He instinctively takes a step back after my sudden appearance. His originally confused state now turns to nervousness, as he starts to realize the situation he's in.

"Is this a marketing bit? L-listen, I don't have a lot of money to spare in the first place, so whatever you're selling I can't really help you with that." he stutters. While he does look anxious, he still doesn't feel that surprised by the situation, more so mildly uncomfortable.

You know when you ask the waiter for something at a restaurant, and they give you the wrong thing, so you have to try to explain to them that this is not what you asked for, but you also don't really want to bother them? It's like that.

"Well, this is sort of a marketing scheme in that I'm offering you a deal you can't refuse!" I say.

He doesn't respond, probably figuring out that silence is the best way to make me leave and bother someone else.

"You said you don't have a lot of money to spare? That can be arranged! My product will give you all the money you could ever need, power! Fame! And other things that I can't be bothered to list!"

He does perk up at the mention of money, but he's still rather suspicious of this whole thing, for good reasons.

"This sounds like a scam, what's the catch?" he answers, averting his gaze from mine.

"Quite simple! You'll only get my product if you complete a simple challenge, a game if you will. Someone else will try to kill you, if they succeed at doing just that, they will win and be able to get whatever they want, but if you manage to convince them to NOT kill you, then the spoils will be yours~"

"No." he answers without a second thought.

The conversation halts for a few seconds. I have to admit I should've expected that, it's better if the actors are willing but...

"Unfortunately, when I said a deal you CAN'T refuse, I meant that literally, but of course I will be giving you a small sample of the full product to help you, you need to know what you're risking your life for, mm-hm?"

I rip off the blue menu out of my soul, it stings but I've been through worse. I then redirect it towards the soul of the boy facing me. Of course this entire process is invisible to him, it doesn't hurt him at all either, menus are often designed to latch unto someone really easily. But they aren't really supposed to be taken off, people are expected to live their whole life with them. Then again, it's mostly a me problem, souls realistically shouldn't get more than one menu on them in the first place. So there's usually very little reasons to take the one you have off.

"Alright, that's all for today, friend! I'll come back later to check your progress, okaycoolhavefunbyyyye~"

I dissipate into the smoke wall, only for the smoke to do the same a few seconds later.

I'll be honest, I finished this conversation early because it was kind of awkward. He clearly doesn't like talking to people, or maybe it's because I just revealed that someone was going to hunt him down soon, I doubt that helped. Now that I think about it, this might make the guy's social anxiety worse to believe everyone he meets might try to kill him.

That's fine though! I explained what he needed to do and he'll figure out how to open the menu fast enough, I hope so anyway.

See, I believe anyone can be a protagonist, because heroes can both be reactive and active, reacting to the antagonist and acting for their own personal goal, this is why picking someone at random is fun, because anyone will do, and you don't know who you'll end up with. Variety's the spice of life after all!

Unfortunately, I can't afford to do that for the antagonist, an antagonist needs to be active, they need the drive to act and succeed, you want specific traits for an antagonist that you don't necessarily need in a hero.

Thankfully I have a skill just for that!

This is originally a skill meant to find your soulmate, but I modified it for something else! Instead it tries to find someone who is currently feeling or thinking the same things as you, the hard part is that it makes it really hard to find someone specific, but I don't need someone specific, I just need someone that fills a few basic criteria.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Ahem...

I'm tired of how nothing changes.

The world isn't fair, I'd be willing to kill for infinite power.

I'm at my limit.

Why, why is it that I wake up early, come home late, and they STILL want more from me? I'm barely being paid minimum wage and these idiots still make me work overtime. More paperwork needs to be written, more machinery needs to be fixed. Incompetent, everyone here is incompetent. Everything in this stupid company would fall apart without me and I can't even get a proper thank you, not even anything resembling a promotion. I hope the mist devours them, at least their-

Will you look at that a candidate! Nothing scarier than a minimum wageworker I suppose. No matter how fantastical a place may be, it seems terrible working conditions are just a fact of life huh? Truly the biggest escapist fantasy of all is being paid a living wage.

I think they would make a good antagonist, hate towards the system, greed for more, clearly a hard worker. And they don't live that far off from our boy, so they are more likely to find each other.

I jump from pipes to pipes to find my new antagonist, no one seems to mind that I'm doing something clearly hazardous to my health. I can't tell if everyone is just too busy to care or if that's just another common method of travel. Still, it's extremely fun to navigate this place like that. Maybe that's why there's no railing? So people can just jump off to another street if they need to? How thoughtful of them.

Soon enough I find them, her.

If I had to describe her in two words, it'd be pissed off. Her eye twitch at the mildest of inconveniences, each step she takes is heavy and reverbs through the metal tubes as she's constantly muttering something under her breath, not very nice things, I'm sure of that.

I jump down in front of her, not bothering much with theatrics this time.

"Hello! Would you-"

She pushes past me without even letting me finish my sentence.

I start walking after her.

"Hey! Hey! Heard you didn't like your job! Heard you're open for a new offer!"

She stops, there's a heavy silence for a couple more seconds until she speaks up

"What do you mean? I love my job, why I could work here forever! I have a GREAT salary and even BETTER working conditions, I really hope I DIE HERE-"

She takes a deep breath and after a solid second, she speaks again. "I'm giving you 1 minute, what's your offer, and why do you want me specifically."

I smile and present the "offer" in as little words as I can muster.

"Kill a specific target and you'll get everything you want, power, money, fame, you name it! You'll also be given a special tool to help you with your assassination."

She raises an eyebrow. Clearly intrigued and somehow not at all disturbed by the implications of that job.

"Go on"

"You'll be given...this!"

I give her the pink menu and force it to appear in front of her as an example. Her menu is the pink one and it's a pain to read on, so I'll tell her how to summon the menu early, so she gets more time to get acquainted with its bizarre color scheme.

"You just have to conjure up the image in your head, and it'll appear in front of you! It can do a bunch of things, but you'll have to figure that out by yourself, ho, and don't worry, no one else can see it but you."

She stares at the bright pink screen for a couple of seconds, before carefully touching it with one finger.

The pink menu suddenly jolts to something else, startling her.

"How does this work?" She asks.

"Okay, thanks for accepting the job we'll see you in two to three business days okayhavefunbyyyye~"

I quickly jump off the pipe and try to put as much distance between me and her as possible. I never did tell her why I wanted her in particular, but she really doesn't need to know that.

Once I'm far enough, I take a deep breath, only to cough after inhaling a bunch of black smoke. Seriously, how do people breathe here? They look human enough, but their biology has to be different to live in that place. Well, it doesn't matter what they are, what matters is that their motivations are human enough. This means the rules of the game work just fine. The rules being this:

1. If the "hero" manages to convince the "villain" to not kill them, their menu will gain a metric ton of experience that will boost their stats to a ludicrous amount.

2. If the "villain" kills the "hero" they will be the one to get said experience boost.

3. Both actors have a menu that works differently because of the universe differences. Including a different language. But the first person that manages to figure out how the menu work will be given a massive edge, and that's because...

4. Both menus have a compass system that points in the other actor's direction. Said compass can be upgraded to give more information on the target depending on the menu.

Our protagonist is motivated by the fear of death more than the reward itself. While our villain will, hopefully, try to find a way to safely kill our protagonist without being caught.

Of course there are still a few kinks to iron out, I had to set up the whole plot in a hurry, but!

Without! Further! Ado!

Let this story begin!