Klavin Adderwood was surrounded by a whole village of men and women from different economic standings all staring at him like a thief–which they believed he was. A bishop of silver hair covering his face below his nostrils thin and groomed looked at him with vehemence that could sell a stage play.

  “Your skill will cause great ruin upon us all. Leave now before we put an end to it.”

  This was some serious, malicious behavior–to understand what happened his tale will need to be backtracked.

  Before he was Klavin Adderwood he was Liam Gefferson, a twenty-seven year old low income part timer who loved playing a tactical RPG game called Stars of Runes: Wolf’s Calling to Fenrir. It was a game where you control units on a board to fight. You can be a magic academy student, adventurer, dungeon explorer, or just go against the usual system, becoming a bandit who fights travelers for their money and equipment until a strong hero kills you, making you repeat the whole game.

  Liam completed the game in New Game+ an umpteenth amount of times hoping with all his wins in the original storyline he could take down the hero of the path but always failing. The game was basically cruel to those who fought solo and bandits mostly walked alone in that world. Not only does he not get any party members in a game that has different units forming together to defeat armies, hordes of monsters and demon kings…it also has your own OC creation love interests. Basically character customization of a girl with A.I. giving her personality, script and a voice mimicking an actual female voice making them better than the script written love interests with voice actors/actresses acting their interactions with you.

  Liam just tried for the eighth time after starting New Game+ for the umpteenth time to defeat the hero. He found a way to take down all his companions, misdirecting him away from getting to fight him last. He checked the heroes’ status on the board before the fight–double checked it because this wasn’t the first time he got to this part–before moving in a left vertical line facing the hero from his flank since that was what he believed to be his weak spot.

  It started like any battle he was in: him using his legendary Fenrir Leg Ebony knife to unleash a preemptive strike on him before the Action Gauge showed up. The Action Gauge was a way for players to decide which kind of action they would take; basic attack, magic attack, or ultimate attack.

  The stronger a character was the faster the gauge filled up. First it reached orange then blue followed last by silver. Basic attack may seem at first to be the fastest and easiest option to use, but the hit ratio was low not to mention it fills up slower the more it's used. Magic has a higher hit rate but its potency is weakened using it as a first action with the magic completely randomized of the magic learned, and the less spells you know the slower the gauge fills to use it. Finally there was ultimate. It is unlocked only after a character reaches a high level and can only be used once throughout the whole battle.

  Flashes of memories rushed through his mind like a flood roaring through a crevice–memories of all his previous defeats. First he just came in using mere basic attacks than others with a knife imbued with a poison effect. Instead of the knife inflicting poison on him it bounced back weakening him until he died. Next he used an amulet that lets him cast two spells at once combined with a staff that boosts lighting magic constantly hitting him with a Thunderstorm Strike; the hardest spell to dodge. It seemed to be working a lot better than his previous attempt only for him to raise his hero sword in the air as a lightning rod when the lightning strikes. Instead of the lightning circulating through his skin charring him his skin sheened with a yellow coat before setting into his two-gripped sword stance slashing away until his characters’ health depleted.

  Liam’s latest plan was to use equipment that charges his gauge, increase his evasiveness and finish with magic that boosts his stats with each use saving for his ultimate move: Ragnar?k and Yggdrasil. When activated a large tree guarded by a gold dragon emerges from the ground before a gargantuan flaming red titan grows from behind. He clasps his hand tightly on the peak of the tree pulling it out, the dragon spewing a tongue of flames on his arm, the flames causing his burning body to burn with fire lighting the whole tree in blue flames before swinging it like a lumberjack axe.

  After a cool explosion expanding a large radius–the length of three plantations–the hero was exhausted to two percent of collapse leaning on his sword for support. Liam believed the battle was as good as won; the hero had a health bar so depleted it would take a magnification of a thousand to see his speck of health left. However, glowing balls with long wispy tails emerged around the field. They soared up high before flying directly into the hero. Every spirit slamming into him cleansed the scorching char and blood from his armor and surrounded him in a gold aura.

  Before Liam’s gauge even got to the basic attack fill, the hero created a golden apparition of a giant lion that pounced on him tearing into him until his health was torn away, killing him.

  Now he began the battle trying something he’s never done before, and that was enter unequipped, not bothering to press any buttons. In all the fights the hero seemed blessed with a deus ex machina–plot armor that allows him to overcome anything that would kill anyone else. If he can depend against anything…why not see what nothing does, Liam decided.

  The battle progressed with neither side attacking even when their gauges filled to the maximum. It seemed like the battle would go on forever…until someone else jumped into the fray, Princess Rossy. She was a long blonde haired skinny lady with a red dress, a collar of white fur trimmed on the neck, a very thin necklace above her color, light blue eyes and a ring on her ring finger. The princess through a text exchange reasoned with the hero not to hurt him–he would be better repenting his crimes in a cell with a gaoler whose uncle was one of the royals he killed.

  Pictures of Liam’s character being taken away in a coach with bars followed by a flabby armed sickly skin gaoler pulling out toes and fingernails finished by a somber frame of his character holding his legs crying into his knees while the twilight of the moon shone through his prison window. Etched in a textbox on the lower half of the screen was the text giving this transition more nuisance.

  “Surrendering to the hero and the princess, you were taken to the gaolers’ cell awaiting the day you would be released. However, due to your past with the gaolers’ uncle you were tortured and fed slop not even a rat would eat. Eventually you lose all hope of ever being released and trap yourself in the hope the gaoler would just end your life.”

  Then the end credits start rolling, ending the adventure game that took him umpteenth New Game+ to reach. Liam was upset; not because he spent years playing this game for it to be finally over leaving him as a shut-in with no prospects…but because after several tries in a route the only way it ended was an unhappy ending. He just let the credits roll like a Chatroulette random match looking for a pretty opposite sex partner wondering what he would do next with his life.

  He was bad at school so he couldn’t expect to graduate night school and earn a diploma, he was too antisocial to be a streamer/reactor, and he had no friends to talk to.

  Just when he was about to do an empty celebration buying a taco kit, a text appeared on his TV screen “Congratulations for completing 100 percent of stars of Rune: Wolf’s Calling to Fenrir. For a full game experience please head to this address: 169 Blackstone ave.”

  Liam scoffed; this could be a trick from a hacker to get him alone so he could jab a knife in his back and rob him. However, if it was an address close by Liam couldn’t resist scoping it out…after putting a steak knife in his back pocket just in case they really were trying to mug him.

  He opened his door–took a lot of initiative since he hasn’t left his apartment in over ten days–blinking from eye irritation when direct sunlight beamed down into his face. The pain mixed in with the smog from everyone in the building going outside to smoke five times a week made him want to throw up…by some miracle he choked the vile building up back down his throat. With that he trekked from his building to the aforementioned street.

  Along the way he was bombarded with constant migraines, the loud noises of traffic roaring into his thymic membrane, and the incessant coughing of a mucous substance that neither wanted to stay but didn’t want to leave either. This was city life–fun to vacation here if you think you have better dating opportunities and watching a sporting event but living here was like being a mole without a burrow.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  For the inhabitants all you were given was food that eventually kills your taste buds and crap on the sidewalk that probably wasn’t even a dog’s. Liam used to live in a beautiful house by the lake when he was born until he turned twelve when something bad happened to his parents that made them have to move. His guess was either gambling debts, job loss or investment scams. His parents never told him since they were very proud, but being an only child in that situation caused a lot of tension he couldn’t share with anyone.

  Eventually he passed high school at the ripe age of 21. After that his parents convinced him to take a two year college course where the only aspect was working in a community center for mentally disabled adults. Pay was low but so were his responsibilities. He mostly wrote Naruto or Inuyasha fanfictions while watching videos on stranger danger. Like a lot of other stores from strip malls to restaurants the funds eventually got cut leaving the laziest worker, Liam, to getting let go. After losing his meager job he used savings from a survey app with weekly winners to buy a game station and the game Stars of Runes thinking he could get donations streaming Let’s Play.

  Why he didn’t consider his online game streaming was such a big hype and his game was so popular many other streamers including big chested Instagram models would be playing it leaving no room for a scrawny guy with more purple bags on his face than skin on his face. The early years of internet subscription they charged for the minutes he spent on the computer so no views/donations left him with very little to spend. He gave up trying to make a name for himself and embraced his hikkamori lifestyle playing Rune of Stars Wolf’s Calling Fenrir twelve hours a day.

  That was Liam’s sad past; he stared too long into the abyss of escapism; it eventually stared back at him. And now he was a few blocks from the street address the mysterious messenger sent to him, 169 Blackstone ave was a street that didn’t have that smog, smell, taste inhalation, a lot of space in a street that prided itself in strip malls, ditches with small streams of muddy water and one abandoned house made from redwood but now so corroded in black it was more like a black knights’ castle.

  Liam paced around the area keeping his right hand close to his thigh while keeping his left arm stretched out. There were no footprints in the dirt other than the ones he made stepping on it. After pacing around for a quarter of an hour he was thinking about leaving and going home…reacted with a cry as he side-stepped with a hop after something that usually never happens to him happened. Indeed, the thing that happened to him that usually never happens was he received a text on his phone. Granted, he did have some apps that notified him when new surveys were available or when he won the weekly draw, but they had their sound notification turned off. He didn’t bother turning off the notification for his texts since no one texts him–not even scammers who send random messages hoping he would reply to them so they could hassle/honeytrap him to invest on bogus sites.

  No number but it was titled YOUR BENEFICIARY. In it was just two words: KNOCK KNOCK

  Liam was certain now this was a joke brought on by someone who had jilted feelings towards him. How they hacked his TV was a mystery, but if their plan was to make him feel like a fool…they succeeded.

  Liam with a huff turned around about to go home. However, something inside him was screaming for him to knock on the corroded black door. For a moment he just blew a raspberry to one one finding his own idea to be asinine, but the more he thought how ridiculous the idea was the more a thought fringed in his head…’what do I have to lose? Oh yeah, a dignity I never truly had.’

  A little resentful, seething from memories of his past turmoil's and present ineptitudes, he stormed to the door giving it two knocks. By instinct already suspecting nothing would happen he swerved around about to venture back to his house. He made a quick veering stop, finally noticing something unusual and queer: there was only a white void where the road/sidewalk should be. Liam was confused and petrified for what felt like the length of the Lord of the Rings trilogy–really it was just two minutes in this scenario–’all he could come up with was he isekai’d.

  Isekai: a fantasy term for someone who lives in a world similar to the real world being sent to a world with more fantasy elements. But if those video games were any catalogue/help guide for this it was most worlds have at least trees, river, lava or sky wherever they take them; this was more to Liam like the way a blank slate of a baby’s mind would look to a psychotherapist.

  Just when he was about to turn around before his eventual meltdown in a trapped space, a voice like honey called to him.

  “Welcome.”

  Liam turned around to find a woman behind a receptionist desk made of teal blue plastic with two photo frames with black corners and gold trimmings. Seeing a girl in this void actually speaking to him after ten days of alienation from the outside world was a little tantalizing for his senses, but at least it meant he wasn’t trapped like he originally thought.

  He met the gaze of a red haired girl with straw looking strands of hair jutting in two ponytails, had on a white gown but with a patch of yellow with black stripes on her right shoulder, and hazel eyes.

  Liam immediately had an obvious question for her. “Where am I?”

  “Why you are in the Isekai Library.” She replied with a big smile and soothing honey voice.

  “Isekai Library?”

  “Yes. It used to be called Isekai Club but that sounded like something humans have in small groups; a library is owned by a government like how my superiors rule this space.”

  “That’s all very interesting but why and here?” A question he should’ve started with but this was all strange, phenomenal to him.

  “Throughout the world we send out certain games with challenges hidden in the games. By reaching 100 percent completion you’ve completed our test thus have earned the right to experience new reality.”

  Suddenly, the white void around him was aligned with book shelves, a bathroom with a poster of Ren from Re:Zero making an omelet with a heart on it, a shower room, an indoor food stand and a room with a computer.

  “Like it?” She asked. “We originally started as just an archive of books then we learned humans need to dispel waste, get hungry, need to cleanse their bodies and need food. As for the computer…it’s fun for them when the world gets them down, but only for one hour.”

  “This is good ‘n’ all but what does it have to do with me? I thought I was being sent to another world.”

  “I never said you couldn’t come back.”

  Liam looked at her with intrigued glinting eyes.

  “I am going to a fantasy world and get to come back to this place?”

  “Sure. To come back chant ‘escapism’ not in a sentence, and to return to the world you're given, say ‘reality’.”

  Next thing Liam knew he was handed a guidance book. This one had a tally black line through the middle or one side was a fat stickman sprawled on a couch with x’s in his eyes and a game console controller gripped in it while on the other side was a stickman raising his sword in the air with a stickman with long hair clinging to his leg. The title of the book was ‘How To Go From A Societal Loser Into A Big Hero In Your Isekai Journey.’

  Liam skimmed through the pages before giving it time for an actual read. It looked more like a D N D book than a guidance book. It talked mostly about levels, EXP, growth stats, dungeons, skills and even how women in Isekai worlds throw themselves at you ready for you to change their lives. After skimming he pushed it back to the receptionist

  “I’m required by rule to show it to you, but I can understand how insipid it must be.”

  The book floated in the air encompassed by the leering eyes of Liam and the receptionist. Liam could assume it was attached to strings, until it disintegrated into blue pixels. Next two holograms appeared of two stick men. One had a bandana tossing seeds into a field…the other was reading on a lavish couch.

  “Normally you get to choose if you want to reincarnate as a baby or live the rest of your life there as a foreigner at the age you are now–I just figured since you played a video game so much to full completion your life beforehand wasn’t so great.”

  Liam shuddered. Whatever problems made his parents move it was so bad they kept looking behind them every time they turned a corner, never let him hang out with other kids after school, and moved their bed besides the front door. It was unfair how some kids were born with parents who wanted what was best for them while others were born with parents who just can’t help themselves.

  “Yes, I would like to be reincarnated as a baby.”

  “Good. Would you like to be in a family who are poor, commonly referred to as ‘commoners; or would you rather be in a rich family who expects much of you but are too busy to make time for you?”

  Being rich was enough to set aside all the other problems his family had, but he was poor in his last life…another life of it couldn’t hurt, especially when this time he’d have parents who love him.

  “I’d like to be born as a commoner.”

  The hologram of him sitting in a lavish chair disappeared leaving only the seed sower hologram. Liam stared at it a fleeting moment, felt like time was standing still which it probably was in his original world, finally mustering a small smile.

  “When you're ready please put your hand into the hologram.”

  Liam took a deep breath in, for the first time he didn’t taste leftover food or smog sifting into his nasal cavity, just air so fresh it was practically from the hemisphere, then put his hand into the hologram.

  And then–he was gone in a star-shaped effect. The receptionist was by her lonesome now in the seemingly bright library with human facilities.

  In a blank of an eye it all changed back into a sterile white void. The receptionist stayed the way she looked for a short while; once she was sure she was completely alone she grew red cat ears, pink phoenix wings on her back, a third oval shaped large golden eye sticking from her forehead to the ridge of her nose, and replacing her gown with a black fuzzy chest squared around a black lizardmen’s head. She took out an old fashioned dial phone starting to dial it like relishing fries on her plate. She listened for minutes to the regal sound of trumpets blowing while angels caroomed through the sky before she received an answer.

  “M’Lord, it’s Gossamer. I just spoke to the boy today…the boy we’ve been looking for. Now we only have to wait a few decades before he delivers what you want. Uh-huh. I will certainly do that. Thank you Lord.”

  Ending the call and putting the phone away…she traced her chin smiling. “It seems like just yesterday you were a baby…the day before that you were an NPC bully no one thought about…and before that you were a simp who fell for an organ harvester. Now you're a useful man. Live a good life, Liam…until time needs you.”