So there I was.
On a carriage.
Pissing my pants.
Screaming like I was auditioning for America's Next Top Bitch Made Man.
Why? Because a twenty-foot-long white ice alligator monster—yes, that's its official Pokédex entry (I'm fucking joking dumbass)—was charging at me with the speed of a Honda Civic going 120 in a school zone.
Its breath turned the air frosty like a soft serve from Dairy Queen. Its scales glistened like cocaine on a nightclub bathroom counter. And its teeth? Dude, imagine the Home Depot chainsaw aisle had sex with a mentally deranged shark.
"Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! THIS WORLD SUCKS ASS!" I screamed, which, by the way, was also the exact phrase I yelled when I accidentally joined a furry VRChat lobby and couldn't figure out how to leave for 45 minutes.
And you're probably wondering: "Samuel, how the actual fuck did you end up in this situation?"
Well. Funny story.
Let's start at the exact moment when it all went fucking wrong.
Roughly 2 months earlier
It was a normal day on Earth. I was minding my own business, jaywalking like a champion, when out of nowhere—BAM! Truck-kun. Not even an eighteen-wheeler. Just some beige Toyota pickup with a bumper sticker that said "Honk if you rawdog your sister."
Anyway, I died instantly. Zero HP. No respawn.
Or at least, I thought.
Instead, I woke up in this… dream void thing. Imagine if a rave, a dentist's office, and a 4chan paranormal thread got put in a blender and were then smothered over a blank canvas. That's where I was. Floating. Naked. Transparent. Hanging brain in front of what I can only describe as… cosmic HR representatives.
A voice appeared. "Hello my dear travelling young soul. It seems you unfortunatley have met an untimely demise just mere moments ago. However, by the whims of the gods, you shall be given a second chance at life in another wor- HOL UP! "
"OI, RICHIE! GUESS WHAT!" one booming voice said.
"WHAT?" another replied.
"WE GOT A FUCKING WHITE BOY!"
"OH HEEEEEEEELL NAH!"
Now, for context: I'm not even 100% white. Half-Scottish, half-Mexican. That's like… discount spicy white. But apparently these godlike beings only hand out overpowered cheat skills and harem packages to Japanese dudes who've never touched grass.
"Wait, wait," I said, floating there, "You guys were gonna send me to a fantasy world like in one of those isekai anime right? don't I get, like, a sword that eats souls, or some skill where I can punch so hard it causes earthquakes?"
Both of them started laughing maniacally. "Bro. You think we're wasting an S-tier cheat on a white boy? Nah. You get… let's see… ONLINE PACKAGE DELIVERY."
My spiritual jaw just dropped to the metaphorical floor.
"HEY, WHAT THE FUCK MAN!? You can't just do that!"
One of them snorted. "Euh, yeah we can. We're gods bro."
Rather than getting angry at ethereal cosmic entities, I started to contemplate just accepting my losses and hope it couldn't get any worse.
"Then, what the hell does that online package delivery skill even do?"
"Basically," the god said, stifling laughter, "you can order shit off WAMAZON and it shows up instantly in a box."
"…Like Amazon Prime?"
"Exactly. But without customer service. Or refunds. Or moral safety checks."
"Oh for fuck's—"
"Also, have this passive skill: Dimensional Storage. Totally useless, don't even worry about it. BYEEEEEEEEEE!" —ZAP!
So yeah. I got isekai'd into a medieval fantasy world, which the inhabitants call Gryndalon, with nothing but the clothes I died in a few minutes earlier. Still better than being naked I guess. This world kinda looks like Game of Thrones if it was more colorful and had better plumbing. They've got swords, goblins, elves, and all that shit—but then you see a sewer grate. A clean one. With flowing water. And then you walk into a tavern and there's a radio in the corner blasting medieval pop songs like "Ye Olde Booty Shake Anthem."
Turns out only about 10% of people here can use magic, and most of them suck at it. So instead of everyone slinging fireballs, people just… invented toilets. Steam locomotives. Plumbing. Radios. This world was literally on the verge of the industrial revolution. But somehow deodorant is still classified as a luxury item. I call that "fantasy priorities."
The City and the Country
I found myself in Caldera, the capital city in the kingdom of Veyra. Picture a medieval metropolis with cobblestone streets, gothic towers, a castle looming over everything, and a surprisingly advanced sewage system as I mentioned earlier.
The kingdom itself? Prosperous, relatively stable, and only mildly racist. The monarchy is obsessed with trade, which is why Caldera is crawling with merchants, guilds, and shady guys in back alleys selling "orc powder."
Thanks to its massive river port and a growing railway system, the city is basically the heart of the continent's economy.
Anyway, I quickly figured out my "Online Package Delivery" skill wasn't completely ass. Turns out if you sell medieval peasants an air fryer, they'll literally call you a prophet. Which was surprising considering the fact they knew how to figure out conducting electricity, but build no other appliances for it other than a radio an a light-bulb. This world has some serious skill issues.
The first stop on my post-isekai career path was the Merchant Guild, because apparently you need a license to sell shit in this world. Just like at the DMV, but everyone is armed with knives and smells faintly of mead and goat cheese.
The clerk at the counter—a skinny guy with more wrinkles than a recovering alcoholic—looked at me like I was trying to buy meth with Monopoly money.
"Name?" he droned.
"Samuel. Uh…Samuel L. Jack….Jacker."
"Occupation?"
"…Future billionaire sex god entrepreneur."
He sighed, scribbled something on his parchment, and muttered, "Another one."
The paperwork was insane. They had me fill out a ten-page form asking if I was affiliated with any black markets, necromancers, or "guilds of illegal cheese smugglers." (Yes, that's a real thing. Apparently the King once outlawed mozzarella because it made people "too rowdy.")
My first week after getting the license? Rough. I was hustling ramen packs, lighters, and some basic modern knick-knacks. They sold, sure. Adventurers liked the lighters for campfires, a few broke college-student-types thought the ramen was exotic and cheap. But it wasn't exactly changing the game. No mobs of peasants were throwing gold coins at my feet. It was like opening a food truck and realizing the town already had a McDonald's.
So yeah. Decent start. But nothing that screamed "isekai protagonist success story."
I was halfway through recovering on a nearby bench after arguing with some guild employee that, no, ramen noodles are not "contraband herbs," when someone plopped onto the bench beside me.
"Ey, big fella," a voice said, slick as oil. "You look lost. Like a dog that got hit by a carriage, y'know what I mean?"
I turned, and for the first time in my life, I was actually talking to a goblin. I'd seen a few on the street before—usually hauling crates or selling scrap metal—but this one was different. Like hella different. He was three feet tall, wearing a black suit with a matching fedora, puffing on a cigar like he was auditioning for Goodfellas 2: Fantasy Boogaloo. He looked like if Joe Pesci turned green and got cursed into World of Warcraft.
My brain short-circuited.
"…you're a goblin."
"Yeah, and your mother is a whore. We all got problems."
"Hey man, fuck you. You don't know her." He was totally right by the way.
"Well, what I do know is that you're a white boy sellin' light-sticks to cavemen."
I blinked. "…light-sticks?"
The goblin took a puff of his cigar before opening his mouth, creating a thick cloud of cancer inducing chemicals.
"Yeah, those lighters you're pushin'. Word on the street is they're 'self-lighting candles.' Half the church thinks they're heresy, the other half wants to mass-produce 'em for pilgrimages. One priest even tried to exorcise one—burned his own robes off in front of the congregation. Funniest shit I ever saw."
He leaned in closer, tapping his cigar ash onto the floor like he owned the place. "Name's Craig. I hear things. And what I heard is, you got potential. Problem is, you're playin' checkers while the world's playin' chess. You don't just need customers, kid—you need angles. And me?" He jabbed a stubby green thumb at his chest. "I'm all fuckin' angles."
"…are you trying to mafia-propose to me right now?"
Craig slapped my knee. "Kid, listen—stick with me and I'll make ya richer than the fuckin' Pope. But you try to screw me, I'll break your knees, then I'll sell the crutches back to you at a markup."
"…do goblins even know what a Pope is?"
Craig squinted. "Don't ask questions you don't want answers to, kid. This world's got Popes, Popettes, and a guy named Popé the Destroyer. Nobody talks about him."
I stared at him. "The fuck is going on in this world?"
He waved it off like I just asked why birds fly. "Anyway, look—these schmucks around here? They'll eat up anything new. I saw the things you were selling at the guild earlier today. But it seems you are still wet behind the ears about marketing. Let me tell you how uncle Craig does it. You bring 'em forks, I call 'em 'Silver of the Future.' You bring 'em peanut butter, I'll slap an elf's face on the jar and call it 'Elven Nut Cream.'"
"…bro, no. Don't ever say 'nut cream' again."
Craig paused, then cocked his head. "Anyhow. Where do you even get all this stuff, by the way? You got crates, gadgets, and these weird little paper squares with funny words. Where's the supply, kid?"
I blinked. For some reason I felt like the world's dumbest confession booth. "I—uh—look, I'm from another world."
Craig just puffed, let out a lazy smoke ring, and said, almost bored, "Oh… okay. Cool."
I choked on my own incredulousness. "You don't find that weird or suspicious?"
He shrugged like it was Tuesday. "Different world, different brother from another mother. Whatever. The only thing that matters is that we're both capitalists."
Silence swallowed me. I went blank. "…what the hell…"
He squinted at me, then smirked. "Listen, kid. I know people. I know guys who know guys. You wanna make money in this city? Then you gotta partner up with me—you got potential. But you also got a face that screams 'please mug me in broad daylight.' Capisce?"
"…capisce? How does this world know Italian?"
"Don't worry about it." He patted my leg again, like I was a prized racehorse. "Look. You don't know the streets. But me? I am the streets. You got the goods, I got the sales pitch. Together? Fuggedaboutit."
I should've walked away. Instead, I shook his tiny green hand. And that's how I got my first partner in crime in an attempt to maliciously abuse my WAMAZON online package delivery skill for capital gain. Spoken of it, let me explain how my dumbass skill even works.
So here's the breakdown:
Online Package Delivery Skill™ – I can summon a hologram screen, browse WAMAZON, pick literally any item (from a Snickers bar to a goddamn Toyota Corolla), hit purchase, and BOOM! It shows up right in front of me… in a cardboard box. Always. Even if it's a battle tank, it'll show up in a box.Currency Options – I can pay with this world's money (gold, silver, copper, or bills) or my own mana. Problem? I have the mana pool of a regular Joe. Which means the best I can buy with magic energy is maybe a high-quality toaster. Or like, three months of cable TV. (Which raises questions: how the hell do I even stream HBO in this world? Where's the Wi-Fi router, Gandalf?)Dimensional Storage – A passive skill I didn't think much of at first. Basically lets me shove infinite items into some pocket dimension. No weight. No space limit. Stuff also gets permanently frozen in time until I pull it out again. Kinda like a Costco warehouse in my back pocket.
Craig, the shady bastard, taught me how to flip my WAMAZON goods for maximum profit.
It started simple. I thought I'd sell basic survival gear—lighters, canned food, batteries (fuck those magic thunderstones they mine all day, that's blood money). You know, practical stuff. But Craig? No. Craig had other plans.
"Ey, Sammy boy," he said, pointing at a pile of goods I'd pulled out of storage. "Ya gotta dress it up. Presentation is everything."
He held up a can of Pringles. "Boom—Wizard Chips. Every crunch is magic, eh?"
He grabbed a roll of duct tape. "Dragon Binder. Strong enough to shut up your mother-in-law."
Then he picked up a box of condoms I'd forgotten I even ordered. He twirled it in his little green hands like it was the One Ring. "And these? Hero's Sheaths. For when ya gotta 'slay the dragon,' if ya catch my drift."
"Craig," I said, staring him dead in the eyes, "what the fuck is going on in this world where this actually makes sense?"
He just grinned, flashing a row of sharp teeth. "Marketing, kid. It's universal."
"And apparently brain damage too" I slurred silently.
And from there on Craig and I started our business as marketers from another world.
Plastic forks? He marketed them as "Silver of the Future."
Fidget spinners? "Focus relics used by monk assassins."
Peanut butter? He straight-up branded it as "Elf Paste." (Thank god he gave up on "Elven Nut Cream")
And then came the big one—clothes.
Craig was flipping through the WAMAZON catalogue one day, squinting at page after page of Earth brands. Hoodies, jeans, sneakers. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there in my usual outfit—black jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt. Pretty standard stuff where I'm from. Here? I might as well have been dressed like an alien.
"Ey, look at this," Craig said, slapping the catalogue. "These medieval jamokes around here? They're wearin' potato sacks and itchy wool tunics. You stroll in lookin' like this—" he gestured at me—"and suddenly you're the goddamn trendsetter of Caldera. We push this stuff? Ka-ching. Fashion gold mine."
"Craig," I said, "you're telling me I'm about to launch the medieval Renaissance equivalent of fuckin' H&M?"
He grinned. "Kid, you're about to be the Versace of Veyra. Capisce?"
I sighed. "…I hate the fact that you will now start using all these references from my old world after scrolling through that WAMAZON catalogue."
But he wasn't wrong.
I ordered bulk clothes—t-shirts, sneakers, hoodies, jeans. And people went nuts.
Within weeks, half the younger population of Caldera was rocking cheap sneakers like they were holy relics. Hoodies became a noble flex. Skinny jeans hit the banquet halls, and suddenly rich kids were strutting like runway models Hugo Boss failed to catch. Some peasant even tried to wear crocs in the snow because "the Merchant's Guild said it was divine footwear."
Boom. Trend set.
I wasn't just a merchant anymore—I was a goddamn fashion mogul. My shop was packed daily, and the guild clerks started looking at me like I was a walking vault of tax revenue. Nobles wanted exclusive shipments, high-ranking adventurers wanted rugged "traveler wear," and even a priest tried to commission a hoodie with his temple's insignia on the back.
But here's where it got really nasty. Craig decided we shouldn't just monopolize the noble brats.
"Sammy boy," he said, puffing smoke like a mafia accountant, "ya gotta feed the middle class too. The peasants are the ocean, the nobles are the islands. Don't starve the ocean, or the islands drown. Capisce?"
So, we launched Future Wear: Lite Edition™. Slightly crappier fabrics, looser stitching, still way better than the scratchy potato sacks the average blacksmith's kid wore. Affordable "status flex for the common man." Sold like wildfire.
Craig even dragged in merchants and shopkeeps who owed him favors, forced them to sign "mutually beneficial contracts" (read: contracts where Craig's cousins would break their fingers if they didn't pay up). Suddenly, even the shoeshiners and butchers of Caldera were rocking knockoff hoodies. Middle-class hype train achieved.
Economically? I nuked the market. Caldera's trade pyramid looked like this:
Nobles (1%) → Hoard gold, buy fancy crap, complain about taxes.
Merchants (9%) → Middlemen, skimming profits off peasants like financial vultures.
Everyone else (90%) → Subsistence grinding XP in the poverty mines.
My clothes cut through that hierarchy like a knife through Costco butter. People from the bottom 90% could suddenly flex like nobles for the price of two bowls of soup and a roast beef sandwich. That wasn't just fashion. That was social mobility—brought to you by WAMAZON Prime.
And the stonks? Through the roof. If there'd been a stock ticker in Caldera, it would've looked like GameStop in 2021:
📈📈📈
Investors weeping, peasants screaming, Craig puffing cigars like he was the Wolf of Wall Street but shorter and greener.
Meanwhile, my lifestyle did a full upgrade. One week, I was sleeping in a piss-stained cot at the Rusty Nail Inn, listening to rats host MMA fights in the walls. Next week? Luxury hotel suite. Hot water. Clean sheets. A chandelier that looked like it could commit tax fraud.
Why? Because I cut a deal with the hotel itself: I supply them with "Limited Edition Bathrobes™" (a.k.a. bulk cotton robes from WAMAZON with fancy embroidery), and they give me the presidential suite. Rich guests were so desperate for my branded robes they were walking around town flexing like they'd been knighted.
Craig called it "vertical integration." I called it "selling towels to dumb rich people." Either way, I was living like a king.
Word spread fast. Caldera's kids started calling my brand "Future Wear," like I was selling divine visions from another age. And soon, whispers started trickling in from one city to the next. They'd heard about the merchant who was redefining style, turning hoodies into holy artifacts, and apparently inventing "self-lighting candles." (That's lighters, for the record. Still the dumbest rebrand I've ever signed off on, but hey, it sells.)
And just like that, I completely cast off my label as 'the new guy' and became 'that guy.' I was one of the top merchants in Caldera. Guild members were dropping my name with respect. People on the street would point and whisper. Hell, one bard even wrote a song about "the man who tamed fire and clothed the future." It was terrible, but still—street cred.
Craig, of course, saw the next move before I did. He pulled a few strings, greased a few palms, and suddenly I had a deal lined up: deliver a shipment of "self-lighting candles" and a crate of "future wear" to a nearby city known as the turning point for all great merchants—Brislewick.
"Expansion, Sammy boy," Craig said, flicking ash off his cigar. "Today Caldera, tomorrow the world. And Brislewick? That place is where copper turns to gold. Big port city, bigger wallets. You sell there, you ain't just makin' coin—you're signin' patents, shippin' goods overseas, buildin' an empire. It's where peasants turn into millionaires if they got the stones for it."
And I can't lie, things were going smoothly. It wasn't long before I would be drowning in money, fame and bitches with pointy ears.
I was ballin'. At least until I remembered one small problem: this world has monsters.
Big ones. The kind of shit that could solo a Walmart parking lot on Black Friday.
Which brings us back to—
Smash Cut Back to Present
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" I screamed as the Ice Gator lunged.
And I knew my ass was grass—because I read The Adventurer's Guild Handbook of Hostile Creatures – Revised 7th Edition cover to cover the first week I got here.
[GLACIATOR – A-Class Threat]
Size: 20+ feet.Abilities: Ice breath capable of freezing landscapes, physical strength to destroy buildings with ease, and armored scales resistant to most conventional weapons. Recorded travel speed of 430km/h. Tail swings casually break the sound barrier.Danger Level: Requires a party of 3–4 seasoned A-class adventurers to defeat. Direct confrontation is discouraged.Weaknesses: Fire, specifically fire above 1,370 °C (2,500 °F)—the temperature needed to melt steel. Good luck casting that shit in less than two seconds.
For comparison:
C-class monsters are like overgrown wolves or large bug swarms. Dangerous in packs, but a few armored guards can handle them.B-class monsters are serious threats—ogres, wyverns, giant spiders. One B-class can take out a village if left unchecked.But A-class? They're the stuff of nightmares. They flatten houses, topple fortresses, and in the case of the Glaciator, they delete chunks of the environment like a natural disaster with teeth and an icy mint breath.
And here I was. Me. Samuel. A dude whose strongest ability is buying an iPhone 12.
What enveloped next was a type of carnage I never thought I would witness in my entire life. Because the Glaciator wasn't just charging—it was obliterating
Two of the three carriage horses? Kaboom. Exploded like firecrackers dipped in gasoline. I didn't even know horse guts could fly in three separate directions at once, but they did.
The passengers? Two of them were snatched and chomped in half like Pringles. One poor guy tried to run, and the gator hit him with a tail whip so hard his skeleton went ragdoll mode out of his skin like a Mortal Kombat fatality.
"Oh Jesus CHRIST ON A SCOOTER," I yelled, diving under a wagon seat.
Then the thing reared its massive snout back and—
FWOOSH!
An ice beam, like an arctic nuke blast, tore across the landscape. The ground literally froze, cracked, and then exploded into frozen chunks the size of minivans. A whole section of the hillside was gone. Just deleted.
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?" I shouted, voice cracking. "That thing's basically a Cold War superweapon with legs!"
"Driver!" I yelled. "DO SOMETHING!"
The driver tried to steer us away with the remaining horse, but he was already split in half by the gator's claws. One second yelling "HYA!" at the reins, the next second: Two-Piece Combo Meal.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO, JIMMY! HE HAD SO MUCH LEFT TO LIVE FOR!"
I scrambled out of the carriage, slipping on blood like it was a damn Slip 'N Slide, when the Glaciator locked its beady lizard eyes on me.
"….don't you fucking dare—"
The gator's jaws opened. Its breath hit me—like standing in front of an air conditioner that only blows depression.
My fight or flight instincts didn't even bother to surface anymore. Instead I proceeded to wet my pants even more than it already has.
"Goddamn fucking isekai."
I closed my eyes made peace with whatever god was laughing at me right now and accepted my fate as alligator brunch.
And right when I thought my obituary was gonna read: 'Samuel. Died crying like a bitch.' —step.
Someone was suddenly standing in front of me. I didn't see him walk up. Didn't hear him. One second it was just me and impending lizard death, the next—a man with slender frame and silky black hair was blocking my view of the monster.
SHIIIIIIIIING!
A katana came free, bursting into blue flames like someone had turned on Hell's stovetop. And with the same motion, he tossed the sheath straight up into the air.
Then, as the Glaciator roared, charging with the speed of a bullet train with jaws wide enough to fit me and the carriage inside.
SLASH!
The gator split in half. Not just cut—sliced through like wet paper. The air sizzled with blue fire as the two halves of the monster flopped apart, frozen guts spilling across the snow ridden wasteland.
And then, without even looking, the man spun his blade in a flawless 180-degree horizontal swing—timed so perfectly that the falling sheath slid right back onto the sword with a neat, final click.
It was like he rehearsed it over a thousand times for the Aura Olympics and just scored a perfect 10.
The blue flames faded. The monster's corpse smoked like Texas barbecue. And he just stood there, staring into the distance as if he'd merely swatted a fly.
Then, finally, he tilted his head slightly, opened his mouth, and spoke as if it were his first words of the day (which it probably was).
"Sup."
My eyes stood wide open. My pants still soaking wet.
"…I wanna go back to Florida."