Hunter was thirty-three, forgettable, and thoroughly wasted. Not drunk wasted but life wasted. The kind of man who melted into crowds and owned exactly three mugs because buying a fourth felt like commitment he couldn't handle. He worked insurance claims in a Boston apartment that smelled permanently of cheap pizza sauce, the kind that stained the air no matter how many windows you opened.
Average height. Average build. Brown hair that couldn't decide between straight and wavy, so it did both badly. Brown eyes that had witnessed precisely nothing worth remembering. Two days ago, his girlfriend of three years had left. No fight. No explanation. Just a text that said "I can't do this anymore" and a forwarding address.
The only thing left behind by his old girlfriend was a plant that refused to die out of spite. He'd stopped watering it weeks ago, but there it sat on the windowsill, full of life and judgmental.
Sometimes he turned on the TV just to hear another voice. Most nights, the building hummed with the pizzeria downstairs and nothing else. The alley outside was a narrow throat of brick, always damp, always echoing. A dented metal door slammed at weird hours. Delivery vans coughed smoke and heat that climbed through his window and pretended to be company.
At work, he'd once spent an hour arguing whether "and/or" should be "or/and" in a policy rider. Ten emails. Four CCs. A tiny war over nothing that mattered. He'd laughed then too, the same hollow sound that followed him everywhere, and gone back to typing.
This particular night, he sat on his dark brown couch with a microwave meal that tasted like cardboard. A documentary about Viking raids played on the TV. Real Vikings. The kind who showed up on dragon-headed ships and made entire coastlines pray for mercy.
Hunter watched them pillage and burn and wondered, just for a second, what that kind of freedom felt like. To take what you wanted. To live without having to pay rent and those managers who spelled your name wrong in emails.
Then reality crashed back in. Even if he could do something like that, it was a one-way ticket to jail. He chuckled nervously at his own stupidity, pushed the thought away, and stared at the screen until sleep dragged him under. Just like every night.
A dull ring threaded into something sharper, more insistent. It dragged him up from sleep like a fish on a hook.
Hunter woke with the taste of stale pizza in his mouth and the leftover shape of the couch beneath him. Except the couch felt wrong. Too hard. Too uneven. Like he'd fallen asleep on tree roots instead of secondhand cushions.
[SYSTEM] HERO MODULE: ACTIVATION SEQUENCE [SYSTEM] T-MINUS: 10
"What?" Hunter's hand patted his belly, searching for the TV remote that usually sat there. His fingers found nothing. "What is that noise? Where's the controller?"
[SYSTEM] T-MINUS: 07
The black coffee table he always kicked with his toes was gone. He groped for the wall, for the light switch, for anything familiar. His hand met empty space. Then cold soil. Actual soil, damp and gritty, pressing under his fingers where carpet should be.
In fact, there was no wall at all.
[SYSTEM] T-MINUS: 03
Hunter's eyes adjusted to the darkness. Two massive moons hung overhead where his water-stained ceiling should have been. One white and bloated. One smaller, purple, like someone had photoshopped the sky and forgotten to make it convincing.
"Wait." His brain stuttered, trying to process. "Why are there two moons?"
Realization landed like a fist to the gut and ribs at the same time. The air tasted different. Smelled different. Felt different in his lungs. Everything felt foreign.
"I'm not in my apartment." The words came out small and stupid. "I must be dreaming. Right? This is a dream. Was I kidnapped? Did someone drug me?"
No answer. Just the whisper of leaves settling on forest floor, and the sound of his own breathing, too fast, too loud.
[SYSTEM] BOOT: INITIALIZING HERO SYSTEM… [SYSTEM] HELLO, DANIEL. CONGRATULATIONS. I AM YOUR PERSONAL ASSIS—
A voice. Metallic. Cold. Speaking directly inside his skull like it lived rent free in his head.
[SYSTEM] ERROR: HOST_MISMATCH_DETECTED [SYSTEM] PRIMARY HOST: NOT FOUND [SYSTEM] ABORT SOUL-INTEGRATION: FAILED (ABORT_NOT_POSSIBLE) [SYSTEM] FALLBACK: FORCED INTEGRATION → SUBJECT: HUNTER [SYSTEM] STATUS: INTEGRATING …
"What is going on?" Hunter whispered, but the voice kept talking, kept invading, filling his head with words that made no sense. "Who's Daniel? Integration?"
He looked up and finally saw it. The forest. Trees like black columns rising where his TV should have been. Branches overhead instead of his yellowed ceiling.
He took a step forward. Then another. His dress shoes that he forgot to take off found cold dirt and sharp stones.
Then he felt it.
An electrical current, but wrong. Not on his skin. Deeper. It traveled through muscle and bone, past organs and blood, into something he'd never known existed until it started burning.
His soul.
For a breath, he had no words. No thoughts. Just a feeling that something fundamental was being played with.
Then the pain started.
The warm current turned acidic. It burned through every part of him, inside and out, in places that shouldn't have been able to feel pain. His soul was screaming. He was pretty sure souls weren't supposed to scream.
"Argh! God help me!" Hunter shouted into the dark, but the words came out strangled and pathetic.
The burning didn't ease. It grew. It consumed. It reduced him to a shaking mess on the forest floor, broken and left in shambles, wondering if you could die from pain alone and praying that you could.
[SYSTEM] INTEGRATION: COMPLETE [SYSTEM] WELCOME, HOST: HUNTER [SYSTEM] WORLD: TERRA•AQUA [SYSTEM] FUNCTION: ASSIST HOST IN WORLD-SALVATION [SYSTEM] CAPABILITIES: SPECIAL_ABILITIES + KNOWLEDGE_GRANT [SYSTEM] SELECT MISSION:
1. ELIMINATE DEMON LORD — NORTHERN DRACONIC LANDS
2. RESCUE PRINCESS — ANCIENT SHU DYNASTY
3. LEAD EXPEDITION — FORBIDDEN ZONE — DEFEAT SEMI-DIVINE ENTITY
4. ALL OBJECTIVES [RECOMMENDED OPTION]
Hunter lay on the cold forest floor, drenched in sweat and tears and worse. Every breath hurt. Every heartbeat hurt. Bark bit through his shirt and pants, but he couldn't move. Couldn't think past the pain still echoing in places that shouldn't exist.
"You kidnapped me." The words came out raw. Angry. "You brought me to this place, tortured me, and now you want me to save the world?"
The absurdity of it hit him like a second wave. Some kind of system. Some kind of fantasy world. Some kind of mistake, because he was Hunter, insurance adjuster, owner of three mugs, and the least qualified person in any universe to eliminate demon lords.
Anger flared hot and bright in his chest.
"I pick none of the above." He said it to the moons, to the trees, to whatever being had landed him here. "I would rather destroy it. Everyone and everything. I would rather pillage and burn this world to the ground than help you."
The words felt good. Felt like the first honest thing he'd said in years.
He flopped onto his back, staring up at those impossible moons, and fought against the absurdity until exhaustion dragged him down. Darkness closed in at the edges of his vision like a curtain falling.
The last thing he heard was the system, responding to words he'd meant as a big middle finger.
[SYSTEM] USER_REQUEST: "PILLAGE"
[SYSTEM] CORE DIRECTIVES: REWRITE PENDING
[SYSTEM] ADMIN AUTHORIZATION: REQUIRED
[SYSTEM] ADMIN AUTHORIZATION: GRANTED
[SYSTEM] MODULE SWAP: HERO_SYSTEM → BANDIT_SYSTEM
[SYSTEM] STATUS: ONLINE
[SYSTEM] GREETING: "WELCOME, HUNTER. CODE NAME: BANDIT SYSTEM. LET'S PILLAGE."
If only Hunter had been awake, he would have witnessed it. The exact moment his boring life ended and his bandit life began. The moment a cosmic clerical error turned a joke into destiny.
But he was unconscious on the forest floor, and destiny didn't wait for permission.
It never does.