The first thing Silas became aware of was the pounding in his head.
It was the kind of headache that felt like a dwarven mining crew had set up shop behind his eyeballs and were working overtime without safety regulations. The second thing he became aware of was that he was not in his apartment. The third thing—and this was the one that truly ruined his morning—was the blood on his hands.
Not his blood. Someone else's.
Silas stared down at his fingers. They were long, pale, aristocratic fingers. The kind of fingers that had never typed a frantic resignation letter at 2 AM after a corporate restructuring. The kind of fingers that currently glistened crimson in the light of a crackling fireplace.
"Oh no," he whispered.
The voice that came out of his mouth was not his voice. It was deeper, smoother, edged with the kind of cultivated menace that took generations of inbreeding and absolute power to perfect.
"Oh no," he repeated, because sometimes vocabulary failed a person in moments of crisis.
The room spun into focus around him. It was a study. An obscenely large study, the kind that existed in museums or as backdrops for period dramas about wealthy people being miserable in style. Bookshelves towered to a ceiling lost in shadow. A fire roared in a hearth big enough to roast a wild boar. Tapestries depicting violent battles and uncomfortable family portraits lined the walls.
And on the floor, at his feet, lay a man.
The man was wearing servant's livery. He was middle-aged, with a kind face now frozen in an expression of terror. A letter opener—an ornate, probably priceless letter opener shaped like a silver serpent—protruded from his chest. The pool of blood beneath him was spreading with horrible enthusiasm across the expensive rug.
"I'm sorry," Silas said to the dead man. "I have no idea how this happened."
The dead man offered no reply, which was fair. He was dead.
Memories that were not his memories began to surface, rising through the fog of confusion like bubbles in a swamp. Vicious. Duke Silas von Vicious. The villain of the bestselling twelve-volume epic fantasy series "The Chronicle of the Holy Blade." A man so cartoonishly evil that readers wrote angry letters to the author demanding he be killed off sooner. A man whose hobbies included: oppressing peasants, tormenting the hero, kicking puppies (metaphorically, though the books implied literally on at least one occasion), and monologuing about the purity of his bloodline.
A man who, in Chapter Three of Book One, was supposed to murder a servant for the minor offense of entering his study without knocking.
This was Chapter Three. This was that servant. And Silas—office drone Silas, who once cried when his goldfish died—had apparently just committed the murder.
"No," Silas said firmly. "No, no, no. I refuse. I didn't sign up for this. Where's the union? Where's the HR department? I want to speak to management."
The universe, as it often does when confronted with demands for management, responded with silence.
Then a window appeared in front of his face.
It was not a physical window. It was a translucent blue screen, the kind that haunted Silas's dreams after too many late nights playing Korean grind MMOs. Text materialized on it, crisp and clinical.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
[WELCOME, HOST.]
[STATUS: CRITICAL]
[PROPHESIED DEATH TIMELINE: 72 HOURS (APPROXIMATE)]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: SURVIVE.]
Silas blinked. The window remained.
"Am I hallucinating?" he asked the dead man. The dead man, unhelpfully, remained dead.
[NEGATIVE. YOU ARE NOT HALLUCINATING.]
[THE ABYSSAL THEATRE SYSTEM IS NOW ONLINE.]
[YOUR CURRENT SITUATION: YOU HAVE TRANSMIGRATED INTO THE BODY OF DUKE SILAS VON VICIOUS, ANTAGONIST OF "THE CHRONICLE OF THE HOLY BLADE." THE PROTAGONIST, ELIAN, WILL RECEIVE HIS CALL TO ADVENTURE WITHIN THREE DAYS. HIS FIRST TASK, AS FORETOLD BY PROPHECY, WILL BE TO SLAY THE EVIL DUKE WHO MURDERED HIS VILLAGE ELDER.]
[SPOILER ALERT: HE SUCCEEDS.]
"I know he succeeds!" Silas shouted at the window. "I read the books! He stabs me in the heart with a holy sword while delivering a one-liner about justice! It's the most satisfying death scene in the entire series! The readers cheer!"
[CORRECT. YOUR SURVIVAL PROBABILITY UNDER STANDARD PARAMETERS IS 0.00%.]
[SOLUTION: OUTSOURCING.]
Silas stopped shouting. "I'm sorry. What?"
[THE ABYSSAL THEATRE SYSTEM SPECIALIZES IN CRITICAL SURVIVAL SCENARIOS. YOUR PERSONAL SURVIVAL SKILLS ARE—]
There was a pause. The window flickered. Silas got the distinct impression the System was searching for a polite word and failing to find one.
[—LIMITED. YOUR COMBAT PROFICIENCY IS NEGLIGIBLE. YOUR POLITICAL ACUMEN IS AVERAGE. YOUR PHYSICAL CONDITIONING IS, BY THIS WORLD'S STANDARDS, EMBARRASSING.]
"Rude," Silas muttered. But accurate. He'd spent ten years behind a desk. The most strenuous activity his body had performed recently was reaching for the top shelf at the grocery store.
[THEREFORE, THE SYSTEM WILL SUPPLEMENT YOUR DEFICIENCIES BY SUMMONING EXTERNAL ASSETS.]
[ASSET TYPE: PLAYERS.]
[SOURCE: ALTERNATE EARTH REALITY.]
[METHOD: GAME INTERFACE.]
The window flickered, and a new set of text appeared, this time formatted like a corporate memo. Silas recognized the formatting. He'd seen enough corporate memos to last several lifetimes.
[PROJECT: VILLAIN PROTECTION PROTOCOL]
[OBJECTIVE: PREVENT HERO ELIAN FROM SUCCESSFULLY ASSASSINATING HOST.]
[STRATEGY: DEPLOY PLAYER BASE FROM EARTH REALITY #7934 VIA GAME CONTENT UPDATE.]
[CONTEXT: PLAYERS WILL PERCEIVE THIS WORLD AS NEW EXPANSION CONTENT FOR THEIR EXISTING MMO PLATFORM, "ETERNAL KINGDOMS." THE PROTECTION OF THE HOST WILL BE PRESENTED AS A LIMITED-TIME LEGENDARY WORLD EVENT WITH APPROPRIATE REWARDS.]
[RATIONAL E: PLAYERS ARE UNPREDICTABLE, RESOURCEFUL, AND POSSESS ZERO REGARD FOR LOCAL DIVINE HIERARCHIES OR NARRATIVE CONVENTIONS. THEY ARE THE OPTIMAL COUNTER TO A PROPHECY-DRIVEN PROTAGONIST.]
Silas read the memo twice. Then a third time, because the sheer absurdity of it required multiple passes to fully process.
"You're going to... summon gamers? To protect me?"
[AFFIRMATIVE.]
"From the hero? The chosen one? The one backed by gods and destiny and the power of narrative convention?"
[AFFIRMATIVE.]
"Gamers," Silas repeated. "You're putting my survival in the hands of gamers."
[STATISTICAL ANALYSIS INDICATES THIS IS YOUR HIGHEST PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL.]
[GAMERS HAVE COLLECTIVELY DEFEATED GODS, TOppLED EMPIRES, AND COMMITTED GENOCIDE AGAINST ENTIRE SPECIES IN PURSUIT OF LOOT. A SINGLE PROPHECY-DRIVEN HERO REPRESENTS A MINOR OBSTACLE AT BEST.]
Silas opened his mouth to argue. Closed it. Considered the logic.
He'd been a gamer once, back in university. He'd been part of a raid team that spent six weeks learning the mechanics of a boss, wiping hundreds of times, until finally they'd beaten it at 3 AM on a Tuesday, and the collective scream of victory had probably woken his neighbors. He'd seen what gamers could do when properly motivated.
Motivation, in that context, had been a 2% chance at a purple item with slightly better stats.
"What's the loot?" he asked.
[EXCUSE ME?]
"The players. What do they get for protecting me? If you want them to take this seriously, there has to be loot. Rare items. Achievements. Titles. Maybe a mount. Gamers will fight gods for a mount with a slightly different color scheme."
The System was silent for a moment. When the window reappeared, the text had shifted to a slightly different shade of blue, as if the System was reassessing its host.
[...THIS IS A VALID POINT.]
[LOOT PARAMETERS ADJUSTED. LEGENDARY ITEMS ADDED TO REWARD POOL. EXCLUSIVE MOUNT: "SHADOWSTEED OF THE VICIOUS DUKE" ADDED. ACHIEVEMENTS: "BODYGUARD OF EVIL," "PROPHECY DENIER," "FIRST BLOOD (OF THE HERO)" CREATED.]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD ANY ADDITIONAL INCENTIVES?]
Silas considered. "Exclusive title for the first person to land a hit on the hero. Call it 'Hero Slayer' or something. Gamers love exclusive titles. Also, make the drop rates abysmal so they have to keep coming back."
[...NOTED.]
[DEPLOYMENT INITIATED.]
[ESTIMATED PLAYER ARRIVAL: 6 HOURS.]
[RECOMMENDATION: DISPOSE OF THE CORPSE. IT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN TO THE PLAYERS WHY THEIR QUEST TARGET IS STANDING NEXT TO A DEAD BODY.]
The window vanished.
Silas stood alone in the study, staring down at the dead man at his feet. The fire crackled. The shadows danced. Somewhere in the distance, a clock tower began to chime, marking the hour.
"Oh god," Silas whispered. "Oh god, there's a dead man. There's a dead man and I'm standing here and there's a dead man."
He had never dealt with a dead body before. He'd dealt with difficult emails, with passive-aggressive coworkers, with a landlord who kept "forgetting" to fix the heating. He had never dealt with a corpse.
The memories that weren't his memories supplied the solution. In the books, Duke Silas had called his guards, had the body disposed of in the river, and threatened the guards into silence. It was efficient. It was cold. It was exactly the kind of thing a villain would do.
Silas looked at the dead man's face. The terror there. The open eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said again. "I don't know if you can hear me, wherever you are. But I'm sorry. This wasn't me. Or... it was me, but not the me I used to be. The other me. The one who did this. I'm not him. I swear I'm not him."
The dead man, as dead men do, offered no forgiveness.
Silas straightened his shoulders—the shoulders of a murderer, now—and walked to the door. He opened it. Two guards stood in the hallway, armored in the black and silver of House Vicious. They snapped to attention.
"Your Grace."
"There's a body in my study," Silas heard himself say. His voice was steady. Calm. It was the voice of a man who disposed of bodies regularly. "Remove it. Dispose of it in the river. Tell no one. If word of this reaches anyone, I will know, and I will ensure your families know as well."
The guards exchanged a glance. One of them—the older one, with a scar across his cheek—nodded.
"It will be done, Your Grace."
They moved past him into the study. Silas stood in the hallway, watching them work. They were efficient. Professional. They'd done this before. For the real Duke Silas. For the monster whose body he now wore.
Six hours, the System had said. Six hours until gamers from another reality arrived to protect him from the hero.
Six hours to figure out how to be a villain without being a monster.
Six hours to prepare for the most absurd survival strategy in the history of transmigration.
Silas von Vicious, former office drone, current accidental murderer, and reluctant duke, walked down the hallway of his ancestral castle, leaving the guards to clean up his mess.
He had a lot to think about.
---
The players arrived at exactly the six-hour mark.
Silas was in his private chambers, having changed out of the bloodstained clothes and into something less incriminating. He was staring at a map of his duchy, trying to remember the geography from the books, when the air in front of him shimmered.
A rift opened. It was roughly door-shaped, edged with light that shifted through colors that didn't exist in nature. Through it, Silas could hear sounds: the clatter of keyboards, the tinny output of gaming headsets, the unmistakable chaos of voice chat.
"—lagging again, anyone else lagging?"
"The new zone is loading, give it a sec. Oh damn, look at the graphics. This is insane."
"Did anyone read the quest text? We have to protect some NPC called Duke Silas. Says he's a 'villainous duke' and the hero is coming to kill him."
"Who cares about the text? What's the loot?"
Silas watched, frozen, as figures began to step through the rift.
The first was a man in absurdly elaborate armor, covered in spikes and glowing runes. He was huge, easily seven feet tall in his digital form, with a helmet that obscured his face except for the glowing eye-slits.
[PLAYER: REX]
[CLASS: BERSERKER]
[LEVEL: 85]
"Nice place," Rex said, his voice booming in the confined space. He looked around Silas's chambers with the casual assessment of a tourist. "Bit gloomy. Needs more skulls."
Behind him came a woman in flowing robes, her character model ethereal and beautiful in the way only video game characters could be. She moved with a grace that suggested years of experience.
[PLAYER: LILY]
[CLASS: HOLY PRIEST]
[LEVEL: 82]
"Oh, the NPC is right here," Lily said, spotting Silas. She waved. "Hi there! You must be Duke Silas. Don't worry, we're here to help. The quest says you're in danger?"
Silas opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"You can... you can see me?"
"Of course we can see you," Rex said, laughing. "You're the quest giver, aren't you? The big guy we gotta keep alive?"
More players were coming through the rift now. A mage in dark robes, his character crackling with arcane energy. A rogue, barely visible as she flickered in and out of stealth. A paladin in gleaming gold armor. Within minutes, twenty-five players had assembled in Silas's private chambers, filling the space with digital bodies and overlapping voice chat.
"—the ambient sound in this zone is amazing."
"Check out the loot table, someone posted it on the forums. There's a mount. A SHADOWSTEED. I need it."
"Raid up, everyone. Kael's loading in, he's going to lead."
A final figure stepped through the rift. This one was less flashy than the others—practical plate armor, a sturdy shield, a sword that looked well-used rather than decorative. He moved with the calm authority of someone who had done this a thousand times.
[PLAYER: KAEL]
[CLASS: PROTECTION WARRIOR]
[LEVEL: 90]
[TITLE: RAID LEADER]
Kael looked around the room, assessing the space, the exits, the positioning of his players. Then his gaze fell on Silas, and for a moment—just a moment—Silas felt like he was being truly seen. Not as an NPC, not as a quest objective, but as something real.
"Alright everyone," Kael said, his voice cutting through the chaos. "Listen up. We've got a new zone, a new boss to protect, and according to the forums, the 'hero' is going to start spawning in about three days. We need to scout the area, establish defensive positions, and figure out this NPC's mechanics."
"I'm not a mechanic," Silas said weakly. "I'm a person."
The players laughed. They thought he was programmed dialogue.
"Good voice acting," Rex said approvingly. "The devs really went all out."
Kael walked over to Silas and stood in front of him. Up close, the warrior was imposing—not because of his size, but because of the quiet confidence he radiated.
"Hey," Kael said. "I don't know how much you're programmed to understand, but we've got your back. The hero shows up, we'll handle it. Just try to stay out of the fire, okay? Healers can only do so much if you stand in the bad."
Silas stared at him.
"I'm not programmed," he said. "I'm real. I'm a real person who woke up in this body six hours ago and I have no idea what's happening and there was a dead man and now there are twenty-five gamers in my bedroom and—"
Kael nodded thoughtfully. "Nice. They gave him a backstory. Adds immersion."
"It's not immersion! It's my life!"
"Sure, sure." Kael patted him on the shoulder. "We'll figure out the lore later. For now, just... stand over there, okay? We need to establish a raid camp."
He turned away, already issuing orders to his team. The players scattered, exploring the chambers, checking the windows, discussing tanking strategies and heal rotations.
Silas stood in the center of his own room, surrounded by strangers from another world, and felt the full weight of his situation crash down on him.
He was a villain in a story where he was supposed to die.
His only hope was a raid team of bored gamers who thought he was a video game character.
And in three days, a divinely ordained hero was going to show up with a holy sword and a prophecy.
Silas sat down on the edge of his bed, put his head in his hands, and laughed. It wasn't a happy laugh. It wasn't even a sane laugh. It was the laugh of a man who had passed through confusion, through terror, through denial, and arrived at the final destination: absurd acceptance.
"Your Grace?" Lily the priest was standing in front of him, concern on her digital face. "Are you okay? You're not broken, are you? The quest says we have to protect you, but it doesn't say anything about repairing you if you're broken."
"I'm fine," Silas heard himself say. "I'm perfectly fine. This is fine. Everything is fine."
"Great!" She beamed at him. "We're going to go scout the castle. Try not to wander off, okay? And if the hero shows up early, just yell. We'll hear you."
She hurried off to join the others.
Silas sat on his bed, in his chambers, in his castle, in a world that wasn't his, surrounded by players who weren't real, waiting for a hero who was very real and very determined to kill him.
The System had said his survival was now in the hands of gamers.
Looking at the chaos unfolding around him—the arguments about positioning, the excitement over graphics, the obsessive checking of loot tables—Silas realized something.
The System might actually be right.
After all, what was a prophecy compared to twenty-five bored gamers with something to prove?
What was a god's blessing compared to the collective determination of people who had spent thousands of hours learning to press buttons in exactly the right sequence?
What was a hero, really, against people who treated his tragic destiny as nothing more than a weekly raid boss?
The answer, Silas suspected, was: not much.
He leaned back on his bed, closed his eyes, and waited for the madness to truly begin.
It didn't take long.
---
[CHAPTER 1 END]