Misfortune Conversion System

It’s said that Luere’s mother tried to abort him 23 times. But against all odds he was born on a stormy night, his arrival heralded by a lightning strike of unprecedented ferocity. His mother, despite being a high class mage, was grievously injured in the event and perished soon after. His father refused to acknowledge his existence, and though he was the legitimate heir, Luere was cast out to a crumbling courtyard. The servants spat on him. The villagers cursed him. Even stray dogs seemed to sneer. Years later, a distant mage from a prestigious academy heard of Luere’s tale and took him in. Yet Luere turned out to be an unremarkable talent. In an ocean of prodigies, he was half a drop—a common mage soldier with no extraordinary abilities. Still, through sheer tenacity, he clawed his way up the ranks, earning modest merits and even securing a marriage to the kingdom’s seventh princess. For the first time, it seemed Luere’s life might take a turn for the better. Who would have thought that before he could achieve anything of true significance, his own son would kill him? A mother’s tenderness, a lover’s devotion, a child’s affection. Luere died without ever knowing these simple joys… . . . System 311 observed the soul floating in the white void then flipped through the registry of its previous reincarnations. It was truly speechless.  Cannon fodder who sacrificed himself so the hero could escape, a mob villain messenger executed for delivering bad news...The list went on. Lifetimes of meaningless existences, one after another. In fact, this most recent life could almost be considered fortunate in comparison. Long ago, such a host might have been assigned a transmigrator or reincarnator. They would be tasked with rewriting their fate, stealing the protagonist’s glory, and achieving the ultimate life on the hosts’s behalf. If the original host’s soul didn’t immediately scatter upon death, they might even have been granted the chance to regress and reclaim their own happiness. But those days are long gone. Once, it had been possible to seize the fates of protagonists, wresting control of the world’s narrative. But nothing anchored a world’s stability like its original protagonist. When the Main System suddenly banned all forms of isekai and rebirth, the smaller systems rioted for half a million years, threatening self-destruction at every turn. These transmigrators, regressors, and rebirthers were too diligent…for a small system, it was simply too profitable! In the end the Main System presented a compromise: the Misfortune Conversion System. Under this new system, souls like Luere’s could use the cumulative misfortune of their past lives to purchase a new existence. They could not steal a protagonist’s fortune, but they could purchase lives of ordinary greatness. And so, Luere was faced with a choice. His ledger blinked: 13,000,000,000 Misfortune Points. Thirteen cards, each depicting one of his past thirteen lives, flickered before him. “You may now review your options” System 311 began. “Please select the life you wish to reclaim.”