Creative Kaleidoscope: System Short Stories

This is a collection of litRPG short stories. Different characters, different genres, different Systems—a creative kaleidoscope. The first story is The Incalculable Weight of Countless Lives: A Supervillain Origin. (Summary below.) Jim Davis used to deny health insurance claims for a living. Then one day, after one denial too many, the System changed his class from [Insurance Adjuster] to [Villain]. Ten years later, Jim is better known as Jesterman: a mass-murdering supervillain with a talent for chemical weapons, theatrics, and moonwalking away from crime scenes. Botman is the city's greatest superhero: a cybernetic vigilante with absurdly powerful weapons, an unshakable moral code, and one ironclad rule—he never kills. Not even Jesterman. No matter how many people die. Every time Botman captures him, Jesterman escapes. Every time Jesterman escapes, more people suffer. And every time Botman refuses to end the cycle permanently, the System rewards them both. Soon, Jesterman begins to suspect that heroism and villainy aren't opposites at all. They're a progression loop. And he's about to exploit it. The Incalculable Weight of Countless Lives is a short story, a darkly comic LitRPG superhero parody about moral absolutes, broken systems, and what happens when the bad guy reads the fine print.