A Sin Called Loving Something Too Much

Multidimensional Transcendent Gallery

Can loving something too much truly be a crime?

There's a famous saying from a certain internet broadcaster on the subject, but my case probably has little to do with it. All I ever did was love one novel, deeply and completely.

A novel that caught flak every single day — readers screaming for it to be axed — and which nonetheless stubbornly carried its 3,750-chapter epic through to the end. If finishing it was a crime, then I was a repeat offender forty-two times over.

Because I read the whole thing through forty-two times.

I never ground out any ten-thousand-word super-feedback essays. I never left a single malicious comment. I was simply the most devoted fan a work could ask for.

If I had to name one flaw, it would be the power-scaling debates I occasionally picked with fellow readers... and I hardly think that counts as a grave sin.

If anything, the real culprits were the lowlifes who dragged in arguments that had nothing to do with the story's actual facts.

And yet, apparently, I have been punished.

I don't know what for. But the fact that I was punished is undeniable. Otherwise, how else would you explain the situation of transmigrating as a powerless ordinary civilian into a world overflowing with transcendents of every description?

It's already year three.

I live in a world packed with hunters, mages, knights, psychics, martial artists, monks, and more. As an ordinary person with nothing at all.

"Honestly? This life just plain sucks."

In a world where superpowers and magic bloomed in riotous abundance, I lived as a mere mortal. Worse, I'd transmigrated into this world as an orphan to boot, so I had no money, no connections — nothing. Naturally, I got treated like garbage.

Today, too, delivering to an awakened-only district, I'd had to travel by freight elevator. The feeling of a human being handled like a piece of cargo was truly fucking degrading...

And for enduring days like that, my pay barely cleared the bar for survival. In that gutter of an existence, this was my one and only solace:

"Look at them burn."

Shitposting. It was a pathetically trivial thing to call a hobby, but I genuinely had nothing else I could do. This much dopamine, and it didn't cost a dime? I could have searched the world over with my eyes peeled and never found a cheaper pastime.

Of course, this 'hobby' did require a few resources. First, the ability to draw aggro — and that I could cover with a measure of hard-earned chops, honed since my previous life. Second, knowledge of this world. And that I possessed in full, having peered into it forty-two times over.

Simple as they looked, those two conditions were brutally hard to meet. For someone holding both, this hobby of mine — 'forum power-scaling firestarter' — fit me perfectly.

"...No need to bother with the rest."

I skimmed through the comments on the power-scaling and tier-list posts I'd put up. A few replies to the ones worth answering, and the mood settled itself. At least within the tide of opinion I'd spent three years building, no one existed who could beat me.

That much was inevitable. I knew nearly everything there was to know about this world. I couldn't tell you every little incident, but on the grand scale, no one was my equal — because I had the complete official canon of past, present, and future committed to memory. It hadn't missed once so far, and it wasn't as if a nobody like me could set off any butterfly effects in this world.

Therefore, the odds of anyone beating me in a power-scaling debate were exactly zero. ...Of course, there were always those who refused to concede to the bitter end. They were simply wrong. At the very least, I had never once heard a counterargument worth conceding to.

"Haah. But what's the point of winning this, anyway..."

A few minutes of rolling around in bed, and reality came crashing in fast. No matter how many godlike beings I lined up and ranked on some forum, I was still nothing but a Grade-4 citizen of Haedong Nation (and for the record, the next grade down was slave)...

My actual life was, no joke, a genuine gutter. Of course, come tomorrow, the moment I spotted a fun topic, I'd be right back at it, cranking out another tier list. Without even that small pleasure, I couldn't see any way to keep living this exhausting life. My life before the transmigration had been far better — in this world, a powerless nobody with trash origins was never granted so much as a shot at transcendence.

"Wouldn't it be nice if I just went 'Ding—!' and awakened, right here and now."

Granted, depending on the type, an awakening in this world didn't necessarily come with a 'status window' or anything of the sort. But more than half of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all awakenings that weren't bloodline-based did include one.

I counted to three in my head, then shouted at the empty air.

"Status window! Status wiiindow!!!"

......

Needless to say, nothing happened. Expecting a reaction at this point would've been the real joke. Who knows how many times I'd screamed those words since arriving in this world.

So I simply cracked open a can of beer and lay down. With a pleasant buzz settling over me, the sleep demon came creeping in, slow and gentle. And so another nothing-special day would wrap up, same as always.

Ding—!

"...Huh?"

The sudden chime roused my mind just as it was seeping away into the distance. Of course, this alarm wasn't announcing that I'd become some ultra-SSS-rank hunter. It was just a notification from my smart wear.

"The hell? I turned every notification off."

Then again, there wasn't exactly anyone out there who'd be contacting me. The community app included, I'd shut them all off — which made this the only real mystery of the night. What notification could this even be?

A hologram radiated from my wrist. The lines of text on the blue screen drew a rather unexpected reaction out of me.

"...A message?"

For the record, not an MMS. Lines of text from a source I couldn't begin to identify.

......???

What on earth was this? Oz was my username — the handle I'd used before transmigrating and still used after. But the words that followed both made sense and didn't.

Presumably, the 'dimension' ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this person meant wasn't the point-line-plane-solid business of the 0th, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd dimensions. In this world, where the concept of the multiverse was common knowledge, a dimension was simply... a country, more or less. Nth Dimension, ○○ Galaxy, ■■ Cluster, □□ Planet. Something like a street address.

Of course, nobody actually felt any national belonging on a per-dimension basis, but whatever. The dimensional framework was no secret, so even the people here — ordinary citizens of a fairly backwater nation — all knew that this place belonged to the 5th Dimension.

"...Another dimension?"

Which meant this message had been sent from at least one dimension other than my own. And that was... more than a little impossible.

The 'community' I'd been using until moments ago was a communications network woven together through the divine power of an absolute-god-class transcendent. An individual sending a message to another individual across dimensions? I could say with certainty that almost no such method existed. And tracing, on top of that?

But the next message arrived faster than my doubts could. Before I could manage any response at all.

Ding-dong—

Another notification chimed once on my watch. And a new app appeared — strikingly similar to, yet somehow different from, the icon of the community I used every day.

"......"

The name couldn't have been more self-explanatory.