I stabbed Alex in the stomach.

“Gah! What–” If he wasn’t willing to play ball, I just had to incapacitate him until all those fancy abilities that allowed him to blitz me wore out.

“How long will the wings last?”

“Do you really–” He stopped talking after wincing from pain. He needed a couple seconds to recover before continuing. “Do you really think my abilities will wear off before yours? I’m a tank! I’m built to last!” Oh, he didn’t know what I even was.

“I don’t have any abilities. I’m just a normal swordsman. There’s nothing special about me.” He looked confused.To be fair, I would also be confused if I didn’t have my own memories to explain why I chose the most basic class.

“Oh, another one. Why hello there.” Who the hell is this person? Where am I? Is this heaven? Did the pillar actually kill– “Calm down there. I am the Revifier, this is your first dungeon, and I’m just here to help you familiarise you with how this whole operation works before I let you loose upon this lowly world.” Huh? Dungeon? Revifier? Like… the concept of reinvention? How did she even know what was going through my mind? “Oh, you people are just so predictable. Is this planet only going to yield Ian? It’s still better than nothing, but I expected more people like him.” I took a deep breath, and readied myself to talk to her.

“What the hell does any of that mean? What the fuck is this pillar? Who really are you? What type of dungeon is this?” I was really confused. One day before this, I was just living my life, giving advice to the Prime Minister after being re-hired by the government, and then this pillar showed up, riots broke out, the police got overwhelmed by wizards and warriors, everyone was told to shelter in place, and then I thrown into this pillar by one of my friends.

“Alright, let’s start from step one. First, look at me, think of how I look.” Why? “Just do it.” Alright? She was pretty tall, by my standard at least. She wasn’t wearing anything, but her long, white hair covered most of her body. Her skin was also as white as paper. “Good, now they know that. I am the Revifier, the goddess of change, and ruler of reality. Your universe had reached its zenith, falling into the trap of utopianism instead of expansion into space or endless wars or attaining magic, so I allowed the rest of reality to come to this planet and placed some magic wells around this planet so you could attain it yourself. This dungeon is one such magic well. You beat monsters, and then absorb their magic. Simple, right?” What? Was this… oh, of course it was a game for her. She was a god, a role above even the rulers of old. Anyone with real power saw life as a game, one which they had to win at all costs. It wouldn’t be any different for a god.

“So you just destroyed society because we reached the end goal? What’s the point in improving our lives if we’re going to be rolled right back to the start when we’re happy?” She wasn’t surprised as she moved through me and around me, observing every small motion I took. Why was I surprised by her lack of surprise? Did I think I was special enough to not have a response she’d have heard a couple hundred times over?

“What your planet lacks in warriors it makes up a thousand fold in ‘mock philosophers’ beginning for any kind of meaning in their truly meaningless lives. Make your own purpose. Why should your problems be my feelings?” I wasn’t a philosopher, so even the title of ‘mock philosopher’ had me feeling pretty good about myself. “The whole point of existence is change. If you didn’t, I would have less power. The more change there is, the more power I have, and your world remaining stagnant was not acceptable in the slightest.”

“But–” I tried continuing, but was made to shut up by either her aura, or by her magic.

“Anyhow!” She snapped her fingers, and a bunch of weapons appeared before me. “Which one would you like? Guns aren’t allowed after Ian did his thing, so don’t even try it.” Who was Ian, even? She kept mentioning– “Focus, Mariel, focus.” Right. I just picked up the moderately sized sword.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I said as I got adjusted to the weight of the blade.

“How do you want to fight? There are plenty of ‘classes’ out there, enough to accommodate any way of fighting you might want to do.” What the hell was she on about?

“Can’t I just increase my strength?” Someone developed their fighting style around their power, not the other way around. I wouldn’t build up my body in a certain way just so it’d synchronise with my fighting style. That would be stupid.

“Ah! You’re one of those types of people. What an interesting combination. A brute and mock philosopher rolled into one. Why, yes, you can just ignore all the intricacies of magic in favour of a simple increase in strength, speed, durability, and all those types of things.” She started fading away right as a menu was appearing in front of me. “You’ll achieve… something great. I’m sure of it.”

“Seems like your abilities are gone.” I said, right as the last feather fell off of Alex’s body.

“Why are you even keeping me alive at this point? You know I’ll try and kill you eventually if you don’t kill me.” He still didn’t get it.

“Alex, we’re both in this together. We are a group, undivided and indivisible. You have to realise that Elizabetha is just trying to make you do her bidding.”

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

“Bu–” I rolled on past his interruption.

“She has never given you any shred of love after she decided you were boring to her.”

“Tha–” Could he have stopped trying to interrupt me?

“Stop falling for her traps. How many times does she need to tell you you’re worthless before you realise you were tricked before? Her kindness was never real. None of her emotions are real. She manufacturers them all up because to her, we are tools. We are toys that are nice to have around, to help her, but if we step out of line or get too old, we’re thrown away.”

“That’s not true! You’re making up some convoluted reason to explain the rift between me and Elizabetha. You’re the one and only reason for it. ” Me? Convoluted?

“Your reasons are convoluted, Alex. You’re trying to make it out like me existing caused her to stop caring about you a whole month before she found me. She wants you to have someone to blame, and that person is me.” I could tell what rant he was about to go on. “And no, it’s not because she is secretly testing you. It is because she wants me to kill you. I’m clearly stronger than you, and could kill you at any moment, but I, unlike you, have realised her motives, and will not do exactly what she wants us to do. Please, at least think about this for a while before trying to kill me again. Let’s just get out of this dungeon.” I took my sword out, letting him rest and heal somewhat.

“You…” His eye twitched several times as he raised himself up before opening his bag, grabbing a healing potion, and chugging it. “I’ll go along with your little ‘truce’.” I looked at his bag, and remembered that I still couldn’t drink healing potions. To make my tolerance not grow wildly out of control, I only took healing potions during my training with Charlotte. Even if I did drink one of those potions, it would only partially heal me.

“Good. Follow me.” We walked through the dungeon together, not saying as much as a word during the whole affair due to the tension between us. Sure, we’d work together when encountering a swarm of bats, but the air of tension was far too much for the both of us. I trusted him, but he didn’t trust me, and all I had to do was give him time… No, I wasn’t that dumb. “Why did you even come here anyway?” I needed to break the ice. If keeping my distance was the way of making Alex not hate me, he’d have been head over heels for me since the very start.

“To impress Elizabetha, duh.” Right, as I guessed.

“You didn’t even factor in the risk of this whole… thing? What if the summoner can summon bats faster than you can kill them, or if you die.”

“Then that’s that. My life is over. Big deal.” I really didn’t get suicidal people. Sure, life was bad, but it got better if you approached it with the right mindset. Life was precious for one reason, because pleasure was precious. Hatred and sadness got filtered out, but joy made its mark clearly on psyches. Oh, unless it was clinical depression. Then the solution was antidepressants, not a change in mindset.

“Do you seriously think so little of your life? You should care about more people, and more regularly. I have friends out of the group, y’know? Right now, you only care about Elizabetha, and that’s just sad.” I couldn’t leave him with that point, so I continued. “You haven’t even told me who you were before the end of the world.” He was silent for a while. I could sense the cogs in his head turning, and turning, before his desire to just talk honestly and fully to someone about whatever he wanted to overcome his hesitation.

“I was on the government worker program, the one you guys implemented.” What was it again? Oh, yea, the thing where we guaranteed employment. “I dropped out of college and all that because I was a dumb kid doing dumb shit. A couple years later, and the government was the only one that didn’t just laugh me out of the room when I asked for a job. It wasn’t the greatest work, but it was something. I used to be an AUR voter before the program.” Behold, the median voter. Easily swayed to join the PSD after the government did even one thing to help him.

“Huh. Well, I wasn’t in charge of that,” I was about to continue, but he chose to butt in.

“Yea! Weren’t you kicked out or something?” Yea. I was too much of a liability in terms of popularity, as the media made me out to be some young buffoon put in my spot because of nepotism, which was partially true. I was a foreign policy scapegoat that was redeemed after the guy after me faced the consequences of my rushed policy. He was vilified, and I was redeemed after a bit of populist rhetoric from the next administration. The one I served until the end of the world.

“I was.”

“I still don’t get why they did that. You got us Moldova and negotiated an end to the Russian conflicts.” It wasn’t exactly a negotiation. I just told the military to do what everyone was already thinking about, which was coordinating a peacekeeping mission to stop the second Russian civil war. Most factions gave up after we had a talk with them, and the administration that re-hired me used that as propaganda to explain why I was secretly good the entire time. They called me the peace and victory foreign policy officer, and that’s who I became in the eyes of the public.

“The media and people who owned it didn’t want me there.” I wasn’t wrong, technically. It was really just that, combined with older forces behind the PSD that wanted me gone in favour of another person who had more connections than me. They coordinated to kick me out, but that was just fine with me. I was an agent of the state, nothing more.

Huh, I was a lot more independent now than I was back then.