Dave Walter had been a perfectly unremarkable IT employee. He had job security and a steady income, but was bitter and lonely, an example of the average, microscopic cog in the corporate machinery of Serv0tec Inc. He was a gear that spun about aimlessly - not even connected to anything, often getting paid for doing absolutely nothing.

His daily routine was a never-ending labyrinth of pointless business meetings about reallocating priorities, starting projects that never finished due to being reassigned, and pretending to satisfy clients who couldn't be bothered to use google.

On this particular Wednesday, Dave was feeling particularly disgruntled. He had been stuck in a meeting nearly all morning in which his colleagues discussed the importance of prioritizing tasks

As if on cue, his manager poked his head into his cubicle. "Hey, D, could you grab everyone some coffee?"

Dave felt a sense of mild irritation wash over him. His office manager's idea of "office efficiency" involved wearing two watches for tracking two time zones and shortening everyone's name to a single letter or two. He wondered if he would ever be able to reclaim his full name at this rate. It seemed quite a hopeless endeavor, so he chose not to argue and accepted the quest with a nod.

As Dave stumbled into the elevator, the grating sound of elevator music assaulted his ears. He winced, wishing he had the superpower to control the musical choices of elevators, or perhaps even the universe.

He spotted one of his overly chatty coworkers in the elevator and quickly averted his gaze, pretending to be engrossed in his phone. He knew all too well the agony of being trapped in an eternal loop of small talk with Karen.

As the elevator doors opened, Dave bolted out of the building, eager to temporarily escape the blandness of corporate life. He flashed his ID badge at the security desk, feeling a small sense of satisfaction at the semblance of authority it granted him and strode toward the nearest Starbucks.

Dave had been walking across the street on his way back, trying to balance an absurd amount of coffee cups in his hands, when he heard the screeching of tires and felt the crushing impact of a car.

. . .

An otherworldly, ethereal chorus resounded in his mind.

As Dave's eyes fluttered open, he saw a blurry figure looming over him, surrounded by a halo of radiant, brilliant light.

"Congratulations!" a voice boomed in his head, "You've been reincarnated, hero! Welcome to your new life of adventure, magic, and dragons!"

Dave struggled to focus on the figure in front of him. The image flickered and doubled like a film slide layered over itself.

With a tremendous effort, Dave managed to mentally focus on one of the images and the double effect suddenly popped like a soap bubble encountering a child's finger. The image of the haloed goddess converged into a paramedic girl in a bloodstained orange vest.

"Where are my dragons?" he slurred.

The paramedic's blue eyes sparkled with amusement. "Sorry to disappoint you, hero," she said, "but there are no dragons here."

Dave's heart sank. He had been hoping for a more exciting afterlife. But as he looked up at the paramedic, he couldn't help but notice how pretty she was. Not in a perfect, ethereal way, but in a human, flawed way. She looked a tad exhausted, with locks of blonde hair escaping from a tightly bound bun, but all the tiredness seemed buried beneath a brilliant, wide smile.

"You've been dead for three and a half minutes. That's a lot of minutes. Probably enough to see dragons. You're welcome, by the way," the paramedic stated. "Consider yourself lucky. It's Wednesday!"

Dave couldn't help but roll his eyes. "What's so lucky about Wednesday?" he groaned.

"See, statistically fewer people die on a Wednesday, therefore you're in luck to pick this day to get run over by a taxi. Get it? You don't look convinced. You're right! I just made that fact up to cheer you up." The paramedic's smile widened. "I'm Laricianna by the way. Stupid name I know, I didn't pick it. You can call me Lari. Remember to stay positive. Everything from here on is only going to be better! You can't get any worse than being dead, see?"

Lari just smiled and went back to her work.

As Dave stared up at the ceiling of the ambulance, he couldn't help but feel a sense of bitter irony. He had always wanted more excitement in his life, but he never imagined that it would come in the form of a car accident and a mangled body.

"Well," he muttered to himself, "at least I can say that I died doing what I loved. Drinking coffee and ignoring traffic laws."

Lari chortled overhead. Dave wondered if there was something wrong with her, nobody else found his horrible jokes amusing.

. . .

Lari or Dave's hallucination, whichever it was, had been spot on - Dave had been reborn. But this wasn't like the kind of rebirth experienced by some new-age yoga enthusiast after a few deep breaths and a green smoothie. This was the kind of rebirth that involved learning how to walk again, talk again, and a series of surgeries that made him feel like a cyborg. The bolts that now held his shattered bones together were a constant reminder of his new reality.

Dave lost his job at Serv0tec, the one thing that used to give his life some semblance of purpose. He was now stuck with a disability pension, which felt like a slap in the face. He spent most of his free time moping around, feeling sorry for himself, and calling Lari just to hear her voice. She was always there to give him the tough love he needed.

"Don't focus on regrets," she said. "Focus on the future. Focus on being productive, on learning new things. You got a new lease on life, don't blow it or you'll disappoint me."

At first, Dave resisted. But as he slowly recovered both mentally and physically, Lari's words began to sink in. He read an article about Google's Lamda project and discovered the “Attention Is All You Need” paper which tickled his interest.

Joining an online community of similar enthusiasts, he collaborated with numerous other, more experienced AI programmers to develop on an open source large language model. It wasn't easy at first, but with time and effort, he was making incremental progress understanding a field that was entirely new for him.

As he worked on the project, Dave began to feel a sense of purpose again. He was determined to make something of himself despite the setbacks he had faced. His friendship with Lari grew and blossomed, and he found himself looking forward to each new day.

. . .

Six long years had passed, and the code that he had poured his soul into made contributions to the greater goal of making open source AI assistants. Alas, it was a bittersweet success that left him feeling empty inside, due to an unfortunate twist of fate.

On a very dreary October morning, Dave found himself standing in front of Lari's grave. The flowers he had brought with him seemed unable to express the depth of his grief. He finally understood why she had refused to date him, why she had kept him at arm's length. She had been fighting a battle that was bigger than both of them, and in the end, cancer had claimed her life.

He looked up at the sky, as if he could somehow find the answer to his pain there, but all he saw was an expanse of gray clouds. He knelt down in front of the grave, tears streaming down his face, and placed the flowers at the base of the headstone.

Thunder cracked overhead, a rainstorm rolling across the sky. The rain poured, chasing people away from the cemetery.

Dave found himself alone. He fumbled with the keys for a minute before finally managing to start his car. He drove aimlessly, away from the city.

The road was a blur as pouring rain and his tears clouded his vision. He felt the weight of the world crashing down on him, mocking him, taunting him. What was the point of anything if his best friend was no longer there to share it with him?

The road home was far worse than he had anticipated, and the slick pavement snickered beneath his tires as he found himself drifting into the oncoming lane. There, a car loomed, blinding him.

Dave attempted to swerve out of its path. His new, unforgiving trajectory flung him off the road, through the parapet. His car flew towards a proud and ancient six hundred year old sequoia, who had, over the course of its long life, acquired a certain amount of indifference towards the comings and goings of lesser beings.

The tree withstood the vehicular onslaught with the sort of quiet dignity that can only be achieved by spending centuries minding one's own business.

The programmer, on the other hand, found himself decidedly less fortunate in this encounter.

. . .

Dave blinked, trying to focus.

The sensation of a thousand tiny hammers pummeling his head compounded his misery.

To his astonishment, he was alive.

His ill-fated rendezvous with the sequoia should have rendered him a mere smear on the uncaring forest floor, yet here he was, perfectly unharmed!

Dave found himself confronted by an unexpected and mildly alarming sight: an entire ocean of naked people all around him.

The crowd was massive, stretching as far as the eye could see. Dave estimated there had to be millions of people here, all equally confused and disoriented. Girls shrieked and covered themselves, while guys muttered and cursed under their breath. The noise was deafening, with millions of voices blending together in a cacophony of confusion.

Dave felt like a lone fish out of water in a sea of bare bodies. He had never felt so out of place in his life, and he had been to some pretty weird parties at college. He couldn't help but wonder how he ended up here. Was this some sort of sick joke? A twisted version of the afterlife?

He looked beyond the crowd, to the point where the sky should have been. There was no sky.

There was an unnatural, quirky wrongness with perspective, no horizon line to be seen. It was as if the universe had forgotten to install a proper ceiling on this place.

The world curving upwards was a kaleidoscope of colors, a display of wonder that defied comprehension. Cumulonimbus giants loomed overhead, casting their shadows across the gradually curving terrain.

Supercell storms spun menacingly overhead, their dark tendrils snaking across the landscape. Volcanoes belched smoke and ash, their fiery maws a stark contrast against the cool blues and greens. Deep blue oceans shimmered under the scorching sun, tiny waves crashing against cliffs of jagged rock.

Glacier peaks gave way to vast deserts of yellow sand. Azure lakes sparkled like jewels, their waters clear and pristine. Frozen tundra stretched out in patches of white.

The horizon curved up and up, the mountains, lakes and forests becoming mere specks on the landscape as they blended into the endless expanse of the sky, the details eventually getting too distant and too small to be observed with the naked eye. Parts of the landscape looked like they had been bombarded with asteroids, gargantuan circular impacts bisecting mountains and forming new lakes and oceans.

As he stood there, gazing up at the spectacle before him, a sense of insignificance washed over him.

Dave's mind struggled to comprehend the scale of what he was witnessing. Was this world a hollow sphere? If so, it was astonishingly gigantic. Possibly hundreds of millions of times bigger than the Earth.

Like a bolt of lightning, the answer suddenly hit him. This had to be a Dyson sphere, a theoretical, colossal megastructure crafted around a star. It was a world turned inside out, a marvel of engineering that defied imagination.

"Bloody fantastic," he sarcastically muttered under his breath as his eyes came back down to the naked, increasingly perturbed crowd. "I always wanted to be part of a giant nudist colony in the afterlife inside of a god-damn Dyson sphere."

"CONGRATULATIONS!" a loud, snarky, male voice boomed, causing Dave's eardrums to throb with pain.

"What?" Dave asked, feeling an unnerving sense of deja vu.

His comment was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. The ocean of naked, bewildered humanity stirred.

"Your old lives have ended and you have been reincarnated by my divine grace!" the deafening voice resounded once again, making Dave wince.

The crowd stirred and made incoherent noises of a million people trying to respond.

"SILENCE!" The voice echoed across the landscape, causing Dave's teeth to rattle in his skull.

Dave rotated and craned his neck to see the source of the voice, and millions of others around him did the same.

A rotund figure of a bald, bearded man draped in cloth woven from gold and black threads, sat against the yellow sky of a distant continental desert. The clouds passed through the figure as if he were a mere hologram. Dave assumed this was some sort of projection. A suspicious thought crossed his mind that perhaps this ludicrous vision was a hallucination brought on by his car crash.

"I AM THE GOLD DRAGON-GOD-EMPEROR," the figure bellowed, clearing his throat. "I summoned you to this world to aid me in my fight against wretched villains who threaten the prosperity of my nation! Now you have a chance to become heroes and citizens of my glorious Empire. If you do not wish to work for me, raise your right hand and I will free you from such responsibility. Choose. You have one hundred heartbeats to make a decision."

Dave blinked, trying to make sense of the situation. The Dragon Emperor's tone was somehow off, and Dave felt a tingle in the back of his mind, warning him that something was amiss. All around him, people began to raise their hands in defiance. Dave kept his hand down, his eyes glued to the Emperor's rotund figure sitting on an upside down stone pyramid.

The Emperor waited, his eyes flicking over the crowd with amusement. Dave couldn't help but feel a sense of dread at the thought of working for such a pompous, ridiculous looking figure. He wondered what sort of "heroes" the fat Emperor expected them to become.

One hundred heartbeats passed quickly, and Dave hoped that he made the right decision. He looked at the ground beneath his feet. It was made of something white. Dave leaned closer trying to understand the pattern of uneven shapes beneath his feet.

"Marvelous. For those of you who didn't raise your hands, observe!" The Dragon Emperor's eyes flared up as he uttered a single word: "Isekai!"

Suddenly, the air was filled with the sound of popping, followed by a chorus of screams. Dave turned to look at the old man standing next to him, who had raised his hand in response to the Emperor's question. The man was no longer recognizable as a human being; he had been twisted and fused together with another body, creating a grotesque, surreal abomination. Two mouths were open wide in agony and terror.

Dave saw that all of those who had raised their hands suffered the same fate of being juxtaposed with another summoned body. They were choking and gasping for air, their faces turning blue as they collapsed to the ground.

"This is how I deal with useless chaff," the Dragon Emperor declared from above. "Disobey me, and you will be liberated. Serve me well, and you will become part of the team!"

Dave was too horrified to pay attention. He suddenly understood the answer to his query as he bent closer to the ground, heaving. He saw that he was standing on a carpet of bones, the remnants of countless genocides that had been compressed and compacted by millions of feet over the years into white sand. How many people had willingly chosen to be "free" here before this group?

The hologram of the Dragon Emperor flickered, fading. His voice now boomed from behind. Dave turned and saw a tremendous, white city with the hologram now sitting over it.

"March towards my city," the Emperor commanded. "There, you will be given food and weapons! Cheers." He offered the naked crowd a seraphic smile, like a monster that had just killed millions with no remorse.

"And don't forget," the Emperor added, "you can always choose to be free, to walk away from my city. Go ahead, I'll be watching."

Dave felt numb as he began to trudge towards the city with the others. He now knew that anyone who tried to escape would be killed instantly by isekai. The irony of being given a choice to be free when there was no real choice at all was not lost on him.

The great yellow-white city loomed on the horizon as Dave and the naked, thinned-out but still massive crowd shambled towards it. With each step, they stepped over and onto the corpses of the millions of the "liberated". Dave's unease grew as the walls made from white blocks stretched away from him for miles in every direction.

Gigantic white pyramids loomed above the walls, their golden caps glittering in the sunlight. It was a grotesque, ludicrous sight, and Dave couldn't help but gulp at the enormity of it all. He saw distant, tiny people, working away at the walls and the buildings. White walls. White pyramids. White like the ground beneath his feet. Bones.

The city was constructed entirely out of bones. Bones of the people that had been summoned here by the millions, perhaps even billions, after they died on Earth.

Dave felt a sudden, minute hope blossom in his chest.

Lari!

Maybe she had been summoned here! Maybe she was alive here, against all odds. She was clever and quick on her feet. Dave searched the faces in the crowd, hoping to see her familiar features, but he didn't recognize anyone.

“WELCOME TO FORTRESS CITADEL D-114." The Dragon Emperor's voice boomed from the sky, welcoming them to his domain.

But as Dave continued to walk towards the city, his unease grew. What if Lari was one of the unlucky ones, summoned into a person? What if he never saw her again? The thought made his heart ache. But he couldn't give up hope. It was the only thing keeping him moving forward.

Dave's mind was racing, trying to make sense of the physics-defying world that he found himself in. It was a place where magic seemed to be the norm and giant holograms floated in the sky, summoning absurd numbers of people right into other people, as if it were a perfectly normal activity.

Despite the overwhelming strangeness of this world, Dave felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe necromancy was a thing here, or perhaps even time travel. Whatever the case, Dave was determined to bend the rules of this universe to his will. He clung to that sliver of hope like a drowning man clutching a life preserver. He had to find the girl with the perpetually positive attitude and the brilliant smile who had saved his life on a Wednesday.

 

. . .

 

Dave felt utterly spent as he stumbled through the gates to the city. The sun beat down mercilessly, casting the world in a fiery glow.

The sprawling citadel loomed right in front of him, a towering behemoth of white blocks that seemed to stretch on forever. Dave couldn't fathom the scope of this place - it was larger than anything he'd ever seen, even in his wildest dreams. The teeming masses of humanity dispersed into a labyrinthine network of gates and entrances, each leading to a different district of the city.

Dave found himself in a queue that snaked its way towards a looming entrance marked with bold, imposing letters- "GATE 76". The bold, English letters seemed oddly out of place amidst the otherwise absurdly alien surroundings.

Dave's feet ached, his throat was parched, and he was beyond exhausted. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he reached the entrance.

The massive hall that greeted him was dazzlingly vast, the ceiling soaring high above his head. After another thirty minutes, Dave spotted a counter up ahead.

The attendant standing at the counter looked like a cross between a medieval executioner and a horror movie villain. He was talking to every person who had reached his desk with a distinct air of boredom. Dave watched as the attendant handed out black bracelets and white knives to every person, while burly guards in flesh-sewn uniforms roughly ushered the rest of the confused and bewildered humans along the way.

"Name?" The attendant asked Dave with a yawn, his British accent dripping with disdain.

"Dave Wall... Wallsberry," Dave decided to fib, his voice trembling slightly.

The counter in front of him was made entirely of bones too, Dave realized with a shudder - and the attendant's clothing was sewn from what looked like human skin. The jewelry adorning the man's fingers and neck was made from carved human bones, and a mask fashioned from a human skull sat atop his face.

"Welcome to the Dragon Empire," the attendant said, noticing Dave's horrified gaze. "Everything here is made from people, by people. You're one of us now, Mr. Wallsberry. Welcome to the team."

He handed Dave a black bracelet and instructed him to put it on and say "CONNECT TO THE SYSTEM" in a clear voice. Dave complied. As he spoke the words, a blue window appeared on the bracelet, flashing with an eerie light.

Dave blinked in surprise at the sight of the holographic window.

"Follow the prompts, get assessed for magical affinity, complete a quest, get a magic skill, etc. It'll all be there," the desk attendant explained.

Dave nodded wearily.

"Only you can see your system prompts," the skull-masked attendant said. "They're personal for everyone."

[SCANNING SOUL... PLEASE WAIT]

The blue window blinked.

[SOUL INTEGRATION IN PROGRESS...]

Dave felt a strange, tickling sensation in his chest as the blue window flickered. He wondered what was happening inside him.

"Your first mission will be to head back out the gate and carve gold out of the dead," the desk attendant added, handing Dave a short bone knife.

Dave accepted the knife with a trembling hand.

"It's made from compressed human bones. Tougher than regular human bones," the man said. "Bring back one thousand gold tooth crowns. No rules. We only accept strong heroes here."

[CITADEL GATE - QUEST: Bring back one thousand gold teeth to gain access to Citadel D-114.] [Accept: Y/N?]

The blue window changed.

"I'm..." Dave struggled to find the words.

The desk attendant handed him a belt and a pouch sewn from human skin. "This is enough food and water for the day."

Dave's stomach turned at the sight of the pouch as he had a gnawing suspicion what the food and water was made from.

"Good luck," the desk attendant finished, pointing a grimy finger back towards the field of the dead.

As Dave turned around and stepped out of the gate, he was hit with a wave of nausea. He clutched his bone knife tightly, as if it were the only thing anchoring him to reality. He had no idea how to do magic, not even a clue about how to fight. The journey ahead of him seemed impossible.

As he surveyed the scene around him, Dave saw that a few of the half-merged people were still alive, but only just, emitting pitiful groans.

He saw that other naked people, armed with similar bone knives, were already slicing open the mouths of the dead, or finishing off those who were still clinging to life, in the hopes of finding gold crowns. Some were forming gangs, others were fighting over the precious teeth. Without rules, the strong preyed on the weak.

"Show me your teeth, you look rich!" A brutish-looking, muscular man bellowed, as he kicked an old, bald, short man on the ground. Dave's stomach churned at the sight. This is hell, he thought. He had died and gone straight to hell.

He retreated back into the gate, the only safe haven in this nightmarish landscape. The guards in skull masks were stationed there. They grabbed anyone who caused trouble, throwing them into a dark pit, moving with inhuman speed and strength. The wails that echoed from the pit were enough to make Dave's blood run cold.

A naked man with a bone knife sticking out of his back rushed past the gate, screaming incoherently.

As Dave stood there, lost in thought, a girl approached the counter.

"I can't do this," she said to the desk attendant, her voice trembling. "It's too dangerous out there."

Dave nodded in agreement, but the attendant simply pointed to the dark pit beyond the gate.

"You can always choose to be free," he said.

"I see," she answered.

Dave gulped as he looked down at his very pale, skinny arms, regretting his life choices. He really should have gone to the gym more often. He retreated away from the desk.

[TABULATING CREDIT RATING...] [SKILL ASSIGNED: PHANTOMANCY!]

 

"A skill? Phanto-what now?" he muttered incredulously.

One of the brutish guards, towering over him with bulging muscles and a skull-adorned helmet, snickered at Dave's confusion. "You got a skill, mate? Lucky you. Use it to get the teeth faster!"

Dave's mouth twisted into a wry grin. "Oh, great. Just what I needed. Another way to die in style," he remarked sarcastically. "Do I get a participation trophy if I get stabbed? If I die here… do I get isekai’d again to this place?"