“It’s like whoever made this character chose all the worst things of purpose,” Warren said with a laugh as he looked through Benjamin’s character sheet, making him flush in shame. “How do you even end up with most of your stats below average, anyway?”

“We don’t think anyone chooses their stats on this Earth of theirs,” the older mage said from over, the younger man’s shoulder. “It seems to be entirely random, which isn’t nearly as fair as your system, but still, we will do what we can to help him optimize and be of use to his betters.”

“Well, I’m not sure there’s much hope for this guy,” the apprentice said, shaking his head as he poured through the lines with a smirk. “Maybe if I flipped his gender and poured all his extra points into appearance, we could grow some titties and put all this flab to good use.”

They couldn’t really do that, could they? Benjamin found himself wondering. It was bad enough that they could sculpt his soul like clay and do what they’d already done so easily to his friend, but to change him so much that he literally couldn’t recognize himself in the mirror anymore? To practically erase him mentally and physically from the world? That shit was terrifying, or at least it would have been if Kitsune Miko-chan’s admonition hadn’t been enough to keep him from completely losing his shit as the magic of her words somehow managed to keep him calm. 

“That would count as a failure for the purposes of this exercise,” Lord Jarris answered, showing a hint of annoyance for the first time this evening. “Though some might welcome such a transition, it is readily apparent in the nature of his soul that he would find that extremely traumatizing. Even mentioning such torments is already making your task more difficult, Kathalles. Please focus on the task at hand.”

“Fine…” the apprentice said with a sigh as he seemed to start taking the exercise more seriously. “Well then, the correct path would be to lower his intelligence to 6, strip out all the unnecessary lore and knowledge skills, and then apply the 60 build points plus the 20 he currently has to give him at least average physical stats and the Soldier ‘B’ package with the legionnaire specialization.”

“Why would you choose that over cannon fodder or any other possible option?” the mage asked. “He seems unlikely to survive in a formation, and putting a weak link there could endanger other members of the unit.”

“Well, he has just enough points in teamwork and leadership if I’m doing my math right,” the apprentice said, starting to sound somewhat unsure of himself, “So it seemed like the most optimized move. I thought about maybe converting him into a war mage because his programming skill is so similar to runic magic, but you said you wanted warriors, and in theory, since this loser spent so much time building up specializations in so many things that don’t matter at all, he should be capable of learning to be a good soldier after he gains a level or two fighting the wildlings.”

For a long moment, the mage stood there silently, making both his apprentice and Benjamin wonder what was going to happen next before he finally said, “I agree with your assessment, and especially your decision not to optimize him for runic magic. It’s much too dangerous for someone who is not born of the empire. Where will you start?”

Benjamin could only stand there in mute horror while the two of them discussed which parts of his life were least important and could be cut away first while he listened to the rage around them. He had never felt so humiliated or afraid in his whole life. Not when Matt had told him that he and Emma were going to go on a date the month after she dumped Benjamin. Not the night he’d gotten lost in the bad part of town and had to make it home without a cell phone to call an Uber. Not even when he’d been accused of cheating on that midterm and been called to a board of academic review to see if they were going to kick him out of school.

It was almost an out-of-body experience, and he couldn’t stop shaking as they discussed his mind like he was going to be the next patient on one of those horrible surgery shows. Eventually, they decided to start with his skills and then proceed to his stats, monitoring his soul’s integrity the whole time. 

It was a terrible, disorienting thing for Benjamin. One second, he had a video game lore of 88 and an academic knowledge that was almost as high, and the next second, they were just gone. He was sure it wouldn’t affect him too much, but he was dead wrong. 

Suddenly, Benjamin could barely remember what a video game was, and though he was sure they’d been important to him once, he couldn’t bring himself to name a single title. Likewise, he had no idea what Academic knowledge was, but now that it was gone, he couldn’t remember precisely what it was he’d done with his whole life up until now, and math and science were just big blank spots in his mind.

One minute, he knew exactly where he’d been for the last few years and what he was going to do with his life. He knew what it was he did for fun and what his hobbies were, and in an instant, all of that was just gone. Whole years of life just faded into the mist, and he wasn’t sure what it was he was supposed to do. After that, all he had left was programming, and he held onto that like it was the only thing that mattered because it was all that he had. 

C++, Java, Python, databases, troubleshooting, debugging, and object-oriented programming. He repeated these terms in his mind like a mantra. Like it was the only thing that could keep them from taking away everything he was because it was pretty much the only part of them they hadn’t ripped out of his soul yet, but he knew that they were going to. 

These monsters were going to take away everything they didn’t need because all that mattered to them was that he could swing a sword and fight and die for their war. It was so unbelievably unfair, and Benjamin silently prayed to any god that would listen. 

The answer came in the form of a single arrow. It soared in from somewhere behind him, missing his own skull by inches as it glided over his left shoulder before it embedded in the neck of the young monster that was doing this to him. For a second, nobody moved as they were shocked into silence. 

Kathalles gasped and tried to speak, but he couldn’t, and it was obvious why that was the case for Benjamin: there was magic in the arrow, and something was growing inside him. The shaft of the arrow wasn’t a smooth piece of wood. Instead, it looked like the stem of a flower or a branch plucked straight from a sapling. It was curved and contained both buds and thorns. That wasn’t the strange part, though. 

The strange part was that while the apprentice choked and gasped, roots were growing under his skin, spreading out from the arrow, and even after the young man began to seize, and his master brought him down gently to the ground at Benjamin’s feet and pulled out the arrow, the growth only accelerated. 

It looked like a terrible way to die, but Benjamin found himself wishing it had happened a few seconds sooner. Then, that little bastard wouldn’t have had the chance to fry half of Benjamin’s brain with the strange magic that they used. 

Even as Lord Jarris tried to use magic to heal the strange growths that were crawling under the boy’s skin, the febrile seizures grew worse and worse. Eventually, even Benjamin regretted wishing ill on the man who was really just a little younger than him. Sure, the mage’s apprentice had been a monster, but no one deserved this. 

Finally, Kathalles opened his mouth to scream, but he never got the chance. Instead, a fist-sized bouquet of blood-red flowers forced its way out of the orifice even as the body seized hard one more time and then was still forever more. 

“So the witch has finally joined the battle, then,” the mage muttered to himself darkly as he rose back to his feet. “We shall have to teach her what a mistake that was. Alright, everyone, listen to me. We’re going to—”

Even as Lord Jarris gave his order and Benjamin felt himself eager to jump at whatever the command was, something large and loud finally burst through the wall of the tent. He didn’t have a chance to see it, but he did get completely bowled over by it as whatever it was charged straight for the mage. 

What followed next was bloody and terrifying. Benjamin heard the yowling of some kind of giant cat and the baying of a giant hound, but balanced against that, he saw emerald beams of light and green fire being casually tossed around by what he presumed was the mage. All he knew for sure was that for perhaps half a minute, the pavilion was a bloodbath, literally and figuratively, and that he knew he wasn’t going to survive. 

Once that hellish moment was over, though, the mage strode toward the rent in the far wall and said, “Come with me. All of you. We shall end this thing once and for all. Revealing her position like this was a tragic mistake worth all of your lives and more.”

It was only after everyone started following the mage out and Benjamin continued to lay there in the blood of his enemies that he realized that not only had he not died in the attack, but strangely, he didn’t feel the need to follow the other man’s orders for the first time all night. He had trouble understanding it, and as he slowly rose to hands and knees, he quickly realized what had happened. 

The silver rod that the apprentice had been wielding to access his system had been lying beneath him, and something about that item, or the fact that his system was still being actively worked on, or both made him temporarily immune to the compulsion that had been so irresistible up until now. 

As Benjamin stood up and looked around, all thoughts of pulling up his character sheet to dig deeper into the mystery were momentarily dispelled by the carnage. The six or eight humans from Earth that had been between him and the rent fabric of the pavilion wall behind him lay in pieces, along with their bestial attackers. If there was a silver lining, it was that he didn’t see any of his friends among the piles of dead, though even that was no guarantee that they lived now or would still be living in ten minutes. 

The place was a charnel house. Some of the people had been pulled apart or cut to pieces by the monsters, but the rest of them bore magical wounds of one sort or another. Many of those that had died from magic had holes straight through their chest from some sort of beam attack, and others still smoldered with green embers that seemed to disintegrate the flesh it left behind rather than slowly reduce it to ash. 

It was enough to make Benjamin vomit. He could feel his gorge rising while he clutched the rod in his right hand. In the end, the only thing that stopped it was Kitsune-Miko’s words.

“So you think you’re going to be able to escape?” she asked, practically purring. “Take me with you.”

“Y-you’re a demon,” Benjamin spat back, whirling around. He wasn’t sure what that really meant in this context, but he’d seen the word on his character sheet, and he was going with it. “Why should I listen to anything you have to say?”

“Because, unlike you, I know what the hell is going on, and I might be willing to help you if I think you could help me to escape from Lord Jarris’s grasp,” she said with a sigh. “That man is a monster.”  

It was only after Benjamin was finished considering her words that he realized the fox girl was trying to be as seductive as possible in both her tone and her body language. She was trying to seduce me, he told himself belatedly. 

“Fine,” he said, blushing slightly as he picked up the phone and pocketed it. “But if you try anything, I’m smashing this thing to bits, and you with it.”

“That works for me,” she cooed. “If we head straight south for the river, we should be able to—”

“We can’t,” Benjamin said, “Not yet. First, we need to save my friends.”

Author's Note: This book has been stubbed. Chapters 5-43 can now only be found at Amazon.