Good System Novels Novels & Stories

The moment I was born, I took her life. They called me a murderer. Marcus used to burn me with cigarette butts, and Dad would say it was my fate. “You’re a curse. If you had any conscience, you’d have gone to join Mom a long time ago to repay what you owe.” When Marcus was diagnosed with kidney failure, that same cold, distant father knelt in front of me. “Please… save him…” I put my hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Dad, I’ll do the surgery. But can you promise me one thing?” Dad performed the surgery himself. It was a success. He saved the son he loved most and took the life of the daughter he hated. But after I died, Dad turned himself in to the police, and Marcus lost his mind.

After failing my mission, I was about to be erased by the system—completely wiped from this world. In the final twenty-four hours before my deletion, I agreed to donate a kidney to my younger sister. My husband, overjoyed, held me tightly and said he would not divorce me anymore. When my sister stole my design draft, I voluntarily admitted I was the plagiarist. My parents nodded in satisfaction, saying I had finally become sensible. At last, I became the good wife and good daughter they had always wanted. But later, when they saw my corpse, they all lost their minds.

My son, Kaden Watt, shouted at me menacingly, “I don’t have to pretend anymore! I bet you didn’t know that I could hear your conversations with the System. I never once thought of you as my father. Every bit of it was an act. A man that desperate makes me sick.” My wife, Silvia Watt, walked in with her true love, her affectionate eyes reflecting hostility. “If it weren’t for fear of the System punishing Simon Bartone, I would’ve filed for divorce a long time ago. My son doesn’t deserve a spineless man for a father. Watch yourself, or I’ll come after you.” The trio stood there, as if they had their perfect ending. I curled my lips. Well, who was to say that I wasn’t acting too? A player in a game could never fall in love with NPCs.

Ten years after I accidentally crossed into the modern world, the system finally detected the glitch that was me. It was ready to send me back to the era I belonged to, but it gave me three days to say goodbye. On the first day, Corinne Whitford asked me to step aside so her childhood sweetheart could take my place at the altar. I did not cry or make a scene. I just smiled, slipped off my ring and handed it back to her. On the second day, she brought him home. She told me she was giving him a home. I did not argue, just stepped aside and let it happen. On the third day, she wanted to take him on a honeymoon to Wyndmere, the one place I had always dreamed of going. I helped her arrange everything, gentle as ever. When she stepped onto the train bound for Wyndmere, I turned and walked toward the road that would take me home. This ten-year dream had run its course. It was time to wake up.

I've chosen to participate in a death game. As long as I can escape from the murderer's killing spree in ten time loops, I'll be able to win at least 100 billion dollars. In the first loop, I have my apartment refurbished into a bank vault. Still, the killer is able to bust down my front door. In the second loop, I hide in the ceiling crawlspace. Yet, the killer is quick to locate me immediately, as though he knew where I was, to begin with. In the third loop, I finally realize that something's definitely fishy…

My younger sister and I unlocked our systems on the same day? The setting? The nation decades ago. She went for the learning system and married an intellectual. I had no choice but to go with the useless storage space system. Then, I was forced to marry a thug. A very rude and crass one at that. Thanks to the storage space system, I got through a famine and became the village's richest person. My sister's learning system was useless, and she almost died of starvation. Driven by jealousy, my sister seduced my husband and slept with him. To get my wealth, they came up with a plan and pushed me down a cliff. When I came to, I realized we'd returned to the day we awakened our systems. My sister shoved me away and picked the useless storage space system. "Move, you bitch! Now I have your system! I'll survive the famine and get rich! You'll live in my shadow forever, as you should!" She was so smug. She was gloating. I took the learning system and smiled to myself. Unbeknownst to my sister, I got rich during the famine, not because of the system, and my dream was to score high on the exam and get into a good college. My sister managed to mess up her life even when she had the better system. Now she took the useless one. I could practically see the misery waving at her down the path.

On the very day I underwent a vasectomy, Susan bought the designer tuxedo I had been eyeing for months. However, her next words struck me like a bolt of lightning. “Tomorrow is my baby’s sip-and-see. I need you looking your best.” The IV needle snapped right out of the back of my hand. With bloodshot eyes, I begged her to stop playing around. However, her face remained dead serious. “Choosing to be childfree back then was just a compromise because we were struggling. But now, I’m sitting on a multi-million dollar estate. I need an heir to inherit my fortune. My child will be your child, too. From now on, you will be the baby’s godfather.” In that exact moment, my vision blurred. “So, you pushed me to get a vasectomy just to secure the positions of your lover and your illegitimate child?" I spat out. Susan frowned, annoyed. “Myles, watch your mouth. I am giving you the status of my official husband, and I'm giving Owen the child. It’s a fair trade. Staying with me means you get to be a father without any of the pain. If you leave me, who else would ever want a sterilized man like you? Think about it wisely.” The pain hit me all at once as the anesthesia wore off. Yet, I couldn’t help but remember that once upon a time, she had carried a child of ours that she refused to accept.

My wife's first love was bound to an "overachiever" system—every ounce of exhaustion he racked up from grinding away at work got transferred straight to me. He pulled seven straight all-nighters to land a multi-million-dollar deal and became a legend in the industry. Meanwhile, I ended up in the ER with heart failure. When I tried to explain it to my wife, she shot me a look of pure disgust. "You're just born lazy," she snapped. "You can't stand seeing him succeed at such a young age, so you make up some sick fairy tale to accuse him." After that, every late night he pulled chipped away at my body. First came nervous exhaustion, then organ failure—until I was hanging on by a thread. I went to the hospital for tests, but the doctors couldn't find a thing. A few even hinted I might be suffering from paranoid delusions. Then, to get his company listed on the stock exchange, he locked himself in his office for two weeks straight. I wound up dead from overexertion in my own room. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the night of his very first all-nighter. This time, I bolted the door, pulled out a full strip of sleeping pills, and smiled. "Time to sleep."

My deskmate, Sierra Langford, handed me a throat lozenge. I turned around and melted it into the school cafeteria’s "Top Scholar Soup", letting all four thousand students share a taste. Because this time, I’ve been reborn. In my previous life, Sierra had a system that could steal other people’s exam scores. As long as I ate something from her, my grades would automatically transfer to her. She was a rich girl, already set to study abroad. Stealing my college entrance exam score was just a joke to her. On the other hand, I was poor. The exam was my only chance to change my fate. After three mock exams, my scores kept dropping for no reason, and no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find out why. In the end, I failed the college entrance exam. Lost and broken, I was hit by a car. After I died, my soul hovered in the air and overheard Sierra laughing with her best friend, Hailey Monroe. "Who would’ve thought Vera Collins could’ve ranked first in the entire city? Well, that title’s mine now! Someone like her deserves to rot in the mud forever." This time, I’m back. So, she liked stealing people’s scores for fun? Then stealing just mine would be too boring. This time, the entire school’s exam scores would be a surprise for her.

My brother had bonded with an Academic Prodigy System, and its mission was simple: get into Northbridge for graduate school. If he failed, the system would erase his intelligence and leave him permanently disabled. To save him, my parents told me, "Aaron, you're smart. You still have options, but your brother doesn't." So they secretly switched my guaranteed admission file and gave my place to him. My fiancee, Vivian Harkins, a professor at the university, personally helped him forge the records. She touched my face with the same tenderness she always used. "Aaron, everything has an optimal solution. Sacrificing one year of your time to protect this family is worth it." My brother held the admission letter with his own name on it and became the star of the celebration banquet. I stood in the corner and watched the system panel in front of me as the [Hope Value] hit zero. The cold voice in my head asked, [Host, you have reached the threshold for extreme injustice. Confirm activation of the death program?] I watched Vivian, with her own hands, fasten the pair of cuff links she had once promised me onto my brother's sleeve. I smiled, swallowed the taste of blood rising in my throat, and said, "Confirm." "Use my life to trade for the rest of theirs... beyond redemption."