I was heating instant noodles at two in the morning when the floor of my kitchen decided to stop existing.
There was no warning. One second I was glaring at the microwave like it owed me money, and the next the world stretched sideways like chewed gum, folded me through a gap that shouldn't have been there, and spat me out onto cold stone. My knees hit rock. My noodles did not come with me. The air stank of sulfur and old water, and it was very, very far from my kitchen.
Somewhere above me, a girl's voice cracked with hope.
"It worked. It— guys, something worked."
I lifted my head. Three people stood at the edge of a circle carved into the floor, a ring of symbols that still pulsed a sick, bruised purple. The one who'd spoken had short dark hair and a scowl that looked permanent, and she was clutching a scorched sheaf of pages to her chest like it might bolt. Beside her, a girl in a robe two sizes too big bounced on her toes, grinning. Behind them both, a young man the size of a barn door held a two-handed sword and wore the expression of somebody who understands nothing but has decided to be ready anyway.
They were staring at me the way you'd stare at a lottery ticket you weren't sure had won.
"Where," I said, and my voice came out embarrassingly small, "is my microwave?"
That was the first strange thing: I understood them, and they understood me. Different mouths, different sounds, and yet the meaning slid straight into my head, smooth as oil. I'd learn later that the thing pulling my strings simply translated, the way it did most inconveniences — silently, and without asking.
The scowling girl's frown deepened, which I hadn't thought geometrically possible.
"You're supposed to be the Demon King," she said.
"I'm Adrian."
"The ritual was for the Demon King."
"Then the ritual has the wrong number. I work in a call center."
The barn-door boy leaned toward the bouncing girl and whispered, far too loudly, "What's a call center?"
"I don't know," she whispered back, delighted. "It sounds evil."
Before I could defend the honor of my former employer, the air in front of my face rippled — actually rippled, like a stone dropped in a pond turned sideways — and a pane of blue light unfolded out of nothing. Text burned across it, calm and bureaucratic, as if reality had opened a settings menu.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
[Welcome, Awakened.]Class assigned: Demon King (Legendary).Current Rank: F.Class Trait: Demonic Aura (uncontrolled).Skills unlocked: 0 / ???
I read Legendary. Then I read the F right below it. Then I read Skills: 0, and the little word uncontrolled, and I felt the specific despair of a man who has been handed a very expensive car with no engine and no doors.
"Okay," I said. "Somebody explain to me how I'm legendary and useless in the same paragraph."
The scowling girl stalked forward and jabbed a finger through the blue light. It didn't so much as flicker. "Rank F," she breathed, and there was real horror in it. "That's impossible. This ritual was meant to bind the original Demon King. The one from the prophecies. The end-of-the-world one. Not—" she gestured at all of me, pajamas and bare feet and dawning panic "—this."
"They got the budget version," said the bouncing girl, cheerfully. "And I love him."
The scowling girl pressed the scorched pages tighter to her chest, and for just a moment her eyes flicked down to them — not one page, I noticed, but a whole thick sheaf, edges burned, symbols crawling across every visible margin. She caught me looking and turned so the bundle was out of my sightline. Filed that away. When someone hides a thing that fast, the thing matters.
"We need to leave," she said, to the other two. "Now. Whatever this is, we open the ritual gate, we walk out, we figure out the rest above ground where the air doesn't try to kill you."
She didn't get to finish the plan.
Because the dungeon, which had been merely oppressive, changed its mind about us. Somewhere far down the black throat of the tunnel behind me, something woke. I felt it before I heard it — a pressure, a held breath, the sense of a very large number of very small things all opening their eyes at once. Then the sound arrived: footsteps. Not one set. Hundreds. Little, scrabbling, hungry footsteps, all of them coming toward the light of the ritual circle, which is to say, toward me.
The blue pane helpfully refreshed itself.
[The summoning has disturbed the dungeon.][First quest available: Survive.]
"That's it?" I said to it. "That's the whole quest? 'Survive'? No tips?"
"Are you talking to your interface?" the scowling girl demanded.
"It started it."
The barn-door boy raised his sword and planted his feet, and for the first time his face made complete sense. Down the tunnel, in the dark, dozens of pairs of yellow eyes bloomed open, low to the ground, and behind them dozens more, and behind those, a glittering flood that did not seem to end.
"Goblins," the boy said, with the grim satisfaction of a man meeting an old friend. "Lots of them."
I looked at my glowing status window. Rank F. Skills: 0. Trait: uncontrolled. I looked at the barefoot situation of my feet. I looked at the tide of yellow eyes deciding, collectively, that the confused man in pajamas was the softest thing in the room.
"Great," I said. "Great, great, great."
The horde screamed all at once — a thin, jagged sound like a thousand rusty hinges — and came.