Becoming a Stand-In After Arriving in Yokohama

Ellis used to be a Level Five ace employee at a certain company. After an accident while handling an emergency at work, he somehow switched places with himself from a parallel world, bringing along the Abnormality he was fighting and ending up in that other self’s world.

The good news: Once the other version of himself’s ability wears off, they can switch back and return to their respective worlds.

The bad news: His parallel self is dead, so he can’t go back.

The even worse news: It’s bad enough that he brought a company asset, an Abnormality, into this world. For some reason, the Abnormality is also sharing his body.

As everyone knows, Abnormalities have a rather vague concept of food, and they can also cause a certain amount of mental damage.

To live a normal life in this world, which is far better than his original one in ways he can’t even begin to count, and to leave behind the darkness of his past and start anew, Ellis has no choice but to look for a way to separate himself from the Abnormality.

If possible, he’d also like to find out what “love can live on nothing but water” means, a phrase he came across in the romantic literature that fascinates him so much in this world. He also wants to uncover what made everyone at the company he used to work for sink into pain and despair.

At the suggestion of the staff member guarding him, he heads to a place said to be full of elite ability users: Mersault, a European prison for ability users.

The suggestion proves remarkably effective. There, Ellis meets someone who can grant him “three wishes all at once.”

…

Fyodor encounters the being he’s so deeply interested in at Mersault. Just as the records described, the person is strange, surrounded by an aura that sends chills down the spine.

He’s very interested in Ellis’s ability, and also in the impact Ellis had on this world when he arrived. So he strikes up a conversation.

When the ash-gray eyes look at him, they seem to burst into flames. The chaotic feelings in them are impossible to read, and even the confession that sounds like love at first sight is hard to tell as genuine or false.

…Then Ellis loses control.

He not only destroys Mersault, but nearly kills Fyodor as well. Fortunately, once he regains his senses, Ellis sincerely apologizes, saying he was just too desperate to fall in love. After hearing about Fyodor’s ideals, he says he’s willing to help him.

Everything goes almost unbelievably smoothly. He gets the person he wants.

A witness willing to help him achieve his ideals, and bear witness to his final act.

…

Ellis has always wanted to know where the ideals of those who burn themselves up like martyrs will ultimately lead, and what kind of world could truly be the best.

To find out, he occasionally uses the “inheritance” his parallel self left him, an ability, to switch places with himself in various parallel worlds and resolve their predicaments.

He helps his counterparts in other worlds take part in demon hunts, protests against unfair treatment at a talent academy, the struggles of the Kings, the selection of a mafia successor, the task of protecting the world, and even a battle to obtain an all-purpose wish-granting device…

He sees all kinds of fascinating worlds and develops his own abilities, bringing Fyodor more information and possibilities from other worlds to help forge a path to the end.

At last, atop a tower built from countless worlds, Ellis gets to see the final outcome he wished for: the ending of a world that has been refined through more than ten thousand simulations into the most wonderful one possible.

He says, “We destroyed the world, and we created the world.”

And so, a new world begins.

[Reader’s Guide]

1. The protagonist is incredibly strong, inhumanly so (literally). His background is as a Level Five ace employee at Lobotomy Corporation.

2. In short, this is a story about the protagonist having a blast fighting across various fictional worlds (see the tags for specific settings; you can still enjoy the story even if you’re unfamiliar with them), while falling in love and witnessing his partner achieve their ideals. (Nods.)

3. The worldbuilding is almost entirely my own. I wanted to explore the collision between a protagonist with the trait of having nothing at all and Fyodor’s ability, and write scenes of a Holy Grail War between a Master who seems like a Servant and a Servant who seems like a Master. (?)

4. Please don’t bring up other authors or characters in my comments, and don’t mention me in other authors’ comments. Let’s respect every creator. Please!

Blurb screenshot dated March 28, 2025; updated March 23, 2026.

Theme: May ideals blaze like wildfire, burning on without end beneath an everlasting day.