Tracy Brown was your bubbly small-town girl with blonde highlights and a love for pop-music artists. She was also your behind-closed-doors alcoholic who listened to her parents argue most nights. In a fit of sudden rage that wasn’t usual for her, she took her dad’s pickup truck for a joyride. She wound up slamming it into a tree.

Everything went dark for her after that. Then she heard and saw a voice talking to her about having a second chance. Moments later, the darkness went away. Tracy found herself waking up with her heart pounding against her chest like her dad beating against the walls when he got angry.

But Tracy soon realized she wouldn’t have to deal with her dad anymore. Or her mom. Or anyone from the old world. She was in Urmatia, surrounded by gloom and mist even though it was daytime.

A chirpy message prompt nearly as bubbly as Tracy’s usual persona spoke to her when she got to her feet. It told her stuff that didn’t make much sense to Tracy. She was bewildered. Afraid. She was feeling downright out of her mind. She ignored the message prompts and the information showing up in her brain all of a sudden. Her mind refocused on the fact that she had died.

Tracy checked herself for the bottle she had before the crash. It was gone.

She broke down into tears and refused to get up despite the system prompt’s urges. The mist thickened around her, heightening her hysteria.

A shambling noise reached her ears.

Roy Tinkerman considered himself a proud geek, gamer, and connoisseur of tasteful art that one could find across the internet. He found a program where he could attend school virtually and pretend that he was paying attention while watching anime.

He considered most people too dumb for him to socialize directly lest he wanted to breathe the same contaminated air that spread the idiocy of average mortals. Besides, he didn’t want to move around too much. It took energy. He liked to sit where he was and let his mom handle everything for him.

He died of a heart attack.

He was in the darkness. Then he saw a voice speaking to him. It was going to take him to a new world. Instantly, Roy knew where this was going. At long last, he would be the hero of the stories he absorbed for years. He knew what to do as soon as he got reincarnated and⁠—

Roy soon discovered there was no reincarnation. In fact, he woke up in the same body he had died in back in his old world. Roy struggled to get to his feet since it was pretty laborious for him. He cussed at the system while it attempted to placate him.

This was idiotic, Roy thought. Everyone knew when an isekai happened, one was supposed to get reincarnated. Then they could use all the advantages of the knowledge they had previously to upset the order of things in the new world and rule it!

Looking down at his plump body, Roy felt unhappy with himself and his life decisions. Maybe he could make a change from here on. But that sounded like a lot of work.

Roy cussed at the system again when he heard suspicious noises. A shambling undead person attacked Roy. But Roy was aware of his blessing and summoned a female knight to save him. He leveled up multiple times and poured his MCP points into his fireball magic core.

In no time, Roy found himself slinging fireballs at every shambler he could find. It was glorious for him. He had never felt so powerful before. It usually took a while before anyone got immediate power like this based on the media Roy had watched.

Heck, the system didn’t even equip him with a class! What was this business about weapon art? Why didn’t the system just give it to him like it gave him magic? Roy found this curious because it felt backward. Class, weapons, and skills were supposed to come first, then the magic and blessings.

Roy ridiculed the system for its silly changes to the way things were supposed to work. He had a specific taste in media, and this world should adhere to his tastes. Then he heard a female scream followed by the system offering him an optional quest.

Roy froze up. Not out of fear but out of the sudden realization that he could live his fantasies here. It didn’t matter if he had issues to resolve with himself. If he rose as the hero with all the power and treasures that would come with such a duty, he could have whatever he wanted. He could have a caravan of adoring female slaves following him around as he wiped out monsters left and right.

As fast as he could move, Roy went over the scene of the disturbance. He imagined he would arrive just on time, kill the monster, and have the girl. He had a raging headache from using his fireballs a lot, though. But it seemed manageable as long as he put points into intellect.

Arriving at the scene, Roy found the monsters. He found the girl. The monsters were tearing the girl limb by limb while her head was bent at the wrong angle.

Roy blinked at the scene of death.

Why did it look so real?

It shouldn’t look like this, he thought.

She wasn’t supposed to die until she realized she loved him and sacrificed herself to save him, helping him become an even greater hero in his story. But the girl with the blonde highlights was a tarnished, bloodied thing. And all Roy could do was stare.

A groaning noise sounded behind him.

Roy turned and faced a large shambler with a humongous arm. It was higher in level and looked way too strong. It was a [Mauling Shambler].

There was a fortress nearby that stood above the mist and trees that Roy could see. If he ran over there, he could probably find shelter.

But that was too far for Roy. That was too hard, he felt.

Roy froze up in place and got smashed by the mauling shambler.

Gilbert Bandsmith watched the girl die while hiding behind a tree, staying still. When he saw a plump redhead walk into the scene and freeze up, Gilbert watched him die, too.

Gilbert used them as case studies to see how deadly this ‘game’ could be. It looked like the reanimated corpses had an unreasonable strength to them that went beyond their anatomy. They were obviously robots. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have moved in such a way that defied logic⁠. Corpses didn’t move, after all.

Having logic was a necessary condition that made the physical world have some matter of sense to it. Logic belonged to the realm of reasonable men, and Gilbert thought of himself as the most reasonable. He had been top of his class in his school, after all. He had stayed out of trouble and kept to himself. He had focused on what he could control and nothing else, forgoing friends and anyone he found to be unruly.

Unfortunately, he found himself kidnapped. He had been told he suffered a nasty fall down some stairs, but he disregarded that news. He was obviously fine.

He did the smartest thing he knew. He avoided conflict and moved cautiously. He gathered valuable information by observing what was around him. The two people who had died did so because they failed to control their emotions. The girl had been too hysterical. The redhead had gone into a dangerous situation without having the mental and emotional maturity to handle it.

Clearly, the last case study was an example of someone who toyed with matters greater than them without understanding the full implications of what was happening. But Gilbert had a feasible idea that they were part of an augmented reality experiment run by immoral scientists and wealthy investors.

Gilbert figured if he avoided the game long enough, he would outwit the rules and find a way to bargain with the people in charge. Not through their puppetry system but face to face. The best play was to refuse to play and⁠—

Something snatched Gilbert by the ankle and yanked him down. It got on top of him and started to squeeze his neck. The message prompt told him to use his blessing, but Gilbert found that illogical. Blessings didn’t exist. It was something out of his control.

Instead, Gilbert tried to use a grappling move he studied through videos he’d seen online.

Gilbert died.

Clifford Hernandez Garcia was finally going to make it to safety.

It had been a hard task to do. It was scary, too. But his time spent preparing to join the Marines after high school and his nerdy interests in video games had seen him through the worst of things.

He’d listened to the system when it made sense to do so. He avoided taking any risks and only fought when necessary. There was an opportunity to take on an optional quest, but Clifford decided it wasn’t worth the risk of his own life.

If he had one regret, he realized late that each shambler had a pouch he could’ve looted. It was a terrible thing to do. Most people wouldn’t think of it. Hell, even with his gamer-knowledge, snatching stuff off a corpse he had to fight didn’t come to mind as quickly as dealing with his fear and shock.

It had been a long trip to get to the nearest place of safety, too. And he felt exhausted. More exhausted than what the stamina stones could recover. But he could see the mist was starting to thin. He was almost there. He hadn’t seen any shamblers for a while.

Something appeared from behind the tree shade. It was long and skinny. It was armed with a weapon. The sound of its laughter was horrifying.

Clifford ran.

The thing chased.

Clifford barely made it to the gate of the town’s wall. The monster receded into the misty forest, leaving him slashed up but alive.

He smashed a vitality stone and waited for the guards to open the gate. That was a close call for Clifford.

The system had a reward ready for him since he reached safety, but Clifford ignored it for now. He had a few things in mind other than what the system wanted from him.

He was going to find some work and make a new life for himself. He knew there were people still in that misty forest. As someone who had looked up to the military ideals of serving others, he found it terribly unrealistic to follow through right now. He couldn’t imagine himself going back to help those lost people out there.

It was hell out there.

Clifford decided whoever remained in the misty forest could figure things out for themselves. He let go of his military ideals, finding it pointless in the face of such challenges. He didn’t want to die a second time.

Sasha Volkov crushed a shambler’s skull under her boot heel. “Aye, bro, you’re done with yours?”

She looked over to her brother, Dimitri Volkov. While holding two shamblers at the same time, he shattered their skulls against each other.

“Hah! Nice!” Sasha howled with laughter.

Her big bro nodded before facing off against more shamblers.

Her bro was broad and strong for his age. She was super tall for a person. They both liked to exhibit their own strengths, even when it got them in trouble growing up as rough-and-tumble siblings.

It had gotten them killed in the old world, which was tragic. But now they found themselves somewhere more interesting. A place where Sasha could cut loose as much as she wanted!

Feeling spirited, Sasha whirled around and threw out a low kick. She knocked down a monster and stomped it dead. Then she crushed the head of the next shambler to show itself.

It didn’t take long for the Volkov Siblings to clear the area and receive their rewards. It was nice for Sasha to know they could get rewarded for being themselves. But she didn’t like the silly hero jargon coming from the person behind the system.

“Bah, who cares about being heroes,” Sasha said, waving off the system prompt. “Let’s have some more fun!”

Her bro grunted, which sounded like he agreed with her.

Of course he did, Sasha figured. Her life was a fun way to live. It could get them killed again, but they seemed to be doing fine now. She could live her life to the max here with her big bro and some badass magic!

The girl with no name stirred awake after escaping the clutches of death. She wondered why she was alive and how that was possible. Then she stopped caring. She didn’t really care about anything in her old life, anyway. Why should she care about things in this new one?

It was tempting for her to stay on the ground, but she was lying on a rock. It was digging into her side. Annoyed, the girl with no name sat up. Then she went a step further and got to her feet to look around. A message prompt appeared in the air, relaying information on the prompt and into her brain.

The girl found it strange, but she was not surprised. She shrugged her shoulders and observed the misty morning. She heard the noise of shuffling footsteps far behind her. She recognized that the person had trouble walking without having to look at them. They made aggressive, raspy noises, too.

Her intuition told her they were going to attack her. The girl with no name had a choice.

She could let the attacker kill her.

Or not.

She was tempted to let herself die again.

But based on the sounds of the attacker, she could tell this death would be a hassle. The girl with no name sighed.

“I’ll keep living for now,” she mumbled tiredly.

With that said, she picked up the rock she had woken upon. It was a good-size rock. It was big for her little hands since she was a short person. But that was okay. She knew what to do with it.

The shambler attacked her. The shambler died.

More shamblers suffered the same fate when they came across the girl with no name.

Victor Lindeberg tossed a shambler head up and down with one hand. His other hand held a shiv made from a stone spike. It was a tiny application of his blessing, really. But it worked just fine for dealing with undead peons like these.

“I expected a challenge,” he said, sneering. “This is pathetic.”

He chucked the head behind him and continued his stroll through the misty forest. When he found the time to play around, he used his [Minor Telekinesis] magic core to levitate his stone spike and fling it at shamblers.

One spike. One skull. One defeated enemy and some experience.

“A hero you call me?” Victor said to the message prompts. “Watch me, dear. I’ll become more than a hero. I’ll become a king of this world.”