Setting aside murder, torture, starvation, dehydration, depravity, immorality, corruption, and the unfairness of life, it is my firm belief that an unfinished story is one of the greatest tragedies, yet if it were possible to sort all web fiction by their most common tag, 'Hiatus' would certainly be the largest category by far.

There are many reasons why an author might choose to abandon their story. Premature deaths and debilitating illnesses such as cancer make up the more tragic possibilities, while the other end of the spectrum contains pathetic excuses like 'I didn't have time' or 'nobody likes my story, so why should I bother writing it?' Those lazy degenerates are the most hopeless types of writers. They are useless scum—the deadweight of society.

Perhaps you might think I am being pretentious in judging them, and you would be right. However, I am justified in hating them.

Why, you might ask?

Because I am one of them.

I started a story five years ago and I poured my heart and soul into it. Unfortunately for my readers, I was worthless garbage. I never finished the story. As an artist, I committed the worst possible sin by raising expectations and bringing my precious few fans to the cusp of brilliance…

And I failed to deliver. An artist who cannot entertain has no value. Of course, the dreamer in me wants to reject that statement with every fiber of my being, but reality says otherwise. If you disagree with me, then why are you reading this book for free? If you're not, then congratulations for proving me wrong. For the rest of you, I rest my case.

Our society dictates that value equals money and fame. I have neither, and my art is the medium through which I tried to earn a living. I only ever had a single sponsor: ClojureGod69. Thanks to his donation, I can tell you that my story made $5 in five years. Considering that I put in roughly a thousand hours of sweat, love, and tears and racked up bills buying awesome ergonomic keyboards to combat arthritis, my net worth as an artist is approximately -$349 per year as of 2022.

But that's enough complaining for now. I just needed to prove to you that I am worthless trash.

Now that I have hopefully weeded out the impatient and those who don't appreciate the value of my storytelling, I'll get on with the story.

Where should I start? Ah, maybe starting from 'the reason I was monologing' would make the most sense.

So, basically, I got isekai'd…

***

“Ughh…”

Opening my eyes, I found myself in an unfamiliar room. It was a moderately large room—after including the queen-sized bed, a desk, and a small dresser, there was still enough space to walk about comfortably.

With not a single decoration to be seen, the place was dull and boring. There wasn’t a single speck of personality anywhere. Light filtered through dusty, worn blinds and drew a grid-like pattern on the floor. The air tasted of salt and fish, the distinct smell lingering through the gap between each breath.

‘Where am I?’ I thought as I rolled out of bed. As my bare feet touched the floor, a screen suddenly appeared, impairing my vision. “What the…?!” I shouted as I stumbled and slammed my knee against a nearby nightstand. Wincing as I rubbed at the fresh sore spot, I blinked my eyes a few times, but the screen didn’t go away.

===Status===

Name: Brick Layer

Level: 1

=Dynamic Stats=

Strength: 1

Agility: 1

Dexterity: 1

Stamina: 1

Magic Control: 1

Magic Power: 1

=Static Stats=

Intelligence: 2.5

Charm: 3

Machine Resonance: 1

Psychic Resonance: 1

→Class: Author

→Abilities:

→Skills: Retcon, Rule of Cool, Ability Creation Ticket

→Traits: None

→Weapon Arts: None

→Spells: None

===========

“No way…” I muttered as I stared at the impossibly familiar screen.

It was the status window I created a few years ago for the 4th draft of my story. I got annoyed with it in the later arcs because it was way too complicated—tracking numbers like that is way harder than it looks.

In my professional opinion, litRPG elements are just a shortcut for lazy authors to do math instead of learning to write decent prose. You might point out that I put litRPG elements in this story, which would make me a lazy author who can’t write decent prose. My response? I know what I said, and I said what I meant. The prose when I narrate to you speaks for itself.

Anyway, with this status window, I had a suspicion about what had happened to me, but I needed a little more information before I concluded anything. Making my way over to the window, my eyes first settled on my reflection.

Ash hair, light skin, and grey eyes protected by a thin pair of glasses. The same haggard face I’d seen in the mirror for twenty-three years stared back at me, though I looked a bit more like I did a few years ago: I hadn’t been this lanky since I started going to the gym when I was twenty, so this was probably me when I was eighteen or nineteen.

Turning my attention from my boring features, my eyes widened as I gazed outside.

The view was astoundingly gorgeous. Beneath the cerulean blue sky filled with wispy clouds rested a city built on the ocean. Flocks of seagulls occasionally dove toward the water that stretched out endlessly in the distance. Lining the waterfront were rows of American battleships, and an aircraft carrier visible in the distance. Hundreds of humans moved about, loading and unloading supplies from different ships while dozens of soldiers kept watch over the situation.

Turning my head, I was momentarily blinded by the sun gently shining its morning rays in the eastern sky. The celestial star brought new light and a fresh start as it heralded the beginning of a new day. A motorcycle-like vehicle flew by not far from my window, the low rumbling from its engine not unlike the purring of a satisfied cat. As for the city…

Ah, excuse me. I almost got lost in narrating half-decent prose for a minute there. Anyway, I wasn’t sure how it happened, but I did figure out where I was.

“Horizon…” I muttered in awe.

The hours I spent imagining this place easily exceeded a thousand. This was the most important city in the novel I was writing. Though the setting and genre changed in each draft, Horizon was there every time.

If this was Horizon, then I had to be inside my novel. Setting aside how I got here, for now, I urgently started to search my room. Inside the drawers of my nightstand, I discovered a smartphone and a wallet. The wallet had a badge with my current cadet rank, while the home screen of my smartphone displayed the current date and time:

Cadet Rank: To Be Determined

Monday, August 13, 2040 - 7:32 AM UST (Universal Standard Time).

Checking the time and date, I cursed under my breath and sat down on the edge of my bed.

Technically, I had a week until the main story starts. Monday, August 20th was the first day of Fall semester classes at Horizon Academy, the place where the first three years of the story would take place. There were all sorts of events there that helped the main characters grow and develop. Since I had a license, I was a ‘cadet’, which was the term I used for students attending the academy.

So with seven days until the main story starts, I should be plenty safe until then, right?

Wrong.

You see, August 13th, 2040 would be a very special day. It was the first time since this city was created that the monsters attacked Horizon directly. Furthermore, there was no character named Brick Layer in my story. Obviously, there was no way I would ever name a character after myself. As an author, I took pride in pretending like my characters weren’t shameless self-inserts, and I couldn’t do that if the character was literally me.

Real-world reasons for why my character couldn’t exist aside, I was here now. Assuming that the plot would try and progress along its designed course, it was possible that my character simply ceased to exist after the upcoming attack.

In other words, I could very well die today.

This wasn’t an unreasonable guess after seeing my stats…

Checking the screen again, I winced.

“What kind of pathetic numbers are these?”

All 1’s in every dynamic stat. The status window was supposed to be a numerical estimate of an individual's abilities in specific categories relative to a set standard. While values fluctuate a lot due to genetics, body type, race, and magic, a perfectly average, unmodified adult human male would have 2.5 in every dynamic stat except magic power and magic control.

What about Horizon cadets, then?

To answer that, I need to explain what it means to be a student here. Horizon Academy was built a few decades ago to raise ‘Heroes’ to fight against a world-ending threat. Since this world was seemingly built on my most recent draft, that threat should be ‘monsters’. Heroes were special individuals who stood out amongst the countless humans. They were prodigies who would save humanity from destruction.

Starting at the age of eighteen, the best of the best were offered scholarships by the Council and brought here to undergo special training. Since a person could stand out in more ways than just combat ability, it was technically possible for a person to enter Horizon with stats like mine, but, in practice, it was basically impossible.

So, how did I get into Horizon Academy, then? It probably had something to do with the three skills listed at the end of my status. Raising my hand, I tapped the word ‘Retcon’ in the list.

=Retcon=

-Active Skill-

An ability belonging to the [Author] class. This ability allows the [Author] to introduce a piece of new information or a new interpretation of previously described events.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

* All changes are retroactive and take effect immediately.

* The effect cannot be undone, except through another usage of this ability or through an ability with a similar effect.

* Certain limitations may apply depending on the information or interpretation added.

* Only contents of the 'outline' may be retconned---events that occur in the Final Draft may not be modified except as a result of changes to the outline.

This ability has (1) charge remaining. More charges may be accumulated based on story contribution.

=======

‘Wow…’

This had to be the single most OP ability to exist in this world. To balance it, I could only use it one time for now, but it clearly stated that I could gain more uses in the future based on ‘story contribution’.

‘What about the other skills?’

=Rule of Cool=

-Passive Skill-

An ability belonging to the [Author] class. When performing implausible actions, the chance of success is increased based on the [Author]’s charm stat. Additionally, when performing actions that use the charm stat as a secondary modifier (e.g. combat/torture), the charm stat will be calculated as if its value were increased by 2.

===========

=Ability Creation Ticket=

-Temporary Active Skill-

A one-time privilege granted to the [Author] class upon transmigration to this world. This ticket allows the [Author] to create one ability of their choosing. This ticket will cover up to 2000 story contribution points of the ability creation cost.

=================

“...”

I was speechless. Rule of Cool was kind of an ambiguous ability, though it was one possible explanation for how I got into Horizon Academy. Another possible explanation was that my method of arriving in this world had something to do with it.

That aside, I didn’t have enough information to figure everything out, for now, so I decided to focus on the most important thing:

‘What should I do now?’

The monsters were going to attack soon, though I never wrote down the exact time in my notes. I simply wrote it off as ‘the monsters attacked Horizon’.

‘Do I need to use Retcon already?’

Classes at the academy wouldn’t start until next week, so I still had seven days before I could easily interact with the main cast. If I wasn’t mistaken, none of them had even arrived in Horizon City yet.

It wasn’t like I could warn anybody about the impending attack. What were they going to do, increase security? This was already one of the most secure places on Earth. Besides, there wasn’t enough time. The attack was supposed to happen in the morning…

The floor started to shake and my face paled. Rushing over to the window with my heart sinking into my stomach, I saw a horrific sight. An enormous crimson crack appeared in the sky, tearing a hole in the dimensional fabric.

“Humans who dare to call yourselves ‘Heroes’, I bid you farewell!”

Wait…

The aura she released was oppressive enough that I could feel it from my dorm room despite the enormous distance. Though I was quivering with fear, the more rational part of my brain recognized that something was wrong.

‘Why is Selena here?’

Selena was the Demon Queen in the 2nd and 3rd drafts of my story, so I knew a ton about her. However, I got rid of the demons and replaced them with generic ‘monsters’ in the 4th draft. For her to be here…

‘Is this world not based on my most recent draft?’

But it had to be. I didn’t add a status system until the 4th draft.

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I focused on the matter at hand. After Selena’s declaration, legions of demons crawled through the dimensional tear. The invaders descended on Horizon like a swarm of bloodthirsty humanoid mosquitos. Screams and gunshots filled the air while soldiers and heroes retaliated.

‘What should I do?’ I wondered. Until minutes ago, I was just a lazy, failed author sitting alone in my room, hiding from the world. Was there anything a useless person like me could do in this situation?

A loud explosion sounded from the room next to me. My ears rang as I turned in time to see a female demon crash through the wall carrying another cadet by his head. She crushed the cadet’s skull and tossed his corpse aside like a doll.

My body froze in terror.

“D-d-d…” I stuttered as I tried and failed to speak.

The demon stalked toward me, a vicious smirk on her face. She licked her lips as her eyes roamed up and down my body. “A pathetic, weak little boy. You’ll do for an appetizer…”

I recognized this demon. Despite my state of abstract terror, my mind annoyingly supplied me with information.

‘Physical features: Obsidian-black hair, pale-white skin, sapphire-blue eyes, and a blue, silver-rimmed dress…’

‘Succubus…’

There was only one demon I knew of that fit those criteria.

Lilith. The main antagonist of the first arc of the story. She broke into the student dorms a week before classes started and massacred over three hundred students. She was a cruel demon with an overwhelming desire to dominate.

She stalked closer to me. Raising a bloodstained hand, she stroked my chin with a dainty finger. I bit my quivering lip and closed my eyes.

‘I don’t want to die…’

Her finger traced a line down to my neck. Knowing that I had just moments left to live, I desperately shouted “Retcon!”

The sensation of her finger touching my skin disappeared. Slowly opening my eyes, I recoiled away from the demon. Her face was frozen mid-bite as she lunged for my neck. Taking a few deep breaths to calm my thundering heart, I looked around and realized that it wasn’t only Lilith that was frozen—everything was still as if time had stopped for everything except me.

Once I was calm enough to think coherently, a screen appeared in front of my face.

Taking a moment to scan the contents, I couldn’t help but do a double-take.

They were my notes. Specifically, there were five categories of notes titled ‘1st draft’, ‘2nd draft’, ‘3rd draft’, ‘4th draft’, and ‘final draft’. I tapped through them to check their contents, and they perfectly matched the information that I wrote myself. The ‘final draft’ section was currently grayed out, though I only ever worked on four drafts, so I wasn’t sure who wrote that part.

“Let’s see…” I muttered to myself as I scanned through all the notes. “I can add a new piece of information or a new interpretation somewhere in here. I know that the contents from my 4th draft are in this world, but demons don’t appear in that draft, so I’ll leave that one out. The 1st draft was just a bunch of info dumps about the world and the plot, so I’ll leave that as is for now. That leaves the second and third drafts…”

There wasn’t much of a difference between the two drafts when it came to the demons. The 2nd draft added aliens, demons, cyborgs, and treaders to the world, while the 3rd draft removed the aliens, cyborgs, and treaders in favor of spending more time describing political conflicts. I only had so many words for every page, and I wasn’t capable of writing ten different political factions at once.

Choosing the 3rd draft section since it was the more recent of the two, I searched for my notes about demons.

“Let’s see… three types of demons: slaughter, plague, and perversion… invading to turn Earth into a sea of blood and depravity… main villains…”

All the information was exactly as I remembered it. Touching on the section, I tried to add ‘all demons love peace and hate violence’.

*Error* Insufficient charges of Retcon to complete the request.

Figures. I was hoping something like that would go through as it would not only resolve the immediate problem, but it would basically solve all the problems in the plot going forward. Changing the genre from a power fantasy to a slice-of-life seemed like a pretty good way to survive for a long time…

Then what about this? I looked for the section describing Demon Queen Selena and read:

Demon Queen Selena is evil incarnate. She loves blood, slaughter, and suffering and seeks to conquer other worlds to build a literal sea of blood. With each conquest, she harvested the blood of billions and bathes in it daily.

I covered my face with a palm and groaned.

Yeah, it was stupidly edgy for no reason. In my defense, I was like, sixteen or something when I wrote that. The demons were a phase.

I changed the text around a little bit to now read:

Demon Queen Selena is evil incarnate, or so everyone thought. She acted like she loved blood, slaughter, and suffering as she conquered other worlds, but she really just wanted to find a friend. With each conquest, she felt emptier inside until finally, when she reached Earth, she decided to try a more diplomatic approach.

This seemed more likely to work. My other change would result in a setting change for every demon who ever lived and it would have modified every event involving demons that ever happened. This one would keep most things static until the Demon Queen reached Earth, and then history should diverge from there.

*Retcon Request Accepted.*

I blinked and the world around me changed. Time almost seemed to rewind as the cadet who died revived behind the wall that was being reconstructed before my eyes. Lilith, Selena, and the other demons all disappeared and the crack in the dimensional fabric was resealed.

Within ten seconds or so, everything reverted to how it was before the demons invaded Horizon. Glancing around to see if anything else changed, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Though I didn’t know all the results of my Retcon, I knew that I was alive and that the demon attack had been prevented, for now. There would probably be some other changes as a result of my interference, but honestly, I didn’t really care.

Since I got rid of the main bad guys, it was time to live life in easy mode.

After a cursory investigation of my room, I concluded that I was still a student at Horizon Academy. Since the school still existed, that most likely meant there was still some threat that humanity needed heroes to fight. Since the demon attacks on Earth started before Selena arrived, that didn’t surprise me. Though she would be trying a more diplomatic approach now, tons of humans would have died in the initial invasion before she issued new directives.

That being said, her starting with a diplomatic approach didn’t necessarily mean that diplomacy would succeed. With the bloodthirsty and perverse nature of demons, I didn’t think they would get along with general human sentiment—we modern humans tend to have this weird idea that fairness and equality are desirable concepts, after all.

The demon apocalypse was probably still on the table, so it was in my best interest to prepare for one. Ideally, I would find a way to increase my stats, and I needed to use that skill creation ticket before we took the ranking exams. If my rank started too low, it would be hard for me to get the attention of some of the main characters.

Now, some people might say that I should intentionally score average or low to avoid attention, and then operate in the shadows while secretly guiding the plot alongside that of the original novel.

Those people are forgetting that I am the author of this world, and I get to decide what kind of world I want it to be.

On a less pretentious note, I needed to be realistic: following the original plot would be functionally impossible.

My very existence in this world had already changed the setting and the plot. I had no idea how things changed as a result of my Retcon, but I could only assume that it was for the better.

I mean, what could possibly be bad about a crazy interdimensional conqueror who wants nothing more than friendship?

Besides, this story was a power fantasy. The main character, Thaddeus, was the living definition of a ‘munchkin’. Everything about him was broken. With the information I had at the time, I had no reason to believe otherwise. Getting on his good side and working with him was the smartest decision I could ever make. After all, I never killed a single member of the main cast in my story.

So my first goal was to get in with the main cast and share their plot armor. To get the main character’s attention, I needed to stand out in some way. Since he was a stereotypical Gary Stu, lots of people tried to take advantage of him and get close to him in his high school years. Since he was now eighteen, he had been burned so many times by manipulators that it was a little harder to get close to him than it would have been a few years ago.

Basically, I needed to fulfill three criteria:

1. Get him to notice me.

2. Make him think I’m a decent person.

3. Find a way to make him approach me first.

With my goals defined, it was time to get started on the first criterion.

Throwing on a cadet uniform (since I had nothing else to wear in my room for some reason), I made my way over to the door and out into the hallway. The dorms were mostly empty, though I did see a few other students walking about. Ignoring the extras, for now, I made my way over to the elevator. Once inside, I learned that my dorm was on the fiftieth floor of the ‘Excaliber’ building. All of the student dorms were named after legendary weapons.

After a few minutes, I stepped outside the campus and looked over Horizon City below. A gentle sea breeze ruffled my hair and a thrill of anticipation ran down my spine.

‘As the creator of this world, I know everything about my story. I know all the villains, all the abilities, all the important events, and all the characters. I’m basically omniscient in this world.’

Though a few things had changed, I still knew where all the important things were. With the demons gone, there should be no threat in the world for the time being, so I just needed to poach a few of them for myself while it was still safe to do so. “First, I need to…”

A loud hum interrupted my thoughts as a torrent of wind nearly blew me over. Stumbling for a moment, I glanced up and found the source:

A large, flying spaceship straight out of a Sci-Fi movie flew overhead.

The ship paused in midair and a human-like creature appeared in front of me before I could blink. He was indistinguishable from a normal human in every way, but I knew this thing wasn’t a human because he opened his mouth and said, “Greetings, Earthling. I seem to be lost. Can I ask you for directions to the nearest spaceport?”

“...”

“...” The alien tilted his head to the side when I failed to respond.

Of course, I knew where the nearest spaceport was. If this were my 2nd draft, then… “It’s in the open area east of the city. You can’t miss it.”

“My thanks, Earthling.”

As quickly as he appeared, the alien disappeared, teleporting back into his spaceship. The ship flew off to the east, leaving me staring after the disappearing technological marvel with a flabbergasted expression.

“Aliens, too?”

I got rid of the aliens in my story after the 2nd draft. This was supposed to be purely a contemporary fantasy world…

As I stared at the sky where the spaceship disappeared, a large crack identical to the one that opened up before the Retcon split the sky. Wordlessly, I watched as a dozen demons in cadet uniforms crawled out of the dimensional tear and flew toward Horizon Academy.

“Huh…”

Two old apocalyptic enemies from my drafts appeared before my eyes within minutes of each other. Setting aside their lack of hostility, this was something that never happened in any of my drafts. Not this early in the story, at least.

I decided to retreat to the safest place I knew until I learned what was going on:

Without hesitation, I promptly turned around and ran back to my room.