Chapter 1: The Undying Rudy (Patreon)

His eyes slowly fluttered open.

Rudy frowned, staring at the excited blond man in front of him. He watched as the man leaned in closer. Without hesitation, he shoved both hands out, pushing the man away with obvious resistance. He was fairly sure any normal man would feel the same way. Faced with a stubble-covered man lunging at him with such excitement written all over his face, he doubted anyone's heart would welcome that.

But then, the moment Rudy's hands shot out to push the man back, he made a startling discovery. His hands had somehow become tiny — impossibly tiny. And beside him sat a beautiful blonde woman. She looked at him, her face weak yet gentle. But he had to admit, this beautiful woman possessed a pair of terrifying, awe-inspiring weapons.

He'd been reincarnated?!

Before he knew it, three years had slipped by in the blink of an eye. Over those three years, Rudy had come to fully understand the world he now lived in. The world of Jobless Reincarnation. This was the world of an anime he'd watched in his previous life. And he had become the protagonist of that story... Rudy! A man whose child would one day take part in the sealing of Hitogami (Human God).

But Hitogami had foreseen it in advance, and struck first, several steps ahead, killing the child's parents outright, just to avoid being sealed himself. When a human draws a god's attention, tragedy is the only possible ending.

When Rudy first learned all this, fear had gripped his heart, naturally. But fortunately, ever since arriving in this world, he'd possessed the authority of immortality. Which meant he himself could never be killed. But being unkillable didn't mean he couldn't be sealed. So, to keep himself from being targeted, he'd have to deal with Hitogami first.

In his past life, Rudy had never been the indecisive type. Over the course of three years, he'd secretly finished reading through every magic book his mother owned. And today was the day he'd truly begin developing magic of his own.

After telling his mother where he was headed, Rudy ran straight out of the house. He found a secluded spot, and used wind magic to launch himself toward a barren, deserted wasteland he'd already scouted out.

Thud!

He landed and steadied himself. He swept his eyes across the surroundings, and once he confirmed nothing would interrupt his attempt to grasp new magic, Rudy began experimenting, conjuring a small ball of water and a small ball of fire. At the same time, a small bit of wind element merged with the fire element. They formed a spiral, circling endlessly around the little ball of water. Every rotation sent ripples rolling through the water. Then he began to compress it. Compress. And compress again!

At first, Rudy managed to keep it fairly well under control. But as the head-sized mass of triple-element magic kept shrinking, from fist-sized down to fingertip-sized, everything seemed to shift into an entirely different tier! The control that had once felt so effortless suddenly became agonizingly difficult! The sudden shift caught Rudy off guard, and his control slipped! As a result, the extremely compressed triple-element magic exploded violently outward!

BOOM!

Within a radius of over ten meters, steam and electric sparks filled the air in overwhelming amounts. The searing heat instantly burned Rudy's entire body down to nothing but bone.

Crack!

A skeletal frame collapsed to the ground. Surrounded by the scorching steam, it sizzled and popped, dripping with rendered fat.

Before he knew it, as time slowly passed and everything cooled down, new flesh and blood bloomed back over the bare skeleton. It took only three seconds. Rudy had come back to life.

Since this wasn't his first resurrection, he was well used to it by now, and recalled what had just happened without missing a beat.

"Just now, it felt like I hit some kind of bottleneck?"

"But I have to say... even just barely reaching that bottleneck, the effect it produced wasn't bad at all."

"In an instant, the heat vaporized my entire body."

"If I push further, what would happen?"

Fully restored now, not only had Rudy's blood and vitality recovered, but his mana was topped off too. So, filled with anticipation, following the same steps as before, Rudy began his second attempt at breaking through that unknown bottleneck.

But unfortunately! Not long after...

BOOM!

Another explosive blast rang out. Amid a burst of scorching steam and purple electric sparks, Rudy once again became nothing but a pile of bones. The second attempt had failed!

An entire afternoon — long in some ways, short in others. After being vaporized more than ten times, Rudy finally started to get a feel for it. But unfortunately, he'd run out of time to keep playing around. He shook his head, a little regretful. With a wave of his hand, wind element lifted his whole body off the ground. He shot off quickly, heading home.

...

...

Time slowly passed. After the three-year-old Rudy had shown his parents his outstanding talent for magic, while waiting for his tutor to arrive, every day he'd basically die dozens of times out in that remote wasteland. But he had to admit, magic mastered by burning through his own life came together fast.

Through endless trial and error, trying it again and again, until nearly every possibility had been exhausted, he finally broke through that unknown bottleneck. The head-sized triple-element mass, he'd successfully compressed down to half the size of a fingertip.

But unfortunately, a second bottleneck appeared!

And at that very moment, the magic tutor his parents had been searching for arrived right in front of Rudy.