Roy sat sharply up, his every instinct screaming that something was very wrong with the surrounding situation. A dull computer screen stared back at him, currently showing an excel sheet filled with meaningless numbers. With his left hand, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and ignored the dull trill of telephones in the surrounding area. Beyond that, the low voices of several dozen people using their ‘phone-voice’ formed a rather harmless soundscape around Roy.

The nearby ringing incessantly continued. After several bleary blinks, he surreptitiously wiped a bit of drool from the corner of his mouth; he had fallen asleep in his cubicle at work and the harsh ring of a nearby phone had served as his alarm clock. His head foggy, Roy pivoted in his seat and leaned back in the swivel chair to peer down the inoffensive walkway of tan carpet.

He saw numerous identical black swivel chairs holding numerous workers wearing the same expression of boredom. Slowly, Roy’s gaze wandered past them toward the window sitting proudly at the end of the long aisle of cubicles.

A drizzling rain spat against the window. It was a chilly day in early March, Roy belatedly remembered. Walking from the parking lot to the building had been hell. It was a day like every other day. Because nothing in Roy’s life ever changed. At this point, it was hard to remember how long he had been stuck here.

“You fall asleep again, Roy? Yanno, If you don’t like this job, you can just find another one.”

Suppressing his unease, Roy turned to face his manager Carla. He contorted his face until his expression settled into something like a greasy smile. “I… I think I’m just running a bit of a fever. I was just pressing my forehead against the table to cool it off a bit.”

“I’m sure.” Carla folded her arms and shifted her copious weight. Then Carla jabbed her finger at Roy’s desk. “And what are those?”

Still feeling profoundly confused and out of touch, Roy turned to look at his desk. Then he flinched when he saw the scattered post-its sitting prominently on top of his workbook. Perhaps due to his own inner perfectionist, Roy had clearly taken the time to arrange the thirty-six odd post-its in six rows of six. Each post-it was almost perfectly spaced from its fellows, evidencing the significant amount of time Roy must have dedicated to the project.

The horror he felt as he realized what was happening was a chilled bucket of ice water dumped over his head. Because the post-its were for the comic that Roy was working on. Perhaps because he had been comparing concept art, all of the small comics he made during work were arrayed in a neat grid on his desk.

The one at the top left depicted a smiling young man who resembled a ten-years-younger Roy alongside the bubble-lettered title: “The Day I Became a Hero”.

Carla sniffled lightly, waiting for Roy to respond. But Roy couldn’t think of anything to say. “Uh…”

Carla produced a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose into it noisily. Then she tossed the used tissue into Roy’s trash and said, “You are gonna need to throw those post-its away. They aren’t work appropriate”

“What?” Immediately, Roy became panicked. The only reason that he had taken the job at the call center was to save money so he could apply again to AC Comics as an illustrator. Although these drawings were done on post-its, basically all of his best work was done while he was supposed to be answering customer support calls. When he went home, he needed to copy these over to more expensive paper for the application. No, I-”

“Here, let me help you.” Before Roy could respond, Carla jabbed her hand out and snatched the middle portion of the post-it grid and threw the fistful of drawings into the trash can. Then, for good measure, Carla made a deep slurping noise that sounded and spat into the trash.

With trembling hands, Roy began to reach for the trashcan. But then Carla snapped. “You stupid Man-child, why can’t you just accept what you are? A loser who has to keep me happy in order to stay at this job. And you are doing a pretty shit job at it. If I catch you pulling those shitty drawings out of the trash, you’re fired.”

Roy looked blankly up at Carla. The entire call center around them had gone quiet as the surrounding people furiously listened in to distract themselves from their own misery. It was a terrible cauldron of depression that bubbled gleefully to Roy’s misfortune. “Why…”

“How old are you Roy?” Carla said with faux concern. “You’ve got a bit of a belly, don’t you? Probably growing out that beard to hide your double chin? This is me helping you. The sooner you admit that none of the fantasy stuff is real, the happier you will be. Instead of drawing cartoons, put in some effort here, in your real life.”

“But-” Roy began, but Carla’s pudgy hand slapped down on Roy’s desk again and snatched the title panel. She spared it a frowning glance and then shook her head sorrowfully.

“Heroes don’t exist.” Carla ripped the picture of the smiling young man to pieces and tossed it into the trash. “You know what? I’ll just go bring a janitor. Better to toss this shit out now. Then there won’t be any more distractions, will there be, Roy?”

Without waiting for him to answer, she turned around and waddled off toward the office manager’s desk. The other employees immediately did their best to act busy and spoke loudly into their phones, as though everyone hadn’t been watching the entire dressing-down out of the corner of their eyes.

Blankly, Roy looked down at his desk. He suddenly felt ten years older than he had felt this morning. He needed an entire comic book for the application. Remembering the plot wouldn’t be difficult, but when he had quickly glanced at the panels earlier, he had noticed some really impressive perspectives in action sequences. Somehow, Roy knew that this would be the application that would land him a job.

Yet as soon as Roy thought that, a bleak depression crept up from the bottom of his heart and reached with cold hands to tug at that optimism. How many times had he thought the same thing in the past? Yet here he was, working another temp job in order to make enough money to avoid eviction from his apartment.

And everything was still so fuzzy from his earlier dozing…

Roy turned and looked once more toward the window. Rain dripped over the glass pane and beaded across its surface. It seemed to confirm his worst fears; there would be no sudden miracle even if Roy risked losing this job to recover the post-its.

“Maybe… there really isn’t magic in this world,” Roy said softly. He flinched when someone nearby snorted.

As he gathered up the rest of his comic panels with trembling hands, Roy began to cry. It hurt to admit it, but maybe Carla was right. After all, what did he know? Even though he had been told his entire life that trying to make it as a comic book artist was a waste of time, Roy hadn’t given up. But now, at thirty-seven, with nothing to show for all his hard work…

There was nothing tragic about surrendering, right? Some things weren’t meant to be. That was just karma.

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Sniffing loudly, Roy shook his head and hunched over his desk so he could pretend like his coworkers hadn’t silently witnessed everything that happened. Or that they couldn’t see that he was crying now.

But as Roy held the handful of comic panels on post-its over the trash, he couldn’t help but hesitate. The pure joy on the main character’s face made Roy’s heart ache. He brought his ink-stained finger down and lightly dragged it across the post-it note.

When was the last time I smiled like that? When was the last time I was that happy? Roy thought to himself. Finally, he sighed; with his head so fuzzy, he couldn’t think of the last time he had been truly happy

Roy pivoted and held the poisonous false-hope of his next illustrator application over the trash. Yet right before he tossed the post-its away, Roy realized there was something strange about these comic panels. Very quickly, he flipped through the first half-dozen. His frown deepened as he realized that the plot of these panels was slightly different than he remembered. Had he done some of these while half-asleep earlier…?

Roy’s original idea for a story was a normal office worker transmigrating to a fantasy world with game-elements. But in the comic held in his hands, the main character didn’t travel to another world; a System came to Earth. And it wasn’t just the main character that had access to it. Everyone on the planet began to Level up and fight against monsters. Rather than it being a blessing, the System seemed to be making a serious attempt to wipe out the human population on Earth.

Enamored with this story he didn’t remember writing, Roy flipped quickly through the panels. Although he had only had thirty-six panels arranged, no matter how many panels Roy flipped through, there were still more to read.

In the story, Roy barely managed to survive those first few days by utilizing improvised weapons from around the office and moving quickly to secure food. With a base, he began to gather companions to assist him. After assembling a team, Roy rescued an attractive young couple who would eventually become his left and right hands. Together, they pushed back the forces of monsters in the surrounding area.

They even managed to find a golden coin and create a Village, which gave them access to Classes. Entranced, Roy’s fingers flipped from the panel where he spoke to the Village Spirit to obtain his Class. Although Roy’s phone abruptly began to ring, he ignored it. His hands were trembling as he once more began to cry. These were silent tears that coursed down his cheeks.

Because this panel was probably epitomized the feeling that Roy had chased his entire life.

The panel was extremely simple. The main character selected his Class: Hero. For several seconds, Roy couldn’t breathe. Then he wiped away his tears and continued to flip through the post-its.

Everything was right with the world even as monsters continued to attack the Hero’s Village.

His eyes were bright as he eagerly continued to read. But suddenly his hands clenched with enough force to warp the post-its. After spending a few minutes confused, he finally remembered Carla. For a second, Roy had thought he had missed something because the main character underwent an abrupt transformation in the later panels. But the middle section of his comic had been thrown in the trash.

Something snapped inside of Roy. His eyes burned with malice. But that horrible desire to hurt began to push away some of the confusion in his mind.

Uncaring that his phone continued to insistently ring, Roy put his hand into the trashcan. Ignoring the slimy sensation of Carla’s partially dried snot, he pulled out the panels he was missing. After reorganizing them, Roy eagerly continued to read. But as he reached the panel exactly in the middle of the story he had drawn, Roy stuttered to a stop.

Roy looked down at the drawing depicting his own death. The Tribulation of his Village had taken the form of an attractive woman and snuck into the compound. It hadn’t really even needed to do anything; it had just make sure that Roy saw its fleshy exterior and he was instantly blinded by lust.

It had ridden on top of Roy, and when he had closed his eyes to orgasm, the Tribulation slid a dagger into his heart.

Still wearing the beautiful face of a raven haired woman, the Tribulation had leaned over him and whispered, “What a way for a Hero to die.”

Then it had twisted the knife. No matter how he had struggled, Roy hadn’t been able to make a sound. He died, bleeding out on his bed, his Village consumed by the Tribulation.

Roy stared solemnly at that pencil sketch on a post-it for so long that whoever had called him finally got fed up. Although there was the constant murmur of other people talking around him and other phones ringing, his cubicle became deathly silent.

“That’s right. I’m already…” The malicious energy in his chest quickly cooled. It became almost well-behaved in its madness as clarity began to arrive. Muttering to himself, Roy didn’t even hear the heavy steps as Carla stalked over toward his cubicle.

“ROY. What the actual FUCK!” Carla roared, sniffing to pull a oozing booger back into her nose. She slapped her pudgy hand against Roy’s desk, once, twice. “Did you think I was KIDDING? Get your things and go.”

Roy’s shivered and Carla laughed scornfully. “I tried to give you a chance; it’s too late to act sorry now.”

Of course, all this is just… heh. Roy couldn’t tear his eyes away from the satisfied expression on the Tribulation’s face as Roy died in the panel. Yet then he shivered again; as he stared at the picture of him dying, he remembered the sensation of passing on to the next life. The terrible lack of sensation, the suffocating inevitability. Right before he died, his Skill Trials of a Hero activated, giving him a slight edge. But it could only delay the inevitable.

Bit by bit, Roy had been frozen as his sanity was stripped away with a mechanical precision in preparation to be truly dead. Luckily, his allies moved quickly enough for some of him to remain. He had been revived with the same body, sure, but Roy would never have claimed that the ‘he’ who returned was the same as the one who had left. His Skill activation had delayed the degradation, but it hadn’t been stopped the process entirely.

The ‘he’ that returned was forever marked by the abyss that waited for them all.

That horrible, forbidden knowledge of the cessation of life strained Roy’s personality with an existential pain that was difficult to understand. But if Roy focused too long on the memories of that time, he would slip once more into that horrible sensation of falling. Within a few minutes, he probably would be nothing but an empty machine of flesh.

So Roy distracted himself from that horror. In the strange dream of his life before the System, Roy looked up at his shitty manager at the call center and smiled. “Carla, do you know what dying feels like?”

“What…?” Perhaps because of the sudden change of expression on Roy’s face, Carla instinctively took a step backward. Before she could respond further, Roy stood and walked briskly past her. He even had the decency to ignore the way she flinched. Then he went to the office manager’s desk, who was looking at him with widening eyes. There, he picked up a pair of scissors and walked back to Carla.”

“This is what it feels like.” Roy said as he drove the scissors into Carla’s left eye socket. She reeled backward and hot blood spurted out across her fleshy face. A split second later, she began screaming bloody murder and Roy stopped forward again. As she fell toward the ground, he placed both hands on the handle of the scissors and shoved to pierce into her brain.

Because in his dream he was just a normal human, Roy messed the attack up; the scissors couldn’t pierce deeply enough to make it into the brain. When he landed on Carla’s chest, the window was knocked out of him by her flailing arms. As she worked herself into a bloody lather, Roy rolled off of her and crawled away to catch his breath.

When he finally did, Roy began to laugh.

It was a slow process waking up from that dream and Roy could immediately sense that it was his Meaningful Visions Skill that had shown him those things. But even as he came back to himself, Roy remained extremely still.

He was being carried over someone’s shoulder and felt non-metallic armor shifting underneath his fingers.

“Why does it matter that they are creating a television network? It’s just constant movies, right?”

Roy didn’t recognize the throaty feminine voice, but he recognized the second voice when it answered.

“The channel itself doesn’t matter much. I bet the content will even be pretty decent. It’s more… the fact that there is a significant portion of Zone 1 that dedicated their time and effort to entertainment. Donnyton can be extreme sometimes, but I agree with them on this: we should be preparing for the Calamity, not trying to reclaim pre-System habits.”

Sydney…? I was… Sydney rescued me from the Toad Lord…?!? what the hell is going on…? Roy wondered as he continued to play dead.