I was not always like this.

I was not always a loser.

Once, many had pinned their hopes on the future that I would attain.

Once, many were the dreams and aspirations which I had held.

Then on one fateful day, I dared to bare my teeth at those whom I deemed my enemies.

And I was taught a lesson. I was sent to the school of hard knocks.

I had lost.

I lost, hence I was a loser.

I became a loser not only in name but in practice as well.

I had not completed post-secondary education, worked menial jobs in between prolonged periods of joblessness, and had a dearth of friends and girlfriends.

I had nothing to live for.

Perhaps that is not completely true, for I have a daughter.

But I haven’t seen her in years. To her, I might as well be dead.

Turns out that not only was I a loser, but a loner as well.

And so, I spent most of my time reading or playing games.

Actually, reading was the one thing I had never given up on.

I read everything: from trippy new age spiritual books to the Gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi library, Occidental political treatises to Oriental Prophetic works, conspiracy theories to scientific journals, science fiction to fantasy, authors from Weber to Nietzsche to Danjae Shin Chaeho…

Well, you get the point. Yeah, I might have been bragging a little bit.

In any case, even so, even with all the reading and the gaming that I engaged in,

I felt disconnected from the world, I felt unfulfilled, and I felt empty.

Which is what contributed to this dreamlike scene I’m seeing right now.

You see, I had had enough. I had lain knocked down for far too long.

I was going to pick myself back up and get going once again!

So on this yet-to-be-spring night, I exited Dungeon Destroyer, the game I had been playing. Then I went outside wearing my trusty old sneakers, grey sweatpants, and a t-shirt. I was going to start running again like I used to ten years ago when I was eighteen.

I was going to run like the wind, or so I tried.

I ended up stumbling once, then stumbling even harder a second time as I attempted to regain my balance, before I finally fell over hard head first into the asphalt.

Wait a minute, I can’t be dead right? I must have only been knocked unconscious!

Because this scene in front of me certainly didn’t seem to be the afterlife at first glance.

I mean, I am sitting on a white chair, opposite an empty matching chair, that is beside a white round table, all of which are in the middle of a lush green and verdant garden. The sky above is bright and blue, and I can even feel the gentle summer breeze as it rustles the leafy branches of the nearby trees.

But now that I think about it, perhaps this is a part of the afterlife after all.

This is irony straight out of an O. Henry story.

“Huuuh,” I let out a big sigh.

“What is worrying you, my love?” a resplendent feminine voice rang out.

Surprised, I looked towards where the voice had emanated from and saw the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She wore her sleek and lustrous brown hair down around her neck and shoulders. She had electrifyingly dazzling blue eyes which gave me a jolt by just gazing into them. I could also clearly discern that she maintained an hourglass figure beneath her pure white dress. But most of all, she was the epitome of beauty with her radiant smile and the paragon of virtue with her overwhelming aura of goodness and goodwill.

I was stunned.

“You called me your l-love? I-I don’t understand,” I stuttered uncharacteristically.

“You will understand one day,” the woman replied with a pleasant tone.

As she sat down on the chair opposite mine, I tried to catch a glimpse of her breasts undetected. I didn’t manage to see anything, but I didn’t get caught either.

“You asked me what was worrying me. Well, I had just come to the realization that I was dead and in the afterlife. Just when I had decided to make something of myself again. That’s why I sighed,” I told her.

“Don’t be too downcast about that, honey. I’ll give you another chance at life~” the woman said playfully while giving me a wink.

“Alright, I’ll play along,” I replied.

“Great~ we’ll settle things with a game like we always do!” the woman exclaimed cheerfully.

“What kind of game?” I asked.

“My favorite, Scrabble,” she said while looking straight at me.

Right then, a scrabble set materialized out of thin air on top of the table.

So we started to play the game and it was weird.

The rules were all twisted but I felt like this was okay.

It truly felt like as if I was within a dream, where everything makes sense while you are within the dream, although when you think about it rationally, nothing really makes sense about it.

I lost. So I couldn’t go back to my old life.

I lost again. So I couldn’t be a hero, a lord, or an emperor in a fantasy world.

In fact I lost so many times that everything was practically to be decided upon by the woman.

“Fufufu~ Don’t worry about it too much, I’m really happy that I got to beat you so badly~

I won’t make things too harsh,” the woman said happily.

She continued on, “Let’s see, you get to live in a fantasy world with exotic magic and interesting races. You also get to be someone powerful. But, you must be a dark lord in a world where dungeons are the embodiment of said dark lords’ life and power.”

“I can live with that, come to think of it, I always thought it would be interesting to be on the other side,” I remarked.

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The woman then proceeded to give me a brief overview about the world I was going to before concluding, “Okay then, I will make you take the place of one of the dark lords~

Have fun my dear~”

Her last words were echoing through my head as I was falling into a soporific stupor, before I finally blacked out.

When I came to, I was standing in the midst of a mound of corpses inside a dark cavern.

I saw dead people with their heads chopped off and their entrails spilt.

The sight and the stench were unbearable so I retched and vomited there and then.

Though I didn’t want to look at the mound of dead any more than I had to, I also noticed the cadavers of creatures that I presumed as goblins strewn about.

Gathering my wits about me, I heard the sounds of battle, of clashing steel, yelling men and shrieking goblins. The noise was being carried down through the entrance of the cavern I was in, which had stairs leading upwards.

After a few minutes the noise stopped. Then I heard the indistinct murmur of men accompanied by the reverberations of footsteps on the earthen stairs.

Uh oh.

The humans won and are coming down here and I’m all alone.

This can’t be good.

Wait a minute.

I’m a fucking dark lord!

I’ll scare them off, maybe even maim or kill one or two if I really must.

A habit that I've formed is to imagine counterfactuals and hypotheticals of catastrophic personal events. Just thinking about something as possible seemed to blunt the emotional impact of when the event actually occurred. I reeled at the sight of the dead at first, but I believe that I can steel myself enough to kill.

Finally I saw the silhouettes of eight men appear at the entrance to the cave.

“There he is, that’s the dark lord!” One of the men shouted.

“ROOOOOAR!” I roared out loud.

But the men, ill-equipped and haggard looking as they were, took my roaring as a signal to attack and started charging towards me.

“You lowly scum think you can challenge me? A dark lord!?” I bellowed as I ran forward to meet them.

“Take this!” I unleashed a furious slash with my gigantic paw to the man at the head of the charge.

“Hrrrah!” The man countered with a vertical slash from his sword.

At that moment, blinding pain engulfed me, and I crumpled down to the ground while screaming in agony.

“AAAAH!! What the hell, my hand! It’s gone! Holy shit, this hurts so much!!!” tears were flowing freely from my eyes.

I was rolling around on the ground screaming and crying, when the sharpness from a kick to my face garnered my attention.

The men had gathered around me and were snickering.

“Some dark lord you are, eh? Where’s your treasure room dark lord?”

They mocked me while kicking me around.

“Come on, fess up or we’ll be putting you in a world of pain! Much worse than what you be feelin’ now ya hear?” they bawled.

“P-p-please, I don’t know anything! I just became a dark lord only a short while ago! Have mercy, please!” I begged them.

“GAAAH!!” I cried out in pain as one of the men stuck his sword into my left thigh.

“Arrgh…treasure room… secret…grrrrgh….chamber… first…hic….room,” I strung together whatever came to mind to get them to stop the hurt.

“Alrighty! We’re not bad guys, dark lord. We’re heroes enacting justice you see. Since you told us the whereabouts of the treasure, we’ll let you rest in peace now,” The leader of the bunch said.

“Uuh..uuh… thank… you” I murmured.

“Good-bye now!” The man then flashed his sword.

I saw the world spinning around before I blacked out.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the garden.

The woman was looking at me with her head cocked sideways and her face plastered with a mischievous grin.

“YOU BITCH!!!” I shouted at the top of my lungs as I leapt up from the chair.

But then I fell down on the grass while screaming and rolling in pain once again.

“Now, now, my love~ Your first life was just desserts for trying to gander at my bosom~ Please behave yourself now, or I’ll have to administer some more pain! Don’t worry, there is no lasting damage, so I can apply it over and over again~” the woman chided me as a lover trying to act cute would have done.

I was able to pay attention because she had apparently relented on making me feel the pain.

“Yes, I understand! I’m sorry! Truly sorry!” I repented.

“I accept your apology. That life as Porcus Minorus was a freebie. I sent you into the body of one of the weakest dark lords around, tehe~”

With a name like Porcus Minorus, it was no wonder that that dark lord was so flabbily weak. But to make me a dark lord on the verge of meeting his doom was…

“I had also lowered your Maximum Pain Tolerance Threshold by 100% and increased your Pain Sensitivity by 100%. But I will reset that to your normal values now,” The woman continued on.

This woman… I thought that she was a goddess or an angel before, but now I’m not too sure anymore.

“Since the small prank I meant to play really seemed to hurt, I will give you a bonus and unlock the credit requirements during your start-up process.

In all earnestness though, I hope you learnt a lot about the pain and harshness of reality. Anyways, this time is for real, so be careful and have fun!”

With those words resounding in my mind, I once again fell into a state of soporific stupor, before finally blacking out.