Sennefer turns away from the picture window looking down on his Cut-And-Pastesville’s entrance on one side and its one allotted spawnpoint on the other.

  The same spawnpoint I just walked from to get into the building and up to his office.

  He’s been glaring at me the whole time. “Well, if it isn’t the one and only Oneshot.”

  That’s right. Me. Oneshot. In the flesh. Basically. Or, as my friends like to call me, Mega Hitler.

  I’ve never met these friends. I don’t even know who they are. Honestly, I’m good with that. They kind of suck. But they do keep to the party line. That being that mine is not a reputation to imitate. It’s just not a very good idea is all. But everybody already knows that. It’s not a message I need to spread myself. That’s what friends are for.

  Referring to me at all is a big enough red flag on its own. Let alone if it’s me doing it. So I don’t.

  Instead, I opt to get on with whatever this is. “Hey, dude. You wanted to talk?”

  Sennefer’s shoulders slump a bit at my neglecting to run with his conversational setup. “Not particularly. But I do need to speak to you, yes.”

  “Alright… So here I am. What do you ‘need’ to speak about?”

  With a sigh, the unreasonably old man abandons his place by the window and plops into a plush office chair. “To be honest, I didn’t expect you to actually show up.”

  [ UNIQUE CHAIR DEPLOYED: CELESTIAL BEANBAG ]

  Ignoring the identically plush office chair facing his desk the other way, I splay out on my own, much nicer one. “Well, you did invite me over…”

  “I think we both know such formalities have little to no effect on where or when you do anything.”

  I rack my brain for what in the world he could mean by such a thing. “Not really a fair conclusion to draw. I can’t remember the last time I was invited anywhere.”

  “I wonder why that is…”

  “You’re old.”

  “I… Well, yes. I am aware.”

  “Oh, I thought we were just saying obvious shit about each other. Is that not what you were going for?”

  “I see we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  I shrug.

  His mouth twitches. “Very well then, straight to the point. You recently made an appearance around these parts. Traumatized a new arrival, even.”

  “Oh, you mean the girl who showed up, swore at me a bunch, and then ran away? Yeah, I wasn’t going to press charges or anything, but that did happen.”

  “You weren’t going to… From what I hear, you were the aggressor.”

  I balk at that. “What? I didn’t do shit to her.”

  “You scared her quite a lot, you know. So much so that she ran straight here, jumped a fence, and was about to land in an open-air orgy before its privacy barrier killed her first.”

  I just stare at him, mouth agape. Then I burst into laughter. “Oh my god, that’s fucking hilarious!”

  Somehow, Sennefer’s expression grows even sterner. “I don’t see what’s funny about that.”

  I’m still laying back in my beanbag, laughing my ass off. “You don’t? Have you tried picturing it?”

  “Not only that, I saw the aftermath. Blood and gore and vomit splattered everywhere, all over a lot of very traumatized naked people guilty of nothing beyond trying to put their previous trauma behind them.”

  I laugh harder.

  Sennefer rubs his temples. “I see regret isn’t something I’m about to instill in you over this. I should’ve guessed… So was that your goal then?”

  My efforts to make my speech intelligible only amount to getting my uproarious laughter down to a manic chuckle before responding. “Goal? What goal? I didn’t have a goal. And I’ll have you know that were I so inclined, I’d be plenty capable of traumatizing any number of naked people all on my own, thanks.”

  “Am I expected to believe that you, arguably the most notorious human to ever somehow be regarded as a ‘hero’, just happened to be, as your generation likes to say, ‘hanging out’ at that New Hero Spawnpoint? You being in Outset at all is unprecedented. And by the way, on behalf of all the towns of Outset, we were very happy with that status-quo.”

  I puff out a sarcastic sigh. “Everyone always is…”

  Sennefer is wildly unamused.

  I let out a less sarcastic sigh. “Of course I was there for a reason. It just had nothing to do with the girl you’re describing, and none of her actions were by my design. Except maybe her initial acknowledgement of my existence. Everything after that though? Nah. In fact, she only sticks out in my memory because the actual reason I was there showed up right as she ran off.”

  Sennefer perks up at that. “Ah yes, the man who spawned in, fell over, and who you then killed.”

  I screw up my face. “That’s an oversimplification if I’ve ever heard one. But yes, that is, technically, what happened.”

  “Then please…” Sennefer gestures me grandly onwards. “Do complicate it for me.”

  So I do. That is, after all, why I came here. “So there’s this guy. Or creature. Or… Never mind, that part doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that he was practically comatose for his entire run through Purgatory. Which, as I’m sure you know, isn’t entirely unheard of. Except for the fact that he was both alert, and conscious the entire time. And it just so happens that an Admin enlisted my help to come in and intercept him.”

  “I don’t understand. Why did the ‘Admin’ in question not simply do it themselves? Or why didn’t a ‘Mod’ just swipe him up and cut out the middleman?”

  I roll my eyes at both his air-quotes and the accusation of being a middleman. “The ‘Admin’ in question was otherwise ‘occupied’ at the ‘time’. And ‘someone’ in that specific ‘condition’ just barely wouldn’t ‘warrant’ Mod ‘intervention’ under their ‘Code’. You know… The one they ‘must never break’? Not for ‘any reason’? Not even for the obvious betterment of what is clearly a ‘victim’?”

  Sennefer nods, ignoring all my own air quotes. “And therein lies corruption… They are perhaps wiser than they know.”

  Lowering my pointer fingers, I snort out a derisive laugh. “Oh, trust me. They know. They’re perfectly aware of just how good their shit smells.”

  I try to time out a continuation of the same laugh to make myself not sound like a robot. But I’m pretty sure the attempt is what makes me sound like a robot.

  Sennefer looks at me like I’m crazy. Which is fair. Preferable, even. “Do you disagree with their policy of nonintervention?”

  I shake my preferably crazy head. “Not at all. I just talk to this Admin a lot. And she definitely wishes they’d loosen their own self-imposed handcuffs a bit. The fact that it would benefit me personally is wildly besides the point.”

  “I’m sure… So why did the aforementioned girl tell me that both she, and said comatose man, had their Blankets disabled the instant they appeared there?”

  “I wouldn’t know why anyone, let alone she, would tell you anything at all.”

  “Are you saying Jessie lied to me?”

  “No, they were definitely disabled. I just don’t know why she’d tell you.”

  “Jackass.”

  With a smile, I blow right past the apt insult. “That was something the Admin in question did to help things along. Otherwise, I couldn’t touch the guy. Literally, even.”

  “So this disabling wasn’t done by you, but rather for you?”

  I shake my head. “It was specifically done to facilitate me killing that guy. But the whole thing, both my part and theirs, was exclusively for his benefit. You gotta understand, he was only ‘comatose’ in appearance. In actuality, he was fully conscious, confused, and in constant pain from overstimulation to all his previously nonexistent senses.”

  I just stare at Sennefer for a second to let that sink in.

  He doesn’t react.

  So I spell it out. “Every moment was hell. But, ‘wisely’, no administrative action could be taken by anyone but his Admin on-call. Who, as we’ve established, was otherwise occupied at the time. But what they could do, what she could get approved, and so what happened, was to alter the respawn point itself to take one damage from anyone who spawned in. That disabled the blankets. And that’s what let me put him out of his quite literal misery as soon as I verified I had the right target.”

  “I see… And this is why you ‘greeted’ them both first?”

  “Yep. It was a test. To pass, all they had to do was acknowledge my presence. You know, I actually thought it was the girl for a while? She just stood there and stared vaguely into the distance for several minutes before I said anything. But then it turned out she was fine. Just enjoying the view. So I left her to it.”

  I uncross and recross my legs for no reason. “The next guy though? Instead of responding to my greeting or staring off at Gaia or whatever, he rather, as you so eloquently put it, fell over. And then he stayed that way. As soon as I was sure I had the right guy, I killed him as painlessly as I could. At which point, the Admins took over and redirected his respawn to one of their treatment centers.”

  “Why couldn’t they have done that first? Why get Outset involved at all?”

  I shrug. “Same reason I had to show up in the first place. Their hands were tied. Me not actually being an Admin, or working for them in any way, was the one loophole that let the whole thing work.”

  “You aren’t working for them, then?”

  “You find that surprising?”

  Sennefer just rolls his eyes.

  I smirk at that. “Nope… I’m not working for them. Just married to one. She needed my help, so I helped. Simple as that.”

  “So the rumors are true…”

  “Ah yes, the salacious rumors of me being-” I put on a scandalized expression. “-MARRIED.”

  Sennefer relaxes into his chair. “Very well. That’s all I needed to know about this incident I think. Do you have any other questions for me?”

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

  “What’s your favorite sexual position?”

  Sennefer sighs. “Missionary. Now please leave.”

  I could teleport home straight-away. But that’d be too amenable for my liking just now.

  Instead, I push off my beanbag, land on my feet, and turn around with a flourish.

  [ UNIQUE CHAIR RETRACTED: CELESTIAL BEANBAG ]

  I stroll down the stairs, out the door, and onto the street.

  When I get there, I’m met with a familiar sight. An angry mob. Not that I’ve seen this one specifically. It’s a far cry from the usual crowd. But I’ve definitely got a good deja vu going right now.

  I blink at them for a second before belatedly looking up at the big ‘MAYOR’ letters dancing above the door.

  Feigning a sudden understanding of the situation, I step out of the doorway and graciously gesture them through.

  Their eyes all stay on me, apparently uninterested in the hole in the old-man-still-for-some-reason’s schedule.

  Eventually, one of them speaks. “Well?!”

  I blink at them as though I don’t already know exactly what this is. “Well what?”

  The blonde guy on the bench leans forward like an untreated mental patient on his throne at the park. “Well… How about we start with what the hell you’re doing here?”

  I look up at the ‘Mayor’ sign. Then back to the guy.

  I point at the sign.

  As though in response to anything anyone would reasonably call ‘fighting words’, one of them shoots me with a gun.

  Except he doesn’t. Not when I have my thing turned on.

  [ LEGENDARY TOGGLE: REACTIVE TELEPORT ]

  From about an inch to the right of where I was just standing, I target my ‘attacker’. Not the one who was talking. Gotta make sure I’ve got the right guy, now…

  But that worry is alleviated as the town’s allotted Pyramid Guards each zoom in to take him by the arm.

  [ HERO TARGETED: TROY ]

  [ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]

  I wait for them to just barely start to lift him up before I stab him.

  Hundreds of red ‘1’s rise from his corpse all at once.

  [ UNCOMMON DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: REVOLVER ]

  So, I have this policy. If a Hero attacks me first, I kill them. If an NPC does, I don’t. Not unless I can remember them from an earlier attack. In which case, they die too.

  Thankfully, none of these loot boxes are NPCs. That simplifies things. I really don’t like killing NPCs. But the whole point is to discourage future attacks. And I can’t have people thinking I’m not enjoying this.

  So did I need an assist from the triangle robots? Hell no. I could’ve stabbed Troy right away. But I generally try to make my reprisals as fast, efficient, and ruthless as possible. And waiting the few extra seconds to strike while they’re helpless just adds this extra sadistic spice to the whole affair.

  It’s a fairly brutal policy, I know. But with my reputation, I can’t really afford to be constantly attacked by everyone with an axe to grind. Because there’s a whole hell of a lot of them. More than enough to go around. Way more than I could ever deal with. Not and get anything else done.

  So I do try to at least stay consistent enough to set a clear precedent for anyone interested in following up.

  Some do attack me anyway. Like this guy. But somehow, I can’t quite bring myself to feel bad about slapping away the worst of them to keep the rest away. It’s win-win, really. They get to bother me. I, in turn, get a steady supply of catharsis and minor loot pulls from my equally steady supply of helpless attackers.

  Or maybe I’ve just grown jaded after dealing with it for going on 65 years now. It got old a while ago.

  But I could never say no to a free loot box. Yeah, the prizes tend to suck. But there’s always the chance.

  And that’s what keeps you going. The ever-encroaching jackpot. The one you know is coming. Right up until you win or run out of money. Or exhibit any semblance of self control at all.

  But you’ll definitely win the next one. And when you don’t, you’ll still win the next one. Always the next one.

  You keep telling yourself that. Statistically, you have to eventually be right.

  And when you inevitably are, that’s all you’ll remember. The fact that you were right that one time lets you pretend all the others didn’t happen. It’s easy to lie to yourself when you have the evidence in your pocket. Evidence that’s just a single pull away. So how can you afford to give up now?

  You can’t. That’s all there is to it. You’ve gotta spend money to make money, after all. But that’s where the analogy breaks down.

  In my case, all the pulls are free. And they come to me, not the other way around. They even go so far as to show up insulting my mom and stuff. Killing them is mentally, spiritually and monetarily fun, rewarding, and healthy.

  In other words, I do this because I have to. When you get right down to it, I don’t really have a choice.

  As they attack, I retaliate more or less on autopilot. After all, where else would my attention be but on the system readout?

  [ COMMON DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: HEALTH POTION ]

  [ COMMON DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: MANA POTION ]

  [ UNCOMMON DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: PUNCH DAGGER ]

  As my new items stream in, I can’t help my disappointment. The revolver really was the jackpot, wasn’t it? I guess that’s what I get for defending myself in Outset…

  Apparently Sennefer agrees with the sentiment because the Pyramid Guard quickly stop responding to my would-be victimizers.

  And as my excitement at trimming the weeds diminishes, some of it returns with a voice I never expected to yell at me again so soon. “YOU!!!”

  Turning even as I teleport through oncoming attacks from people I now ignore, I watch the redhead take her time plodding over to me. I suppose she might be fast for a newbie. But I’ve got 32 Speed myself. Even minmaxing the opposite STAT, I’m unbridgeably faster than her by default.

  So, not even bothering with a Targeted Teleport, I simply hold the hidden blade under my hand and watch her run straight into it.

  Except she doesn’t. She doesn’t even attack me. She just touches the tip of my weapon to hers before it’s even out of the scabbard. And instead of exploding in a cloud of 1’s, she simply disappears the moment my blade meets hers.

  Then, I marvel as I take damage for the first time in… How many years?

  [ HP: 9,407/9,408 ]

  I can’t help laughing at the readout. One Damage? Whatever she did, it obviously backfired.

  Wanting to see if that was actually all she had, I pivot around and lazily wave another thrust at her center mass.

  She just barely gets her sword up in time. When the edge of her blade hits the point of mine, she disappears again.

  Then, a teeny red gash flashes across the tip of my blade.

  [ HP: 9,404/9,408 ]

  Three Damage? Oh my god, she tripled it. That’s adorable.

  Spinning in place, I stop slowing my movements and actually try to hit her this time.

  She tries to touch her blade to mine again at the last second. She’s got some seriously impressive reflexes, too.

  But no. Not even close. Not now that I’m actually trying. When two Heroes compete in a STAT, it really all comes down to who has the bigger number.

  And at Level 64, I’ve got STATs for days. Seven of them, anyway. The eighth doesn’t count.

  I smile warmly at the big red ‘1’ rising from her inevitable corpse.

  [ UNIQUE ATTACKER PENALTY LOST: TRUE RANDOM MOD STONE ]

  Aaand there goes my smile.

  That… Wasn’t an attack, was it?

  She… Only ever countered, didn’t she?

  I… Killed her before she ever actually attacked me, didn’t I? “Oh…” I guess that’s ‘technically’ within the spirit of the rules they love so much…

  Pyramid Guards grab me by either arm.

  “Fuck…”

  They start to raise me up.

  Figuring I might as well make the most of it, I wait until then to throw my arms to the side and do an even eviler laugh than last time. “MHMHMHMHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!”

  Everyone seems to forget that these things have HP. It’s a lot. But that might as well be the same as ‘1’, only brighter.

  The space on either side of my arm erupts into columns of red so opaque that they seem to make the rest of the world transparent by comparison.

  Some folks in the back turn and run. Smart. But they’re in no danger. If they don’t attack me, I won’t attack them. Or else it’ll be nothing but bullshit like what just happened where I’m about to lose several days of grinding just to replace the thing I lost just because I bothered to be thorough.

  Comparing that to the best-case-scenario loot from each of these morons? It’s just not worth it. Not to say they don’t have good stuff for where they are and what they’re doing. It’s just that my minimum standard for ‘good stuff’ is different from theirs.

  No way around it. I lost something valuable to me. And I’m about to walk away with a pile of stuff valuable to them. In other words, trash. Looks like this whole thing is ending badly for everyone…

  [ HP: 9,408/9,408 ]

  As I watch them run, my passive regen finally kicks in and my sliver of red health refills, disappearing from my view once it’s full.

  Over half of the crowd is gone now. Leaving only the ‘badasses’. Who knows? Maybe one of them is carrying something that’ll make it worth losing that True Random?

  I snort derisively at myself. Fat chance.

  I offer an even more derisive sigh to these newbies ineffectively swinging at me as they follow right behind… Jessie was her name, right? Hm… Jessie the Anime Swordsman… Swordswoman..? Wait, no. Weeb. Jessie the Weeb. I wonder how she’ll use the Mod… But she’s already gone.

  And they’re still trying to hit me.

  Overcome by a wave of nostalgia, I just stand there, let it happen, and remember that one episode of Sword Art Online. Oh god, I can’t believe that’s the first place my mind went. Who’s supposed to be the weeb, again?

  Moment effectively ruined, I just glare at these idiots as they keep failing to hurt me even a little.

  One by one, I repeat the same move to kill them all. I lazily walk over, reach out, and prick them once on the forehead.

  If they dodge, I shrug, change targets and try again.

  The whole thing doesn’t take more than a few minutes. And in those few minutes, I watch their will to fight diminish. Which it eventually does. As always, this is so much more effective than killing people outright and giving them my shit.

  Just let them attack until they don’t want to anymore, kill them in one shot, and take whatever of theirs the System gives me.

  Soon, only a single attacker remains. He’s been shooting arrows at me since the girl showed up. I only didn’t attack him earlier because someone else was always closer. Not anymore though.

  Now that he’s the only one left, he’s acting all skittish about it.

  I don’t move forward right away. Instead, I just look at the guy. I can’t help it. He reminds me of my old cat. I take a single purposeful step towards him.

  He turns and runs for his life.

  Aaawe… He really is just like Autumn. But, to be fair, this guy has more reason to fear me than she ever did.

  I remember the cat then. I remember all my cats then.

  Actually pretty far from me already, I belatedly target the runner as he tries to enter stores and doors and other such things you can’t access while in combat.

  [ HERO TARGETED: MICH ]

  [ EPIC ACTION: TARGETED TELEPORT ]

  I’m immediately in front of him.

  He immediately bumps into me and falls over.

  I immediately reach down and tap him on the forehead.

  [ COMMON DEFENDER REPARATION GAINED: ORGY TOKEN ]

  “Heh…” I start laughing.

  I can’t help it. That’s fucking hilarious. I bet he’s not too happy about me having that. Probably already cursing me up and down while he waits for respawn. Not that the guy really has anything to worry about.

  I’m not about to sneak into any of their little Olympic Village Fuckfests. For a variety of reasons. Not the least of which being that they’d never let me in, token or no, for a much larger variety of reasons.

  Finally done, I look around at the result of all that chaos. Even when it’s not profitable, self-defense is always at least a little fun. And people just keep volunteering for it. Not like I actually ask for this shit…

  And if they don’t like me beating them at a fight they did ask for, they can absolutely go fuck themselves off the nearest cliff. Or they can try me and I’ll do it for them.

  Although I do wince as I glance back at the door with the ‘MAYOR’ letters dancing over it.

  And there’s the mayor himself, arms folded, glaring at me with somehow even more disapproval than before. I suppose this is quite a bit more trouble than I had in mind when I left his office.

  I was just gonna take a stroll around the town. Turn a few heads. Stimulate a few rumor mills. Cause a few headaches for a few bureaucrats. But instead?

  I look around and really take in the mess of bodies covering the previously idyllic street. “Oof…”

  I wince again as I bring up my world map and select literally the first waypoint that occurs to me.

  [ MYTHIC ACTION: COOLDOWN RESET ]

  [ EPIC ACTION: MANA OVERCLOCK ]

  [ LEGENDARY ACTION: WAYPOINT TELEPORT ]