The next morning, the sun hit our faces like a 4K copyright strike. We were heading to a restaurant, looking like absolute NPCs, when Ayush turned to me with that "bruh" face.
"Yo, Aryan, deadass... what happened to you yesterday? You were glitching so hard I thought your ping was 999," Ayush asked, genuinely confused.
"I don't even know, man. It just... happened," I replied, keeping it vague.
Inside my head, though, the gears were turning. I can't tell these guys about the library or the fact that my soul almost got evicted from my body. If they find out I was playing with powers that could literally delete the server, things will get weird. Better gatekeep this for now.
We reached the diner and inhaled the food like we hadn't eaten since the prehistoric era. Everything was vibes until the check arrived. The shopkeeper stood there, waiting for the coins, and then it hit us—the realization was a total jump scare. We hadn't finished a single mission yesterday. We were sitting on a grand total of zero coins.
We tried to explain the situation, but the shopkeeper wasn't having it. He looked at us like we were low-budget scammers and started moving in to kick us out.
Suddenly, the door swung open, and the vibe shifted from "we're cooked" to "main character energy." It was Rei's party: Junie, Nakamu, Rei, and Miku.
They walked straight up to us, ignoring the grumpy shopkeeper. Rei looked us in the eye with pure respect. "Yo, thank you guys for saving our lives yesterday. Real talk, we wouldn't be here without you," he said, and the whole party bowed.
We were caught off guard. We all did that classic anime pose—scratching the back of our heads, smiling like idiots, blushing. "Heyyy, it's nothing, man. No biggie," we stammered, feeling like total shy bois.
When the shopkeeper tried to interrupt, we explained to Rei that we were currently "financially challenged" because we spent the whole day saving them instead of grinding quests. They laughed—not at us, but at the sheer chaos of it—and Rei immediately covered our tab.
"Nah, don't worry about it. It's the least we can do," Rei said. He officially introduced the squad: Rei, baddie Junie, Nakamu, and Miku. Nakamu walked up to me, slapped a hand on my shoulder like we were childhood besties, and grinned. "Nice to meet you, Aryan!"
"Nice to meet you too, man," I replied, feeling the bro-code solidify.
Then Rei dropped a proposal. "Look, let's collab. We'll hit a mission together and split the loot. Stacks for everyone. You in?"
We didn't even have to think about it. "Say less. We're in."
We headed to the Adventurer's Guild. Habitually, I reached for an E-Rank mission card because, you know, survival.
Rei looked at the card, then at me, then back at the card. "Bruh, why are you picking up trash missions? Are you trolling?"
I sighed and showed them our official cards. Their jaws literally hit the floor.
"Wait, E-Rank and B-Rank?!" Rei shouted, his brain clearly 404ing. "Bro, with the way you fought yesterday, we thought you were at least S-Rank or A-Rank hidden bosses! How is your rank so cooked?"
He shook it off, though. "Whatever, ranks are just a number. High ping or not, you guys are cracked." He proceeded to pick an S-Rank mission. We tried to tell him we weren't actually that "him," but he wasn't listening. We were officially locked into a suicide mission.
We left the Kingdom on foot, a party of seven heading into the wild. As we walked, Rei got curious. "So, why did you guys choose the Mage life? You don't exactly look like the 'study-at-a-desk' types."
We all looked at each other. We couldn't exactly tell them we were isekai'd from Earth by a glitchy system, so I improvised. "Uh, you know... just for the vibes? Adventure, fun, and the loot, I guess."
Rei nodded. "Fair. I bet you guys were the popular kids in magic Academy."
My brain stopped. "Academy?" Ayush, Vikas, and I asked in unison, sounding like a bunch of confused owls.
Rei stopped walking and stared at us. "Wait... don't tell me you've never been to the Academy? How did you even get your powers and the System?"
"It just... appeared?" we said, looking like total noobs.
Rei sighed and gave us the "Tutorial 101" lore dump. "Okay, so usually, when kids are growing up, after coming to magic academy they go through a brutal awakening process. They lock you in a room without food until you're at death's door. When your body hits 'low battery,' your internal magic sparks to save you. If you survive, you're a Mage. If you don't, you survived nothing happens to you then."
"But the System? That thing is pure RNG. It's a mystery. Sometimes a random farmer gets it, and sometimes an S-Rank legend never sees a single notification. It's totally unknown why or how it picks people. Those who can't spark magic usually become Swordsmen, trying to reach Mage-level power through pure grind."
Right as he finished the lore dump, the ground started vibrating like a bass-boosted meme. The sky turned dark, but it wasn't a cloud.
Out of the fog emerged a monster so massive it broke our brains. If you took ten elephants and stacked them, they wouldn't even reach this thing's pinky toe. We couldn't even see the top of it—its torso and head were chilling above the clouds.
Vikas and Ayush's souls basically left their bodies. I felt a level of fear I didn't even know existed. This wasn't a boss fight; its suic*de
"Guys... tell me this isn't the mission," I whispered, my voice trembling.
"Yep," Rei said, pulling out his katana. "This is it. We have to delete this guy."
"Are you smoking something?!" Ayush yelled. "That's not a monster! That's a God-level entity! We need to log out right now! Run!"
This was the first time we felt true, unfiltered fear. Even when we died on Earth, it wasn't this intense. This thing was a walking apocalypse.
Rei looked dead serious. "This is the kind of monster that raided the Kingdom years ago and left half the population as ghosts. We have to end this. It's our destiny."
"Who cares about destiny?! How do we even hit that thing?!" we screamed.
Then Rei dropped the magic words. "The bounty on this thing is One Million Coins."
The fear in my brain was instantly overwritten by greed. One million? That's infinite rizz money.
I looked at the boys, and I saw the same fire in their eyes.
"Boys..." I shouted, summoning every bit of aura I had. "ATTACK!