Somewhere in the frozen sky, with the Blue Screen of Death stretched across reality like the universe had been downgraded to Windows 95 Pro without consent, one of Vescarion's clones let out a slow, deeply offended breath.
"At this rate," he said flatly, "we will be here for eternity."
"I refuse," a third snapped immediately. "I have plans. I had a malevolent wish to fulfill today."
"You always have wishes to fulfill," the first shot back.
"Yes," the third said, visibly irritated, "but these were scheduled."
A faint flicker passed across the blue screen.
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3%…
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A low, collective groan rippled across the battlefield—not loud, not dramatic, just… tired. The kind of tired that comes from existing too long in a situation that makes no sense.
One of the clones tilted his head slightly. "Is it… stuck?"
Another stared at the number. "…If that's the speed, we're not dying today. We're buffering."
Vescarion's original body twitched again, something dark and furious tightening behind his frozen expression.
"…No," he muttered, voice low, dangerous. "No, I am not… I am not being processed."
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PLEASE DO NOT RESIST RESTART
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That did it.
Something in him snapped—not power, not rage, just sheer, unfiltered offense.
"DO NOT RESIST—?!" he barked, his voice cracking through the frozen air. "I AM THE ONE WHO DEFINES—"
The screen flickered violently.
For the first time, the blue surface distorted, lines tearing across it like a corrupted file struggling to hold together.
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ERROR: FORCE RESTART INITIATED
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The Arch-Exorcist closed his eyes.
"…Ah," he said softly, almost peacefully. "So this is how it ends."
One of the clones panicked. "WAIT, WAIT—WHAT DOES FORCE RESTART MEAN?!"
Another answered immediately, "It means we die faster."
"I DON'T WANT TO DIE FASTER!"
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27%…
-------
Everything went quiet again.
Even Vescarion.
Even me.
"…That's not how percentages work," I whispered, watching it jump like it had somewhere better to be.
One clone looked up slowly. "…It skipped."
Another nodded grimly. "We're not even worth a proper loading sequence."
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48%…
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"Okay, this looks bad—" I started.
"THIS looked bad at 1%," someone shouted from behind me.
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76%…
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"OH COME ON—"
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99%…
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Everything stopped again.
Not frozen.
Not paused.
Something worse.
It felt like existence itself had taken its finger off the pulse. For a single, stretched-out instant, I became aware of everything and nothing.
Vescarion's voice came out low, almost impressed despite the situation.
"…I hate this."
And then—
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100%…
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Reality instantly got switched off.
There was no explosion, no collapse, no fading into darkness. It didn't feel like destruction. It didn't even feel like an ending. It was simply… absence, instant and complete. Everything that had existed a moment ago—every sound, every form, every thought—was gone so thoroughly that there wasn't even anything left to register the loss.
There was no darkness, because there was nothing to see it.
No silence, because there was nothing to hear it.
No time, because there was nothing to move through it.
Even the idea of nothingness couldn't exist there.
And then, without warning, something began again.
When I opened my eyes, the hum of my apartment greeted me. The soft glow of the evening sun filtered through the blinds, and a thin stream of steam rose from a forgotten pot on the stove while my ramen sat cooling on the counter like it had been waiting for me to remember it existed. Everything looked normal—too normal—and for a moment I just sat there, trying to shake off the lingering weight in my chest.
I let out a slow breath and rubbed my face. "Yeah… that was the craziest dream I've ever had."
The memory was already slipping away. Something about light, something overwhelming, something that felt far too real to just be my imagination—but the more I reached for it, the less there was to grab. All that remained was the feeling, heavy and strange, like I had just come back from somewhere I wasn't supposed to be.
I pushed myself to my feet and immediately regretted it. My legs wobbled, my balance faltered, and I had to steady myself against the wall as a dull weakness spread through my body.
"…Why do I feel like I just went through a boss fight?" I muttered.
"Because you did."
I froze.
Slowly, I turned my head.
The Unknown (Vescarion) was sitting there in the corner, completely at ease, holding a mug like he'd always been part of the room. That same grin sat on his face, relaxed and infuriating, like nothing in the universe had ever gone wrong.
I stared at him for a few seconds before shaking my head. "No. You're part of the dream. You don't get to follow me out of it."
He took a sip. "That's a bold assumption."
"I barely remember anything," I said, more to myself than to him.
"Of course you don't," he replied easily. "Wouldn't be much of a reset if you did."
The word sat wrong with me, but before I could question it, he tilted his head slightly toward the window, his expression sharpening just a little.
"You might want to look outside," he said.
I frowned. "Why?"
His smile widened, just enough to make something cold settle in my stomach.
"Because reality has changed in unimaginable ways."
Something about the way he said it made me move without thinking. I stepped toward the window, still unsteady, and looked outside—
The street was… different.
Not completely unrecognizable—but wrong in subtle ways. The road had faint glowing lines running through it, shifting slowly like veins under skin. Streetlights weren't poles anymore—they hovered slightly above the ground, adjusting their brightness on their own.
Even the people—
Some of them had faint screens hovering near their wrists. Others moved like they were following prompts only they could see.
"…What am I looking at…" I whispered.
And then—
A truck moving at insane speed was barreling straight for a massive man standing in the middle of the street. It wasn't even built like a normal truck—its body was sleeker, reinforced, edges too clean like it had been designed to survive impact, and for a moment my brain refused to process what I was seeing..
I froze by the window, eyes wide, my breath catching halfway in my chest as the scene unfolded below like something out of a badly timed movie.
People screamed. Phones rose into the air almost instinctively, like a congregation offering up their screens to witness something terrible and important. Someone shouted for the man to move, their voice cracking under the weight of what was about to happen.
He didn't.
He just stood there, completely still, headphones on, lost in whatever music he was listening to, as if the world hadn't decided to end right behind him.
* Another isekai story. Truck-kun claims another victim.*
And then the truck went flat.
Not the man.
The truck.
The entire front of it collapsed inward like it had slammed into something far denser than steel, the metal folding into itself with a sickening, unnatural crunch, as though an invisible hand had crushed it like a discarded soda can. The impact didn't throw the man, it didn't even move him.
The street fell silent.
For half a second, maybe less, the entire world seemed to hesitate, like it needed to confirm what had just happened.
"How the—?" I breathed.
And then the street reacted in the most wrong way possible.
They celebrated.
People started cheering like they had just witnessed something sacred. Phones didn't lower—they rose higher, trembling with excitement instead of fear. The air shifted from panic to something almost religious, like everyone had collectively agreed that what they just saw was correct, even if it made no sense.
"Amazing, truly."
"Another hero has been born…"
"I wonder what his job will be like?"
"I wish my child could just hurry up and awaken."
I felt my legs give out, and I dropped down near the window, my mind lagging behind reality.
"…What the hell am I looking at…?"
Then soft clap echoed behind me.
I turned.
The Unknown (Vescarion) was standing there, like he had stepped out of a system message and decided to take physical form for dramatic effect.
He gave a theatrical bow, slow and exaggerated, like he was introducing an audience to something very important.
"Welcome," he said warmly, "to the New World, Renjiro Souta."
I stared at him.
"…A New World?" I repeated.
He straightened, clearly enjoying himself.
"Mm. Reality broke so badly it panicked," the Unknown said casually, like he was explaining a broken appliance instead of the foundation of existence. "Think of it like a system crash. Something in the structure of the world hit an error it couldn't resolve—the absence of mathematics in the universe. So instead of collapsing cleanly, it attempted an automatic repair."
He lifted a hand slightly, as if conducting the idea itself.
"The first fix was a rollback, it didn't work. Too many changes had already been accepted into the 'current state.' So it tried patching instead, forcing consistency back into the world through whatever logic it could salvage. That failed too. The contradictions were already embedded too deeply."
His smile widened faintly, almost amused by how badly it had gone.
"So it did the only thing it had left. It improvised."
He gestured toward the window.
"Now you've got leftovers, Fantasy residue, systemic hallucinations, probability glitches that sometimes manifest as miracles, sometimes as people getting flattened by divine negligence."
I blinked slowly.
"…Ves, That's not a thing."
"It is now," he said immediately.
He looked delighted about that fact.
I should've been scared, or angry, or at least confused enough to shut him up. Instead, my chest tightened with something close to excitement.
"…Could it be..? Magic?" I asked, the word tasting absurd and real at the same time.
The Unknown tilted his head slightly. "Depends what you call magic."
"To reality, it's a bug. To you… it's an opportunity."
Something in my brain just snapped open with excitement.
Magic.
The word that makes a brain-dead monkey to get excited.
There isn't a day in our early lives were we haven't screamed "Fireball" in pure nostalgia.
I grinned before I even realized I was doing it.
"Are you serious?" I said, voice rising. "You're telling me the world just… started running fantasy code on accident?"
The Unknown smiled wider.
"I'm telling you," he said, "that monkeys would start casting spells if they saw what's outside right now."
I laughed.
Actually laughed.
Because it was insane.
Because it was real.
Because I didn't care if it made sense anymore.
The apartment behind me stayed exactly the same—washing machine rattling, ramen cooling, sunset pretending nothing important had ever happened—but it all felt slightly less relevant now, like background scenery for something far bigger trying to unfold.
I pressed my hands against the window, still grinning like an idiot.
The beginning of something grand.
A legendary awakening.
A world stitched together with fantasy and chaos and maybe—just maybe—my name carved somewhere in it.
The start of a great adventure.
…And I'm late for school again.