I Don’t Want to Start a Story!

Major characters:

Max: The morally questionable protagonist who is a five-star completionist and an expert on magic runes. After being disillusioned by the stories he completed, Max is trying to avoid starting a story to see if it’ll rattle the system. He also seems haunted by his previous lifetime, where he met a woman called Ellie.

Cy: A magician uniquely talented in reading fates. Having a stronger moral compass than most people in the village, Cy tries to keep the peace while investigating a fate-less Max.

The system: A mysterious system which is set on making souls from different worlds commit to starting and completing stories. It is implied to be sadistic with the ‘required’ sub-goals, which are unknown until a person starts their story.

Bessie: The steely (abusive?) owner of the farm. She is also the mother of the berry girls, her herd of dairy cows.

Farmer Bill/Gill/Phill/Brill/etc.: Bessie’s husband… not much more to say.

The village mayor: A delusional, old man who was from another world and completed his story. He recently had a stroke.

The mayor’s son: Useless son. Magnificent interior designer.

Reymond: A knight from the capital sent to handle the alien problem. He’s a more down-to-earth guy compared to the others.

The vegan amnesiac: Another person from another world who was pressured by the system to team up with Max. Max killed him before he became too troublesome.

Aldwin: The village idiot and Max’s closest friend.

Liv: The village shopkeeper.

Adelaide: The village’s fashion loving psycho.

Noah: The village’s chill blacksmith.

Navy-blue fate: Who knows? Max doesn’t.

Juniper: The sweetest member of Bessie’s berry girls who was abducted by aliens.

Straw: An infected cow who was saved by Max.

TLDR:

Isekai’d-farmhand Max used rune magic to avoid the system's prompts to start a story, gain a fate-seeing magician bud, and rob a delusional mayor before leaving the village he woke up in.

More detailed recap of the first arc:

Part 1: The People Who Are New to this World (Prologue – Chapter 10)

Oh no, cows were being abducted! Eh, it was one of the many strange things happening in this village. Max woke up in his newest world and on a farm. So far, a cryptic system had been forcing Max to complete ‘stories.’ Before selecting which story to commit to for this lifetime, Max was provided a title, genre, description, goal, difficulty (in the form of stars: one-star = easy; five-stars = you’re fucked), and the method to start the story. Max was determined not to start a story this time.

He got to work taking care of the cows called the berry girls (Juniper-berry, Straw-berry, you get the picture). His employers, Bessie and Bill, and the nearby villagers took a liking to him as he pretended to not have any memories prior to waking up on the farm. During a village meeting where the butcher’s son was dragged away to start a story of becoming a duke, another amnesiac shows up. The villagers put him to work and threatened to kill him if he didn’t comply – a common punishment for outsiders who were seen as ‘troublesome.’

In the village, numerous prompts for stories have been appearing, including two romance plots with the spoiled daughter of the village store owner, Adelaide, and the blacksmith, Noah. While organising some work done for Bessie’s farm, Max went to Noah’s shop and saw a mysterious, Chinese dragon. They were interrupted by the self-proclaimed vegan amnesiac, who was rambling about Max helping him with the system. Not wanting to be forced into starting a story or have his life be made harder by the system as punishment for revealing his status, Max made an exit without another word.

While pondering what to do, Max ran into a mysterious stranger, whose face was covered. The system called him Cy. Cy blathered on and on about Max not having a fate, which Max interpreted as not being bound to a story. A story prompt appeared with Cy’s story, which specified Max must ignore him in order to begin the story. This meant Max could not ignore him if he wanted to continue to be unbound by sub-goals and requirements for the story’s goals. The stranger disappeared, confirming magic was available in this world even though Max couldn’t use it until he started a story.

Returning to the village, Max was cornered by the vegan amnesiac again. The amnesiac told him that the system wants them to cooperate, but Max killed him in front of the village before he could finish. The knights sent to capture the now-absent aliens were suspicious of the death, but the villagers shrug off the murder as just another death on a cursed road. During this time, Max noticed that there were no prompts caused by the event, something very unusual. Before going home, Cy appeared again with more eerie messages and called Max “Ren.”

Part 2: The Story Completionist (Chapter 11 – Chapter 22)

Max denied any knowledge of that name and got his friend, Aldwin, to help him reveal Cy’s face. With his identity known, Cy decided to hang around and tell Max about how the cow next to him, Straw, was doomed to die from a plague. Fun times. This also activated a story prompt causing Max to take steps to prevent the disease from spreading. Leading Cy back to the farm, Max introduced him as a vet to the farm’s owners. Bessie allowed him to live on the farm with them as he identified other infected cows.

Cy quickly got on Max’s nerves, but there were more serious issues with Adelaide’s romantic prompt disappearing. Story prompts needed to have someone play the protagonist or other events must occur for it to be cancelled. Nothing had happened for Max to explain the disappearance. In a fuck up, he accidentally made it seem he was asking her out – the starting method for her old story prompt. Luckily nothing happened, and it confirmed that the opportunity to start that story was now gone. In an effort to escape, Max asked Aldwin to distract Adelaide and Cy while he made a getaway.

Max took refuge in Noah’s shop and saw the dragon sculpture was now gone. Before Noah could go into detail about who commissioned it, they were interrupted by a creepy knock at the door. It was Cy! And he was freaked out by Aldwin, who had magic bones. Like real magic bones. Like the human remains of other magicians like Cy. But, apparently, they were lucky (not as lucky as a rabbit’s foot). While talking, Cy refused to enter the shop and was noticeably rude to Noah. Amused by Cy’s panicking attitude, Max waved down Aldwin to join them, causing Cy to flee with a teleportation spell. He sure was a talented ‘vet.’ After he left, Aldwin gave Max three magic bones, and Noah told him who commissioned the dragon.

Bill and Max had a sad dinner while Cy and Bessie got wasted. Cy crash-teleported them back to the farmhouse with more liquor for everyone. During their drunken mischief, farmer Bill and Max decided it would be funny to slip a magic bone into Cy’s magic, infinite pocket. The next morning, Max was left with two bones. While everyone else asleep, he decided to carve healing runes onto the bones and try them out on the infected cows. Max couldn’t use magic, but the runes only needed magic from the object it was carved on. After a struggle to feed one to Straw, a hungover Cy confirmed her fate had changed and was now delayed. Lucky Straw had a few more years before succumbing to disease. A cryptic message appeared in the plague prompt, but it was unnoticed by Max.

While making a delivery to the village shop with Cy, a knight called Reymond informed Max that the delusional and decrepit mayor of the village wanted to speak with him. Adelaide and Cy expressed their concern, but Max ignored the pair and willingly went. Three things were revealed at the mayor’s house: 1. The mayor’s son was a talented interior designer but hopeless at anything else. 2. The mayor knew about the system and woke up in this world like Max. 3. There was a giant mural covered with runes behind the mayor’s desk which neutralised magic.

The mayor revealed he had completed his first story and was now enjoying retirement. The mayor asked Max about how many stories he had completed. Max revealed he had only finished four; two one-star, one three-stars, and a five-star. This revelation changed the power dynamic between them. The mayor asked Max for advice about handling morally ambiguous sub-goals. During the process of his story, he had introduced a law that allowed small communities to execute troublesome outsiders. However, his choices while completing the story meant his daughter was abandoned at a church and his wife left to join her once his story was complete. They were on good terms though and were going to come visit the mayor just before he died at the age of a hundred and twelve.

This shocked Max. There was a bet going around the village about when the mayor would die. A gleeful mayor showed pride in being the founder of the bet and was planning on using his winning bet and jackpot to arrange an extravagant funeral for himself. He also confirmed Cy’s predictions about people’s death dates were accurate, since he was the only one to bet on the correct date. Max finally revealed his intentions with this lifetime and for refusing to start a story: he wanted to frustrate the system into revealing more about their situation. The mayor promised to help him.

Part 3: Time in the Village Was Running Out (Chapter 23 – Chapter 32)

After a chill conversation, the pair witnessed a mob gathered in front of the mayor’s house. Adelaide was back and with a new prompt. Her new story depicted her as a psycho lover in a horror story. The mayor handled the mob while Max was led by the mayor’s son to a narrow window he could climb out of. After a squash and a squeeze, Max ran into Cy on his way out.

Cy had a new prompt as well. Now, Max could ignore him, but Cy couldn’t die. Adelaide spotted them, causing Max to pressure Cy into using a teleportation spell. It was successful, but the two landed on the road to Bessie’s farm. To test Cy’s knowledge, Max drew a rune on the ground and told him that the mayor had the same one in his office, but it was pointless. Rune magic wasn’t native to this world. Cy told Max that the fates he could see were shown as different colours, which seemed to be connected to stories, such as pink was romance and orange was horror. The vibrancy was also related. More vibrant meant they were more important to the story, and MCs like the vegan amnesiac and the mayor were the brightest.

Max had a troubled smoke under the first summer rain. Bessie came to berate him before noticing something was off. After a little pep-talk, Max confided that he used to be married to a woman called Ellie. Bessie returned the trust by telling him her real name, Gwendolyn Royse Amice Cateline Edvardsen, the third. The pair merrily discussed the problems with high society that both Bessie and Ellie had endured. Once more comfortable, Max told her about his problem with avoiding Adelaide despite being forced to go every day as part of his job. She was confused, why did he have to go every day? Because farmer Bill’s knees hurt? Oh? Bessie went back inside the farmhouse in unnerving silence before the screaming match began.

Bessie threatened her husband, getting him to take on Max’s duties as well as his own for a week. When Cy talked back to her, she told him to shovel shit from the surrounding farms before selling it as fertiliser. Max was given a week-long vacation.

The next day, a well-rested Max found Cy cleaning up the mess from the night before. Adelaide showed up on Bessie’s farm. She tried to talk to Max, but Bessie blocked her way. After a small argument, Bessie hit Adelaide, who then fell off the porch. Bessie continued to threaten Adelaide, even going as far as to ask Bill to get their musket. Meanwhile, Max suspected there was another person with access to the system nearby since there were no new prompts appearing. He fought Cy to get the remaining uncarved, magic bone from his infinite pocket. After having a scuffle, grabbing the bone, and carving it, Max was able to identify there was someone else there. Now informed, Max calmed Bessie down. Cy revealed the unknown person had a navy-blue fate before the system showed a prompt listing ‘investigate the navy-blue fate’ as a method to start a story.

Liv came to sort out the situation with Bessie. While the friends were fighting, Max was threatened by Liv as she intended to report him for being a troublesome outsider. This caused an attack from the system, which blinded and incapacitated him. Retreating to the nearest barn, Max explained his sudden illness to Cy as a panic attack. Cy told him not to worry since Liv was having an affair with the village butcher. It shouldn’t be difficult to blackmail her… theoretically.

Bessie and Liv went to the mayor for a solution. Once back, Bessie began baking and cooking like crazy. During dinner, she informed Max he was to start working at the village shop as compensation for her assault. The prompts appeared again, and Max started plotting on ways to avoid starting them. Suddenly, Bessie declared her distrust towards the mayor and Adelaide, so she decided to fire Max and evict both Max and Cy. Initially enraged, Max calmed down after hearing Bessie cry more for him than any of the abducted cows. Being fired and evicted cause most of the prompts to be cancelled, allowing Max to finally notice that Cy’s prompt now had a cryptic message. On the way out, Bessie handed Max a pouch of money and bags with food and clothes. As a sign of gratitude, he gave her his magic bone with a healing rune.

Cy offered to take Max to his home, Tsujuma, since it was next to the capital. There would be a home for them, probably jobs, and experts on magic to help with Cy’s analysis of Max’s fate and Max’s interest in runes. Before they left, Max insisted on doing something first.

Max went to the mayor’s office, where a sleepy mayor found him sitting on his desk. When he was there before, he had carved a symbol under the mayor’s mahogany table. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been too successful at processing and storing raw magic. In an attempt to scare the mayor, Max broke the mural and carved several runes around the office. The runes created lights and sounds to suggest the aliens had come back and were going to attack. During their conversation, Max got irritated by the mayor’s attitude towards life in this world. A threatened mayor gave him the jackpot for the bet on his life. In return, Max slipped a seal with a rune into the mayor’s pocket causing him to have a stroke. Cash in hand, Max was caught leaving the mayor’s house by Aldwin. The village idiot waved at him before going home.