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Prologue: The Hero Who Refused to Save the World
THE END OF ONE LIFE
Haruto Saito had always assumed that when he died, it would be in some grand, dramatic way. A car accident. A robbery gone wrong. Maybe even some final, poetic moment where he muttered something deep and profound before fading into the abyss.
However, the moment Haruto Saito’s life ended, it wasn’t in a blaze of glory, a tragic accident, or even a dramatic betrayal.
It ended in the most mundane way imaginable.
A dull fluorescent light flickered overhead as he slumped over his desk, hands still resting on the keyboard. His half-empty coffee cup had gone cold hours ago, but he never had the chance to finish it. The office was silent except for the hum of overworked servers and the distant clatter of some other poor soul still stuck in overtime hell.
One moment, he was staring at the endless spreadsheet on his monitor, his half-finished coffee sitting idly on his desk, the office fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like dying insects. The next, he felt his body slump forward, as if someone had pressed the power button on his existence. And then—darkness.
No dramatic farewell, no last words. Just the sudden realization that, at some point, his body had decided it had enough.
And honestly? He couldn’t blame it.
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THE SUMMONING
Haruto’s next moment of consciousness came with the sensation of falling.
Light. Wind. Voices.
Then—impact.
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He groaned as he peeled his face off the cold marble floor. Above him, towering spires of gold and stained glass stretched into a sky so impossibly blue it made his head spin. Around him, armored knights and robed priests gawked, their expressions somewhere between awe and confusion.
He barely had time to process the situation before a voice—calm, melodic, and absolute—rang through the air.
“Behold! The heroes summoned to save our kingdom from ruin!”
Wait. Heroes?
Haruto blinked, slowly turning his head to the left.
Beside him, another figure stood—a young man, barely seventeen, clad in shining silver armor that practically radiated holy light. His eyes gleamed with the righteous fury of a protagonist, his hand instinctively grasping the hilt of an ornate golden sword.
Haruto glanced down at himself.
No shining armor. No divine glow. Just the same cheap office shirt, slightly wrinkled from the unfortunate death nap.
A realization hit him like a sack of bricks.
Oh. Oh no.
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THE FALSE HERO
The grand hall erupted in cheers as the real hero was celebrated, lavished with blessings and prophecies.
Haruto, meanwhile, stood awkwardly at the edge of the ceremony, ignored until a robed figure—the High Oracle—narrowed her eyes at him. A tense silence fell over the chamber.
Then, with a voice sharp enough to cut steel, she declared:
“This one… is a mistake.”
The room’s temperature seemed to drop.
Haruto barely had time to open his mouth before armored hands grabbed him, shoving him to his knees.
“He is the False Hero. A glitch. He does not belong.”
A chill ran down his spine. Ah. Well. That was fast.
In the span of minutes, he had gone from overworked corporate drone to "prophesized hero" to exiled anomaly. As he was dragged through the golden halls toward what he really hoped wasn’t an execution chamber, he sighed, muttering under his breath:
"Man. I should’ve just stayed dead."
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THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING ELSE
They didn’t kill him. That would’ve been too clean.
Instead, they threw him out—literally.
A hard shove, a door slamming shut, and suddenly he was outside, standing in the middle of an unfamiliar wilderness. No supplies. No instructions. No idea what the hell he was supposed to do next.
He looked up at the vast, unfamiliar sky, then down at his empty hands.
For the first time, a true, creeping panic began to settle in.
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
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END OF PROLOGUE