Prologue
With a scratch of his head, a young boy floating in the middle of the air stared down at the streets below. There had been a car crash involving a bus and a truck in the middle of a crowded city intersection, and though the paramedics on scene had rescued the injured, there were a few people that hadn't been lucky enough to escape with just a broken arm or leg.
"I know the old man said to go examine people and learn from what happened here to fix my world, but..." he mumbled to himself, staring at the incident with a concerned look on his face before he sighed. "It's not like I can just jump in and change things."
Slowly floating down until he touched the ground, the boy glanced around, making sure that nobody seemed to see him despite his anachronistic garb, before quietly walking closer to the ruined bus. While still contemplating on a course of action, the sight of a book peeking out from one of the deceased's bags caught his attention. With a callous shrug, the book was plucked from its hiding spot as the child-like figure flipped through it. There were a few nods as he skimmed through the pages, but his expression seemed to brighten much more in response to the words that he was reading.
"Hey, this is a great idea!" he said, clapping the book shut and tossing it into the air. It seemed to float for a moment before disappearing into a shower of silver sparkles, taking the boy along with it.
The landscape where the boy had brought himself was empty—an endless expanse of nothing but white as far as the eye could see. But with a snap of his fingers, an array of chairs suddenly popped into existence, and onto each of them, one of the recently-deceased from the incident he had just borne witness to.
Not their bodies, of course, but their minds—their souls.
"Oh, hey, it worked!" the boy said cheerily as he clapped his hands. In an instant, a microphone fell from out of nowhere and into his hands, and a pair of large speakers came into existence behind him.
"Testing, testing... Okay, we're all clear! My name is Pren, and I'm the manager of a little world called Larov!" the young boy began, addressing the somewhat-confused people staring at him in turn. A few of them seemed to try and speak, but seemed surprised when they were unable to do so. "Oh, right, you're all the people I picked up after there was a nasty crash in the middle of some city street. It might be a bit of a surprise to you, but you're all dead right now~!"
With that came a quick image of what Pren had just mentioned, eliciting a few shocked (but wordless) reactions from the crowd. After a few moments, the young boy threw the image somewhere else before continuing his lecture.
"So, um... It's kind of a weird request, but, umm... Please help me!"
With that, all semblance of composure disappeared from the child, and he bowed towards the ground towards the souls in front of him before continuing.
"Larov was meant to be a world where everyone could live in harmony, but after a few centuries everyone started getting really angry at one another! I'm talking things like wars, widespread poverty gaps, and everything else bad that you can think of! So I thought, 'how about I add a common enemy for everyone to rally against to fight?' and added some evil creatures off to the side. But then they grew, and now everyone's fighting each other instead and fighting them and please help me fix this."
There were tears forming in Pren's eyes as he finished his explanation, and after a moment the young boy wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at the souls still staring at him.
"It's fine if you don't want to help me; I think the old man has everyone here set for something else if you want to go back. But if you do want to help, please, step forward."
After a few moments of awkward silence, a few people took a stand and walked towards the young boy. Pren seemed ecstatic that there were people even contemplating his greedy request, and he hugged each of them in turn soon after before realizing that there was still a job to explain.
"A-ah... Right. So, um... As everyone here is dead right now, I'll be putting all of you into new bodies so you can be reborn into Larov. You'll all be able to tell who's who from this world, and I'll give everyone a special ability to help me with this problem! Uh, well... Within reason, of course. Think of it as a present for helping me to fix my mistakes, okay?" he said, looking towards the ground in embarrassment as the other people who decided to simply sit by began to disappear, one by one.
"I'll keep in touch; once you've decided on something, just think really hard about what you want to pick and I'll get you as close as I can to the best of my ability!" he said before conjuring up a small chair and taking a seat.
It's been a little over twelve years since that incident, and, as promised, the child-like god had done exactly as he had said he would do. But with the reincarnated people only now approaching a coming-of-age, it remained to be seen how they would affect Larov in Pren's stead.
So... yeah. Quick, easy, simple isekai. Not much else to it.
Except maybe if you wanted to be silly and get a Japanese name for this in which case...
「私たちは進捗のために転生された」
or 「進捗転生」 for short. :)
