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　A little before Haruto was forcibly reincarnated into this world by the Evil God, the following exchange took place between the Evil God and the shikigami who served him.

　”Evil God-sama, what kind of curse should we place on the one to be reincarnated?”

　”Hmph. Let’s see…”

　The Evil God was about to kill an otherworlder and reincarnate them into this world. Reincarnating an otherworlder consumed an enormous amount of energy from this Divine Realm. By forcibly reincarnating an otherworlder, something only the Creator God was originally permitted to do, the Evil God could interfere with the Creator God’s summoning of otherworlders to this world as heroes.

　However, even for an Evil God, he was still one of the powerful gods in this world. When he reincarnated an otherworlder, that person would automatically receive a ‘Reincarnation Bonus’.

　That Reincarnation Bonus was—

　The rate of status increase becomes ten times the normal amount.

　Their station in the reincarnated world becomes royalty or nobility.

　They no longer take damage from any attack.

　They become able to completely erase their presence.

　—various cheat-like abilities and skills such as these.

　The Evil God couldn’t stand the thought of the Demon Lord he himself had appointed, nurtured, and shared his power with, being defeated by a hero from another world. He found the Creator God, who transferred and reincarnated these heroes, to be unbearably annoying.

　He was about to reincarnate an otherworlder in order to interfere with the Creator God. If he gave that otherworlder a Reincarnation Bonus and they ended up defeating the Demon Lord, it would be a complete disaster. That was precisely why the Evil God needed to place a powerful ‘curse’ on the otherworlder he was reincarnating.

　”Go to the cursed bookshelf and bring me something that looks nasty.”

　”As you command.”

　Following the Evil God’s instructions, the shikigami headed to the temple’s library.

　”Hmmm, something nasty, something nasty—”

　In the temple of the Evil God who ruled over the dark side of this world, numerous books containing world-destroying level curses were sealed and stored. On each bookshelf, the classification of the stored books was written.

　There were five bookshelves in total where the cursed books were stored.

　‘Relatively Tame’

　‘Nasty’

　‘Super Nasty’

　‘World-endingly Nasty’

　‘The Nastiest in a Certain Sense’

　The one who had written these bookshelf classifications was the Evil God himself. Whenever the Evil God created a new curse, he would seal it in a book and store it on these shelves. However, he had created such a massive number of curses that even he had almost no grasp of what kinds of curses there were.

　“This ‘The Nastiest in a Certain Sense’ bookshelf… there’s only one book.”

　The book in that bookshelf was—

　The curse of ‘Status Fixed’.

　“Why would something like this be the nastiest one? …But, if it’s the nastiest, that means it’s even nastier than ‘World-endingly Nasty’, so this should be fine, right?”

　The shikigami judged it so and picked up the book in which the curse was sealed. The fact that it was the only book on the shelf, making it an easy choice without needing to read the contents, was one of the reasons she picked it up. The shikigami had chosen what seemed to be the nastiest curse, just as the Evil God had instructed. She was not at fault. If there was any fault to be had, it would be that she brought it to the Evil God without reading the book’s contents.

　”Evil God-sama, thank you for waiting. How about this one?”

　”Let’s see… Hmph. The curse of Status Fixed, is it? Isn’t that… a little plain?”

　”But, if their status is locked, the cursed person will be stuck at level 1 forever, you know? Apparently, a lot of recent otherworlders get all excited thinking they’ll get cheat abilities when they’re reincarnated. Don’t you want to see the look of despair on the faces of those stupid, hyped-up otherworlders?”

　”You… you come up with some rather interesting ideas, don’t you? True, that does sound amusing.”

　”Ehehe. Please praise me!”

　”Hey, don’t get carried away.”

　Even as he said that, the Evil God was patting the shikigami’s head.

　In truth, this curse was something the Evil God had created by accidentally messing up the effect. He had originally been trying to create the ‘Curse of Fixed Status Caps’, but he had inadvertently created a curse that 〘Locked〙 the status itself.

　A person afflicted with this curse would possess infinite magical power. While the maximum amount of magical power that could be released at one time depended on its value when the curse was cast, as long as it was below that maximum value, it was possible to use magical power inexhaustibly.

　The Evil God had considered disposing of this curse. However, since it was a curse he had poured an enormous amount of power into creating, he decided to store it for the time being. This was because he thought there might be a chance to reincarnate an otherworlder who was subservient to him.

　That was why he created the ‘The Nastiest in a Certain Sense’ bookshelf and stored this ‘Status Fixed’ curse there. But that was a story from hundreds of millions of years ago. The Evil God hadn’t been creating any curses recently, and he had all but forgotten about the curses he had made in the past.

　And so, it came to be that the curse of ‘Status Fixed’ was placed upon Haruto.