Average height, average salary, average dreams—nothing special, nothing ever special—until the truck decided average wasn't allowed to make it home tonight.
The air smelled like cold asphalt and someone else's menthol cigarette. My shoes—cheap leather, already cracking at the sides—scuffed the crosswalk paint that had worn down to ghosts of white stripes. Headphones leaked tinny guitar from a song I'd heard a thousand times, volume just high enough to pretend the city wasn't humming its usual threat. Then the headlights bloomed, too wide, too fast, filling my eyes with white like overexposed film. Tires screamed the way only rubber being murdered can scream. The grille rushed forward with that wet-metal shine, close enough to smell diesel and hot brakes, and in that half-second I thought, huh, so this is the part where average finally gets rounded down to zero
I was dead, that fucking driver smashed into me like I'd personally keyed his truck in a past life. What the hell did I ever do to him? I had plans, man, real plans: get home, crack a warm beer that'd been rolling around the passenger floorboard all day, finally watch that new video my favorite porn star dropped tonight (4K, sixty frames, the good shit).
Now I'm leaking on the pavement, blood hot and metallic in my mouth, tasting like I licked a handful of pennies. The asphalt's still warm from the day's sun but going cold fast under my cheek, gritty with road sand that's digging in like it's trying to file my face off. Somewhere nearby a phone is ringing that generic iPhone chime nobody ever changes, over and over, shrill and pointless. My left shoe's gone; I can feel the air on a sock that's already soaked through, squishing when I twitch. The truck's engine ticks itself cool above me, dripping something (oil? coolant?) that patters on my forehead in slow, lazy drops. All I can smell is burnt rubber, my own coppery stink, and the faint ghost of the menthol someone was smoking three seconds before everything turned into a flashbulb and a crunch.
Then the pain cut out, like someone yanked the plug on the universe. No more blood, no more asphalt, no more ticking engine. Just black. Not dark, black. The kind that has weight, pressing on my eardrums until they pop with silence.
I'm floating, or maybe falling, but there's no wind, no temperature, nothing to taste except the ghost of my own blood still coating my tongue. My body feels… optional. I try to scream and there's no throat, no air, just the thought of a scream bouncing around inside whatever's left of me. Time stretches like taffy: a second, a minute, a century; it all feels the same. No heartbeat to count, no breath to hold. Just me and the void, thick as tar, clinging to thoughts I can't even scratch away.
I start bargaining with nobody. Heaven? Fine, I'll sit through the harp concert. Hell? Bring the pitchforks, at least it's something. Even reincarnation as a medieval peasant shoveling dragon shit sounds like a promotion; give me callouses, give me plague, give me anything with texture. But nothing answers. The blackness doesn't echo, doesn't breathe, doesn't end. It just waits, patient as a graveyard, while I drown in the absence of everything.
Days, years, millennia; I stop trying to measure. The concept of "waiting" starts tasting like rust in my brain. I'd kill for a single sensation: cold, pain, the stink of that truck's exhaust again. Instead there's only this endless, suffocating nothing, and the growing, animal certainty that average really did get rounded down to zero, and zero is forever.
I opened my eyes to splintered sunlight knifing through a thatched roof, dust motes drifting like lazy fireflies in the beams. The air smelled of dry straw, woodsmoke, and something faintly sweet (crushed herbs hanging from the rafters). My back rested on a lumpy straw mattress that poked me in a hundred places; under my palms the packed-earth floor felt cool and gritty. I was wearing a coarse linen shirt that scratched like burlap and loose wool pants that ended just below the knee. Beside the pallet sat two battered leather slippers, soles worn thin; I shoved my feet into them and the left one immediately flopped because half the stitching had rotted away.
I staggered out the low doorway, ducking under a bundle of drying lavender that brushed my hair with sharp, clean perfume. The void was gone; real air filled my lungs, warm and thick with morning cook-fires, baking bread, and the faint iron tang of livestock.
Spread before me was a perfect starter-zone village: crooked timber houses with mossy roofs, a stone well in the square, chickens scratching in the dirt. A burly dwarf with a braided red beard hauled a keg past me, grumbling in a voice like gravel. Two cat-eared beastfolk (one tabby, one black-panther) argued over the price of carrots, tails flicking. A pair of pointed-eared elves glided by in green cloaks, their silver hair catching the sun like liquid metal. A squat, green-skinned orc woman in an apron waved a ladle at a human kid who'd tried to steal a sweetroll. Even a couple of short, big-eyed halflings darted between legs, laughing in piping voices while a stately dragonborn with bronze scales polished a market stall sign, steam puffing from his nostrils with every breath.
Everywhere, life: clanging from a smithy, the lowing cattle, a bard somewhere murdering a lute. Colors, smells, heat on my face, the honest ache in my empty stomach. I stood there barefoot in one slipping slipper, shirt half-untucked, grinning like an idiot at the sheer noisy clutter of it all.
I was out. Finally, painfully, beautifully out of that fucking void.
I stood there in the village square, the sun baking the top of my head while a nearby cartwheel creaked over rutted dirt, and thought, mockingly, *wait, do I have some kind of system panel?* Like clockwork, it shimmered into existence right in front of my face—a translucent blue hologram flickering like heat haze off a hot griddle, humming faintly with a low electronic buzz that vibrated in my teeth.
I almost shouted *holy shit*, but my inner voice slapped me down: *Dude, you floated in that void for an unknown eternity, blacker than a power outage in a coal mine—at least this is your goddamn compensation.* Fair point. I exhaled, tasting the village air again—bread yeast and manure—and forced my shoulders to unclench.
The panel was pretty basic, glowing letters crisp against the thatch-roof backdrop:
**Name:** [Blank]
**Occupation:** Mage
**Age:** 20
**Experience:** 0/100
**MP:** [Empty bar, pulsing faintly blue]
**HP:** [Empty bar, dull red]
**Level:** 0
*Hmm, pretty basic,* I muttered, the words tasting like dry toast. I swiped right—my fingers passed through the light with a cool tingle, like brushing dry ice—and it flipped to **Skills**.
**Fireball Level 1**
**MP Cost:** 10
**Cooldown:** 5 seconds
*Fireball. I don't even know how to use it.* Swiped again: **Skill Tree**. A branching web of icons bloomed, dim nodes waiting to light up. Next to Fireball glowed a little **+** sign, pulsing invitingly. I tapped it.
Knowledge slammed into my skull like a cold shower straight to the brain—blueprints of mana flows, wrist flicks, the guttural chant *Ignis globus*, the spark in your gut uncoiling into a roiling orange orb. My temples throbbed, vision blurring for a second with afterimages of flames licking my eyelids, the phantom heat prickling my palms.
The panel updated:
**Fireball Level 1**
**Experience:** 0/100
**MP Cost:** 10
**Cooldown:** 5 seconds
*Wait, I have to cast it a hundred times to level up? Oh my God.* My stomach twisted, empty and growling louder now.
Then, on the left edge, a notification chime *dinged*—sharp as a spoon on glass—and text scrolled in gold letters:
**Here is your compensation: At every level 10, you'll get 3 skill options to choose your fighting style. Frontline bruiser, control freak, or whatever the fuck you want. This is goodbye, kid. Take care.**
It winked out with a soft *pop*, leaving the panel humming quietly, the village noise rushing back: elf laughter tinkling like wind chimes, dwarf boots thudding past, and that eternal chicken *cluck-cluck* somewhere behind me.
"Ah, where the hell should I go now?" I muttered, scratching the back of my neck where straw had left itchy little welts. The sun was climbing, turning the air thick with baking bread and horse sweat.
Inner me kicked in like a shot of cheap whiskey:
*Dude, we gotta register at the Adventurer's Guild, whatever the fuck it's called. Standard isekai protocol. Let's move, baby.*
Good point.
I flagged down the first guy who didn't look like he'd rob me: tall, sun-browned human in a patched green cloak, smelling of pine needles and pipe smoke, a wooden tankard swinging from his belt.
"Excuse me, sir, where can I find the guild?"
He gave me a slow once-over—bare feet in one flapping slipper, linen shirt half-tucked, hair probably looking like a haystack fire—and grinned with teeth too white for this century.
"Kid, what's your name?"
Name. Right. The panel had left that line blank like a middle finger. Guess I get to pick my own cheat-code handle.
I rolled the thought around my tongue, felt the morning breeze cool on my teeth, and said, voice dropping half an octave on pure instinct:
"Name's Kael Veyron."
I even cocked a hip and flicked an imaginary coat tail. The breeze decided to cooperate, fluttering the loose linen against my legs like I'd rehearsed the damn pose.
The guy barked a laugh, slapped his thigh so hard the tankard clacked, and shot me a double thumbs-up.
"Hah! Kael Veyron—sounds like the kinda bastard who'd steal your girl and your gold in the same night! Love it."
He stuck out a calloused hand. "Call me Jory 'One-Eyed' Whiskerjack, on account of the eyepatch I don't actually need but the ladies dig the mystery." He winked with both eyes just to prove the point.
Then he launched into directions like a sailor reading the wind:
"Head past the bakery—follow the cinnamon till your mouth waters—hang a left at the fountain with the naked nymph who's missing half a tit thanks to last year's drunk dwarf. Straight till you smell the tannery fighting the flower stalls, take the alley with the cat that screams like a banshee, and boom—big timber hall with the sword-and-shield sign big as your ego. Can't miss it."
Miraculously, every word stuck in my head like it was branded there.
"Got it. Thanks, Jory."
I flicked two fingers off my brow in salute. He mirrored it with a theatrical flourish, tankard sloshing.
"Go get famous, Kael Veyron. Try not to burn the village down on day one!"
We both grinned, turned opposite ways, and I was off, slippers slapping dirt, the name already tasting like it belonged to someone way cooler than the guy who died jerking off to 4K porn.