Brock opened his eyes. Standing over him was a tall, gaunt figure with an imposing skull-topped headdress that extended well out over his shoulders. Purple robes draped his body, unpleasantly asymmetrical geometric figures stitched in gold thread adorning the lavender fabric. His claw-like hands were outstretched and his face looked like a ten-day corpse somewhere was missing one. With a shout, the man gestured wildly towards Brock, unleashing a crackling beam of malevolent green and black energy.

Completely disoriented, all Brock could do was stare as the attack smashed into him, tendrils of writhing power crawling over his chest and arms like maggots.

It burned painfully at first, but quickly faded into an almost pleasant sensation.

It felt like a warm bath.

Brock rubbed at his eyes, ignoring the shrieking old man still doing whatever it was that he was doing.

This was all terribly confusing.

He seemed to be sitting in an office building designed by someone with a real penchant for minimalist brutalism, featuring plenty of concrete pillars and steel walls, but it looked like a tornado had gone through the place. Overhead lighting was hanging from the ceiling, sparking periodically, and small fires flickered across the wide open floor space, remnants of cubicles and chairs sprayed in every direction. There didn’t appear to be any windows, either, which left the entire back half of the massive room in shadow. Brock thought he heard someone moaning back in the darkness, but his attention was diverted when he noticed his hands.

Now things were even more confusing.

The hands he was currently moving were much larger than the hands he was used to, and were covered in thin scars, thick callouses, and coarse black hair. They looked like the hands of a man accustomed to hard, dangerous work.

They did not look like Brock’s hands.

Bewildered, Brock patted at his body, which also didn’t seem to be the same as he remembered. For one thing, it had muscles he’d never developed - corded ridges of biceps and abs, bulging triceps and thighs - and for another, it was stitching itself back together before his eyes, bloody lines beneath torn clothing returning to unmarred flesh like time rewinding.

“Die, you stupid NPC!”

Brock looked up at the emaciated man in purple, who was now frothing at the mouth and holding some sort of orb over his head. One hand pointed at Brock with a talon-like finger, while the other caressed the air around the circle of negative space. The orb was about as big as a basketball and appeared to be sucking in all available light, wisps of vapor orbiting it in multiple directions. It gave off the impression of a black hole, and seemed somewhat dangerous to Brock’s admittedly limited scientifically-inclined senses. The man shouted something that sounded like Latin and threw the orb directly at Brock’s chest.

There was a brief moment of agony when the orb hit, a stinging sensation like a million acid needles pricking through his skin at once, and a sense of wrenching vacancy. Brock looked down in time to see the neatly circular hole in his chest, about the size of a basketball, seal itself up almost instantaneously, once again leaving unmarked skin as if nothing had happened. The vaguely militaristic black clothing he was wearing was definitely past a tailor’s skills, though. He looked back up at the man.

They both shared a confused stare, and then, to Brock’s surprise, the skeletal man took several steps back. He held his grotesque hands up in a placating gesture while trying to disguise his heavy breaths of exhaustion. After several seconds, he spoke, but it was with a conciliatory tone completely at odds with his previous unhinged behavior. His overall appearance still reminded Brock of a deranged necromancer.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble. I thought you were an NPC, right?”

Brock pushed himself to his feet in a smooth motion. It was so smooth, in fact, that it almost startled him into falling back over. His body had never obeyed him so perfectly before. As he marveled at the sensation of lightness on his feet, the presumed necromancer spoke again.

“I mean, you’ve gotta be like me, right? I hit you with a max level Death Blast. No NPC is going to take one of those like it didn’t even happen, right? Not when you were getting wrecked by a level one Obliteration Ray earlier. I thought you were already dead, to be honest. I was just making sure. Right?”

Brock shifted his weight back and forth, still amazed at how natural it felt to move around. Struck by a sudden urge, he tried to do a backflip. He landed it perfectly, and let out a whoop of laughter.

“Oh wow, this is incredible. What do you mean, ‘I’m like you?’ What’s an ‘en pee cee?’”

The most-likely-a-necromancer peered at Brock curiously from his sunken and bruised eye sockets, the eyeless skull on his headpiece appearing to do the same.

“You don’t know how this works? Haven’t you ever heard of an isekai before?”

“Is that like a martial arts move?”

As if to punctuate the question, Brock tried out a roundhouse kick on the nearby wall, a sturdy looking slab of dark metal. In a sudden shriek of noise, the entire section disappeared as if by magic, flying out and into the air in a tumbling spin. Bright sunlight appeared through the hole, twinkling dust motes floating in the golden beams, and in the distance a massive crunching noise sounded, followed by shouts and sirens.

Bemused, Brock looked at the wall. The metal slabs on either side of the one he’d kicked out were over five feet thick, and appeared to have reinforced bolts running through them.

“Oh, wow. Huh. That was pretty cool.”

The almost-assuredly-a necromancer spoke in a slightly quavering voice.

“You’re, uh, pretty strong. Right. Look, I don’t want any trouble. Let me finish up these NPCs and then I’ll be out of your hair. You should think about running too, before they collar you.”

“Collar me?”

Brock punched another metal slab, this time aiming up. It shot into the sky like a rocket, eventually disappearing from view.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Behind him, the necromancer made a strangled noise.

“Can you, uh, maybe stop doing that? Please? Those NPCs aren’t going to stay down forever, and I don’t need more attention coming my way right now.” His next words were in a barely audible voice. “I appear to have misjudged some things,” he muttered.

All of a sudden, Brock could hear everything. The scrape of cloth on flesh. The pulse of blood through veins. The scuttling rush of spiders frantically fleeing their now-exposed webs next to the massive holes. The concerned chatter of the emergency personnel wondering why a ten-ton wall had materialized in the middle of an intersection, and how lucky they were that no one was seriously hurt.

Brock decided that hearing everything was a bit too much, and after some quick concentration, managed to adjust his senses to a more manageable level - slightly sharper than what he’d had before, but not so much as to be distracting. Still marveling at his new abilities, he turned towards the hurried footsteps receding away from him.

The necromancer was walking toward a group of bodies limply twitching on the floor, now visible from the sunlight streaming through the holes Brock had ventilated in the wall. They were wearing black tactical clothing similar to Brock’s own, though none had a basketball-sized gap in the chest area. Struck by a sudden compulsion, Brock felt at his back. Sure enough, the fabric was missing there too.

I think that thing went all the way through me. I should be dead. He tried to kill me.

...save them.

Brock jumped at the sudden thought, because he was pretty sure he wasn’t the one who had thought it. It reminded him of the voice he’d heard in the grey place, the shade whose fight he’d witnessed.

When he finished dislodging himself from the ceiling and dropped back to the floor, landing in a perfect crouch, he saw the necromancer chanting ominously with his hands extended towards the still-twitching figures. Brock counted four of them, all with various weapons and weird science-looking equipment attached to various parts of their outfits, each in varying stages of semi-consciousness.

“Hey, whoa, what are you doing?”

The necromancer ignored him, continuing his chant. One black hole orb appeared, then another, and another, and another. Doing some quick math, Brock realized that was one orb for each of the people on the floor.

“Hey, stop. Are you trying to kill them?”

With an ugly grunt, the necromancer swept his hands to the sides, and the orbs descended.

Save them.

Time slowed down around Brock again, just like it had on the street when he saw the truck heading towards the cat.

No. This time it will be different.

Brock surged into motion, and this time it was different. His feet landed exactly where expected, each step covering multiple yards, and dimly Brock was aware that he was moving much faster than a person ought to be able to move. The air itself seemed to fight against him, as if the molecules couldn’t get out of the way quickly enough.

It was almost like his body was acting without him having to think about it, filled with the power he’d always dreamed of.

Is this what it feels like to be athletic?

The orbs had barely started descending, and to Brock’s surprise, he was already past the necromancer. He angled his trajectory at the first Death Blast. It was sizzling towards a short, red-haired woman with green skin lying on her side, festooned with what Brock thought was frankly a ludicrous amount of guns. A sniper rifle as tall as her was strapped to her back, and two bulky pistols lay just beyond her outstretched hands, themselves encircled by what looked like wrist-mounted mini-rockets, while other, smaller pistols were strapped to various chest, arm, and leg holsters, but her eyes were unfocused beneath the veil of dark blood covering most of her face.

Is she... a goblin? Like from that Ring Lord Wars book all the kids at school talk about?

Save them!

Turning his attention back to the orb, Brock threw a punch at it, and watched it disappear with satisfaction. With slightly less satisfaction, he also watched his arm, from the fist to the elbow, completely disappear as well. Pain flared across his mind, like he’d clutched a handful of live coals, but just as quickly faded away, the vanished flesh starting to knit itself back into existence. Based on the speed of the other orbs, though, Brock realized he wasn’t going to have enough time for his arm to completely regenerate and intercept all of them.

Right. Looks like we do this the hurty way.

The Death Blast aimed at the grey-haired man with dark skin, his lithe body slumped over a bloody katana whose blue-steel edge shimmered faintly, took Brock’s other arm, while the third Death Blast ate his left leg up to the knee, but failed to reach its target, a tall, blond-haired woman wearing a garland of vivid green leaves above pointed ears. Diseased purple veins crawled over her exposed skin, pulsing intermittently against her fine features. With a desperate heave, Brock launched himself off his right leg towards the last Death Blast, interspersing his body between it and the raven-maned woman curled around an intricately carved quarterstaff. Her muscular arms and legs were jerking fitfully, as if she was a newborn foal trying to walk, jingling the various charms hanging from each one.

The final Death Blast hit exactly the same spot as before, punching completely through Brock’s chest. As he felt the pain slam into him, Brock twisted in mid-air, ready to reach out with his partially regenerated arm if necessary, but the orb had dissipated. What caught his attention was the black-haired woman staring up at him in shock, one eye unnaturally wide as if she’d seen a ghost, the other hidden beneath a black eyepatch that gave her a piratical expression. Brock didn’t have time to think about her reaction, however, as his spin finished with him sticking his one-legged landing perfectly, much to his own surprise. Acting like the improbable sequence of events was completely normal, he faced the necromancer once more, body parts recohering around him in swirls of bone and flesh.

A second later he was whole, and the necromancer gawked at him.

“What the hell are you doing? What the hell are you?”

Brock felt a breeze blowing along the now exposed skin of his arms and leg. He was definitely not going to be able to wear these clothes again, thanks to the necromancer’s entropic attacks. If this keeps up, I’m going to be naked before long, he thought to himself, and then his eyes narrowed.

The necromancer had seemed pretty sure his attacks were lethal, and he’d aimed them at the helpless people on the ground.

Brock had never been much for fighting growing up, generally causing more damage to himself than his opponent, but right now he felt like he could take on the world. He clenched his newly reformed fists.

“I won’t let you kill them. What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” The necromancer let out a hysterical laugh. “What’s wrong with you? They’re just NPCs! What do you care, right?”

Brock took a step forward.

“They’re people.”

The necromancer laughed again.

“We’ll see if they think the same of you once they wake. Either way, I don’t have any more time to waste. Summon Death Knights!”

Harsh emerald light flared from the necromancer’s hands, and Brock watched five shambling monstrosities of bone and armor crawl up through pentagram portals on the floor, interspersed between him and the necromancer. As they stood, he realized each was nearly ten feet tall, carrying a massive sword crawling with evil-looking black runes, and their horned faces twisted into leering grins as lime-green fire burst into flames in their eye sockets. Behind them, the necromancer cackled.

“Have fun surviving them. On the slight chance you do, I’ll make sure to see you around. Don’t think it’ll be as easy next time.” His growled whisper was almost inaudible, one Brock was pretty sure he wasn’t meant to hear. “I’ll be perfectly ready.”

Another pentagram flared up on the floor, this time beneath the necromancer’s feet, and he sunk into it and away from sight. With a grimace, Brock stalked towards the Death Knights, who raised their blades in response.

Three punches and two kicks later, the last of the bone dust blew out of the room, and Brock wiped his hands with a flourish.

“You better hope I don’t see you again. Jerk.”

As Brock turned back to check on the fallen figures, he felt something snap shut around his neck.

“Whut?”

The last thing Brock saw was the dark-haired woman’s fist flashing at his face, silver charms jangling behind it, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her eyepatch was pushed up, revealing a pure white orb filled with golden runes in place of a pupil, intricate shapes blazing like the sun. Her mouth was clenched in a pain-filled grimace.

“You bastard.”