The Language Barrier
Down in the clearing, the situation was rapidly deteriorating. The towering green monster raised its massive wooden club. The female adventurers huddled together, desperately crying and screaming up at the executives hiding in the bushes.
"Kael'thos mina! Vor'za drek tul!" one of the girls screamed hysterically, tears streaming down her face. "Plira! Nari'za!"
Kniya just chewed his popcorn, tilting his head. "What the fuck are they even saying? Is that Klasvian ? It literally just sounds like 'blah blah blah' to me."
"It is a foreign medieval dialect, Kniya," Malesh noted dryly, tossing a piece of popcorn into his mouth. "We clearly do not possess a universal translation system."
Filoska dropped to her knees in the dirt, aggressively grabbing both Kniya and Malesh by the collars of their expensive shirts and violently shaking them.
"Oh my God, why are you not helping them?!" Filoska screamed, her face red with supreme frustration. "Kniya! Malesh! Get off your goddamn asses right now! They are literally about to get completely pulverized into a bloody paste! Do something! Use your magic! Use the fart cannon! Do absolutely anything!"
The Accidental Annihilation
Annoyed by Filoska shaking his collar, Malesh sighed heavily. He decided to just ignore her. He reached his right arm out, extending his hand forward to grab another handful of popcorn from the bucket resting near Kniya's knee.
But as his hand extended toward the clearing, something catastrophic happened.
Instantly, a massive, brilliantly glowing circle of ancient magical runes violently materialized around Malesh's outstretched wrist. The surrounding air pressure dropped to zero. A terrifying, blinding sphere of raw, concentrated energy enveloped his entire hand, humming with the destructive power of a dying star.
Malesh froze, his eyes widening slightly.
"Wait a minute. What the fuck is happening?" Malesh muttered, staring at his glowing hand in pure confusion. "I literally just took my hand out to grab some popcorn. Why is my palm currently generating nuclear radiation?"
Down in the clearing, the green monster suddenly froze mid-swing.
Before the magical beam of light even fired—before it even touched the beast—the sheer, ambient heat radiating from the energy gathering in Malesh's hand was too overwhelming.
The towering green monster began to violently melt. Its tough muscular skin instantly liquefied, dripping off its bones like hot wax. Within two seconds, the entire beast completely vaporized into a puddle of superheated sludge, completely annihilated by the mere presence of Malesh's unfired spell.
"Malesh..." Kniya whispered, dropping his popcorn.
BOOM!
The spell finally fired itself. A colossal, blinding laser beam of pure, apocalyptic white light erupted from Malesh's hand.
The beam shot forward with earth-shattering kinetic force, completely bypassing the terrified adventurers. It struck the towering mountain ranges directly behind them. In less than a microsecond, the deafening explosion flattened the entire landscape. Countless ancient mountains, massive rock formations, and miles of dense forest were completely erased from existence, leaving behind absolutely nothing but a perfectly flat, smoking wasteland stretching into the horizon.
Malesh slowly lowered his smoking hand, blinking at the newly flattened geography.
The Capitalist Tragedy
Malesh stood completely frozen, his outstretched hand still slightly smoking. He stared at the perfectly flattened, desolate wasteland where an entire majestic mountain range had just stood seconds ago.
His corporate composure finally shattered. He dropped to his knees in the dirt, clutching his head in absolute, soul-crushing devastation.
"Oh my God... what the actual fuck have I done?!" Malesh whispered, his voice trembling with genuine agony.
Salesh cautiously stepped forward, trying to comfort him. "Malesh, it's okay! You saved them! The monster is completely gone—"
"I don't give a shit about the monster!" Malesh screamed, violently grabbing handfuls of dirt. "Look at the landscape! I literally just destroyed an entire mountain range! Do you have any statistical idea how many massive, untapped natural resources were inside those rocks?! Iron! Gold! Coal! We could have systematically mined that territory, monopolized the raw materials, and completely crashed this primitive market! I just vaporized billions in potential profit! What the fuck is wrong with me?!"
Kniya aggressively threw his popcorn bucket onto the ground, completely losing his mind.
"You fucking idiot!" Kniya yelled, waving his arms in the air. "Can you stop for one single, solitary second without talking about corporate revenue?! Why are you so completely obsessed with money?! Every single thing you look at! Here, money! There, money! Always fucking money! Just stop this shit right now, Malesh!"
The Selective Radiation
Malesh slowly stood back up, aggressively dusting off his pants. Despite his financial grief, his highly analytical brain was already processing the physical mechanics of his new power.
"Setting the catastrophic financial loss aside, Kniya, I do have a logistical question," Malesh stated, looking at his palm. "I don't know what the exact physics were, but that radiation didn't harm any of you. It was a highly targeted, localized meltdown."
Malesh pointed at the puddle of green sludge that used to be a monster.
"It only harmed the monster. As the energy was generating in my hand, I watched the beast's eyes become completely lifeless. It was as if my spell was actively consuming the monster's life-force as fuel before it even fired," Malesh explained clinically. "I could literally feel a tiny bit of heat in my palm, but the ambient radiation was massive. Did any of you feel anything?"
Salesh and Filoska slowly shook their heads, completely terrified. The female adventurers in the clearing were still too paralyzed by shock to even move.
"No. Nothing," Filoska whispered, stepping further away from Malesh.
"See? That is a very weird targeting mechanism. We cannot logically say anything about how this physics engine works," Malesh concluded.
Kniya popped his gum, looking at his own hands. "Yeah, Malesh, we literally have the most wildly unregulated, disjointed powers in existence. One of us can materialize biological fart-artillery from pure imagination, and the other can accidentally fire targeted, life-draining tactical nukes while reaching for a snack. It's not just weird, it is highly unbalanced."
The Translation Plot Hole
Malesh adjusted his dragon-themed tie, looking down at the terrified adventurers.
"You know, this brings up another massive inconsistency," Malesh noted dryly. "Unlike every single cliché reincarnation novel we have ever read, we are facing a massive technical difficulty. Usually, on the very first day the hero arrives in the new world, some magical system instantly grants them the local language. I don't know how the fuck it usually happens, but it is a universal standard."
"Yeah, but we are completely unable to do that," Kniya pointed out. "They just sound like they are speaking absolute gibberish."
"Exactly. And I logically know exactly what the reason is," Malesh said, his face completely deadpan. "The reincarnation system probably tried to wire a direct analog telegram signal right into our brains to transmit the local language vocabulary. But our mental receivers completely jammed, and the transmission failed."
"Why would the signal jam?" Salesh asked, genuinely curious.
"Because the storage space in my brain is already overflowing at maximum capacity," Malesh explained, not breaking eye contact. "It is completely filled with highly degenerate shit, aggressive strategies on how to efficiently bribe federal tax officers, and my massive mental catalog of watching a notorious underground gang leader actively take a shit on his own face."
A heavy, incredibly uncomfortable silence fell over the bushes.
Filoska, Kniya, and Salesh all slowly turned their heads to stare at Malesh. Their expressions twisted from mild confusion into deep, horrified suspicion.
"What the actual fuck is wrong with you?" Filoska whispered, taking a very slow, highly disturbed step away from him.
"Malesh, why the fuck do you have a mental catalog of that?!" Kniya yelled, looking at his CEO with pure, unfiltered disgust. "You are acting highly suspicious right now! What kind of degenerate, unhinged shit are you secretly watching in your executive office?!"
Malesh completely ignored their highly valid moral concerns, seamlessly pivoting back to his corporate agenda as if he hadn't just confessed to being a massive weirdo.
"Anyway, Kniya, you need to understand that the monetary loss of those mountains is huge. We lost massive assets today," Malesh sighed, turning his attention back down the valley. "But we cannot dwell on a bad quarter. Let's go. We have to hike down to that village and skin that unconscious dragon immediately, before the local villagers steal our property or try to eat the fucking thing."
The Unprofitable Goodbye
Kniya stood at the edge of the cliff, still genuinely trying to figure out the proper corporate etiquette for acknowledging the saved adventurers.
"Malesh, don't be so mean," Kniya complained, popping his gum. "We literally just saved their lives, and they are crying and saying thank you to us. We should at least say 'you're welcome' in return, right?"
"If you want to say thank you, then stay here and do a fucking interpretive dance for them!" Malesh snapped, aggressively turning his back to the clearing. "I don't want to do anything! Let me go! I have a highly valuable dragon corpse to harvest!"
Without another word, Malesh started marching into the thick jungle. Realizing he was losing his fellow executive, Kniya completely ignored the crying girls and immediately jogged after him.
Filoska and Salesh, possessing the only two functioning moral compasses in the group, stayed behind for a brief second. They politely smiled, waved back at the terrified female adventurers, and gave a respectful nod to properly say goodbye before hurrying into the bushes to catch up with the billionaires.
As they walked, Malesh was furiously adjusting his tie, absolutely disgusted by the entire encounter.
"What the actual fuck was that?" Malesh ranted, aggressively swiping a tree branch out of his way. "Why are they even legally registered as adventurers in the first place if they don't know how to physically fight a fucking useless green monster?! Did you see how easy it was to defeat? It literally melted from ambient heat!"
"Malesh, you fired a highly concentrated, apocalyptic nuclear death-beam," Kniya pointed out dryly. "You had the overpowered cheat magic. That is why you are saying that."
"It doesn't matter!" Malesh argued back. "If they are that genetically incompetent, why are they fucking adventurers?! They don't need to get themselves involved in this dangerous shit! I don't know why local peasants are always like that. Whatever. Let's walk faster. We have to sell the dragon. That is our primary objective."