Chapter One: Arriving In My Home World With My Isekai Harem!
Chad dropped his sword at his feet as the Demon Queen fell to her knees. Blood stained his blade, stained his clothes, and he felt drained down to his soul.
But finally, after two years, he had triumphed.
“It’s over, Malefice,” Chad said. His breath came in ragged gasps, but his voice was firm. “Your reign ends here.”
“Au contraire, my dear Chad.” The demoness coughed up a mouthful of blood and spat it on the floor of her sanctum. “The only thing ending… is your life.”
A high pitched laugh came from behind him. He turned his head over his shoulder to see his lovers enter the sanctum, having finally fought their way through Malefice’s minions. Euridice, Dahlia, Yuri and NekoNeko looked how he felt - battered, bruised, but victorious.
The laugh had come from the catgirl assassin, NekoNeko. “As if a skank like you could ever defeat my wonderful Chad!” she scoffed. “Besides, look at you. He already kicked your ass!”
“It’s true that his InkMage powers have defeated this form,” Malefice said. Even as she talked, she sketched an arcane circle on the floor in her own blood. “But I am eternal. Even as we talk, my soul fades from this realm to be reborn in another world.”
Euridice gasped, the beautiful angel’s hands going to her mouth. “It’s true!” she said. “The ancient legends say-”
Chad had heard enough. He raced forward, pulling his right leg back to kick the hell-bitch in the head. Malefice laughed and finished her spell even as Chad’s kick connected.
In a sudden explosion of arcane force, Malefice was gone. In her place as a whirling purple swirl of power, not unlike the portal that had summoned Chad to this world so long ago.
“Well that’s just great,” Dahlia said. She was a succubus, formerly one of Malefice’s lieutenants, but the love she shared with Chad had broken her free from her control. “All that work and Queen Bitchalot scurries away at the last minute.”
“We have to follow her.”
Everyone in the room turned to look at Chad.
“I can’t let her do to another world what she did here,” he continued. “I can’t ask you to come with me-”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Dahlia said. The tall demoness stalked towards him and placed one elegant hand on his shoulder, her high-heels clacking on the stone floor. Her bat wings flared behind her - a nervous tic that always happened when she was unsure of herself. She had always used sarcasm to keep a wall between her heart and the world, a wall that Chad’s embrace had finally broken down.
“Of course we’re coming with you,” Eurydice said. She crossed the floor as well, embracing him from the opposite shoulder as Dahlia. The angel was as tall as the succubus, and was her opposite in so many ways. The unlikely friendship between them had been a source of strength for Chad over the long months of their adventure.
Yuri was next. The shy elf artificer wasn’t one for grand speeches, but the short curvy girl wasted no time scurrying across the chamber and wrapping her arms around Chad’s waist, smearing her face with teh blood that stained his chest.
“Ugh,” NekoNeko said finally. “Fine. I can’t let you harpies have my precious Chad all to yourself. Besides, without me who knows what idiocy you’d get up to!”
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The perky catgirl bounced over to the trio and pounced onto Chad’s shoulders, glomping onto him and resting her bust on his head. Chad just sighed.
“Thank you. All of you. I-”
“The portal is closing!” Yuri gasped. “Quickly-”
The four of them jumped as one, diving through the portal, not knowing what waited for them on the other side.
***
“And that’s more or less where I’ve been for the last two years,” Chad said, finishing the last of his beer.
“Bullshit,” his friend Jeff said, cracking open another artisanal IPA. “Complete bullshit. You realize this sounds exactly like one of your nerd porn books, right?”
The two of them were sitting in the lounge of Chad’s house, a modest three bedroom home in the Detroit suburbs that he’d inherited from his grand-dad. It wasn’t much, but it was a hell of a lot more than most people his age had.
“Without a word of a lie,” Chad said. “After that truck hit me I woke up-”
“You woke up in a hospital bed after two years in a coma,” Jeff countered. “I know, because I fucking visited you at least once every two weeks the entire fucking time you were out, you fucking liar.”
“OK, right, I understand,” Chad said. “That’s what it looked like in this world. But on Aeternia-”
“About that,” Jeff said. “You hallucinated the whole thing. Aeternia sounds like some Masters of the Universe shit. Put it in one of your books or whatever but don’t try and convince me that it actually happened.”
“Fine, but how do you explain how I spent two years in a coma and didn’t lose any muscle definition?”
It was true. Chad had been moderately fit before the accident, but now he was jacked. The nurses at the hospital had always kept his hair cropped short, and had been baffled as to why he hadn’t experienced any of the atrophy that usually afflicts long term coma patients.
“You’re a freak,” Jeff said. “Pure and simple.”
Chad sighed and twisted off the top of another beer. “I really appreciate you looking out for me, by the way,” Chad said. “Ever since my dad died I didn’t really have anyone else I could put down as an emergency contact…”
“Don’t mention it,” Jeff said. “You’re just lucky your Writer’s Guild health insurance was still paid up. You wouldn’t believe how many people I had to yell at to make sure they didn’t kick you off that shit.”
“Yeah. Well if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know.”
Chad took another sip of the beer. It tasted bitter, not at all like the ale he had gotten used to in Aeternia. “By the way, since when did you stop drinking Bud?”
“It’s all about the IPA now man,” Jeff said. “Bud tastes like water anyway.”
“Right, but it’s American water,” Chad countered. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Whatever,” Jeff said, sitting back on the couch. “So. About this hero complex of yours-”
“It happened,” Chad said with a shrug. “I mean, it must have. Because how else do you explain-”
Just then the front door of the house opened, and four feminine voices filled the air.
“NekoNeko,” Euridice said, “you can’t just hiss at every woman who walks past the house.”
“But they might be witches coming to seduce my beloved Chad-sama!” NekoNeko shot back. “It’s bad enough that I have to share him with you harpies-”
“My best friend was a harpy I’ll have you know,” Dahlia cut in. The four of them made their way down the hall, each clutching an assortment of shopping bags from various fashion stores. “You’re a species-ist, NekoNeko. It’s not a good look on you.”
“Can we just please stop fighting?” Yuri said. Unlike the others, her bags were from a big box electronics retailer. “Oh, and Dahlia you can drop the illusion now-”
Chad shot up out of the couch and turned to face them. “No, wait-”
He was too late. As Jeff watched, the quartet of normal human-looking women shimmered, to be replaced with creatures straight out of a fantasy novel.
Jeff dropped his beer to the ground where it spilled over the hardwood floor.
“Five second rule!” NekoNeko yelled, and pounced over to lap up at the spilled beer, her tail twitching behind her.
“I…” Jeff stammered. “I…”
“I’m sorry,” Yuri said. “I didn’t know we had guests.”
“It’s fine,” Chad said. “Jeff’s one of my oldest friends. We met when I tried to get into screenwriting back in LA-”
“I don’t know what that means and I don’t care,” Dahlia said with a huff. “I thought you said we had to keep hidden, that your world wouldn’t understand?”
“Does this look like a man who understands?” Chad said, pointing at his friend. Jeff’s mouth was still hanging open, his eyes wide.
“…You’re cosplayers,” he said finally. “You’re cosplayers and you’re promoting one of Chad’s books.”
“What’s a cosplayer?” NekoNeko said from the floor, licking her lips.
“It’s true that Chad is a powerful InkMage,” Euridice said. “On our world his tales were sung far and wide, an inspiration to bards everywhere-”
“Cosplayers as crazy as you are,” Jeff said, sitting back on the couch, defeated. NekoNeko swiped one of the bottles of beer from the coffee table and retreated to one corner, trying to open the twist-top cap with her claw.
“Guys, this is Jeff,” Chad said finally. “Jeff, this is, well, this is my Isekai Harem.”