Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s a basic tenet of Isekai Hero, and one of the things that did not fundamentally change between versions. Duty Calls is able to push out the effects of Exhaustion for an hour, forcing me to my feet and letting me work. But when the crash comes, it comes hard, and I’m wholly unprepared for it. Normally, I refuse to sleep without some kind of chemical or magical aid. It’s been many, many nights since I succumbed to any form of natural sleep, purely from exhaustion and with nothing to help block out my subconscious mind.

In all honesty, it’s a perfectly logical chain of events. Take a twenty-year old, put him on a new planet, give him a sword, and tell him to face hideous monsters, slaughter them, defeat Demon Lords, face love and betrayal and loss…and then do it again. And again. And again. Do it twelve more times, actually. At some point, he realizes that sleep induced with drugs or spells is probably better for his mental health than letting his subconscious run wild. After all, if the subconscious is a reflection of your experiences, and your experiences leave a lot to be desired…perhaps it’s better to cage that subconscious beast and never let it out.

I didn’t have the chance to do that this time. And while I didn’t know exactly how long Exhaustion lasted, it’s natural state was likely at least eight hours. Which meant that doubling it would result in sixteen hours of psychological punishment. As my eyes closed, my instincts braced for it. While my body was likely slumped over somewhere in the physical world, my spirit was tensing. I’d see them all soon, and I didn’t really know what to say when I did.

I stood in a sea of white, with an omnipresent light shining brightly, and little else. I stood at the center of a circle, and each time I turned, I saw someone knew. This was what I’d been trying to avoid.

“Hey Blanc. Long time, no see.”

“…Amara.”

She was dressed in red leathers, and her brown skin was tinged with blue. I’d never actually seen her freeze to death, but it was what I imagined she looked like. Snow covering her long, black hair, frost gathering on her face, lips that were torn from the frostbite.

“It’s cold here.”

“….I know.”

She just looked at me, sadly. She didn’t get mad. None of them did. They all just looked like they’d sunk into deep melancholy. No anger, no blame, just disappointment. She knew what had happened, she knew about my selfishness and my petulance and she still didn’t blame me or hate me. I didn’t know what else to say to her, so I looked around, knowing full well who I’d see next.

“Hey bud! Lookin’ good, you been working out?”

“Hey Didier. No, not really.”

Didier was a strapping blond man. In life, he’d been a giant, over fifteen feet tall. In here, in my subconsciousness, he was just a large man. I didn’t know why his height had changed, but the smile on his face was ever-present. Even as he’d sacrificed himself for me, as his head had left his shoulders, he’d continued to smile.

“Ah, well, you should. Ain’t gonna kill off too many Demon Lords if you don’t take care of yourself, are you?”

“Yes Didier. O-Of course.”

He barely looked injured at all, as though he was still the spirited man that I’d known. But I knew that if I looked down, looked past his smile, at his neck, I’d see a dark, crimson line. If I pointed it out to him, he’d finger it and scratch at it, and then ask me what happened.

And I would tell him. And he’d smile, and he’d say he made the right choice. And then he’d ask if I’d succeeded. And I would say yes, because how do you tell someone that they sacrificed themselves in vain? And he’d look into my eyes, and he’d know I was lying, and he’d smile again. Always smiling. And he’d clap me on the back, and tell me that I’d get it next time.

So I just avoided the subject altogether. Didier and Amara made two. There were at least ten more. It was going to be a long, long sixteen hours. I sighed, and turned around again, away from Amara and Didier.

A knife stuck itself in my chest. I couldn’t say I deserved any less than that, and probably a lot more. It didn’t hurt, of course. And in fact, I was fairly sure I could have stopped it from actually even hitting me, but I didn’t. I never did.

“You can’t actually hurt me here.”

“I can try, you good-for-nothing, thick-headed, kharat dropping!”

When Ash had first appeared, I’d been a little bit weirded out, since I’d intentionally killed her. After all, I was supposed to kill the Evil Queen, Isekai Hero had said so. Turns out, Isekai Hero hadn’t mentioned that killing the Evil Queen would result in the immediate outbreak of a war as different civil factions vied for power, which in turn ushered in a plague, because their poorly funded military camps didn’t have good hygiene standards. The plague killed more in three weeks than the Queen had killed in years. And just as I’d been trying to find a way to reverse the affliction…I’d been sent on a new Isekai. The people of Asheotora (yes, she’d named it after herself) had suffered, and I hadn’t been around to see the end of it. I couldn’t imagine it was good.

“I’m sorry.”

“Millions dead, Blanc. Millions. Are you going to go apologize to them?”

“You know I can’t.”

“Then give me back my knife. Or slit your throat.”

Nine to go. It was going to be a long, restless, 16 hours.