Just as the first man sat down, a slightly overweight youth behind him spoke up.

“Hey, boss, when have we ever sat at an empty table? I thought we were going to take a table! If you just sit at an empty table, you’re not taking it, because there’s nobody to take it from.” The chubby boy said, prodding the man.

The man sighed, running a hand through his fiery orange hair. “I don’t know, man, it’s just been a horrible day for us. First, we were spectating that competition match where that brown-haired kid totally should’ve won. But to our astonishment, he actually lost to that pipsqueak girl with the light sword! It just defies all common sense.”

Another youth, a skinny boy, groaned. “The Boss is right. This day sucks. After that, we went to the Mountain Range of Mathematical Beasts to hunt that big-boobed woman with the light sword who crippled the 3 legs of the young master of Ji! Little did we know, we actually ran into that fearsome black bear with the light sword who has been stealing the clothing of poor young women who venture into the Mountain Range of Mathematical Beasts to bathe!”

Shuxue sipped his tea as he listened to their life story with complete disinterest.

The Boss wiped some sweat off his brow. “The bear only let us go when we gave it all our clothes! What a humiliation, I’m not even a young woman! That’s the only reason I’m wearing this ratty T-shirt that we got from killing those merchants. They had such poor fashion sense, nobody ever would have bought these clothes anyway.”

The skinny kid shook his head. “Today’s a horrible day, I’m telling you. I’m not feeling up for a fight over a restaurant table.”

The chubby boy vigorously shook his head, making his fat rolls seem like waves on an ocean. “No, guys. What you all need to do is cool yourselves down by blowing up! You gotta vent your frustrations out on people whom are definitely weaker than you! Otherwise, bottling up your anger will only lead to future complications.”

The Boss blinked, and sat up ramrod straight. “My boy, you’re right! I need to go on a power trip and beat people up! That’ll make me feel much better about my day!”

The chubby boy puffed up proudly. “That’s right! I love living vicariously through the Boss as he savages people, because that way I can, at least for a moment, forget about how pathetic my personal life is!” He began to tear up. “I’m 25 and still a fat virgin who even the prostitutes won’t copulate with, but cheering on the Boss makes me feel much better about myself!”

The skinny boy frowned. “Well, all right. But how are we going to find somebody weak enough and stupid enough to start a completely unreasonable fight with us, where we are definitely in the right? That won’t ever happen in real life.”

The Boss stood up, patting the skinny boy on the head. “Carpe diem, my boy. Seize the day! You gotta make your own life. If you can’t find any stupid fights to join, you gotta start them yourself!”

He turned around, smashing both fists on Shuxue’s table. “Get out of my table, trash!”

The chubby boy laughed. “A tall, skinny man and 2 kids. We can definitely stomp on these guys!”

The restaurant exploded into flames. A few seconds later, Shuxue, Zhujiao, and the Sphinx walked out from the carnage.

“Damn, it feels good to be the Sphinx.” The Sphinx smirked as he licked some blood off his lips.

“I think you shouldn’t have made that place go BOOOOM! after you ate them, Sphinx big bro.” Zhujiao scratched his head as he walked. “They were already dead.”

“But cool Sphinxes always walk away from explosions.” The Sphinx grinned, revealing bloodstains on his sharp teeth.

“Yeah, whatever.” Shuxue sighed. “Can we just go home? I have jade slips which need to be pressed to my forehead.”

“No!” Zhujiao shouted. “We’re going to the Mountain Range of Mathematical Beasts! By walking!”

“What! Why?” Shuxue paled. “Mathematical beasts are too unorganized to get any good jade slips from dungeons. This is a completely pointless venture. Let’s go back, Zhujiao. Just think about all the cool things our Infinity Sector must have built while we were gone.”

“No!” Zhujiao folded his arms. “Plot wants us to go to the Mountain Range of Mathematical Beasts!”

“I’ve about had it with Plot.” Shuxue said, his face dark. “I’ve never even met Plot. Why do we gotta listen to whatever you say it says?”

“Just do it!” Zhujiao yelled, walking off into the distance. Sighing, Shuxue and the Sphinx followed him.

“What the fuck is Plot, anyway?” The Sphinx asked curiously.

“I don’t know.” Shuxue fumed. “But it gave Zhujiao an interspatial forehead, Plot Armor, and teleportation abilities, and using Plot requires Zhujiao to gather large amounts of pearls for their mathforce.”

“That’s fucking awesome!” The Sphinx’s eyes gleamed. “I always wanted an interspatial forehead!” He took out some white powder and sniffed it up his nose. “Ah, fuck yeah.”

Zhujiao halted in his tracks, causing Shuxue to bump into his back.

“What the hell are you doing, Zhujiao.” Shuxue groaned. He looked to the side and saw a black bear sitting in a river.

“That’s the black bear!” Zhujiao shouted. “If we kill it, we get a bounty!”

Shuxue looked at the black bear. “That’s a fucking bear, Zhujiao. How many bears are there in the Mountain Range of Mathematical Beasts?”

1! Completely ignoring him, Zhujiao began to attack the black bear. Roaring, the bear stood up on its hind legs and swiped at Zhujiao.

BOOM! The bear was sent crashing into the ground with a single palm from the Sphinx. “Heh, wildlife.” The Sphinx snorted. “Shuxue, go harvest its toenails for me. I’ve always wondered what black bear toenail powder would be like if you sniffed it.”

“Fuck off.” Shuxue snorted. He stared down at the bear’s corpse. Its head was a puddle of gunk and blood. “You see, Zhujiao, this was just a normal bear. Completel-”

“Wait, did you just say Zhujiao?” A voice could be heard from the bear’s neck, which was still gushing out blood. The head of a man with golden eyebrows and a curly mustache popped out.

“AHHH! OH MY GOD!” Zhujiao screamed, jumping back and shooting an attack at the bear’s body. 2!

BOOM! The Sphinx swiped again, and the man’s head exploded into pulp. After a moment, a big breasted beauty with large, round eyes emerged from the man’s body. “Calm down, guys. I’m just trying to ask a questi-”

The Sphinx was about to swipe again, but Zhujiao waved his arms. “Hold up, don’t kill a harem member!”

“Yeah, listen to me!” The girl said, an annoyed look on her face.

“No, never listen to harem members! Sphinx big bro, you don’t need to listen to her, but you can’t kill her either!”

Puffing his chest up, Zhujiao spun around. “I’m Zhujiao!”

“Me too!” The girl exclaimed.

Zhujiao blinked. “Wait, what?”

“I’m from the Zhujiao clan.” The girl blinked. “Can it be that you’re not from the Zhujiao clan as well?”

“What’s the Zhujiao clan?” Shuxue asked, puzzled. He had studied up on every major Sector of the Tesseract, and had never heard of any such thing.

“The top society in the Multiverse!” The girl said, then sighed. “You guys from the Tesseract wouldn’t know, but there is another realm known as the Multiverse, created by the Laws of Writing.”

“All right, cut the bullshit.” The Sphinx snorted, waving its paw around. “There’s no such thing.”

“Yes, there is, or my name isn’t Jijian!” The girl folded her arms. “The Zhujiao Clan was the uncontested number one Society in the entire Multiverse! We had countless experts and we could give nobody face, and that would be fine. Many of us would even have forty-nine concubines, seven for each day of the week. As a result, our Zhujiao Clan grew like an unchecked cancer.”

“Wow, tell me more!” Zhujiao grew excited. “Super cool! Wait, what’s a day?”

Ignoring his question, the girl continued. “Our rise to supremacy was because our Grand Ancestor, Zhujiao, obtained the ultimate Fictional Artifact, Plot. With it, we could spread throughout the universes of the Multiverse, while also being the sole Society in the top universe of the Multiverse!” A starry look was in the girl’s eyes as she talked. Then, her gaze turned bitter. “But all that changed when the Grand Ancestor disappeared, along with Plot!”

“Over the countless years, our Zhujiao Clan offended too many people by following Plot’s orders!” She said grimly. “The moment the other Societies in the Multiverse discovered that the Grand Ancestor went missing, there was an immense bloodbath throughout the countless universes we inhabited. Our Clan had quadrillions of experts, but it wasn’t enough without Plot Armor.”

“That damn Zhujiao Grand Ancestor!” Zhujiao shouted angrily. “How dare he disappear!”

“Battles shook the Multiverse as our Zhujiao Clan was ruthlessly hunted down by our enemies!” Jijian said, gritting her teeth in anger. “We withdrew to the number one universe, the Zhujiao universe, but countless Societies decided to band together and create the anti-Zhujiao alliance. They Ascended to our personal universe to finish us off! In just under 4 years, over 2,000,000,000,000,000 of us died fighting in the galaxies of the Zhujiao universe!”

“These are some ridiculous numbers.” Shuxue muttered. “What’s a galaxy?”

“Wow, you guys suck! You should’ve killed them all!” Zhujiao yelled in exasperation.

“Alas, our adversaries were endless. The Grand Ancestor simply made too many enemies. He took the daughter of the Golden Legion’s general as his wife, and then took the general’s wife as his grandson’s concubine! In a tournament, the Grand Ancestor’s son permanently broke all 3 legs of the Vermilion Universe Head, preventing him from ever engaging in sexual relations again!” Jijian sighed. “The list goes on. Why did Plot have him do such things?”

“What an idiot! He just shouldn’t have listened to Plot!” Zhujiao yelled. “I never would’ve done something like that in his place!”

“It was too late.” Jijian shook her head. “Because they had bottled up their anger for so long, the anti-Zhujiao alliance needed to vent their frustrations, and they waged a campaign of extermination. As a result, the Head of the Zhujiao Clan could only open a portal for us to flee into random places in the Tesseract. We are scattered throughout these countless, foreign planes, a vestige of our former selves.”

She sighed, a defeated expression on her face. “Plot was our greatest blessing, but also our greatest curse. Now, we have nothing left.”