Ragnar woke up with a hard jolt. His cheek made a wet, sticky sound as he pulled it off the plastic keys of his computer keyboard.
For a second, he did not know where he was. Then he felt his heart. It was like a wild bird trapped in his chest, beating its wings fast and hard against his ribs.
The bad dream. The big, empty blackness. The deep voice. The words that felt burned into his mind.
"It is already done."
He squeezed his eyes shut tight, wishing so hard that it was just a bad dream. He told himself it was a crazy nightmare that came from eating too many cheap noodle cups and not getting enough sleep.
A bad dream, that's all. He opened his eyes and looked around his messy apartment.
Everything looked the same. The pile of dirty clothes in the corner had grown so big it was starting to look like a strange piece of art.
The old poster of a rock band was still hanging on the wall with tape. The air in the room had a soft, strange glow to it. The little bits of dust in the air were dancing in the light, like tiny, shiny bugs.
Wait.
Ragnar blinked. Then he blinked again. The glowing shimmer in the air was real. He could feel a low hum, like the sound a giant power line makes, coming up from the floor. He could feel it in his feet and in his bones. The dream was not a dream. It was real.
A cold feeling of fear grabbed him.
The voice had said his memories were taken away. Erased.
He had to know if it was true. He closed his eyes and tried to think. He tried to see his mom's face.
He could remember the idea of a mother. He could remember the feeling of a warm kitchen.
He could almost smell cookies baking in an oven. He could feel the memory of a hug that made him feel safe.
But a face? A name? There was nothing.
It was like trying to look at a photograph that someone had colored over with a thick, black marker. There was just a black shape where a person should be.
A person he knew he was supposed to love more than anyone. The empty spot in his mind hurt. It was a deep, cold ache.
He tried to think of his father. He got the same empty feeling. He could remember the idea of a strong hand on his shoulder, or the sound of a deep laugh. But there was no face. No name. Just another black, empty hole where a person was supposed to be.
"No," he whispered. His voice was small and shaky. "No, no, no."
His breath felt stuck in his throat, and he could not seem to get enough air. He pushed himself away from his desk, and his chair rolled back and hit the wall.
He stumbled over to the window. His hands were shaking as he grabbed the cheap plastic blinds and pulled them to the side. He needed to see the world. He needed to see something normal. He needed to see people walking their dogs, or cars driving down the street. He needed proof that he was not losing his mind.
The street outside was empty.
It was not just quiet, like it was early in the morning. It was empty in a way that felt wrong. Deeply wrong.
There were no cars parked on the side of the road. There were no people walking on the sidewalks. There was no noise at all, except for the quiet sound of the wind blowing. A single old newspaper rolled across the empty street. It was the only thing moving.
The whole world looked like a picture from a movie about the end of the world. It was the part right after everyone disappears, but before the monsters show up.
"They're gone," he said out loud to his empty apartment. "Everyone is gone."
Or maybe they were not gone. Maybe he was the one who was gone. The voice in his dream said his life was erased from their memories.
Maybe they just could not see him anymore. Maybe they could not see his apartment. What if, to everyone else in the world, there was just an empty piece of land where his building used to be? The thought made him feel cold all over. He was a ghost. A ghost living in a ghost apartment that no one else could see.
He backed away from the window until his back hit the cold wall. He slid down the wall and sat on the floor. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, holding himself tight. He was alone.
He was completely and totally alone. Every person he had ever known, every friend he ever had, was gone from his life. They were not dead.
They were just… erased. It was like he had never been born at all.
As he sat there, feeling his world fall apart, the little monsters he had made crept closer to him. The goblins and the kobolds seemed to know he was sad. Gary the kobold, who seemed to be dry now after falling in his own puddle, came right up to him. He gently pushed his wet nose into Ragnar's hand and made a soft, whining sound.
The little monsters looked at him with their small, dark eyes. They did not understand what was happening. They did not know his heart was broken. They just knew that their master, the big, loud person who made food and holes in the wall, was very, very sad.
It was a sad, pathetic thing to feel comforted by. But it was… something. It was real. They were real.
He took a shaky breath and pushed himself up to his feet. He used the back of his hand to wipe the tears from his eyes. Feeling sad and scared was not going to help him. He could not afford to fall apart.
He was a Demon King now. That meant he had a new job. And that job was to stay alive.
He found his phone on the floor where it had fallen. He picked it up. The screen was still on. The black app with the strange red symbol was still there.
It said, [Demon King System]. He touched it with his finger. The screen with all his information popped up again.
[Ragnar Vhagar]
Title: Demon King of Aethelburg Sector 7
Level: 1
Domain: Small Urban Apartment (Rank F)
Domain Points (DP): 100/100
Creation Points (CP): 50/50
Bonus Points (BP): 20
Stats:
Body: E
Mana: E
Alchemy: E
Creation: E
Knowledge: E
His numbers were still awful. They were the worst they could be. But looking at the screen now felt different. It was not just a strange game on his phone anymore. This was his new life. This was everything he was now. He was Ragnar Vhagar, a Level 1 Demon King. And his small, messy apartment was his kingdom. It was his castle. It was also his jail.
He looked through the other parts of the app. There was a button that said 'Creation', and one that said 'Alchemy'. There was another that said 'Domain Management' and one that said 'Log'.
Most of them were gray and he could not click on them. He tapped on the 'Log' button. New words appeared on the screen.
[System Log]
The Aegis Mandate has been started.
Skill Type found: CHAOS.
New Title given: DEMON KING.
Memory Wipe: DONE.
Domain Creation: DONE.
Waiting for first enemy to attack.
"Waiting for first enemy to attack," Ragnar read the words out loud. His voice was low and had no feeling in it. "They make it sound so normal. Like I'm waiting for a pizza to be delivered, not a group of holy knights who want to kill me."
He looked away from his phone and at his small group of monsters. The goblins had lost interest in the potato chips. Now they were trying to build a tall tower out of his old DVD cases. It wobbled back and forth. The kobolds were sniffing everything in the room again. Their tails were wagging, and they looked happy for no reason at all.
This was his army. This was all he had to protect himself from the Heroes of Law.
A strange, dark laugh started deep in his chest. It started as a small sound, but it grew and grew until it was a loud, crazy laugh that filled the quiet apartment. It was all so crazy. It was all so completely, totally hopeless. He had lost everything. His family, his friends, his past, and his future. His whole life had been turned into a very bad joke.
He stood up tall. His shadow was long on the floor in the strange, glowing air. He was a king whose throne was a cheap, peeling computer chair. He was the lord of a small, one-bedroom apartment. He was the commander of a small army of idiots.
And he was going to live.