I started using a randomizer for the rolls.
¿How did I not think of that before? ¡I feel like such an idiot!
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"My soul, as wretched as my pride, drifts aimlessly in this sea of impotence."
Faced with the loss of what he considered something sacred, Rémy wished with all his might that it was all a dream. Sure, all it took was a little hot water to return to normal, ¿but what manner of normalcy awaited a man now forever marked by an ancient Chinese curse?
Rain, a spilled glass of water, or any cold current became an obstacle to consider. Even Ranma had to transform several times in a single episode due to bad luck, leading to a series of misunderstandings and mistreatment that landed him in endless trouble.
Rémy swallowed hard, aware that he now shared that same fate.
He looked at himself in the mirror's reflection. A young woman with smooth skin and large eyes stared back at him with the same expression of horror he felt. Her delicate shoulders revealed more than the modesty accumulated over his two lifetimes was willing to accept without a nervous breakdown in between. He hugged himself, feeling the unfamiliar softness of his own arms and the icy trail of water still dripping down his back. He had gained a five-hectare refuge only to lose, seconds later, something he considered far more important.
—French and now transsexual. God really punishes twice.
Cartman's taunts fell on the ears of someone refusing to face reality.
«At least I'm pretty cute…»
The constant tinkling of the last sphere, still floating impatiently above the desk, began pulsing rhythmically. Rémy was already hidden inside the suitcase, only poking his head out from the opening, when the fifth flash lit up.
—¡Hey! — he shouted at Cartman. — I bet that one will take you home. ¿Why don't you touch it?
Cartman, who had barely noticed the supernatural speed at which Rémy moved, backed away from the sphere in fear. —¡Forget it! — he snapped, flipping him the middle finger. —¡I'm not losing my dick!
The pulse of light became more erratic and violent, making light objects on the desk—pens, sheets of paper, and an old charger—start vibrating with electric snaps that set off every alarm in Cartman's brain.
—¡Let me in!
He shouted as he reached the suitcase, which now seemed welded shut between the bronze clasps and the leather. The boy desperately pulled at the lid, but the lid felt as rigid as tempered steel.
—Nah-ah — Rémy said from inside. —Get your own magic suitcase.
—¡Fuck you!
The sphere burst into thousands of iridescent fragments that scattered across the room like shrapnel. They were shards of black light and white reflections that completely ignored a screaming Cartman as he covered his head.
The flash that followed was so intense that for an instant the room ceased to exist, replaced by absolute white void. Outside on the street, the glow filtered through the curtains with the violence of a miniature supernova, forcing drivers to slam on brakes and pedestrians to cover their eyes, fearing a transformer had exploded.
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—REWARD 3/3 (RANK C)—
TYPE: Arcane Knowledge / Forbidden Gastronomy
NAME: "THE SECRET FORMULA OF THE KRABBY PATTY"
DESCRIPTION: The best-kept secret of the bottom of the sea. A scroll containing the exact combination of ingredients, cooking times, and the "secret ingredient" that has caused commercial wars for decades.
EFFECT: Allows the user to cook a hamburger with addictive and mildly healing properties. Whoever consumes it enters a state of absolute happiness, ignoring any recent trauma (including identity crises or physical transformations).
NOTE:"Ravioli, ravioli, give me the formuoli."
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Rémy opened the lid and, squinting, observed the piece of paper sealed inside a glass bottle stoppered only with a cork. The glass was thick, with small salt deposits and barnacle remnants testifying to its underwater origin.
When he pulled it out with his new slender fingers, an aroma of toasted bread, pickles, and a mix of unknown spices exploded in the room, making Cartman's stomach let out a roar that sounded like a broken engine.
Rémy was wary. That a simple cooking recipe, no matter how delicious or addictive, was on the same level as a Harry Potter suitcase and Ranma's cursed springs was, at the very least, disconcerting and out of place.
—This has to be a trap — he whispered, his new voice sounding as incredulous as his thought.
He looked at the yellowish parchment peeking from the bottle's neck. He remembered the legends of that underwater restaurant; a place where a single burger could stop wars, cause civil unrest, and drive a microscopic evil genius insane.
Unfortunately for him, curiosity was one of his most devastating weaknesses. He unfolded the paper and…
—Oh… my… God…
A golden glow, so beautiful it made the stars of the cosmos look like filthy shining stones, emanated from the parchment's fibers. Illumination that struck directly at his pleasure center. Rémy felt his knees—now finer and more delicate—buckle under the magnitude of the information he was processing.
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USER STATUS: ILLUMINATED / HUNGRY
ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE: SECRET FORMULA (DIVINE LEVEL)
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Rémy closed the parchment with reverence, putting it back in the glass bottle. The room returned to its usual dim light, but the scent of glory lingered in the air.
Perhaps all the suffering, the humiliation of the transformation, and the imminent death threats had served only to lead him to this precise moment. With absolute clarity, tears running down his cheeks and his soft hand pressed to his chest, Rémy felt that everything had been worth it.
The wet clothes no longer mattered, nor the high-pitched voice, the disconcerting emptiness in his crotch, nor that his skin was now as delicate as silk.
From now on, everything would be fine.
Cartman, who for once seemed genuinely impressed—or maybe just hypnotized by the residual scent of glory—remained silent as he watched the dark-haired young woman with an illuminated gaze.
The village streets were especially lively. Children's laughter, mothers' conversations as they came and went after buying dinner, and the occasional rant from elders complaining about boredom from their chairs.
Rémy, after a good hot bath, walked among a group of people who greeted him with quick hand gestures or a slight nod. The steam from the high-temperature water had worked its magic, returning his height, voice, and that masculine bone structure he now appreciated more than ever.
—¡Hey, Rémy! —a baker shouted from his stall. —¿Is that your cousin?
The baker pointed at Cartman, who was trying to escape between pouts from the leash Rémy had tied him with. The boy struggled with wounded dignity, shooting murderous looks at every villager who dared laugh at his situation.
Rémy kept a firm grip on the leash, ignoring the child's drama. He knew that with Cartman's curiosity and tendency to get into trouble, letting him loose in the village would cause a ton of accidents he wouldn't have the energy to deal with. And definitely not worth risking with the few credits he was getting.
—He's a distant relative —Rémy replied to the baker with a smile. —He has… aggressive autism level 9. The doctor recommended not letting him loose in public places.
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—DISRUPTION EVENT DETECTED—
Title: "The César and the Dog".
Rating Status: THROUGH THE ROOF!
The audience is feeling pity.
Reward for "Infinite Humiliation": 12 Credits.
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—Uh… that must be tough — the baker said, looking at Cartman with a mix of pity and relief that he wasn't the one holding the leash.
—¡Liar!
Cartman shrieked as he tried to bite the leash.
The villagers burst into general laughter, taking Cartman's words as the imaginative tantrums of a sick child. No one suspected that, at that precise moment, Rémy's "cousin" was shouting absolute truths about his origin and the nature of his situation.
Everyone seemed to understand him perfectly, even though Cartman hadn't said a single word in Japanese. His English insults reached the villagers' ears as a rough but comprehensible regional dialect. As a former American, communicating in another language with the child felt as natural as breathing, and he truly hoped no one could understand a single word from his foul mouth.
Rémy felt a cold sweat run down his neck. He had taken for granted that language would be a barrier, a kind of privacy shield between him, Cartman, and the rest of this rural Japan's inhabitants.
But things refused to be simple.
Rémy yanked the harness with a force that made Cartman stumble, momentarily silencing his next string of insults, and led him toward the village outskirts, far enough that no busybody would come snooping. The bustle of laughter and market chatter faded, replaced by the whisper of wind through bamboo trees and the croaking of frogs in nearby rice paddies.
—¡I knew it! You're finally going to kill me and use me as fertilizer — Cartman said, dramatizing as he dropped to his knees on the dirt. —¡You're so cruel!
Rémy rolled his eyes and released the harness.
—Stop being so dramatic, Eric. We have work to do.
With a soft snap of his fingers, Rémy deployed the store's market section in his mental interface. After a quick balance of his resources, counting the credits earned from killing the curse, the initial reward, and the few he lost summoning Cartman from the plane, he now had 657 to spend freely.
¡Peace was never an option!
He wasn't going to let the Adaptive Configuration Force improvement go to waste. It was his only way to defend himself against the dangers that abounded in this world while he didn't obtain a character sympathetic enough to help him, or acquire a powerful magical or technological object to avoid his death.
He checked the store and, finding no trace of the chip that allowed him to be transported to the casino to keep playing, he settled on Butters' Discretion Eye and Wolverine Claws. The 350 credits vanished and gave way to a small semicircular fissure that tore the air. From it emerged a tiny robot, identical to Archie in everything except size, attached to a delivery scooter and with a square backpack bearing the initials "I-S".
The little automaton made a tight turn in the air, its scooter engine buzzing with a high-pitched, cute sound, before landing in front of a Rémy who was starting to blush.
With a movement that looked far too natural for a mechanical being, it opened its I-S backpack (Interdimensional Supplies). From inside it pulled two miniature cardboard boxes, which it gently dropped onto the ground before accelerating back into the portal with an overly flashy drift that left a trail of blue sparks in the air.
The boxes, upon touching this world's ground, grew to their functional size.
—¡Behold! — Rémy shouted, letting himself be carried away by the excitement of the moment as he approached the box labeled with the discretion eye. — With this, I…
When he opened it, a ninja star shot out straight into Rémy's left eye, which was already letting out a scream that tore his throat and scared the birds from the nearby rice fields. The sound of steel meeting bone resistance and sinking into soft tissue. He brought both hands to his face, but hot blood was already seeping between his fingers.
Rémy screamed as he writhed on the dirt ground while pain pulsed to the rhythm of his heart, an electric agony that clouded his judgment.
He felt the ninja star's metal vibrating inside his skull. Every time he tried to blink, the steel scraping against the optic nerve sent pure fire discharges that made him arch his back. The world became a red, blurry smear, a whirlwind of agony where time seemed to have stopped just to let him feel every millimeter of the wound.
Even the normally sadistic Cartman screamed, jumping back with eyes wide, his voice reaching a high register of pure instinctive terror. —¡Don't move! — he told him.
Through that haze of blood and tears, the "Discretion Eye" began to flash. The ninja star's metal wasn't expelled; on the contrary, it began sinking with a metallic suction sound that raised the hairs on the boy's skin. The object buried itself completely in the socket until it disappeared with a dull flash of light, fusing with the nerve and bone in a forced integration. What for Cartman was a snuff-worthy carnage, for Rémy was becoming a fully functional vision. The void of the wound was filled by a self-assembling data architecture at dizzying speed.
The blood and suffering ceased, leaving behind gasps and tears on Rémy's face.
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—SYSTEM INTEGRATED: DISCRETION EYE (BUTTERS VARIANT)—
Status: Successful integration.
Unlocked Functions: Statistics Vision: Ability to see the "soul" of every person/curse and the truth of the world. ¿Who needs the Six Eyes?
NOTE: "To truly understand the pain and essence of something, you must put yourself in its shoes."
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—They didn't have to be so attached to the show… — Rémy said as he wiped the last tears from his cheek.
The left eye, though physically recovered, projected an overlaid reality. He saw the energy flow—or what he assumed was energy—from the bamboo trees and a dense, chaotic mist emanating from Cartman.
—¿What attached to what? ¿What are you talking about? — Cartman asked, less tense now that he saw the wound was practically healed and Rémy no longer looked like he was about to die from septic shock.
Rémy looked at Cartman through his new eye. Beside the boy, a small technical sheet floated in the air, detailing an absurdly high "Affinity with Chaos." Though calling it a sheet was just a figure of speech; the information translated directly into his brain, detailed enough to know that Cartman was hungry, angry, and came with a small summary of his improvements and abilities so far.
—Never mind — Rémy said as he stood up.
He focused his vision on the Wolverine Claws box. The left eye began emitting a faint internal hum as it analyzed the contents. Through the cardboard, he saw the metallic gleam of the blades and the gloves that were apparently normal. No killer springs or direct trajectories to vital organs detected.
—Looks safe… or at least it won't try to assassinate me before I use it — Rémy murmured, letting out a sigh of relief.
He took them out of the box carefully. They weren't biological implants or tech that would jump into his forearms; they were the physical pieces, heavy and lethal, just as they appeared in the accessories from "The Fractured but Whole." The metal shone with a matte tone under the sun rays still bathing the village outskirts. Unlike the game, where they were limited to be a pair of gloves for the player character, here they had real utility and an edge that made the air seem to vibrate around them.
—Put them on — Rémy ordered, firmly extending the gloves. —I'll turn you into a tiny god.
—¿And why should I listen to you? — Cartman asked, planting his feet in the dirt and crossing his arms over his belly, making the harness tighten. —I don't even know your name, and you keep abusing me like a pet.
Rémy sighed, feeling the weight of the situation and the strange clarity his left eye gave him about the boy's volatile temper.
—Rémy Maître — he replied, raising his hand in a truce gesture. — And no, I'm not French. I was born in Japan, but my parents are from Reims.
—That doesn't make it better — Cartman muttered, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. —Still sounds like someone who eats snails for breakfast and surrenders in wars. That sounds exactly like what a Frenchman trying to hide that he's French would say. It's like saying you're not a dog but were born in a kennel.
«Oh God, give me strength»
Rémy placed his palm on Cartman's shoulder and looked him straight in the eyes. He had to convince him that he was here now, that he understood, beyond the insults and mockery, that they were now an indivisible unit in a game where the rules were real and final; that he was now part of something they would have to cooperate to survive. Even if Cartman was essentially immortal, Rémy didn't have that privilege. All it took was one well-placed blow at the right moment or a precise hit to the head for his consciousness to shut off and be taken back to the morgue, where he should never have come from. And there was no way to know if, upon dying, all objects and characters pulled from the system would vanish with him at that very instant. If Rémy ceased to exist, the world he was forced to build could collapse like a house of cards, leaving Cartman alone in the best case. Disarmed and lost in a place where he wouldn't even have the satisfaction of mocking Kenny.
—I used a magical maniac robot to rip you from your world, your family, and your friends, just to bring you to this cursed place where you'll have to risk your life every second. ¡Understand it once and for all, Eric! If I die, we all go to absolute shit. You won't go back to your couch, you won't eat fast food again, you'll simply end up devoured by the dark and infinite void of nonexistence, where there's nothing and no one until the last star in the cosmos agonizes.
Rémy explained the situation, repeating what he had already tried to illustrate earlier with the PowerPoint presentation, only this time much more directly.
—¿Wh… what? — Cartman stammered, jaw hanging a little.
Cartman took a step back, tripping over his own feet, while the clank of metal from his claws betrayed the tremor in his hands.
—¿Do you get it now? If I fall, the system shuts down. And if the system shuts down, your 'existence' gets deleted like a corrupted file. No heaven, no hell, not even a corpse to bury. Just an empty space where a fat kid with metal claws used to be.
Cartman looked at his claws, which now seemed heavier and less fun. His gaze jumped from his metal hands to Rémy's face, searching for any sign that it was a bad joke, but he only found the icy surface of a potential psychopath.
—You're an extension of my account, Eric. A summon from a very weird gacha — Rémy sentenced, adjusting the suitcase with a sharp movement before opening it. — If the account closes, the avatar disappears. So if you value those lungs that are currently hyperventilating, make sure nothing stops mine.
In fact, Cartman thought his words made sense after witnessing and experiencing firsthand that strange witchcraft that transported him from one side to another and his impressive durability. He could never have survived that "curse" attack before, much less killed it.
—So, I really need you to listen to me. ¿Okay?
Cartman, disoriented and with his head processing everything, smelled something magical, wonderful, and greasy that soon eliminated all roughness and bad thoughts. It was a huge burger that Rémy pulled out of the suitcase.
—That's… —Cartman exclaimed, his pupils dilating as the fear of nonexistence was displaced by voracious hunger. —¡It's a double cheese! ¡Rémy, you fucking genius!
Rémy watched through his eye as Cartman's stress levels plummeted, replaced by immediate satisfaction that erased any trace of existential panic. It was fascinating and terrifying how easy it was to manipulate the child's psyche with the right stimulus. The Discretion Eye registered a dopamine explosion so violent that, for a moment, Cartman's chaos aura turned a bright, sedated pink.
Cartman took a massive bite, feeling the meat juice lazily dripping on his tongue. In that instant, the world around him—the curses, feudal Japan, and the threat of nonexistence—simply stopped mattering. He was eating the very epiphany of fat. The bread's texture, soft as a cloud, embraced meat whose seasoning seemed dictated by ancient gods. Every taste bud on Cartman was assaulted by a perfect balance between the sweetness of the secret sauce and the deep smokiness of a grill that knew no borders or human sadness.
It was a divine sensation, an euphoria that ran down his spine like an electric pleasure discharge. For a second, Cartman swore he could hear heavenly choirs singing over the perfect crunch of a perfectly pickled cucumber. The heaviness of Wolverine's claws on his hands vanished, replaced by the lightness of someone who had found the meaning of life between two sesame seed buns.
—Oh, sweet and greasy creator… — he muttered between bites, eyes rolling back in ecstasy. —If this is the taste of being a summon… maybe it's not so bad.
Rémy nodded satisfied, watching how fat and culinary glory had achieved what death threats had barely touched. Without wasting a second, he reached into the suitcase and pulled out a sturdy-looking recorder. After a brief click, the silence of the forest was broken by the least monotonous training song he kept in his personal collection: a frenetic rhythm loaded with synthesizers and percussion.
—¡If you want more, you're gonna have to move that ass!
Over the next few hours, Rémy made sure to fully exploit Cartman's potential under the merciless afternoon sun. Everything turned into a physical conditioning ordeal that, on more than one occasion, threatened to burst the boy's organs.
—¡Cut that trunk, Eric! Use the weight of the claws, not just your arms! — Rémy shouted over the blaring music.
Cartman, driven by the memory of the burger and the fear of nothingness, became a whirlwind of steel and sweat. If he stopped, Rémy threw him a piece of burger and the kid's energy returned instantly.
By the time the recorder's rhythm stopped, Cartman was panting, covered in dust and plant debris that made him completely regret agreeing to all this.
—Fuck it, I think I'd rather disappear into nothingness — he managed to say. —I've cut… more things in two hours… than in my entire damn life.
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—PASSIVE TRAIT UPGRADE: "CALORIC MOTIVATION"—
After high-intensity training based on gourmet rewards and existential terror, the summon's body has learned to process pleasure as combat fuel.
Effect: For every bite of high-quality food the summon receives during combat, attack speed and strength increase by 25% for 3 minutes.
Bonus: Strength has increased slightly.
Penalty: If the summon goes more than 8 hours without receiving a premium food stimulus, its "Complaint Volume" increases by 50% and there is a 10% chance it will attempt to bite the user.
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—Damn, I have to be way too specific with what I make him do. —A light bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. —Worse is nothing, I guess.
He lifted Cartman with effort and walked toward the suitcase. The boy, though small, weighed like a sack of cement due to post-training exhaustion and the food coma starting to claim his body.
It was time to go home and prepare his own supply of burgers. All the ones he had made before were for training only; in his eagerness to manipulate his summon, Rémy—trying to behave like some mysterious entity—had forgotten his own basic needs and didn't bother making one for himself, but after all this time watching Cartman enjoy the meat, smelling the crispy bacon and melted fat floating in the air, it was impossible for his stomach not to cry out for a portion.
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—BROADCAST RIGHTS ROYALTIES—
Status: Reward received.
Detail: Your summoned object "The Rose in the Darkness" traveled thousands of kilometers and has spawned the first addict to war.
"Thanks, holy and emperor."
Sorcerers/curses trapped by quality narrative: 1
Credits obtained: 100
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Rémy blinked a couple of times, rereading the notification to make sure exhaustion wasn't playing tricks on him.