My armoured feet fell onto the sidewalk below. I look around at the skyscrapers around me. The bustling of the city. It was good to be home. “Well that was a fun excursion into a fantasy world.” I say as I take a closer look around me. An unfamiliar language fills the air. The people around me take worried glances at me, but none of them outright stare. Already a woman with black hair has pulled over a police officer. The officer keeps a hand hovered over his pepper spray. I take note of the lack of a gun on his waist, before shaking that thought off. Slowly put my hands next to my head, then I flip up the viser on my helmet. Giving him a smile. The officer relaxes. “geu mugiga jinjjaingayo?” He points to the sword on my belt. I point to it as well. “I can take it off if you want.” I creep my hands closer to it, but as my hands get closer to my weapon; so do his hands get closer to his weapon.  “Son-eul meollihasibsio.”  The language barrier is making this very hard. 

“I’m sorry. I can’t understand you.” 

[Automatic Translation Activated.]

My eyes light up and I jump back as a UI pops up in front of me. I thought I was back on Earth. Why is the UI here? 

“No sudden movements.” 

I bow a little. “I’m very sorry. What were you saying?”

“Is your weapon real?” 

I think for a second. Asian countries aren’t big on people carrying swords. I better just lie. “No, It’s just cosplay.” Asians people love cosplay. 

“What’s cosplay?” 

I look at his face. The officer is in his late forties. “Um. It’s like dressing in the costume of a character from a video game or anime.” 

He looks at me then strokes his face a few times. 

“Dark Souls!” 

“Huh?” 

“You’re from Dark Souls, right? My son play Dark Souls all the time on his playstation three.” 

Does he mean bloodborne? Whatever, just roll with it. “Yep, that’s me Mr. Darksouls. Can you point me towards the nearest convention center? I came here for a convention, but got separated from my group.” 

“I see. I see.” He pulls out his phone and shows me a map of the area. “You are really lost. Nearest convention center is two miles that way.” Then he points ahead. 

I nod my head many times and thank him as I walk away. 

Best to avoid any more confrontations like that. I duck into an alley and put my weapon into my dimensional storage. I put my armour in it as well then step out of the alley. Now a majority of the people on the street are staring at me. I check myself, but nothing seems to be out of place. I’m just a regular white dude. 

I’m just a regular white dude. 

I duck back into the next alley and put my armour back on. Now people only give me passing glances. 

“Are you heading towards the convention?”  I poke the person in front of me. He’s a small man. If it wasn’t for the fur suit then he’d probably only be 5” 4’. The head on his suit makes him almost 5” 11’, which is basically 6  feet. Almost as tall as me. He turns around. His furry paws give an exaggerated shrug. “No. I’m going to my office job?”  He drips with enfemanant sarcasm.

“Just making sure. I didn’t want to follow a random furry around for no reason.” 

I must have said furry in a less than favourable tone, because he picks up on my language. I was speaking as if I was an outsider.

“If you’re not a furry then why are you coming to a furry convention.” 

I pause. That is a good question. Why am I here? I’m the hero from another world who killed the demon lord in record time. I should be enjoying my hero parade, but that was there. Now I’m back on Earth in a new country. I shrug. “Why do anything? This situation was out of my control due to a series of events I had almost nothing to do with. I’m just making the best of it.” I should just enjoy myself until the cops remember to check my passport. 

“Okay Armoured Buddha.”  He turns away from me and begins to walk quicker. I follow until a hand grabs me by the shoulder. I’m spun around. A person places an arm around my neck and leads me in between two buildings. 

“Hey Tin man, you’re a long way from Kansas.” 

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I look up at the group. Heavily tattooed asian men with knives tucked into their belt line. 

“Was that a Wizard of Oz reference? You are very worldly for street thugs.” 

The leader laughs while the others circle around. They form a triangle with me in the center. “Listen here, funny guy. It’s your money or your life.” 

I look at them, studying their movements. They just stand still and await my response. “What?” 

“You money. Hand it over.” 

“Or what?” 

“Your life.” 

“How?” 

The leader flips up his knife. “We’ll stab you.” 

I look at them with amusement. Though they can’t see my face through my viser. “C'mon. You must have tons of money if you get to dress up in such fancy dress.” The leader urges me. 

“So you acknowledge that I’m wearing armour.” 

“Yeah, how about you hand that over too.” 

“This is late medieval period inspired armour with enchants that I modified to run on the souls of the dead.” 

The leader, clearly sick of me, makes the first move. He tries to stab the knife into my viser while the other two try to get their knies into my chainmail under my arms. Their knives don’t even get within an inch of my armour before the soul magic stops it. 

“Why can’t I move my knife?” The boss asks. 

“That’s the soul magic. It was meant to withstand the shrapnel from a soul bomb, but it also works on physical things.” 

“What do you mean!?” 

“It’s magic.” The thugs try to pull their knives out, but the soul mantel holds the knives in place. They begin to panic as thin air holds their knives in place. “Fuck it, run boys!” they let go of their knives and haul ass away from me. I shrug. I grab the knives from the air and store them in my inventory. 

“So what’s your OC’s backstory?” 

I was drinking at the bar with some furries. This dude was asking everyone this. It was like a conversation starter for him, but it was just scaring off the less social furries and he didn’t have a follow up for when the more social furries answered him, but now he was asking me. 

“I don’t really have a backstory.” 

“Oh! You used I. That means you’re a role player.” He nudges my armour with his elbow. “C’mon. Mr. Knight tell me about your life. Are you a traveling knight who does good in distant lands or a unlucky templar forsaken by his kin?” 

I sigh and rub the back of my helmet. 

“Neither? I’m kind of….”

I guess I am like Candide, just not as on the nose about the follies of optimism. I keep bussy by focusing on what’s in front of me, but paradoxically anything that is in front of me I can solve incredibly fast. Even if what is in front of me is slaying a demon lord. I recognize the problem. Then I find a solution. Then I execute. I really speed ran killing the demon lord. I spent all day studying the technology and magic of the world. I was sure that if I could just find some gunpowder I could shoot the demon lord in the head and be back in no time, well you can’t have gunpowder in a world were sulphur doesn’t exist. I then turned to magic. I was shooed away from the forbidden book section by the princess. “That type of magic in the wrong hands could blow up the entire kingdom.” She said. I said “Or the demon king.” She agreed to let me study it as long as I was supervised. Soul magic is a form of magic that can be instructed and communicated with. That’s because it uses a human soul.  Other magic was affected by how you summoned it and controlling it through the laws of physics. Soul magic you could just say “Hey. Burn your soul and shape it like a dragon.” and the soul would comply. 

Bing bang bosh. All the country's prisoners later, and a few border towns worth of souls and we had a bomb big enough to level a kingdom. I pulled a Truman, convincing the princess to sacrifice a few hundred thousand lifes for the same of millions down the line. Then I snuck into the demon king’s throne room. Turns out the demon king hadn’t heard about a trojan horse. Once we opened the box I exploded all the collected souls, met the God of that world and was teleported back here. I wasn’t counting, but I think I got it done in under a week.”

“So you're a shitty isekai protagonist with op powers.” 

“More like I abused banned magic to accomplish a goal very quickly.” 

“It’s a bit old hat.” 

I nod. “Yeah. It is.” 

The dude just rolls his eyes and leaves to ask another person about their OC.

I stumble through the streets. Half drunk and with no place to sleep. Around the corner there are sirens and the immediate area is flashing blue and red. I round the corner. There is a blockade of police cars. All with their lights on, all formine a semi circle around one man. He’s in a military uniform and is carrying a rifle. Frantically pointing it from cop to cop as they surround him. “Get back! I know you’re not real!” I hear him scream. I walk past the line of cop cars. They all have their eyes on the man with the gun so none of them even notice me until I’m at the line of wooden barricades. The cop turns to me. “Mr. Dark Souls. You shouldn’t be here.” I shrug. “But this looks interesting.” The frazzled man with the gun sees me. He moves quickly. We lock eyes. Almost in slow motion I watch him raise the gun. I make no move to avoid it; my armour will protect me from any conventional weapon. Pale blue circles envelop the gun. They start at the end of the scope and get smaller as they follow down the barrel. My first reaction is to read the magic circles, but I quickly change my mind after the first line [Enhancement…] Instead my body lurches to the side. “Demon sorcerer!” He yells before he takes the shot. The bullet instantly travels from the gun, through my armour, and into my arm. The cops open fire. The man is perverted with bullets. The cop looks at me. “Mr. Dark Souls! Are you okay? Where did he hit you?” 

I smile at him. “I’m fine.” 

[Heal]

[Mend] 

With those spells I am good as new. “Did you see the blue circles around his gun?” It looks like your average AK variant. Why was it magical? 

“Yeah. What were those?” 

I shrug. I turn to walk away but the cop grabs my shoulder. “You need to go to the hospital. Even if he didn't hit you. You still need to get seen for the trauma.” 

“I brush his hand off. That’ll cost way too much.” Just a ride to an ambulance costs me a month of working at my old job. 

“It’s free.”   Oh yeah. I’m in korea.