Nick sighed as he walked back home from work. The day had gone terribly, with a long overdue project failing at the last moment due to an easily solvable conversion error. Massive sums of money were lost to the refund that their client got and almost a dozen people were fired. Nick wasn't surprised. He never was. The company was in a terrible slump and Nick had no idea what to do about it though. He might be an award winning physicist, but the intricacies of human stupidity still eluded him. The guy who made the mistake had decided to go get coffee instead of double-checking even once. And it was the middle of the day! If anything, the fact that he had gone to get coffee in the middle of the day irritated Nick more than the fact that he had made a serious mistake.
Every time that he had tried to say something at the following directors meeting, he was shut down. Sure, robbing a bank wasn't the best idea he'd ever had, but still.
"Well, maybe tomorrow will go better. It's still going to take us a while to recover from this regardless," he said absentmindedly, almost failing to notice the sidewalk transitioning into a crosswalk. He lurched to a halt when a speeding car whizzed past, almost running him over.
"Watch where you're going, ya idiot!" screamed a woman that was well into the far side of 'really old.' "Kids these days…" she muttered before turning around a corner.
Stereotypical grandmas aside, Nick's walk home was usually excruciatingly boring. He hadn't been able to find a house that fit his standards anywhere near his workplace, and he never liked walking anyways. The only reason he didn't drive home was that he was in desperate need of exercise, and this was the only free time he had.
"I don't remember that having happen to me before," he chuckled to himself. Just as he was trying to figure out where he had found himself and which direction to go in, his thoughts were interrupted by a loud purr coming from the crosswalk in front of him.Turning back to it, he arched his eyebrows when he saw a black Siamese cat with golden eyes staring at him from the center of the road. It was unusually dark, and Nick would have completely failed to see it if it had appeared at night.
"I could swear that it wasnt there a second ago," he thought. If it was a human, Nick would have said that it looked like it was glaring at him, but he wasn't sure, since he wasn't an expert in feline facial expressions.
"Wait, there's a truck coming! Someone get that cat out of there!" Nick looked back and saw that a small group of people had formed at the same side of the crosswalk as him, and they had also noticed the cat, along with a truck. The truck was barreling down the road at twice the speed limit, with the driver being either ignorant or uncaring about the cat about to get run over. The cat's glare seemed to focus in on Nick and intensified as the truck got closer.
"I'm too old for this," he thought, then promptly did nothing as the cat got run over with a resounding crack because he was, in fact, too old to bother with stuff like this. Also, he hadn't liked how the cat had looked at him.
The rest of the crowd rushed over to where the cat had been sitting a moment ago, despite the crosswalk sign still telling them to stop. "Absolutely no respect for traffic rules these days," thought Nick to himself.
"Wait up," said Nick. "A bit late to be trying to save the cat, don't ya think? Rushing over after it's already dead does no one any good, especially the cat. You'll don't want to follow in it's footsteps, right?" The entire group stopped, turned, and glared at Nick incredulously, as if trying to process the comment that he had just made.
"What is wrong with you? Like seriously, what kind of sad, sorry, pitiful excuse of a life do you have to have to find amusement in something like this?" asked a woman at the front of the group in a dangerous tone.
"Oh no, my feelings… I feel like roadkill," he replied, trying his best to keep a smirk off of his face.
"Ugh I don't have time to deal with someone like you, let's go check up on the cat," she replied angrily. The rest of the group mumbled its agreement. Turning around again, she renewed her attempts to reach the cat. After a near miss with a car that looked suspiciously like the one that almost ran Nick over, they arrived at the 'crime scene', only to find out that there was no body. The cat had seemingly up and vanished. There was no blood, fur, or any other sign that the cat had actually been there at all.
"But I saw and heard it get run over. There's no way it survived that." exclaimed a wannabe detective that was going to get his dreams shattered for stating the obvious.
"Then why are y'all standing over there?" remarked Nick from the safety of the sidewalk with an evil grin, and then walked off before they could respond, much to their annoyance. He had places to be and shows to watch, after all.
A short while later, Nick thought about what had happened. "It probably jumped out of the way at the last moment, or got stuck to the front of the truck," he mused. "Poor truck-kun, it didn't get any victims this time. Well except for the cat. Maybe it appreciates the variety?"
Suddenly, a cerulean blue light flickered into existence a few yards in front of him. Nick blinked at it. It did not disappear like the hallucination that it was.
"What the heck? Last time I drank was 4 years ago," he muttered. "Unless I got drunk, then forgot I got drunk, but then I wouldn't be able to think about the fact that I might have forgotten that I got drunk, but- yeah I'm not going down that rabbit hole. I'm fairly certain I'm not drunk, so is this just an elaborate prank or…"
Nick's voice trailed off as the light began to move. It seemed to be tracing an expanding spiral into the air in front of him.
"Are you trying to hypnotize me? Because if so, whoever taught you was a scammer." Predictably, the light did not respond and continued to trace the spiral. However, as the spiral got traced faster and faster, it began to shrink. These two processes cancelled each other out, resulting in a stable size for the portal(well, that's what he assumed it was, based off of the isekais he'd seen). Just barely large enough for someone like Nick to walk through it.
"Ah whatever, I need to get home, and being isekaied definitely ruins a bunch of my life plans." Nick took a step back and was about to turn around when the portal moved forward towards him. It seemed to be just as far from Nick as it was before he moved back.
"So it follows me too? How am I supposed to get rid of it now?" asked Nick to no one in particular. It was at this point that he noticed that there was no one around, as if they'd all disappeared. He tried taking a step towards the portal instead, but this time, the portal didn't move. It seemed to be encouraging him to enter, but Nick wasn't having any of that. He tried going to the left or right, but the portal followed him. Even running did him no good. And yet, after all this time, Nick hadn't seen a single person since the portal appeared. This was especially suspicious because he was still in the city, and there should've been dozens of people around at all times.
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"It's probably only going to stop when someone goes through it… but does that someone have to be me?"
To test this, Nick first threw a pebble through the portal. The portal flashed cerulean for a moment then faded back to it's usual cool blue. The pebble had disappeared, giving credence to the theory of it being a portal. Or an unstable form of energy that vaporized anything near it.
"If I throw enough things at it, it should run out of energy and disappear. That's assuming that this portal ascribes to at least some of the laws of physics, which is an unsure prospect at best. But first, what if something living goes through though?"
The lack of overeager children nearby meant that Nick had to resort to inhuman methods of experimentation: namely, ants.
There was an unidentifiable piece of food on the road, with dozens of ants swarming around it. Nick took out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and set it down right next to the ants, and waited patiently for some of them to climb on. Once a few of them were on the paper, Nick crumpled it up again, made sure none of them had fallen, and chucked the piece of paper at the portal.
The reaction this elicited from the portal was far more… intense. The moment that the paper ball touched the portal, the portal erupted into purple flames.
"Purple flames usually are a result of burning potassium salts right? Although I doubt that's whats causing this." Nick took a few steps back to ensure that he wouldn't get burned, and to his surprise, the portal remained stationary. Well, as stationary as a blazing Archimedean spiral could be.
"Finally, I'm rid of that thi-" Nick got cut off as the portal released a wave of force, knocking Nick to the ground.
"What the heck was th-" Nick once again got cut off by an identical wave of force just as he was trying to stand back up. This time, he didn't from the ground for a solid minute, making sure that the portal was done with its antics.
As he watched the portal while laying on the ground, it slowly started to fade, getting dimmer until it faded from existence completely. Or at least from view.
"Whew, I'm finally done with that. I hope I'm home in time for my show," he said, just as several pedestrians turned a corner across the street from him. Nick doubted that people only reappearing after the portal vanished was a coincidence, but this was a problem for future Nick. Present Nick was too tired to care about the fact that he had just experienced magic. It wasn't like he could do anything about it either.
A short while later, Nick reached his home without anything else abnormal happening. It almost seemed as if everything that has happened to him was an illusion conjured by his tired mind.
He had missed his favorite show, but had managed to find a bootleg version online. He was watching said pirated copy when the front door was slammed open and a divine golden light shone through. A woman walked through the now open door a second later. She was… golden, for lack of a better word. Her pupils, hair, and clothes were all pure gold. A second later, Nick noticed the wings on her back, which were predictably also gold. She walked up to him, and snapped her fingers. Well, she attempted to, and failed horribly, without a sound being heard.
"Don't damage the door, they're a lot more expensive than people think! Also, was that supposed to be a snap or-" Nick began but shut up when the mysterious entity frowned at him. He wasn't that stupid. She attempted to snap again. And again. Finally, on the fourth try, she was successful, resulting in a barely perceptible snap. For a moment, nothing happened, but then their surroundings blurred before turning pitch black.
. . .
Nick woke up to the sound of… nothing and a gold-tinted sky above him. Which was strange, given the fact that he had bought an alarm clock months ago. His thoughts skid to a halt as the events of yesterday resurfaced in his mind.
He looked around, and found a massive Romanesque building behind him. It looked similar to the ancient temples of the Roman Pantheon, so Nick mentally dubbed it the 'Temple'. Predictably, like everything There was nothing but a path leading to the Temple and a dense forest on all other sides.
Unsure of the consequences of entering the Temple, which was an obvious trap, Nick first attempted to head towards the forest.
About a minute after he started walking into the forest, he crashed into a shimmering golden barrier that suddenly appeared in front of him, blocking his way forward. When he looked around, he realised that this barrier was basically a circular dome around the Temple.
Nick sighed. "Monochromatic color schemes haven't been in fashion for centuries." He looked for a way around the barrier for a short while longer but failed to find anything. With no choice but to enter the Temple, he turned around and walked up to the Temple's entrance. It was even more imposing from up close, with the reliefs seeming to move if he wasn't looking at them. Nick took a deep breath, and entered the Temple.
The interior was more or less what Nick had expected. It was a massive hall with a throne at the end. There were massive pillars covered in indistinct reliefs on the sides of the halls. The throne was covered with jewels of varying shape and size, although they were all predictably golden.
"Citrines, I think. They go terribly with the gold," thought Nick before turning his attention to a far more important matter. On that throne sat the same woman / angel / god / whatever she was that had probably brought Nick here.
He walked up to the throne(a task that took him nearly five minutes), only to realize that the woman was asleep, and snoring softly. Nick, unsure of the consequences of waking her up, waited for a minute, and when nothing happened, he decided to utilize this time to investigate the reliefs on the pillars he had noticed before.
It took him a good two minutes to reach the nearest pillar, and when he was finally close enough to see the reliefs, he took a few moments to catch his breath, before gazing up at them.
"If I could be surprised, I would be surprised," he said to himself. The reliefs seemed to be depicting a story, one filled with mythical monsters like dragons and chimeras, and a armored knight who killed them all.
"I wonder wh-" Nick's words were cut off by a strange lurching sensation that was accompanied by his surroundings becoming blurry. When his vision reverted back to normal, he found himself standing in front of the throne and an awake, pissed off being of probably divine power.
"I," she began angrily, "Have never had to deal with a champion as inept, irritating, or annoying as you from Earth." Nick wisely chose to not point out that irritating and annoying were practically synonyms.
"All you had to do was walk through the portal. How clueless can you be!" she shouted, as if Nick wasn't a few feet away. "All of the Perks and Skills I had selected for you were taken by a god-damned ANT!"
"You really shouldn't curse, you know," said Nick automatically before visibly paling as he remembered who he was talking to. The woman's eyes widened as she attempted to understand the utter stupidity of the man in front him. She shook with (probably) righteous anger before seemingly calming down.
"System, what's the worst race for reincarnators on Cirial currently?" she asked with a smirk towards Nick.
"Dungeon cores," replied a voice that seemed to come from all directions at the same time. Nick assumed that this was the aforementioned system.
"What? But how? Didn't they nearly wipe out all life on Cirial before some random kingdom's researchers came up with a way to stop them from spawning?" asked the goddess in confusion. "Find the most relevant information on dungeon cores."
"Searching… all dungeon cores spawn within a circle with a radius of 0.3 kilometers in Cirial. The average lifespan of a dungeon core is 1 day, with a standard deviation of 1.4 minutes," replied the disembodied voice.
"This system uses the metric system? I like it more already," thought Nick. "The information this System gave about dungeon cores makes it sound like they are harvested on a daily basis and then regrown immediately. I wonder-" his thoughts were once again interrupted by the goddess.
"It's not like you were going to win me the God's Game anyways," she said to Nick. "System Initiate, set my champion's race to dungeon core. Dimensional Teleport."
Nick was about to ask about this nonsensical mishmash of phrases when he felt the same lurching sensation and his surroundings blurred. This time, the sensation lasted for almost a minute before ceasing. When his vision unblurred, he saw darkness all around him. But right in front of him glowed bright letters on a cerulean blue screen.
Welcome to the System!