“It’s like whoever made this character chose all the worst things on purpose,” Kathalles said with a laugh as he looked through Benjamin’s character sheet, making him flush in shame. “How do you even end up with most of your stats below average, anyway?”

“We don’t think anyone chooses their stats on this Earth of theirs,” the older mage said from over the younger man’s shoulder. “It seems to be entirely random, which isn’t nearly as fair as your system, but still, we will do what we can to help him optimize so he can be of use to his betters.”

“Well, I’m not sure there’s much hope for this guy,” the apprentice said, shaking his head as he poured through the lines with a smirk. “Maybe if I flipped his gender and poured all his extra points into appearance, we could grow some titties and put all this flab to good use.”

They couldn’t really do that, could they? Benjamin wondered.

It was bad enough that they could sculpt his soul like clay like they’d done with Matt, but to change him so much he couldn’t recognize himself in the mirror anymore? To erase him mentally and physically from the world? That was terrifying, or at least it would have been if the admonition of Kitsune Miko-chan’s admonition hadn’t been enough to keep him from completely losing his shit.

“That would count as a failure for the purposes of this exercise,” Lord Jarris answered, showing a hint of annoyance for the first time this evening. “Though some might welcome such a transition, it is readily apparent in the nature of his soul that he would find that extremely traumatizing. Even mentioning such torments is already making your task more difficult, Kathalles. His soul stress is rising merely at the idea. Please focus on the task at hand.”

“Fine…” the apprentice sighed as he took the exercise more seriously. “Well then, the correct path would be to lower his intelligence to 4, strip out all the unnecessary lore and knowledge skills, and then apply the 60 build points plus the 20 he currently has to give him at least average physical stats and the Soldier ‘B’ package with the legionnaire specialization.”

“Why would you choose that over cannon fodder or any other possible option?” the mage asked. “He seems unlikely to survive in a formation, and putting a weak link there could endanger other unit members.”

“Well, he has just enough points in teamwork and leadership if I’m doing my math right,” the apprentice said, starting to sound somewhat unsure of himself, “So it seemed like the most optimized move. I thought about maybe converting him into a war mage because his programming skill is similar to runic magic... But you said you wanted warriors, and in theory, since this loser spent so much time building up so many specializations in things that don’t matter, he should be capable of learning to be a good soldier after he gains a level or two fighting the wildlings.”

For a long moment, the mage stood there silently, leaving everyone to wonder what would happen next. Then he said, “I agree with your assessment. Especially your decision not to optimize him for runic magic. It’s much too dangerous for someone who is not born of the empire. Where will you start?”

Benjamin could only stand there in mute horror while the two of them discussed which parts of his life were least important and could be cut away first while he listened to the battle rage around them. He’d never felt so humiliated or afraid in his whole life.

Not when Matt had told him that he and Emma were going to go on a date the month after she dumped Benjamin. Not the night he’d gotten lost in the bad part of town and had to make it home without a cell phone to call an Uber. Not even when he’d been accused of cheating on that midterm and been called to a board of academic review to see if he would be expelled.

It was an out-of-body experience, and he couldn’t stop shaking as they discussed him like he wasn’t even there. Eventually, they decided to start with his skills and then proceed to his stats, monitoring his soul’s integrity the whole time.

It was a terrible, disorienting thing for Benjamin. One second, he had a video game lore of 88 and a knowledge (academic) that was almost as high. The next second, they were just gone, and some of his most cherished memories vanished with them.

He’d been sure it wouldn’t affect him too much and that he’d be able to resist it somehow, but he was wrong. It was like a bookshelf full of journals and photo albums where his whole life had been written down were suddenly put to the torch. As they burned, the complex network of memories associated with them vanished. One moment, he was trying to pull his burning Super Nintendo from the wreckage of his mind, and the next, he could no longer remember that cherished Christmas when he’d gotten it any more than he could remember all the afternoons he’d played it with Matt and his other friends as it crumbled to ash in his hands.

Suddenly, Benjamin could barely remember what a video game was. He was sure they’d been important to him once, but now he couldn’t name a single title. Part of his mind had been anesthetized. Likewise, he had no idea what Academic knowledge was. Still, now that it was gone, he couldn’t remember precisely what he’d done with his whole life up until now, and math and science were mostly just big blank spots in his mind.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

One minute, he knew exactly where he’d been for the last few years and what he was going to do with his life. He knew what he did for fun and what his hobbies were, and in an instant, all of that was just gone. Whole years of life just faded into the mist. After that, all he had left was programming, and he held onto that like it was the only thing that mattered.

C++, Java, Python, databases, troubleshooting, debugging, and object-oriented programming. He repeated these terms in his mind like a mantra. Like it was the only thing that could keep them from taking away everything he was because it was pretty much the only part of them. They hadn’t ripped out of his soul yet, but he knew that they were going to.

These monsters would take away everything they didn’t need because all that mattered to them was that he could swing a sword and fight and die for their war. It was so unbelievably unfair, and Benjamin silently prayed to any god that would listen.

The answer came in the form of a single arrow. It soared in from somewhere behind him, missing his own skull by inches as it glided over his left shoulder before it embedded in the throat of the young monster that was doing this to him. For a second, nobody moved as they were shocked into silence.

Kathalles gasped and tried to speak, but he couldn’t, and it was obvious why that was the case for Benjamin: there was magic in the arrow, and something was growing inside him. The shaft of the arrow wasn’t a smooth piece of wood. Instead, it looked like the stem of a flower with both buds and thorns. That wasn’t the strange part, though.

The strange part was that while the apprentice choked and gasped, roots were growing under his skin, spreading out from the wound. Even after the young man began to seize, and his master brought him down gently to the ground at Benjamin’s feet and pulled out the arrow, the growth only accelerated.

It looked like a terrible way to die, but Benjamin wished it had happened a few seconds sooner. Then, that little bastard wouldn’t have had the chance to fry half of Benjamin’s brain with strange magic.

Even as Lord Jarris tried to use magic to heal the growths that were crawling under the boy’s skin, the febrile seizures grew worse. Eventually, even Benjamin regretted wishing ill on the man who was really just a little younger than him. Sure, the mage’s apprentice had been a monster, but no one deserved this.

Finally, Kathalles opened his mouth to scream, but he never got the chance. Instead, a fist-sized bouquet of blood-red flowers forced its way out of the orifice as his body seized hard one more time before laying still.

“So the witch has finally joined the battle, then,” the mage muttered darkly as he rose back to his feet. “We shall have to teach her what a mistake that was. Alright, everyone, listen to me. We’re going to—”

Even as Lord Jarris gave his order and Benjamin felt himself eager to jump at whatever the command was, something large and loud finally burst through the tent wall behind him. He didn’t have a chance to see it, but he did get completely bowled over by it as whatever it was charged straight for the mage.

What followed next was bloody and terrifying. Benjamin heard the yowling of some kind of giant cat and the baying of a giant hound but balanced against that, he saw emerald beams of light and green fire being casually tossed around by the mage. For the next thirty seconds, he doubted any of them would survive.

Once that hellish moment was over, though, the mage strode toward the rent in the far wall and said, “Come with me. All of you. We shall end this thing once and for all. Revealing her position like this was a tragic mistake worth all your lives and more.”

It was only after everyone started following the mage out and Benjamin continued to lay there in the blood of his enemies that he realized something. Not only had he not died in the attack, but strangely, he didn’t feel the need to follow the other man’s orders. He had trouble understanding it, but as he slowly rose to hands and knees, he realized what had happened.

The silver rod that the apprentice had been wielding to access his system had been lying beneath him, and something about that item, or the fact that his system was still being actively worked on, apparently made him temporarily immune to the compulsion that had been so irresistible up until now.

As Benjamin stood up and looked around, all thoughts of pulling up his character sheet to dig deeper into the mystery were dispelled by the carnage. The six or eight humans from Earth between him and the rent fabric lay in pieces, along with their bestial attackers. The only silver lining was that he didn’t see his friends among the piles of dead, though even that was no guarantee that they still lived.

The place was a charnel house. Some of the people had been pulled apart or cut to pieces by the monsters, but the rest bore magical wounds of one sort or another. Many of those that had died from magic had still smoking holes straight through their chest from some sort of beam attack. Others still smoldered with green embers that seemed to disintegrate the flesh it left behind rather than slowly reduce it to ash.

He felt certain he'd be sick, and the only thing that stopped it was Kitsune-Miko’s words.

“So, you think you’re going to be able to escape?” she asked, practically purring. “Take me with you.”

“Y-you’re a demon,” Benjamin spat back, whirling around. He wasn’t sure what that really meant in this context, but he’d seen the word on his character sheet, and he was going with it. “Why should I listen to anything you have to say?”

“Because, unlike you, I know what the hell is going on, and I might be willing to help you if I think you could help me to escape from Lord Jarris’s grasp,” she said with a sigh. “That man is a monster.”

It was only after Benjamin was finished considering her words that he realized the fox girl was trying to be as seductive as possible in both her tone and her body language. She was trying to seduce me, he told himself belatedly.

“Fine,” he said, blushing slightly as he picked up the phone and pocketed it. “But if you try anything, I’m smashing this thing to bits, and you with it.”

“Works for me,” she cooed. “If we head straight south for the river, we should be able to—”

“We can’t,” Benjamin said, “Not yet. First, we need to save my friends.”