I shook my head in disgust at the tasteless sexualization of women in advertising. A bodaciously busty vampiric beauty, with a distinctive gold hairpiece and a dress that existed more in theory than practice, bit her lower lip as she looked up at me from my phone. There was more fire than smoke in those red eyes. Shameful. We, as a people, are better than this.

Her luscious curves were somewhat lost behind the even more luscious curves of my finger as I hammered the download button. A guaranteed SSS rarity Champion in the first thirty pulls, ten thousand Soul Crystals, fifty Iridium Sheets and a whopping twenty five Songs of the Dwarven Mead Halls? Almost-but-not-quite nude vampire waifu? I would be crazy NOT to download now!

Aww. Now the screen was all greasy. Like someone has smeared vaseline aaaaaalll over Vampirella.

I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of gacha game it was- idle game, tower defense, brawler, farming, but really, they were all the same in the end. I knew what I needed to know.

The art was good. Very good. Like Frazetta met Anime and saw something he could work with. I was sold, so long as the Free-to-Play grind wasn’t too bad. If it was just to punish you for not being a whale, I’d quit.

Never simp in life or games. That was the way of the King. Always more anime waifus out there.

Charmed though I was by the beauty, my figurine collection runneth over with better. I would have to see her performance before deciding if she were truly worthy of enshrinement. And worship.

Earbuds in, game loading, life was good on the subway. Then- tragedy!

I messed up. Messed up bad. I failed my family, my country, myself. I failed God, and already I could feel his wrath descending on me.

I hit “accept” instead of asking the app not to track.

Zuckerberg only knows what that was going to do to my internet traffic. Sorry, Mom and Dad. Your son is a degenerate. And now he will pay for his sticky tastes.

I sighed and navigated to settings. Hopefully this was a fixable problem. Maybe I could dunk my phone in holy water or something after lunch.

“THANK GOD! Finally!” Someone yelled. I didn’t see who grabbed my arm, but their fingers dug in like iron hooks. They yanked me up. Which meant they were really, REALLY strong. I saw a black hood, a hand with a glowing sigil.

“Wha?” The sigil blinded me, a wall of light and colors without names smashed into my mind!

_______________________________________________________

My head hurt. I slowly gave in to consciousness and opened my eyes. This was my second terrible mistake in less than an hour. Somehow things hurt worse, and made less sense.

Wooden ceiling? No, wooden beams way up, holding up a stone ceiling. That must be terrible for acoustics and insulation. I bet this place is noisy and cold as Hell. I haven’t even turned my head and I can safely conclude this place is one hundred percent garbage.

I turned my head. There were… bricks? No, stones, but, like, brick sized. Cobblestones? Could you have cobblestones indoors or was that strictly a street thing? No idea. Loads of brick-sized squared off rocks scattered all over the place. Gonna guess the floor was in bad shape. Or the walls. Or both. Should I risk sitting up?

I didn’t hear anything. I sat up. Yep. Room was trashed.

“Room” might have been understating things a bit. Castle hall? Church? It had Old Ruined Church vibes, maybe. Tall ceiling, like… forty feet tall, or something. Big enough to hold a few hundred people. Bare gray stone walls, with patches of blue-green lichen adding color. Empty arches where windows should have been. Furniture? None. Doors? None. Explanations? None.

I instinctively reached for my phone, and patted an empty pocket. Then patted again. The cloth felt wrong. I looked myself over.

“I’ve been mugged. That… cloak!” I needed better insults, but all I had seen of them was a big cloak and a glowing sigil. Not a whole lot to work with.

My normal clothes- crocks, sweatpants, hilarious Walter White tribute Y-fronts, Pretty-Cure t-shirt (Spicy-Cure doing her classic pose on the front because she is best-girl,) and my sick fedora had all vanished. I was wearing some kind of horrible nerd stuff. Skin tight brown leggings and what I hope was a tan colored tunic and not a slip dress. I mean, COME ON! I’m not a programmer!

I would have my own fursuit if I was in IT. Who hasn’t felt lust in their heart when looking at Crystal the Fox? I MEAN NOT ME, OBVIOUSLY. But, like, some hypothetical full stack developer named NOT ME.

My new shoes were more like pointy slippers. Their being made of leather didn’t make them less wretched. The soles had zero foam. I could feel the edges of the stone floor under my feet. Horrible. These must be awful for my arches. I have very sensitive arches, you see. I need my foam.

As I stared down, I realized something. Something else was missing. Something shocking, something that had been part of me for as long as I could remember.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

I… could see my feet. The gut was gone. The bountiful buttery rolls were torn away, leaving only saltine white skin stretched over some unsettling lumps.

“Is this… are these… abs?”

I had abs. I had actual, visible abs. I slowly ran my hand over them, feeling them. Then my eye was pulled to my arm. There was muscle definition there too. The forearm has muscles. Incredible. I had never seen such a thing.

There was some kind of sparkly thing at the front of the room. I ignored it. Watching the tendons rise out of the back of my hand as I flexed my suddenly strong fingers was WAY more interesting.

Could… Could I do a pushup? Me?

I dropped into the pushup position. There was a chiming noise from the sparkle thing at the front of the room, but I knew what was important. With a mighty flex of my powerful back, I exploded upwards!

“ONE!” I cried, and the sky trembled in awe! Or it should have. My first ever push up. My god. Could I… dared I to dream? Do a sit up?

That chiming noise was getting seriously annoying now. It was super loud. And the light was flashing. Almost strobing. Really bright too.

I looked around. There was a doorway behind me. I could do my sit-up in another room. I turned to walk away, when there was a big burst of green light.

“Congratulations! Thank you for volunteering to join the war against the Etronkin!”

It was black robe guy. He sounded pissy for some reason, but I wasn’t scared. Nothing good came of talking to a pervert, let alone a thief. This fella stole my underwear, making him the lowest sort of scum. I resolutely turned away. I would report him to the police. Justice would be done.

“Wait, wait! Don’t go, this is actually really important!”

“You already mugged me. Why would I listen to you now?” I snorted. My hobbies may promote unsavory tendencies, but my day job? I knew how to deal with pricks- ignore them, and retaliate anonymously online. I swung a surprisingly muscular, yet comparatively slender, leg forward. Striding away. Manfully. Like a winner.

“I didn’t mug you, okay? I didn’t. All your horrible sh… stuff is safe in a box. A sealed box. In a sealed dimension. Didn't know that smell could puncture through a six layered draconic ward, but. Here we are. All learning new things together.”

“That smell, peasant, is Mikawa Fujiwako, the GREATEST of the Spicy Cure cosplayers! She rolled around on top of that shirt after a workout when I donated five grand to her BestFans! I haven’t let a drop of soap touch that shirt in seven years.”

There was a pause.

“I am sure that the translocation spell fixed any mental damage. It… shouldn’t be a stroke or anything. Are you feeling any numbness? Do you smell toast?”

“I do not. Actually-” I was about to ask about snacks, but realized that, weirdly, I wasn’t hungry. Zero desire to eat. Which had never stopped me before, but now I just didn’t want to. Bizarre.

“Ok, I don’t have long so I’m just going to get straight into it. When you agreed to the the terms and conditions of Spires of Ancient Twilight-

“I didn’t.”

The hooded figure flinched.

“What? No, you definitely did.”

“Didn’t.”

The hooded figure yanked a scroll out of a long sleeve and started unrolling it fast. I could hear muttered swears under their breath. His breath? Sounded like a “he” but all I was seeing was slender hands and an enormous black hood.

“What did the picture on the icon look like? Green skinned muscular orc woman?”

“Busty, near nude vampire chick. Hot as hell. Credit to the developers.” I gave him a solid thumbs up.

“I’ll tell Rosalia you liked her picture.” Black Robe sounded sick. “So, you didn’t download Spires of Ancient Twilight.”

“I did not.”

“You downloaded Dream of Eternal Sky, and never actually agreed to anything. Other than the tracking thing. Which means you aren’t who I was expecting. Please tell me you are a SysAdmin with at least ten years of programming Xerpin and got a minor in architecture?”

“I am not. Also, Systems Administrators generally aren’t programming things for ten years, especially not with two year old programming languages.”

The hood recoiled, then drooped. “A CS degree and an interest in traditional stoneworking?”

“I use AI to sell “tips” to day traders and crypto bros. The AI generates a morning newsletter, which automatically gets mailed out by my web hosted mailing list manager. I literally don’t touch any part of my business beyond spending the money. I live very comfortably, work less than an hour a week, and spend most of my money on my hobbies.”

“Ahah! You are an AI programmer!” The hood perked up, a manicured finger pointing triumphantly at me.

“If by “programmer” you mean ‘Use ChatGPT to scrape Bloomberg and put together a Cramer-worthy newsletter,’ then yes. Except I actually paid a guy in Bangladesh to pull it all together for me. His name is Sayed. Good guy, very responsive. Five stars and a tip.”

I had never seen a soul leave a body before. But here we are. All learning new things together.

There was a long pause. I reached for my phone, slapped an empty pocket again and frowned. It was uncomfortable, just standing there and not looking at something. It was like an ache where the phone ought to be.

“So. My carefully planned meta-pick for this realm has gone PFFFT. Which is not ideal, definitionally.”

I nodded along with him.

“Difficulty is definitely going to be raised overall. Some balance issues. Real… sunk cost issue. But your lack of applicable skills may also give us some wriggle room with the starting difficulty.”

He started rolling through the scroll at speed.

“Okay, okay. I’m not completely screwed. Go a kind of- Yeah. Okay, that works. We will just take this whole thing as a learning opportunity and do better next time.”

“Sorry, next time?”

“After you die. I’ll try to get what I can from your run, use that to optimize the next guy’s run. You know, turn a loss into a minor win, then the minor win into that MEGA victory.” The black hood nodded decisively.

“Fall down once, get up twice. Keep that winning mindset on your grindset. Be a real sigma- oh man, look at your face. Are you still on the dying thing?”

“I’m going to die?!” I was outraged. Who was going to look after my Figurine Shrine? Hentai Mountain? Doujinshi Valley? The Hidden Forest of Relaxing Toys? They all required the sort of loving care only I could give them. I balled up my now mighty fist and strode towards the hood. I have never chosen violence before, but if Anime has taught me anything, it’s that violence solves everything. Maybe we could even be friends afterward.

“What, you don’t want to be trapped in an isolated tower with a functionally unlimited number of attentive beauties, expanding your tyrannical rule over the countryside as you grow ever more powerful?”

I unclenched my hand and brushed down my definitely-a-tunic. “I can hear you out.”

“This is a gacha game. Except you don’t have any IRL currency, so you can only use the in-game currencies to pull for Awakened Souls, fix up the Tower, buy costumes, that kind of thing.”

Sounded pretty standard.

“You grind by sending your Awakened Souls out to kill monsters. There is also a tower upgrade system, relationship progression, all kinds of limited time events, special Awakened Souls you can unlock through quests and achievements, and best of all, if you are very lucky and strategic, you can permanently power up yourself. I’m talking ‘smack the point off a mountain, then seduce it’s mom with your sheer rizz’ level power ups.”

“Sweet!” I clapped. “And the catch?”

“You ain’t getting out of here alive. I mean, hypothetically you can complete the end game content and roll out with all your permanent upgrades and your most relationship-progressed Awakened Soul, but…”

I could somehow see the nasty grin in the inky void of the hood. “You ever beat a gacha game?”