Mitchell Alvarez was 19 years old. High school was behind him, but so were his chances of getting into a good college. He hadn't flunked out, he just could never find a career or passion that was interesting to him. Now, life felt like it was stuck in neutral. No direction or ambition. Just the slow ticking of time in a world that didn't expect much from him.
Mitchell didn't mind working. In fact, the routine was comforting. It paid enough to fund the only thing that still gave him joy, his love of anime. His small apartment was cluttered with posters, DVDs, and a carefully curated collection of figurines—his proudest possessions. To others, it might have seemed childish or sad, but to Mitchell, it was his escape, his passion, and sometimes, his only company.
He had shaggy brown hair, tired black eyes, and a belly that showed he had been living off of instant cup ramen. Life might've been simple, but he lived it on his own terms. Still, one thing gnawed at him. He had never once held a proper conversation with a girl. Never kissed anyone. Never had sex. He told himself it didn't matter. That he was fine living the life of a loner. That 2D was better than 3D.
But sometimes, late at night, alone in the glow of his laptop screen, surrounded by silent, smiling figurines… he wondered if he was really okay with that.
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The morning had started like any other. Mitchell trudged along the cracked sidewalk, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his grey sweater. The chill of early morning clung to the air like fog. Another day, another shift at the convenience store. Not exciting, but it paid for his figures and the streaming channel to watch his anime.
He was just passing the intersection—half-awake, half-thinking about whether he should finally buy that life-sized pillow of his favorite character, when the blaring roar of a horn ripped through the air.
The screech of tires, and the terrifying blur of a semi-truck barreling through the intersection with fellow pedestrians screaming to run away. He barely had time to turn his head before a semi-truck came hurtling around the corner, far too fast to stop.
CRASH.
Blinding, searing pain exploded through every nerve in his body. He didn't even have the strength to scream. It exploded through his entire body like a million knives dragging across every nerve. And then—nothing.
He felt the pain instantly leave.
When Mitchell opened his eyes again, the world had changed.
The sky above him was a vivid, endless blue, with puffy white clouds drifting lazily across it. The scent of wildflowers and dew-damp earth filled his lungs. A forest stretched endlessly around him, lush and vibrant, like something out of a dream. Sunlight poured through the canopy of tall, vibrant green trees that swayed gently in a warm breeze. Birds chirped somewhere in the distance.
He sat up in a daze, heart racing. "This… this isn't the city."
He looked down at himself. His blue jeans were still clean, his grey hoodie intact, and his white sneakers—somehow whiter than they'd ever been. Everything was spotless—no blood, no broken limbs, not even a smudge of dirt. He ran his hands along his chest and arms, expecting pain, fractures, something. But there was nothing. He was whole as if nothing happened.
"I… I'm not dead?" He muttered, more confused than relieved.
He stood slowly, glancing around the forest clearing, half-expecting a nurse to step out from behind a tree and wheel him back to a bed.
But no one came.
That's when it hit him. A ridiculous, impossible, utterly weeb-core idea.
He gasped. "Wait… Did I—?" He grabbed his face, as if trying to confirm he was real. "Did I get Isekai'd?!" He spun around in the clearing, giddy with disbelief. "No way. No freaking way."
His heart pounded, not with fear—but with excitement. This was it. It had to be. All the signs were there. The truck. The instant death. The gorgeous fantasy backdrop. There was no other explanation.
"That truck… it did it! It actually worked! I knew watching all those anime would prepare me for something! Oh my god, does this mean…?" His eyes lit up with wild, hopeful delusion. "Do I get magic? A legendary sword? A demon lord to fight? A harem?!"
Mitchell looked to the heavens with sparkling eyes and shouted at the sky: "YESSS!!"
Birds fled the trees. Somewhere in the distance, a confused boar squealed and ran.
He looked down at his hands again, half-expecting a glowing status screen or a magic circle to appear.
"Of course! I died a virgin, and now I've been given a second chance! This is how it works! Alright, alright… focus, Mitchell. You're the MC now. Step one: figure out if I've got powers. Step two: find a cute girl. Step three: survive long enough to build the ultimate waifu collection." He grinned. "For the first time in my life… I'm the protagonist."
He immediately began scanning the area around him, as if anime girls would just start materializing out of the foliage at any second. A busty elf? A clumsy mage? A cold-hearted knight with a soft side?
"I'm gonna get a harem," He whispered, eyes glinting with a determination he'd never had in his entire life.
At least, that was the plan. Until a flicker of light appeared in the air in front of him.
Fwip.
A piece of parchment spun lazily down like a feather, glowing faintly before stopping midair—hovering, as if teasing him. Mitchell blinked in confusion, then quickly snatched it out of the air.
It felt warm to the touch. Magical, even. Like the kind of paper ancient heroes received sacred quests on. His heart pounded.
"This must be a message from a Goddess," He whispered with awe. "This is it. This is my tutorial. My divine mission. My—"
His eyes scanned the letter.
—----------------------------------------------
LOL.
You probably thought you were special. But nope.
You're just a fat loser that I took pity on.
—----------------------------------------------
His face fell. His fingers trembled. His lips silently mouthed the words again as he kept reading, faster and faster, each line stabbing his ego with increasing cruelty.
—-------------------------------------------------
Your death was just so depressing and hilarious that I thought you'd be an interesting little monkey to bring me some entertainment.
But since I'm such a kind and beautiful Goddess (seriously, I'm hot as hell), and I don't want my new toy to die too quickly… I decided to grant you some skills.
Of course, I couldn't be bothered to pick them myself. So they've been granted to you at random.. Have fun figuring them out.
Now, keep entertaining me.
Dance for me, monkey.
—XOXO, Your Goddess ;)
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The letter vanished in a puff of glittering light—like it had never existed.
Mitchell stood there, motionless. His smile, once proud, bright, stupidly hopeful was long gone, his mouth open in shock. "…Huh?"
He read the message again in his head, or at least tried to. His brain felt like it was buffering.
Fat loser. Monkey. Entertainment.
There was no holy mission. No brave quest. No chosen one. Just a bored goddess who decided to toss him into a magical world like a chew toy thrown to a pack of wolves.
"…Seriously?" He looked down at his body. At the gut that bulged slightly over his jeans. At the weak arms that jiggled a little when he raised them. He suddenly felt very aware of how much he hadn't worked out since… ever. He staggered back a few steps, hands limp at his sides, staring at the empty air where the letter had been. The leaves rustled. The sun still shined.
He fell to his knees.
"I… I died a virgin, was insulted by a cosmic narcissist, and now I'm just a dancing monkey?" He muttered, his voice hollow. His bottom lip trembled as reality began to settle in.
"No harem… no prophecy… I'm just… her dancing monkey."
A pit opened in his stomach. Depression, heavier than ever, pressed down on him like gravity had doubled. The sheer humiliation of it all. It was like being laughed at by the universe itself.
He sat there in the grass for a long while, shoulders slumped, wondering if any other anime protagonist ever got roasted this hard by their literal god. "There's probably a real protagonist around here somewhere. Tall. Handsome. Chosen by the goddess willingly. With a sword. And abs."
Eventually, he sighed. "…Well. At least I'm not in pain."
Mitchell sat there for a long time. The cool breeze rustled the grass around him, birds chirped in cheerful oblivion, and sunlight filtered down through the treetops like the world hadn't just called him a fat loser monkey for a laugh.
He let out a long, slow sigh. "…Damn. She really didn't hold back."
The goddess's words had hit him hard. Harder than the truck, even. At least the truck didn't mock him.
But after a few more minutes of wallowing in the dirt, something stirred in his chest. Maybe it was pride. Maybe denial. Maybe the leftover stubbornness that every hopeless otaku secretly carried deep inside them.
He stood up with a grunt. "…You know what? Screw it."
He brushed the grass off his jeans and looked around at the impossibly beautiful forest. Trees taller than buildings, skies bluer than any pollution-choked city back home, and somewhere there had to be villages full of elves, catgirls, and sword-wielding heroines with trust issues.
"I'm in another world," He said to himself, a grin slowly stretching across his face. "I don't care if I got here as a joke. This is still every weeb's fantasy."
Sure, he wasn't the Chosen Hero. Sure, the goddess thought he was just a dancing monkey. But he was alive in another world. With skills—random ones, but still skills. That meant possibility and potential.
And maybe, just maybe, a cute girl who'd think his weird Earth habits were "exotic."
He puffed up his chest, trying to ignore the jiggle. "Fine then. Let's see how entertaining I can be."
He turned toward the forest path ahead—if it could even be called a path. It was more like a vague suggestion of direction between the trees. Still, it was somewhere to go.
And so, with dreams of anime harems dancing in his head and absolutely zero idea of where he was headed, Mitchell Alvarez took his first steps into the unknown.
The trees swallowed him up, the forest thick and full of unfamiliar sounds. He pushed forward, trying to ignore the gurgling in his stomach—or the occasional strange growl that definitely wasn't his imagination.
"…I really hope they have fried chicken in this world." He kept walking.
—--------------------------------------
After what felt like hours of wandering, Mitchell was ready to admit it—he was completely, utterly lost.
The forest stretched endlessly in every direction, like some cruel video game map that hadn't finished rendering the fast travel feature yet. His legs ached, his hoodie stuck to his back with sweat, and the sun was beginning to shift behind the trees.
Somewhere far above, unseen and uncaring, laughter echoed faintly—like wind through leaves. But Mitchell didn't notice.
"No signs, no people, no mini-map," He groaned, dragging his feet. "What kind of RPG is this?!"
His stomach grumbled, earning a grumble of his own. But fate threw him a bone—or in this case, a bush full of weird fruit that looked like purple avocados and smelled vaguely of cucumber.
Cautiously, Mitchell sniffed one. "Well, if this kills me, maybe another god will take pity on me."
He took a bite. No flavor. None. It was like chewing a rubber sponge soaked in nothing.
"…That's a zero out of ten on the food scale," He muttered. But it was filling—sort of. He grabbed a few more and stuffed them into his backpack, which thankfully he still had with him from Earth. Inside, he had a half-empty notebook, a keychain of his favorite waifu, and a water bottle still full.
"Thank you, past me," He whispered, kissing the cap of the bottle like it was holy.
Things were looking… not great, but not terrible. He wasn't dead yet. He wasn't dehydrated. He'd eaten something. All he had to do now was find a town and—
Rustle.
He froze.
That wasn't a bird. Or the wind. That was a low, deliberate shuffle from the nearby bushes. His heartbeat instantly tripled.
"Please be an elf girl. Please be an elf girl. Please be—"
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
The bush exploded.
Out lunged a creature that looked like a badger crossed with a porcupine and whatever nightmare fuel invented the concept of "overly large teeth." It was the size of a Labrador, with coarse black fur, tiny red eyes, and rows of sharp fangs bared in full aggression.
Mitchell screamed. Not a heroic scream or a battle cry. Quite a girlish kind of scream.
He turned on his heel and bolted in a completely random direction, arms flailing, backpack bouncing wildly behind him.
"NONONONONONONO—HELP! ANYONE!"
Branches whipped his face, thorns scraped his arms, and his sneakers slid on loose leaves. The beast snarled behind him, crashing through the undergrowth like a chainsaw with legs.
Mitchell didn't look back.
He didn't want to know how close it was.
He just kept running.
Mitchell didn't know how long he'd been running—minutes? Hours? Days? Okay, probably just 10 minutes but it felt like a lifetime. Mitchell's lungs burned. His legs screamed with every step. But the snarling, frothing beast behind him gave him all the motivation he needed to keep running like his life depended on it. Because it definitely did.
"WHY IS THIS THING STILL CHASING ME?!" He wailed between gasps, swatting branches out of his face.
The trees began to thin out. The forest floor gave way to a field of green grass, soft underfoot but uneven, making every step a gamble. Mitchell stumbled once, twice—caught himself both times, barely.
'I don't wanna die again! I don't wanna die again! Not before I get to second base!' And then, finally, he saw it. It was pretty far away but that was definitely a stone wall.
A massive stone wall towering high above the grassy fields. And behind that wall, rising like a dream, was a city straight out of a JRPG loading screen. Tall stone towers, red clay roofs, spires, and the fluttering of banners in the breeze. The sound of bells and distant chatter tickled his ears.
His eyes went wide. 'A city! Civilization! People who probably know how to kill badgers!'
The monster snarled behind him—closer than ever. Mitchell bolted forward with everything he had left, legs flailing wildly beneath him.
The open field stretched between him and the city gates like the final stretch of a marathon, but he didn't stop. His backpack bounced, breath heaved out of his mouth in ragged pants, but adrenaline pushed him on.
As he sprinted toward the gate, he spotted two guards atop the wall. They were clad in mismatched armor, helmets slightly too big for their heads. One of them looked like he had just finished chewing on bread.
"HEEEEELP!" Mitchell screamed, voice cracking as he flailed his arms over his head like a man on fire. "THERE'S A MONSTER! A BIG TEETHY BADGER THING!"
"What in the goddess's name—?" The older guard squinted, then his eyes widened as he saw the beast charging just behind the screaming stranger. "OPEN THE GATES!" he shouted.
With a loud creak, the iron gates slowly began to rise. Mitchell didn't wait for them to fully open. The moment there was a man-sized gap, he dove through it, barely keeping his footing as he tumbled to the cobblestone inside.
Behind him, the badger-beast slammed into the bars with a screech of rage, claws raking the metal. The guards shouted, spears lowering, crossbows loaded, but the creature, after a long, frustrated roar turned and bolted back into the forest.
Mitchell just lay there, groaning on the floor, face smushed against cold stone.
One of the guards cautiously approached him. "…You alright, kid?"
"I… made it…" He wheezed. "I actually survived my first monster encounter…" He laughed weakly. And then promptly passed out.
As the two guards look towards the man that fainted at the entrance. One of the guards mutters, "Looks like another Lost was just dropped in."
A blue haired adventurer in light armor that was on his way out of the gate says, "Dumb kid must've gotten brought here by Vel'Eina."