Chapter 1

An utter darkness enveloped Aeris's body. He was nowhere, in an infinite, endless space with nothing but darkness.

That was until he fell onto a platform that now stood in the middle of space, going from darkness to a space with a magnificent view of the stars and distant planets.

The platform was translucent, sending shivers down his spine due to his fear of heights. Even a person who didn't fear heights would be terrified in such a situation.

Who would expect to be magically transported into an endless void and then open space, on a platform? 

It was something Aeris had only seen in fiction; he used to read a lot of it back when he wasn't deployed.

All this could mean he either died and was in some kind of realm where souls go after dying for judgment, or whatever. 

Or that he got teleported here by some powerful being for an unknown purpose. Either way, Aeris knew that he wasn't going to return to his old world. 

Not that he wanted to, after all he'd been through. His entire life had been pain, war, and nothing but emptiness, despite joining the military. 

Sometimes he would think of having a wife, sex, and living like any other person normally would. But he was too broken and too weird to have all of that. 

Yes, he wanted kisses, cuddles, and warmth at times, but he hated himself for it. 

It was weakness; he wasn't born for any of that. He wasn't the type to get those things. The world set a lonely path for him; Aeris accepted it anyway.

And now he stood somewhere in space, somehow able to breathe and feel warm, surrounded by countless distant stars, planets, and possible life on those said planets.

Aeris took a good look at those planets and thought about how people there must be living their own lives, totally ignorant of him standing on a transparent platform in the middle of space, with no suit, able to breathe, and not turn into an ice cube. 

Because, for those who don't know, space is very cold.

SWUSH

Aeris's inner thoughts suddenly broke when a spinning wheel appeared in front of him. Before he could react, multiple seats appeared from the sides, and with them, people. 

It would be easy to say "people," but they were more like a masked group of elite-looking individuals who reminded him of a rich baroque elite. 

All of them were masked and had a weird aura about them, like they weren't human at all. 

'I'm dumb, of course they aren't humans, duh!' he reality-checked himself for asking such a dumb question.

Just as he wanted to say something, a tall masked figure that looked like a butler spawned out of nowhere. Poof!

"Hello, ladies and gentlemen! Today we are having another soul, another wheel, another fate!"

The butler spoke from behind his mask, with an odd sense of tiredness in his voice that only Aeris noticed. 

He approached Aeris and pointed him at the wheel, revealing sharp fingers behind his white gloves. "You there! Spin the wheel and let it choose your fate!" 

Aeris was dumbfounded by everything going on. First, he was ready to kill that annoying drone operator, possibly earning him a medal if he survived. 

Then getting transported, changing worlds in between. He went from a clear blue sky to an endless void, to now, a platform in open space. 

Not just that, but a platform full of masked, elite-looking people with a butler and a wheel that he had to spin. 

He glanced around at the figures and decided that it was best to remain quiet; who knew how powerful these beings were?

Taking a better look at the wheel, Aeris was, to say the least, disturbed. 

The spinning wheel had various so-called fates and powers on it, and at whatever point the wheel stopped, Aeris would get it. 

The first thing he saw was getting reincarnated back on Earth, but during the Ice Age. 

Then there was a horrible fate of endless torture, eye peeling, stabbing, burning, and all the other horrible things. Aeris looked at the crowd with disgusted eyes, and they all laughed at the same time.

"I advise you to hurry up, or they will choose your fate for you. This is your only chance to get something good."

The butler spoke to Aeris, revealing a small dose of his eyes behind his carnival mask. They were black, full of sorrow and pent-up pain. 

The butler sounded confident, like he was one of them. But his fate was worse than death; ever since he died, he was chosen to be a slave for these powerful beings. 

Mostly about spinning a wheel, but sometimes they would torture him out of boredom, and he couldn't do anything about it. Aeris looked at him and nodded, forcing his hand forward and spinning the wheel.

whirlllll

The wheel spun fast, and the crowds laughed sadistically, awaiting the fate of the unfortunate soul. 

Aeris didn't know who he should pray to; these beings could be the very Gods if they could control souls just like that. And that didn't calm him a bit; if these beings were Gods, well then, everything was screwed.

whirl

The wheel finally came to a stop, silencing the podium. Aeris looked at his prize and almost fell to his knees out of relief.

Reincarnation in a Danmachi World with three powerful skills and a custom character creation.

Some part of the crowd got disappointed while others clapped approvingly. 

The butler looked at Aeris, and Aeris could hear him murmur before he disappeared. "What a lucky soul, shame that luck didn't serve me right..." he commented before disappearing in a smoke, along with the crowd.

Now left completely alone, Aeris felt like a stone had dropped off his chest. 'Man... I can't speak of how much had happened... But oh boy, I dodged a fate worse than death,' he shivered, remembering the endless suffering fates.

Just as he calmed down, a blue screen appeared in front of him. 

It was a character creation screen. "So now I can be whoever I want in that anime world, and I get three powerful skills, hmm..." 

He touched the screen and saw that everything was there: eye color, races, height, look, hair, name, and other stuff that usual RPG games have. 

He could finally look exactly how he wanted, which meant...

"FINALLY! I can choose not to be a standard human anymore!" 

Aeris smiled. In most of the fics he had read before where the main character ends up in a similar situation, the same MC picks to be reborn as a human. 

Which was stupid; why, for example, not be an elf? Or some powerful race having more potential than humans. It was the same pattern for most other Danmachi fan fictions, making their main characters humans. And harem...

"Ewww, I despise harems." Aeris cringed at the thought of it. "Damn those brain-rot Chinese authors, man."

"Alright, let's begin."