Chương 2: It’s Not a System—It’s Your New Life!

Something soft was pressing into the back of his neck. Grass. His eyes opened to a sky that was wrong. Wrong how. Wrong in like four ways at once, but his brain picked one at a time. First: two suns. Second: one of them was blue. Like, actually blue. Blue Takis blue. A sun the color of a fucking Gatorade flavor. Third: the sky behind the suns was the right kind of blue, which somehow made it worse. Fourth: it smelled like— He sat up too fast and his vision did the thing. Pink grass. Pink fucking grass.

He was lying in a field of pink grass that smelled like lavender mixed with whatever scent those Instagram girls were always shilling, the one in the bottle shaped like a uterus, the one that costs eighty bucks and smells like a Bath & Body Works having a stroke. He looked down at himself. His white Uniqlo tee. The one that said WORLD'S OKAYEST GUY in cracked iron-on letters, which had been funny in 2019 and was now a crime against his own body. His pants. His good pants.

The non-jean ones because fuck jeans, jeans were for people whose legs didn't have feelings. Costco shoes. Black. Generic. Forty bucks. Best shoes he'd ever owned and he'd die on that hill. Had died, possibly. Was that what had happened. Was he— He patted his pockets. Wax pen. Thank god. Wallet. Student card. Debit card. Twelve dollars cash because he was a student and everything cost everything. Well. His father was rich as shit. Whatever. Folded receipt with handwriting on the back. Right. The note.

He had written a note for Cayenne last week at like 3am because he thought of a line he wanted her to say in chapter fourteen and he didn't trust himself to remember it, so he wrote it down on a Couche-Tard receipt and put it in his pocket and never transcribed it. He didn't unfold it. He knew what it said. It said cayenne re: church scene — "i'd let god watch." Yeah. Phone. He pulled out his phone. On. Full battery, which was impossible because it had been at 11% on the metro. Screen open to the webnovel app.

Kael DarkVeil. He raised one hand—not in arrogance, but in inevitability—and the air around him— The screen flickered. The text dissolved. A different screen bloomed in front of his face, hovering in the air about a foot from his nose, translucent blue with little particle effects drifting off the edges like a screensaver from 2007. [Welcome, Ben.] [Welcome to Valoria.] Fuck.

He scrambled backward through the pink grass on his hands and ass, which is a maneuver that has never once looked dignified, and the screen just kept floating in front of his face like it was attached to his eyeballs by a string. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. Valoria. VALORIA. RAVENCREST ACADEMY. RAVENCREST FUCKING ACADEMY. The Kael DarkVeil thing. The book. The fucking book. The screen rippled. New text bloomed. [I sense your confusion, Traveler.] [Allow me to elucidate.] [You have been chosen.] [This is not merely a system.] [This is a new paradigm of becoming.] [Sparkle] He stared. The font was Comic Sans adjacent. Like Comic Sans but… worse. A font that thought it was elegant. Some bullshit serif with little flourishes on the capitals. Every line was center-aligned. There was a sparkle emoji in the actual text. A SPARKLE EMOJI. A SPARKLE FUCKING EMOJI. He was dead. He had to be dead.

He died on the curb in front of a Cybertruck driven by a tech bro and now he was in hell and hell was a ChatGPT-generated isekai based on a book he hated after three lines. The afterlife had a content strategy. The afterlife was a fucking startup. The afterlife was Sam Altman's wet dream. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. He tried to speak. His mouth was dry. He tried again.

"What the fucking shit." His voice came out normal. His voice. Still his. He patted his face. Still his face. He pulled at a strand of his hair and brought it to his eyes. Brown. Normal brown. Not obsidian. Not raven. Was raven even a fucking color. Whatever. His hair was still brown like tung tung tung sahur. Thank god. okay. okay one thing at a time. name's still Ben. hair's still brown. shoes are still Costco. two suns. pink grass. a screen. A SCREEN. He waved his hand through the screen.

His hand went through it. The screen didn't move. The text just kept hovering there with its fucking sparkle emoji and its weird font, and underneath the first message new text was already loading in like he was watching some bitch type in real time. [It is natural to feel apprehension.] [Many travelers experience initial disorientation upon arrival.] [Take a deep breath. Ground yourself.] [Your journey begins here.] Ground yourself. GROUND YOURSELF. It was talking like a wellness app.

It was talking like every push notification he'd ever ignored. It was—oh god, oh no, oh fuck—it was talking like Kael's narrator. Same cadence. Same rhythm. Not merely a system. A new paradigm of becoming. Same antithesis bullshit. Same em dashes coming any second now, he could feel them, they were loading. ARGHHHHHHHH. His hand went to his pocket on instinct. Wax pen. He pulled it out. Looked at it. Looked at the screen. Looked at the pen. Don't. Definitely don't. He hit it. Held it. The screen flashed red.

Actually red. The whole thing went carmine and the font got bigger and an alarm noise played from somewhere that did not have speakers. [ALERT] [Foreign substance detected.] [Toxin classification: UNKNOWN.] [Recommended action: cease consumption immediately.] [Your wellness is our priority.] Fuck you clanker. He exhaled the smoke directly into the screen. The smoke went through it.

The screen stayed red for another second and then faded back to blue, and Ben sat in the pink grass with his pen in one hand and his phone in the other and his student card in his pocket and a note that said i'd let god watch against his thigh, and he thought, very clearly, for maybe the first time since the curb: okay. lock in dude. He breathed. Lock the fuck in Ben. One. You're not dead. Or you are. Either way the situation is the situation. Two. You're in the fucking book. The book. With the obsidian hair guy.

Valoria. Ravencrest. Kael fucking DarkVeil is somewhere on this planet probably gathering himself in a courtyard. Three. The system is a chatbot. It is literally a chatbot. It's talking like the customer service AI of a furniture app. Four. You can probably just kill yourself again. He looked at the screen.

"Hey," he said out loud, because apparently this was his life now.

"Hey system. Whatever you are. Can I kill myself." The screen pulsed gently. [I understand you are experiencing strong emotions.] [Travelers often feel overwhelmed during their initial transition.] [Let us focus on the path ahead.]"Make me kill myself." [Your journey begins here.]"I asked if I can kill myself." [Your journey begins here.] He took a deep breath and smiled.

"AND WHY IS THERE A SCREEN. THIS ISN'T FUCKING ELDEN RING. THIS IS REAL LIFE. ALLEGEDLY. WHO PUT A UI IN REALITY. WHO APPROVED THIS. WHO'S THE PRODUCT MANAGER. I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR FUCKING SUPERVISOR." [Your journey begins here.] He stared at it. It stared back. Sort of. It didn't have eyes. He was going to lose his fucking mind in this field of pink influencer bullshit. Then he heard wheels. Slow, creaking, wooden wheels. The sound of a cart in every video game tutorial ever made. He turned his head. Slow.

He already knew. The universe had been telegraphing it for ten minutes. The cliché's loading bar was visible at the bottom of his soul. A cart. A wooden cart. Pulled by an animal that was sort of a pony and sort of a wolf and sort of made up by a six-year-old. Stubby legs. Wolf face. Pony body. A small horn maybe. Not maybe, definitely, but Ben refused to look directly at the horn. Driving the cart was an old man. Of course it was an old man. He had a straw hat. He had a beard.

He was wearing some kind of brown vest situation thing. He looked like he had been carved out of a community theatre prop. He had crinkly eyes. He had a friendly weathered smile. He was THE Friendly NPC #1. He pulled the cart to a stop.

"You seem lost, traveler," he said, in a warm voice.

"Would you care for a ride?" Ben looked at the screen. The screen sparkled. He looked at the old man.

"Go fuck yourself dude." The old man laughed. He laughed like someone who had never been in a bad mood in his life. He laughed like a man who was about to introduce a Plot Hook.

"Ha-ha. Interesting words, traveler. Interesting words indeed. From which region might you hail?" Ben looked at him. Long second. Pink grass. Blue sun. A note in his pocket about god watching.

"Tung tung tung land." The old man's smile didn't flicker. Didn't even update. The old man's face was incapable of registering Tung Tung Tung Land. It just stayed there, friendly, waiting for him to climb into the cart so the fucking shit plot could start. Ben turned back to the screen.

"System. Hey. System. Can I kill myself." [Your journey begins here.]"Bro. Dude. My guy. Please." [Your journey begins here.]"System can you kill yourself." The screen pulsed. New text loaded. A whole new panel slid in from the side with a little chime sound, like he'd gotten a notification on LinkedIn, and there it was, hovering in the pink-scented air over a field of cotton candy grass under two suns one of which was Gatorade blue: [NEW QUEST] [Travel to the village of Mossgrove.] [Your destiny awaits.] [Reward: XP, Class Selection, Beginning of a new paradigm.] Ben stared at it. Mossgrove. MOSSGROVE. He looked at the old man. The old man was still waiting. The horse-wolf-pony thing was eating a piece of pink grass and seemed contented by it. It was cute. Fuck you. It wasn't. He looked at the cart. He looked at the sky.

He looked, briefly, at the receipt in his pocket because somehow Cayenne felt very far away now, Cayenne who would have at least had a funny line for this, Cayenne who he had created specifically because nothing in his real life was ever this stupid. He stood up. His legs worked. Good. Small wins. He walked to the cart. He climbed in.

The old man clucked his tongue and the horse-wolf-pony thing started moving and the cart creaked forward through the pink grass toward, presumably, Mossgrove, and the screen floated along beside Ben's head like a horrible little balloon, sparkling occasionally, waiting to ruin his life in new and varied ways. He hit his wax pen again. The screen flashed red. He ignored it.