Wearing an apron, Roy walked across the modest interior of the home he had made. The wooden walls were sturdy and a dark blue carpet covered the floor. An icebox sat against the wall, next to a bookshelf. In that perfectly normal home, Roy’s hands were wreathed in fire, weaving together a Skill as he proceeded toward the door and pushed it open.

His flaming palm left a hand-shaped charred portion on the door. As he stepped outside, he raised his head and his eyes flashed. For a few seconds, the human illusion he maintained faded and the necromantic devil he truly was shone through. He pointed and an explosion of flame manifested at the base of a pile of oak logs. Within a few seconds, the fire was happily cracking, turning everything to ash.

But this isn’t enough...

Roy stepped sharply forward, cutting across the intervening space. He arrived before another oak tree and his hands curled into claws. A shimmering, spectral ax manifested in each hand. He rapidly cut left and right with his hands that wielded his insidiously powerful image. The tree couldn’t respond at all to his rapid moves; it was in fact a completely normal tree. Within a second, it was cut down and split into more logs. It was irreparably broken.

Most of these logs were set to the side, but Roy threw some on top of his growing fire. It warmed his chilled heart to see his fire grow larger

Adjusting his clothes after his frantic motions, Roy walked calmly toward the black kettle sitting next to the wooden home he had built. With an almost reverent expression, he carefully brought the equipment out. His hands trembled as he assembled the spit and then hung the large black cauldron above the flame. Normal grey smoke wafted upward, forming a rapidly dissipating signal in the sky.

Roy’s face tightened as he looked at that column of smoke. “At this rate… my plan will be revealed early…” His face contorted in a devilish grin. “I suppose there is no choice but to move up the timeline.”

After speaking, Roy surged into motion. He forcefully blasted apart the wooden door of his home in his haste to go inside. Then his hands were once more blurred axes, cutting and hacking the ingredients he had already prepared and set on the table. By the end of it, the table had been reduced to a pile of useless timber that collapsed to the floor, but Roy ignored the casualty in his preparations; he swept everything off the table and spun away to return to the cauldron.

The order in which things should be prepared for this ritual was very exact, but Roy didn’t have time for the niceties of ceremony. In his mind, the black cauldron became an ominous maw that devoured the ingredients wholesale, leaving nothing but crumbs behind. The liquid within the cauldron grew increasingly turbid.

With a wide grin, Roy stoked the flames. When the heat reached a point that he liked, he produced a cold iron spoon and stirred the mixture. It was with great relish that Roy felt the hastily cut chunks knock against his tool. “Soon… soon…”

But even as he said that, Roy’s face twisted in horror. A blur shot across the horizon, rapidly approaching his position. Roy scrambled backward, but that blur arrived before he could escape its clutches.

BOOOOOOOOM!

The ground cracked and shook as a wave of dust blasted outward from the impact point. It was distant enough that the fire continued to burn, but the flames wavered and the liquid inside of the cauldron sloshed back and forth.

Neveah straightened and brushed herself off. Then she looked over at Roy and offered him a winning smile. “You finish dinner yet, hun?”

Roy stumbled backward, fear making him quake. Gritting his teeth, his pride forced Roy to stop and straightened his spine. Even if a vicious punishment was coming, Roy refused to retreat from it. “I… no, Neveah… I haven’t finished in time. There’s no excuse.”

Neveah rolled her eyes and walked forward to look down into the bubbling cauldron. “Are you telling yourself another one of your strange stories again? I hope you realize you will never make a genuine connection if you refuse to be honest with yourself and other people.”

Again, Roy could do naught but endure Neveah’s words. He didn’t dare contradict her, considering that she controlled his life and death. And the current state of his existence was tenuous-

“Oh! This is pretty good.” Neveah interrupted his thought process, having stuck one of her long fingers into the soup and tasting it. Her expression brightened further, and she waved her hand at Roy. “Well, whatever you are thinking, get some plates, will you? I can’t just eat it by the handful.”

Again, panic seized Roy. “No, Neveah, it’s not yet finished cooking! If you eat it early, some of the flavor-”

“Isn’t it fine?” Neveah said, quickly proving her earlier statement wrong by reaching down into the cauldron and removing a handful of soup that she slurped messily up into her mouth.

Roy could only fall to his knees, trembling. “The flavor…”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. And go get those plates.” Neveah chuckled, continuing to inhale the only partially cooked soup.

Sighing, Roy went into his home. He walked around the table that had been hacked to pieces. He brought out plates and spoons for them both and a serving ladle. Soon, Neveah was messily slurping at the edge of her plate before serving herself seconds. Roy ate his soup rather more sedately, flinching every time Neveah looked over at him.

By the end of the meal, Neveah was so annoyed at his reactions to her that she tossed her plate, still half full of soup, at Roy. It smashed against his head and shattered, sending him stumbling. He dropped his own plate, which also shattered.

Neveah shook her head. “I’m trying to help you, you know. It would be easier if you weren’t so filled with fear. Not toward me, obviously; you need to stop being so afraid of yourself.”

Then Neveah left, leaving Roy sitting with soup splattered across his face. The cooling mixture dripped out of his hair and onto his shirt as he sat and watched her go. And after she left, Roy’s expression shifted. From fear, it settled into a resentful bitterness. When he was sure she was gone, he pressed his lips together and spat on the ground next to him.

There wasn’t any point in continuing his inner narrative without an audience. In fact, to do so would just demonstrate how much of a lie it really was.

Then, with footsteps far heavier than the ones he had when he had walked out of his cabin and created the fire, he walked inside and carefully washed off his face.

“The truth, huh…?” Roy sighed as he used a towel to squeeze the potatoes, carrots, and onions out of his hair. He didn’t have a mirror in the hastily made home, but he waved his hand and conjured one. Roy looked at his reflection, showing the illusion of the heroic human that he had used to be. He was middle-aged, but attractive with a winning smile. His bushy brown facial hair framed his face well. He was a hero.

Then the illusion flickered and Roy stared at what he really was. A skeleton with glowing eyes. The Undying Hero. An abomination who had seen beyond the edge of this life and been eternally scarred by what he found there.

But even this was fine. It was that third flicker that sent waves of panic through Roy’s heart. When Roy looked at the mirror, he saw himself as the man he used to be. His hair was oily. His eyes were dull. His limbs were weak and his stomach was flabby. He was the man who had worked in data entry at a cookie-cutter insurance company. He was the man who ran from himself with the System arrived, seeking a new life.

Very quickly, Roy looked away. Then he pressed his eyes closed. I hate it. I hate who I used to be. So why…?

Part of the problem was Neveah, keeping here and forcing him to do menial tasks and play house with her when she wasn’t studying Engravings or helping Randidly Ghosthound. Her treating him respectfully was strange for Roy, but he ultimately could have dealt with it while plotting his escape and revenge. Which was what he had intended to do in the beginning.

That was until the day after Randidly Ghosthound’s birthday when Roy had received his third Labour: the Doldrums of Normalcy.

It should have been easy. Roy had been flabbergasted at first by how simple his new Labor had been. As a hero, the Labors were the source of his power. Each Labor that he successfully completed would increase his strength and abilities by a large margin. It was the way that the Hero Class functioned.

His first Labor had been dying, which obviously had a profound effect on him. His second Labor had been being tortured by the ruler of the frog world. And now his third Labor was to live… normally, if only just for a time.

So Roy had told himself that he could do it. Since he was captured by Neveah anyway, he would put aside his plots to escape and simply live. And when he completed this Labor, he could use his newfound power to escape.

Very quickly, memories had caught up with Roy. Moments of inexplicable dread left him unable to move when he had no pressing need to do anything. Still, it wasn’t like he was an idiot. He knew that this Labor would increase his mental strength. His images, when he finally could escape normalcy, would be so much more powerful.

But he slowly had begun to panic. What if he never escaped normalcy? What if he was slowly regressing to the man he used to be? What if everything so far was a dream?

Normalcy had begun reclaiming him, too. For the first time since Roy had died, he felt the suffocating weight of depression. If it wasn’t for Neveah bossing him around, Roy might not even move around during the day.

And Roy could try and escape, but that would mean he failed to complete Labor. And that… seemed like it would entail consequences. So Roy wanted to complete it-

“I…” Roy’s mouth was dry. Well, it was obviously dry, he was a skeleton. Yet he couldn’t work up even the spit to speak. He just stared blankly forward at his own reflection. Then he waved his hand and the mirror shattered.

Even the secret darkness Roy still held in his body, the remnant of dying and experiencing what the System had in store for everyone that it was able to grasp, was cowed by the crippling weight of being normal. That horrible truth, the one that had driven Roy to seek to halt the progress of the Earth through the System, no longer made Roy froth at the mouth. It was just a truth.

It was because the normal Roy felt powerless. What was the point of doing anything? Nothing would change. His prior actions were a childish tantrum-

“Fuck…” Roy whispered. Then he shifted and walked to a shelf along the wall. After a long hesitation, he removed a piece of paper from his interspatial ring and began to write a letter.

*****

When Octavius Shrike had received Randidly Ghosthound’s message, his expression had twisted in fury. The message didn’t explicitly say anything, but Octavius had dealt with Randidly for a long time. The fact that whatever he had done had made the Ghosthound nervous enough to reach out was a bad sign.

So Octavius had sat at his desk and waited for the inevitable hammer to fall. One hour passed, then two. And to his surprise, there was no feedback from the System. As far as it was concerned, whatever had happened didn’t require a notification.

Around hour five, Octavius Shrike was beginning to relax. He received a message from a friend in the Nexus, which caused him to jump. But when he saw it wasn’t concerning Randidly Ghosthound at all, Octavius quickly relaxed.

But then Octavius read the message. The hammer had come from an extremely unexpected source. His eyes widened. “Dear god…”