Hiss... it hurt. And it itched.
The moment Ethan Cole opened his eyes, a dull ache spread through his skull, accompanied by a maddening itch — like the worst hangover of his life dialed up to eleven.
Except he hadn't been drinking. He'd been working. Crammed into his cubicle at three in the morning, finishing concept art for a client who wanted revisions on revisions on revisions. The same cubicle he'd practically lived in for the past week.
The pain lasted a few seconds, then vanished — like someone had flipped a switch.
"Am I still at the office...?"
His thoughts were sluggish, muddled. He reached for his mouse out of habit, but his fingers closed around something cold and hard. Not a mouse. A pen.
His vision sharpened.
This wasn't his cramped studio apartment. It wasn't his workstation at the design firm where he'd been pulling all-nighters to hit impossible deadlines.
It was a bedroom. Small — maybe a hundred square feet. A few yellowed posters clung to the wall, depicting armored knights with raised swords. Text was scrawled beside them: 'Tier 3 Blue Card: Sir Rowan' and 'Tier 3 Purple Card: Sir Galahad.'
The desk was a disaster. Blank cards, medieval illustrations, a bottle of ink with a dark green sheen.
And directly in front of him — a half-finished card.
The card face showed a young man in plate armor, handsome and sharp-featured, a longsword at his hip, a crimson cloak rippling behind him. There was something roguish in the figure's expression, like he'd just told a joke only he understood.
The drawing wasn't bad. Not really. But from Ethan's perspective, it was just... average.
Then again, Ethan was a professional. In his previous life, he'd been a freelance concept artist for over ten years — character design, creature design, environment paintings, the works. He could clock someone's skill level at a glance. Whoever had drawn this card had put in years of practice, but talent-wise? They'd peaked early.
The bottom half of the card was still blank.
And then the itching came back.
A flood of unfamiliar memories slammed into his brain like a freight train — faces he'd never seen, places he'd never been, a whole life that wasn't his, all crammed in at once.
Ethan pressed his palms against his temples and sat very still.
It took a while, but the pieces eventually clicked into place.
This body was also named Ethan Cole. Nineteen years old. Sophomore in the Card Making Department at Bayshore Institute of Technology.
And this world — well. It was similar to Earth, but not quite the same.
The technology was slightly more advanced than what he remembered. Computers, smartphones, and the internet all existed, but the entertainment industry was bizarrely barren. Movies and TV were nothing but recycled adaptations of Arthurian legends and Greek myths. Animation was so basic it looked like it was made for toddlers.
The reason was simple: the entire world revolved around Card Masters.
Every other creative industry had been squeezed dry. There was no money in it. Not when Card Masters existed.
About a hundred years ago, a Card Master System had begun awakening in every person's mind on their eighteenth birthday. A mental interface — almost like a built-in app — that let you buy Spirit Pens, Spirit Ink, and blank card bases using Spirit Crystals. You could craft cards, trade them, even list them on a global marketplace.
The process itself was straightforward: buy a blank card base, use a Spirit Pen to draw the character on its face, then channel mental power to inject a complete backstory into the card. The System would evaluate the story's logic, completeness, creativity, and the quality of the artwork, then automatically generate the card's tier and quality rating.
Cards ranged from Tier 1 to Tier 9, with a major power jump every three tiers.
Card Makers had three ranks: Junior for Tiers 1 through 3. Senior for 4 through 6. Master for 7 through 9.
Quality had five levels: White, Blue, Purple, Gold, and Red. Though Red was purely theoretical — nobody had ever actually made one.
Using cards in battle required Psionic Energy — an innate power that had appeared alongside the System. Everyone was born with it, but capacity and recovery rates varied wildly.
In a fight, Psionic Energy was your mana bar.
Crafting cards, on the other hand, burned through mental power. That was the dangerous one. Push yourself too far and you'd pass out. Push even further than that, and...
Ethan's gaze drifted to the Spirit Pen on the desk, its tip stained dark green.
The previous owner of this body had died right here. Under this pen.
To prepare for the Academy Card Master Battle Tournament in two weeks, the kid had pulled all-nighters for seven straight days, trying to finish a Tier 3 Blue Card: Sir Rowan, First Knight of Silverhold.
It was his fourth card attempt. He'd been so close on the third try — so close — but made a mistake at the last second. So he'd decided to push through one more attempt, even though his mental power was already running on fumes.
Total depletion. Brain death.
And so Ethan Cole — freelance concept artist from Earth, dead from overwork at age thirty-two — woke up in a body that had died for the exact same stupid reason.
"Unbelievable," he muttered. He wasn't sure if he was cursing the kid or himself.
Died from working too hard. In two different lives. What were the odds?
He braced his hands on the desk and stood. His legs wobbled.
The living room was sparse: a couch, a coffee table, and an old flat-screen TV that had seen better days. From the inherited memories, Ethan knew this kid's parents had died two years ago in a small-scale Rift disaster. They'd left behind this apartment and a modest pension. Combined with the occasional freelance card-crafting gig, it had been just enough to cover tuition and ramen.
The remote was on the coffee table.
Ethan remembered that the Global Junior Card Master Tournament was airing this week. The original Ethan had been obsessed with Card Master battles, and the schedule was burned into his memory.
He hit the power button.
The screen flared to life, and a wall of sound hit him — dramatic orchestral music and a commentator screaming at roughly the speed of light:
"Sir Galahad has unleashed three consecutive Holy Judgment Strikes, targeting The Little Match Girl directly!"
"But — she holds! The Witch used her Magic Mirror to block the attack, but The Little Match Girl's buff is about to expire!"
On screen, a standard battle arena stretched across a thousand-yard plain. Glowing crystal towers stood at opposite corners. Beneath the blue team's crystal, a broad-shouldered knight in gleaming armor slammed his palms forward, golden energy erupting from his gauntlets like twin shockwaves. The air crackled with each strike.
Beside him stood a tall woman in silver-white armor, her expression cold as winter.
Across the field, a blonde girl in a tattered dress — barefoot, shivering — crouched with a single burning match in her hand. The flame's glow spread outward in a wide halo, bathing the area in warm light.
Circling above the battlefield on a broomstick, a Witch in black robes hurled bolts of dark purple energy at the Frost Maiden below.
"Looking at raw power, contestant Marcus Ward's Sir Galahad is a Tier 3 Purple card with devastating attack strength. The Little Match Girl is only a Tier 2 Purple card. But the Witch under her Fire of Hope buff is performing far above her tier."
"The match has been burning for fifty-seven seconds — the second match is about to burn out!"
On screen, Galahad pressed the advantage. He reared back and launched another strike — Wrath of the Divine — and a massive golden shockwave tore across the arena.
The instant the phantom houses around The Little Match Girl flickered and vanished, the attack hit home. She didn't even have time to strike her third match.
At the same moment, a barrage of dark energy from the Witch finally overwhelmed the Frost Maiden. She staggered, then dissolved into glittering motes of light.
"The Frost Maiden is down! Contestant Marcus Ward now has only Sir Galahad left on the field, while contestant Harry Lennox still has the Witch!"
"Can Galahad win?"
"Oh — here's the problem. The Witch is only a Blue card, but she has one thing Galahad doesn't: flight!"
"Three strikes — all three missed the Witch! She's flying straight for the crystal!"
"And that's the match! Contestant Harry Lennox wins! He advances to the finals!"
"What a heartbreaker. Marcus Ward's Sir Galahad is absolutely top-tier for Tier 3, but his mechanics got completely countered..."
It was the last match of the day.
Ethan turned off the TV and sank back into the couch, rubbing his temples.
That match had just given him a crash course in this world's battle logic.
It wasn't enough to have powerful cards. You needed the right mechanics. The right toolkit.
Was the Arthurian deck strong? In terms of raw stats — absolutely. If Galahad's palm strike connected cleanly, it would've one-shot that Witch.
But the problem was that the Arthurian deck's mechanics were painfully one-dimensional. Attack. Defense. Agility. Aura. Rinse and repeat. The knights could move fast — blisteringly fast — but they couldn't fly. When the Witch swooped in to backdoor the crystal, Galahad just... stood there. Helpless.
And the fairy tale deck? The Little Match Girl's continuous area buff was something the Arthurian system had absolutely no counterpart for. There was also Cinderella's pumpkin carriage, Sleeping Beauty's spindle — in terms of mechanical variety, the Arthurian system was completely outclassed.
Even though it crushed fairy tales in raw power.
That Witch would've died to two clean hits from Galahad. She just never had to take them.
"But I'm different," Ethan murmured, and for the first time since waking up in this body, he felt something spark in his chest. Not quite excitement. Something closer to hunger.
He actually kind of loved a world like this.
Because in his past life, Ethan Cole hadn't just been a concept artist. He'd been a hardcore anime nerd. Full-blown ACGN otaku — anime, comics, games, novels, the whole package.
He'd grown up watching Dragon Ball and Pleasant Goat and the Big Bad Wolf in elementary school, then graduated to the Big Three — Bleach, Naruto, One Piece. Seasonal anime every quarter. Every major manga release. American comics. Indie webcomics. If it had characters with powers, he'd consumed it.
And the power systems in those works were a hundred times richer than anything the Arthurian deck could offer.
Ninjutsu. Devil Fruits. Haki. Zanpakutō. Stands. Magic systems that actually had rules. Superpowers. Mecha. Divine abilities. Cultivation.
The possibilities were staggering.
There was another thing, too. This world's System had a particular quirk: once someone copyrighted a story, anyone else trying to create cards with more than seventy percent similarity would see their success rate plummet — or fail outright.
Classic works like Greek Mythology and the Arthurian Legends had been grandfathered into public domain by the System itself. Anyone could use them freely. And the earliest card makers who'd developed the Arthurian system had voluntarily opened their licenses to the world as a public good.
But anime?
It wasn't that this world had no animation. It just... never took off.
The cost of producing animation was enormous. The development cycle was brutal. And worst of all, it was trivially easy for someone to swoop in and steal the copyright before a project was finished.
It had happened before. Early on, a group of over a hundred people had tried to collaborate on an original animated universe — something everyone could use. Halfway through, creative differences spiraled into full-blown arguments. One member, furious at being overruled, rushed his own version to completion and snatched the copyright out from under everyone else.
Years of collaborative work, gone. Just like that.
After enough incidents like that, the animation industry had withered to almost nothing.
Novels were in a similar state. Writing a great story was already hard enough. But in this world, card-making didn't just require a good narrative — it demanded vivid, detailed imagery. Without a concrete visual of your character, the System wouldn't approve it.
You had to be able to write and draw and imagine, all at once. It was a nearly impossible trifecta.
Web fiction never really caught on here. Most people's card concepts defaulted to classical mythology or fairy tales — the stories everyone already knew. Creating something truly original was agonizingly rare.
Anyone who could produce even a single Purple card was considered a genius among geniuses.
Ethan stood and walked back to the bedroom. His eyes settled on the half-finished Sir Rowan staring up at him from the desk.
The original Ethan's drawing skills were, to his trained eye, barely a passing grade.
But the new Ethan? He'd graduated from one of the top art programs in the country. He'd been a professional concept artist for over a decade. He'd done outsourced character designs for three different hit animated series.
Character design wasn't just his skill. It was his bread and butter.
He picked up the Spirit Pen and turned it over in his fingers.
Using mental power to guide the tip, you drew on the card base. Every stroke consumed mental energy. And injecting the story required absolute concentration — building a complete, self-consistent world inside your head and pouring it into the card.
He glanced at the other cards on the edge of the desk.
Card one: Tier 1 White Card — Greystone Order Initiate.
Card two: Tier 1 Blue Card — Templar Acolyte.
Card three: A failed attempt at Sir Rowan.
He set the pen down.
The original Ethan's cards weren't the cards he wanted.
He walked to the window and pushed it open.
Night air rushed in, carrying the hum of the city — car horns, distant music, the low rumble of a world that never quite went to sleep. Neon signs blazed across downtown skyscrapers, and on the side of one building, a massive digital billboard was playing an ad.
A golden armored figure rotated slowly into frame — impossibly muscular, lion-skin draped across broad shoulders, a club the size of a tree trunk in one fist.
'Tier 6 Gold Card: Hercules — Proudly crafted by Olympus Card Workshop.'
This world's Hercules was built from the original Greek myths. The Twelve Labors. The Lion Skin of Nemea granting near-invulnerability. Strength enough to hold up the sky.
It sounded impressive. But Ethan knew the mythological Hercules wasn't in the same league as what modern storytellers had done with the character. The ancient writers had set their limits — and they were modest limits, compared to what a modern novelist or comic book writer would dream up.
That's why it was only a Tier 6 Gold.
But if it were the other versions — the ones from the comics, the anime, the games — the ones who could shatter mountains and wrestle gods?
What tier would that card reach?
Ethan let the breeze wash over him for a moment longer, then took a deep breath and closed the window.
He turned back to the desk and pulled open the drawer.
Inside lay a single Tier 3 blank card base. The original Ethan had scrimped and saved to buy five of these. This was the last one.
Ethan picked up the Spirit Pen again.
This time, he didn't think about knights. He didn't think about Arthurian legends or Greek heroes or anything this world already had.
He closed his eyes.
What surfaced in his mind was a boy.
Spiky orange hair. Six whisker-like markings on his cheeks — three on each side. A wide, fearless grin that practically dared the world to knock it off his face. Deep blue eyes, burning with something stubborn and unbreakable.
A metal forehead protector sat on his brow, engraved with a single spiral leaf.
Uzumaki Naruto.