> This book is dedicated to all those who will never be able to read it. It may be entertaining, but every word is true.

>

> – "A Guidebook to Surviving the Coming and Forceful Isekai-ing of this Entire Planet," by Annaliese Macco

He was a southern gentleman of the most self-assured breed. He wore a stiff cap and starched shirts. Stiff might have been the most apt word to describe him; he would rather look down his nose than stoop to see those around him. Since his fourteenth birthday, he had never been called by his name; rather, “sir” had become both his name and his role in the world.

He had made some minor and exceedingly dull contributions to the field of law, not the sort that would ever make him famous, but enough to get him a knightly title in one part of the world and a small fortune in another. He would never brag about either of these developments in polite company, of course, but he was secretly quite proud of himself.

These contributions had come from a dusty document that he had found in the crawl space beneath his home when he was a child. His parents, having found him playing with it, had assumed the illegible handwriting was his. This had caused them no small degree of concern, as he should have been at an age where his penmanship was impeccable. He had forgotten, by the time we begin our tale, that the document was not his own creation, and so he had no small degree of pride in his youthful imagination for the creation of the “great charter” from which he had lifted his ideas.

Sir had been leaning against a particularly tall bush, thinking contentedly about how wonderfully bland his life was, when a bird landed on his head. He swiped wildly at the space above his head as he thought to himself, “How now. Birds don’t usually do this sort of thing. Yes, I am fairly sure that this sort of this thing is unusual. How strange.”

Any attentive reader will hopefully be aware that having a bird standing on one’s head is fairly distracting. Indeed, the gentleman failed to notice a number of details that became obvious a few seconds later: he was no longer leaning against a bush, he was no longer standing on solid ground, he was submerged in something like sea foam, if sea foam had the texture and weight of glass marbles.

Minor details.

Once he finished processing these details, the gentleman began to look around. He didn’t look very far, however, because the first thing he saw shone like a lighthouse. The lighthouse drew the gentleman in. As he stared, the ball of lights grew larger in his view. It wasn’t a single light, but a thousand tiny pinpricks, each wandering around and nearly colliding with each other—nearly! Never once did they seem to collide. Nor did they fade; some would flare and vanish, but not a one of them withdrew from sight gently.

He stared with wonder at the goings-on in this tiny chamber until he realized that what he had taken for a small size was in fact distance. No sooner had he reached this conclusion than he realized that he was rapidly approaching the chamber. Feeling rather like an observer watching the moth of his body approach a candle flame, he tried to swim away or slow down. The sea foam, gentle and forceful thus far, hurt his outstretched arms so badly that he resigned himself to descending into the light.

With a start, the gentleman realized that his arms had begun glowing, however weakly, and began to dread the lighthouse. It remained an object of beauty, but if those lights were people—if those lights were alive and trapped in a beauteous cage. If.

The strain of fighting the glass current overwhelmed the gentleman before long, and he drifted off to sleep.

He awoke with a start to much the same sight; a shadowy orb—how had he ever mistaken it for a lighthouse? A shadowy orb so large that it occupied his vision. What he had once taken for a thousand tiny lights were a billion wandering stars, the brightest of them distinct, the dullest blurring together into what might have been a cloud.

It looked like a planet, covered with tiny lights. Each light on the planet was brighter than his own, he realized, with a start. He didn’t have much more time to reflect on the view in front of him, on account of the fact that he felt an overwhelming series of sensations. He slammed into an invisible wall, felt infinitesimal worms dig through his skin, making him glow brighter wherever they touched, and heard a shrieking sound all at once. Then silence. And words appeared in the very fabric of his being, words that he knew like a long-lost friend. Words that he would quickly develop mixed feelings about, and some of which he somehow knew he would never remember again, not quite like this.

[Unknown]

[No class]

[Strength: 12]

[Mobility: 12]

[Fortitude: 12]

[Intelligence: 10]

[Sensitivity: 4]

[Stat Unassigned]

[Honorary Knighthood] (Rare)

[Lawyer] (Uncommon) [Trained]

[Plagiarist] (Uncommon) [Master]

And then, preoccupied with the implications of the [Plagiarist] title, the gentleman found himself lying on a rock.

“That was certainly the trip. I’ll have to see if that was something I smoked.” He muttered to himself. He had, in fact, never smoked anything strong enough to cause even minor hallucinations before, but perhaps the occasional cigarette could trigger an overactive imagination? It was well known that hippies and their sort smoked and sometimes hallucinated from that.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The well-educated reader will note with a degree of disdain that the gentleman knew exactly nothing about the actual hippie movement, instead broadly classifying anything he disliked or didn’t understand as “hippie shit.” This was perfectly appropriate, as the hippie movement had occurred hundreds of years ago, following the unexplained appearance (and subsequent disappearance) of hundreds of exceedingly high concertgoers whose total acceptance of the slogan “make love, not war” established the phrase “hippie shit” in the vernacular as referring to anything related to drugs, sex, sexuality, or anti-authoritarian movements.

As the gentleman brooded about the hippie movement, he once again failed to notice a relevant detail: he was being approached by what appeared to be a group of five dwarves, each wearing miner’s helmets and coated in dust.

“Excuse me, oh bold renaissance fair attendees. I seem to be lost. Could you point me towards civilization?”

“Whatcha-seance fair?” The oldest dwarf grumbled, twisting his knuckle in his ear.

“Renaissance fair. I assume that is where you are going, looking like that.”

“Well, we call it home.”

“Oh. I see. You must be Poors then.” You could hear the way he capitalized Poors, as though that were all he needed to know about somebody.

“Nah. The name’s Jake. You must have me confused for someone else.”

“You can call me Sir. And would I be correct in guessing that you do not own a house?”

“A house? What’s Sir nobody going on about? You wouldn’t catch me trusting my head and health to a house.” At this, the gentleman was quite confounded, as he couldn’t imagine someone not wanting to own a house. Unless—.

“I appreciate your devotion to cosplay, but I really am lost.”

“Well met, Sir Lost. I’m Dad.” the crotchety dwarf said with a sneer, “I don’t know what cosplay is, but just looking at you, I can’t imagine you’re a [Knight]. And I have a family to get back to, so go kick rocks.”

Dumbfounded, the gentleman stood in one place, processing what just happened. As he remembered the conversation, as natural as rain, he also remembered a phrase:

“Shit. Can I ask you one question?” He turned to the last dwarf in the group.

“You just did. But go on.”

“Have you ever heard of people appearing from other worlds?”

“You talking about [Summoned Heroes]?” The gentleman could hear the square brackets, and it made him mildly uncomfortable.

“Maybe.”

“Not much. They show up in wars, usually helping win the whole thing. Or lose it.”

“That might be me.”

“Bullshit, Sir. There’s not a war on for hundreds of miles.”

“Is there a way to know?” The man asked, refusing to think of himself as Sir Lost, but desperately trying to find a way to exploit his situation.

“Yeah. Just go to the castle over there and ask to see Warmaster Stump if there’s a war on. That’s the secret code that will get him to tell you.”

The gentleman scanned the horizon with intense concentration. All 4 of his [Sensitivity] struggled for several minutes before he found a castle on a hill behind him. By this time, the dwarves had left, presumably to go home, so he walked over a couple hills as the sun set on his left.

When he reached the castle, a brisk 15 minute walk that put the gentleman thoroughly out of breath, he walked through the gate and into a bar.

“Ow!”

It wasn’t a bar at all, but the haft of a comically large spear.

“Papers?” Asked a short woman with vibrant blue hair.

“What now?”

“Oh, fine. We can do this the long way. Business or Pleasure?” Now this was a question the gentleman had been asked often enough, so his response was almost an instinct.

“Business,” he replied, “Though I’d like the pleasure of buying you a drink after work if you wouldn’t mind.”

The woman stared at him for a moment, then made the prickliest response he had ever gotten to what he though of as a particularly smooth pickup line.

“Oh. You must be illiterate. We have a sign.” She pointed behind her at a sign that read, quite clearly,

WORKPLACE HARASSMENT OF CUSTOMS OFFICIALS IS A CRIME.

“Um, I’m sorry. I didn’t-” began the flustered gentleman.

She then pointed at a glowing sign on top of her head. It clearly read

I’M ASEXUAL AND YOU DON’T HAVE A CHANCE.

PICKUP LINES ARE WELCOME IF THEY’RE FUNNY.

“Why have I not managed to see anything today?” The gentleman grumbled, not noticing the combined irritation and amusement on the guard’s face.

“I dunno. Why are you a prick today?” The heavily armed woman responded. “Have you tried increasing your [Looking] stat?”

“I don’t have a looking stat. Just—”

“Oh. Great. You must be a new summoned hero. Let me guess: You have four stats instead of six, no levels, no class, and you’ve come looking for a war to win.”

“Well, not exactly. But almost?” The gentleman said, unsure of whether he wanted to fight in a war. Avoiding one would be hippie shit, which would shame him greatly. With that realization, he clarified.

“I have 5 stats.”

“I have bad news for you, Sir [Summoned Warrior]. We don’t have a war going on.”

“I was sent to ask someone important exactly whether that was true.” The gentleman replied, as earnest as he was abrasive.

“Wonderful. I don’t suppose you have anything of value?” She said, with a glance.

“Just my watch.”

“Personal effects don’t much matter. By the way, what is your fifth stat?”

“[Sensitivity]. I have a 4.”

The guard burst out laughing.

“That explains a lot, actually. I still don’t believe you, but you get points for committing to the bit. Who are you looking for?”

“Battleboss something? I think?”

“Warmaster Stump?” The guard resigned herself to her new role of laughing at the gentleman. “Yeah, he just lives in the keep down the road. You can’t miss it. It’s the heavily guarded building.”

“Thanks!” Replied the gentleman as he walked off.

He proceeded to walk down the street, where he seated himself on a bench and waited for Warmaster Stump to emerge.

----------------------------------------

Stump was a giant of a [Warmaster of a Thousand Bloodied Foes], thoroughly unimpressed with anything the world had to throw at him and intensely confused by the small man who approached him outside his home.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here. What’s your excuse?”

“I was told to look for you. I have a password for you. Is there a war on?”

“Of course there’s not a war on, silly man. The whole world is at peace.”

“It’s just that I’m a summoned hero, and so I rather thought there might be a war.”

Warmaster Stump seriously considered the possibility for a second, then discarded it.

“I can see your Achievements. You’re no [Summoned Hero]. Just a [Plagiarist] of mythic proportions.”

A plagiarist was a kind of liar, right? Probably. Stump figured that since the man was most likely a really good liar, there wouldn't be much sense dealing with him.

“How can you read my Achievements?” the gentleman asked.

“I earned this skill when I became a Warmaster. It’s not much fun to crush a foe unless you know what they’ve done that mattered,” the extremely rough man replied. “Though it is strange that you have so few (Normal) or greater Achievements, Sir Honorary Knight.”

“I have a life’s body of achievements, thank you kindly!” cried the gentleman, indignant.

Warmaster Stump thought silently for a moment, and then decided that the gentleman probably had done a lot more with his life than copy existing writers, and so was probably using a Skill to disguise his status. And the only people who could do that were [Infiltrators]. But the sheer ineptitude of the [Infiltrator] before Stump spoke to a much more likely, much more dangerous subclass.

“Assassin!” Cried Warmaster Stump in the same instant that he buried an axe in the head of the late Sir Lost, first casualty of the apocalypse.

And so did many of the first to vanish from the Desolate Earth, as it would come to be called, perish. They died at the hands of the paranoid, the skeptical, and the powerful. But the first wave, casualties of an actuary who doomed a planet to save herself, were not long-lived.