MTL - Great Voyage: The Cartoonist of the Straw Hats - Chapter 168

Stricken with a dull, boring life, Gael has already discarded his ambitions as a high school dropout. However, a chance encounter with death leaves him a choice:[“Meet your end accomplishing nothing, or continue on in an unforgiving world and learn what it is to live.”]Wishing not to die, he accepts the offer, being granted a new life in a fantastical, mysterious world of Gaia. In this new world, he is not granted an easy life, instead hunted as those like him, transported from Earth–”Outlanders”--are deemed to be executed on sight.He is not helpless, though, granted a unique gift upon being reborn in this world–[Integrating system into body.][...10%...][....45%...][....87%...][Integration complete.][Gacha System initiated.] [Level: 1]

This is a world shrouded in darkness, and the pervasive black mist erodes all living beings.

Only fire can dispel the darkness and protect mankind.

But the firewood will eventually run out, the fire will eventually go out, and humanity will eventually perish.

until Rhodes came.

- Description from novelbuddy

When Lu Wu opened his eyes, he found that the world had changed completely.The world before him did not have fancy magic, nor ultimate Dou Qi.What it had were summoners that form contracts with summoned beasts.And coincidentally, he was such a summoner, although not a professional one, and his first summoned beast was a piece of crap.But that was fine, because he also had a golden finger!

BLURB> He was reborn by mistake. Raised with purpose. Loved by a god. Worshipped by monsters. And the galaxy doesn’t stand a fucking chance.Irvine’s soul took one wrong turn through the wheel of karma and woke up in a body grown by an intergalactic hivemind goddess with boundary issues and galaxy-sized ambition. Now he’s the golden child of a psychic swarm that feeds on control and burns whole worlds for affection.With Crystal at the helm, warriors like Kimchi, relic-weapons like Kiya, and a council of psionic horrors eager to call him king, Irvine must choose what kind of god he wants to be.Because when a hivemind learns to love......it doesn’t know when to stop.The universe will kneel—or get devoured trying.SYNOPSISIrvine didn’t ask to be reincarnated, but the cosmos had other plans. And it didn’t hand him a cheat code or a clean slate—just one random boon, selected by an uncaring divine roulette wheel.Good karma? Bad karma? Balanced as all fuck.Now he's reborn in the body of a psionically tuned alien hybrid, raised from psychic infancy by Crystal, the hivemind queen of a race so advanced they’ve abandoned individuality for shared omniscience. All except her baby boy.Irvine is the singularity inside the swarm, the first soul allowed to think, dream, and desire independently. Trained by warriors like Kimchi, advised by bio-symbiotes like Kiya, loved ferociously by hive sisters like Diane, and shadowed by powers ancient and unnamed, Irvine is both weapon and wielder, saint and sacrifice.But empires don’t run on hugs and handjobs. As Crystal expands her dominion—across star systems and sentient nebulae—Irvine must lead the charge through blood, fire, and psionic flame.His soul is still human. His body? Engineered for extinction. His heart? Not entirely his anymore.