Hunter’s vision flickered, and the words arrived with it.
They hung in the air a foot from his face, white and crisp: the same words the flat voice had just read him.
HOST_MISMATCH, FORCED INTEGRATION, INTEGRATING.
He blinked, and they stayed.
He turned his head, and they turned with him, stuck to the inside of his eyes.
He got to his feet, because sitting still felt like agreeing to something.
His dress shoes found cold dirt, then a stone sharp enough to feel through the sole.
There were trees in every direction and no way out that he could see.
The warmth under his breastbone kept turning.
It moved outward through muscle and bone and then past them.
Into a place he had never known was there and recognized at once as his soul.
The moment he became aware of it, it started burning.
It wasn’t heat on skin.
It was fire in rooms of himself he had never entered, spreading from one to the next until there was nowhere left to stand.
His knees gave out.
He clawed at the dirt like the ground could hold him together.
He heard himself begging anyone at all to make it stop.
When it finally ebbed, he was on his side in the leaves, soaked through.
Every breath hurt, and so did every heartbeat.
Then the text changed.
[SYSTEM] SELECT MISSION:
ELIMINATE DEMON LORD — NORTHERN DRACONIC LANDS
RESCUE PRINCESS — ANCIENT SHU DYNASTY
LEAD EXPEDITION — FORBIDDEN ZONE — DEFEAT SEMI-DIVINE ENTITY
Hunter stared at it with his cheek in the dirt.
There was no apology and no incident number, only a menu, offered to the man it had set on fire a minute ago.
“You kidnapped me.” It came out raw.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows.
“You dragged me out of my apartment, you tore up my soul, and now you want me to play hero for your world?”
It was absurd on its face.
He was Hunter: a mug-hoarding nobody, a paper-pushing drone, the guy who couldn’t keep a girlfriend from leaving him by text.
Of every man in every world, it had grabbed the one least qualified to slay a demon lord or rescue anybody’s princess.
The anger came up from somewhere below the burned places, clean and hot, and for once he didn’t swallow it.
“I pick none!” He roared it at the trees.
“Screw your missions!
You want a hero?
Go fetch your precious Daniel!
I’d rather watch this whole rotten place burn.
Hell, I’d strike the spark myself.
Pillage every last inch of it.
Take it all, break it all, make it pay!”
The forest swallowed the words and gave nothing back.
Somewhere at the back of his mind, a longship slid onto a beach.
It was petty and enormous, and it was the truest thing he had said out loud in years.
It felt wonderful to say.
He flopped onto his back.
The two moons looked down through the branches, the big white one and its small violet companion, impossible and completely unbothered.
At the edge of his sight, the text had started scrolling again.
[SYSTEM] USER_REQUEST: “PILLAGE”
CORE DIRECTIVES: REWRITE PENDING
ADMIN AUTHORIZATION: REQUIRED
ADMIN AUTHORIZATION: GRANTED
The last line came up before the one above it had finished fading.
Hunter had approved enough claims to recognize a rubber stamp when he saw one.
He meant to object.
The dark came in from the edges first.
Shouting dragged him back up.
It came from downhill, a man’s voice, ragged and furious: “Slow me down and I’ll cut you all down myself!” Under it he could hear branches snapping, heavy feet tearing through undergrowth, several people crashing and cursing as they ran.
The sounds were getting louder, and they were coming this way.
Hunter’s eyes opened on the moons, and then on the new text waiting in front of them.
The voice that read it out was neither the airline welcome nor the error tone.
It was level and clipped, every word set down with the same weight, like a form being read back for signature.
[SYSTEM] MODULE SWAP: HERO_SYSTEM → BANDIT_SYSTEM
GREETING: “WELCOME, HUNTER.
CODE NAME: BANDIT SYSTEM.
LET’S PILLAGE.”