The Boundless King: Anime Mania

"HAAAAAA—shit, that hurt!"

Pain lingered as I groaned, blinking in confusion. My body felt weightless, suspended in a strange emptiness that surrounded me completely. No temperature, no sound except my own voice that seemed to echo yet never returned. The last thing I remembered was celebrating my escape from the unescapable—then getting blinded by two headlights before being violently launched through the air.

The irony wasn't lost on me. After months of being trapped in my apartment, the one time I finally ventured outside...

"Wait… where is this? Did I die?"

No way. I was sure I'd dodged Truck-kun. I had the whole tuck-and-roll part down! Did it spin back? The experimental treatment I'd been saving for flashed through my mind. Not that it mattered now.

After taking a few moments to gather my thoughts and calm myself down, I looked around at the endless darkness of this seemingly infinite void. No up, no down, just... nothingness. I glanced at my flowing ghostly body—translucent and shimmering like static on an old TV—and sighed.

"So, I guess I'm dead, huh? No reason to cry over spilled milk… or should I say, my spilled guts."

I chuckled at my own dark joke, the sound swallowed by the void without an echo. A brief flash of genuine fear gripped me—was I really gone? Would anyone even notice? The shelter volunteers might wonder why their code updates stopped coming. Would anyone else?

I pushed the thoughts away, and a creepy, perverted grin spread across my face instead.

I waited for several minutes, expecting a drop-dead gorgeous goddess to appear and tell me I'd done something extraordinary—like jerking my chicken to a picture of her or performing some crazy good deed that made her obsessed with me. Maybe my work at the shelter counted for something in the cosmic balance?

"Hehehe… now, where's the hot goddess who's gonna let me smash for some cliché reason? Come on, I'm ready!"

But as time dragged on, almost half an hour passed, and yet… nothing.

No goddess. No divine revelation. Just endless emptiness that seemed to press against me from all sides while simultaneously stretching into infinity.

"Well, damn. Are they late or something? Or maybe they're shy?"

I rubbed my nose smugly and acted nonchalant before yelling into the void.

"Goddess-chan, no need to be shy! I won't bite, promise! Come to Daddy!"

Yet, after what felt like an eternity… still no reply. Not even the smallest sound besides my own breathing—which, come to think of it, was strange for someone supposedly dead.

After hours passed, I started to lose my shit.

"No way… did they really forget about me? Or… is this hell?!"

No, that couldn't be right. I wasn't exactly a saint, but I wasn't that bad either! I'd even done good deeds! All those hours coding for the shelter, giving away half my meager freelance earnings even when it meant skipping meals. Sure, I was a degenerate, but that shouldn't land me in an eternal abyss of loneliness, right?!

Time dragged on as I spiraled into a full-blown mental breakdown. My chronic pain might be gone, but this psychological torture was worse. It felt like days of endless panic, fear, and regret until, eventually, the stress overwhelmed me, and I passed out—though how a ghost or whatever I was could faint remained beyond my comprehension.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After what felt like an eternity, I woke up to a thunderous, rumbling voice shaking the void. The emptiness vibrated, and for the first time since arriving, I felt something—sound waves physically pushing against whatever form I now possessed.

"Hey, you. You're finally awake. You were trying to cross the border, right?"

Still groggy, I let out a confused, "Huh? Ain't that from Skyri—" before my words trailed off.

I looked up, and my brain short-circuited.

Towering over me was a massive, glowing giant—a nerdy-looking dude decked out in a Nike tracksuit, Crocs, and holding a handheld console. The console's screen cast an eerie blue glow across his face, highlighting a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. He grinned down at me like he'd been waiting for this moment.

"Finally awake, huh? Looks like you recognized that line. As expected from you. By the way, sorry 'bout the wait."

I took a moment to process the sheer size of this guy and the overwhelming divinity radiating off him, completely forgetting about his tardiness. I just stared at his enormous body. It was like standing in front of a cosmic entity… who also resembled a Discord mod. The air—if you could call the nothingness around us "air"—felt charged with electricity, making the hairs on my ghostly arms stand on end.

Still a bit doubtful, I asked, "So uh… I guess you're ROB, right?"

ROB's smug grin grew wider before he proudly puffed out his chest. Then, in a booming voice that made my head spin, he declared:

"Yeah, that's me—the strongest ROB overseeing this area of the multiverse! Be honored, for throughout Heaven and Earth, I alone am the Omnipotent One!"

I just rolled my eyes.

'Fucking weeb.'

ROB's grin grew even wider before he spoke in a teasing tone.

"Ya know, I can erase you at any time, right?"

Realizing he could read my mind, I immediately panicked. With a forced smile, I blurted out, "Haha! My bad, my guy! No hard feelings, right? B-By the way, uh… could you maybe talk a little softer? Feels like I'm surrounded by JBL speakers on max volume. Oh, and like, shrink or something?"

ROB chuckled before shrinking down to my size and casually plopping onto a nonexistent couch, floating there like it was the most normal thing in the world. The sudden change in scale was disorienting, like watching a movie where the special effects budget suddenly ran out.

"Sorry 'bout that, man. I don't get much social interaction, ya know."

I gave him a wry smile. "Nah, all good."

An uncomfortable silence followed. I glanced at ROB, expecting him to say something, but instead, I heard the sound of buttons clicking. The rapid tapping echoed through the void, somehow both distant and too close.

I blinked.

This dude... was straight-up playing on his handheld console.

'Shit… did he forget I'm here? No way, right?'

As if on cue, ROB cleared his throat in an attempt to hide his embarrassment. It was painfully obvious he'd gotten completely lost in his game.

"I-I didn't forget you were here! I just… uh…"

He paused, clearly scrambling for an excuse, then suddenly clapped his hands together as if he'd just remembered something. With a confident smile, he said, "Yeah, that's right! I had to, uh… monitor some other realities!"

I stared at him, unimpressed. It was clear as day he was lying. Letting out a tired sigh, I shook my head.

"No need to lie, dude. I know you were just immersed in that game. I get it, man."

A small pause followed before I finally asked, "So… what's next?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With a dry laugh, ROB sat up on his imaginary couch and pulled out a black notebook made of some unknown material. The thing throbbed as if it were alive, pulsing with an eerie energy. Veins of crimson light snaked across its surface, forming patterns that seemed to change whenever I looked away. The edges of the book seemed blurred, as if it existed in multiple dimensions simultaneously, and when ROB opened it, I swore I heard distant whispers in languages no human tongue could pronounce.

Then, in a tone far more serious than his usual laid-back attitude, he said, "So, Eric… since you're a fellow man of culture and have lived your life following the sacred rules of getting reincarnated, you should know that the requirements have been met for your isekai, right?"

The way he said my name sent a chill through me. It sounded both like he'd known me forever and like he was reading it off a page for the first time.

With a tired yet happy sigh, I shrugged and said in a slightly embarrassed tone:

"Yeah, yeah… I got the whole 'be a virgin, degenerate weeb, and get murked by the almighty Truck-kun' part locked down. I even did a bunch of good deeds—gave half of my measly salary to homeless shelters and people in need… even, uh, y'know… beat my meat to a super rare pic of a super hot yet terrifying goddess."

I didn't mention how those donations often meant choosing between medicine and meals, or how the shelter's online system was the only human connection I maintained after the accident left me partly housebound. Some things were too real, even now.

I clapped my hands together, eyes shining with excitement. "So… where's my cute or hot goddess at?" I looked around expectantly then back at ROB.

"GEMME MY GODDESS, BRO!"

Just the thought of banging a sugar mommy goddess and getting stronger with her divine blessing had me drooling. My mind ran wild, and I started chuckling creepily, imagining all the benefits of such a deal.

But before my fantasy could go any further, ROB casually burst my bubble.

"Nah, bro. That already happened to others. Ain't no more Goddesses of Dreams, Lust, and Death left. Also, you didn't have a lover in your past life, so forget about having a former flame turned goddess."

I stared up into the endless darkness of the void, closing my eyes with a sad, Vegeta-style expression—only missing the rain.

"JUST KILL ME."

ROB sighs and flipped through several pages of his notebook. Each turn revealed glimpses of other lives, other reincarnations—some successful, others disastrous. I caught a glimpse of someone who appeared to be drowning in slime, another who seemed to have multiple arms and was sitting on a throne, and one poor soul who appeared to be running from what looked like angry chickens.

"Well… you know you have wishes, right? I'll give you three." ROB said this while examining my file in the notebook, occasionally making small "hmm" and "interesting" sounds.

Still sniffling, I wiped my nose. "Four. Give me four wishes."

ROB looked up, eyebrow raised. "Three is traditional, you know. There are rules to this system."

I crossed my arms. "Let me guess—previous wishers have gone badly? Their perfect worlds turned into nightmares?"

For a moment, ROB's face darkened, and the pulsing of the notebook intensified. "You have no idea. Some of them..." he trailed off, then shook his head. "Let's just say there's a reason we have protocols."

A chill ran down my spine, but I pressed on. "Four wishes. I've earned it with that truck incident."

ROB studied me for a long moment, his eyes shifting through colors that shouldn't exist. Finally, he nodded.

"Fine. Four it is. But remember, Eric—even I can't control everything that happens once you're in."