was Smut here so I guessed there was a world with all the naughty comics. I memorized the list, but there were too many possibilities. 

Moving to Books I could tell I made the right call starting with Manga when I came to the worlds. There were big possibilities of course, but manga was a lot more fun. I found that there was a Romance world too, so at least there was a theme. Maybe whoever put us here liked to watch us have sex. I poured through the list and finally I had what I guessed were the 11 worlds I had chosen when coming to this place. For Manga I sorted it to worlds I might want to check out. 

There was no way to close a world quickly for a Challenger Slot since the Worlds were closed. But I might want to try to find Death Note in the future. I could easily end the canon for that for a quick Challenger slot. The real problem was I was limited to entertainment I knew. 

I was sure there were better worlds out there. But I wouldn’t feel comfortable choosing 11 worlds I had no idea about. So my challengers could have skills I had never heard of or seen before. Luckily I was pretty vanilla. I stuck to popular stuff, so it was safe to say that people would have skills I knew about. 

The question was, where did I want to go after Manga? For Books I really wanted to do Animorphs. It was a Young Adult series about an alien invasion. A group of kids ran into an alien that gave them the ability to turn into any animal they touched. I had seen some crazy animals so far. If I could get the morphing skill and learn to morph into one of the sea turtles from Naruto, that would be pretty awesome. Hell there were animals in all of these worlds that it would be great to turn into. Especially if I could morph into Pokemon. But that would have to wait. I needed to pick my next hall. I wasn’t sure it was Books. 

Comics was a given. I would pick Marvel. I wasn’t as versed on DC comics, but it depended on what kind of ability my counterpart in that world had. Would I be a mutant? Or Batman’s little brother in DC? My name was Watanabe in Manga. Maybe my last name was Wayne in the Comic worlds. It sure as hell wasn’t Watanabe in my original life. 

But let’s be honest. There were too many ways to get really strong in the Manhwa worlds. The people there pretty much had cheats. I needed to pick one that I could potentially be strong right away and not be almost killed immediately like in High School of the Dead. I would be starting over on my physical strength. I had to think it through. All the while the clock ticked while I thought. 

I ended up with Ranker Who Lives a Second Time. It was a manhwa that followed a Korean Special Forces guy. His twin brother sends him a watch from the future that has a diary of all the tricks to follow in some tower. The tower could be climbed up and had challenges on each level. The attribute that sold it for me was the fact that right at the beginning of the tower climb you could raise physical stats based off of dodging and blocking arrows. With my Haki I could do pretty well there. That would give me a base strength and hopefully I could earn the World Lasting Physique for the Manhwa worlds. 

I had thought Solo Leveling, but honestly I could turn out to be anyone. There was no guarantee I could get the cheat leveling skill. My close second had been the Tutorial is Too Hard. A normal person was able to start in the Hell Difficulty, maybe I could. But Ranker Who Lives a Second Time had too OP of a beginning step. 

I held my breath and pushed the Ranker Who Lives a Second Time name. The light over the Junction Hallway turned from red to blue. I moved over to it. Opening the door the 4 side doors in the hall were still red, but the one straight ahead was blue. I followed it and found the Manhwa door lit up blue. 

Walking over to it I grabbed the doorknob as a pop-up came up.

I held my breath and clicked Yes. I was then prompted to click my Challenger Slots from my Status Screen. I clicked what I wanted. When I was done my body immediately became weaker. Strength leaving me. It felt like my body had been full of air, but was now deflating. As muscles disappeared I ground my teeth, annoyed. I had spent a long time earning these damn muscles. Now they were taking it away. I looked down to my stomach as my 6 pack became hidden by a layer of fat. 

I breathed in and out feeling my chakra still there. A much smaller pool, I guessed maybe a quarter of what I had before. My Haki was still there, surrounding the chakra, and I felt my quirk, but everything felt weaker. I looked at my status screen. 

Honestly, it was better than nothing. My Status Screen was a hell of a lot shorter, but I felt pretty good with what I had accomplished during the last 5 years. “Weird thinking of it like that,” I said as I opened the Manhwa door. “Time sure flew by.” 

The hall had 2 doors on 1 side and one on the other. 1 less door than the Manga hallway. The door straight ahead was blue. I walked through and found another 11 doors surrounding me. Straight ahead, the door to the left was supposedly my Ranker Who Lives a Second Time Manhwa since the normally red light above it was now blue. If I thought of the door behind me like the Manga Door then it was in the spot of High School of the Dead. Which of course was the first door I had randomly chosen when I first came there. 

Grumbling about my luck, I turned around and waited in the main room. Shadowboxing, I was trying to get used to my much weaker self. My body was still young. I guessed I was at the strength I was in high school. No real muscle to speak of. At least my chakra channeled through my body and my Haki worked. I became more and more nervous as the timer clicked down. Nervously putting on my Gantz armor, I continued to try to remember what worlds I had to watch out for. It wasn’t too long until the timer hit 00:00 and it all went black.