Seeing the armored man finally fall down was a shock. Matt paused. Honestly, he hadn’t expected any element of the plan to work out. The past few weeks had shown him that when things could go wrong, they did go wrong. It should have been time for plan C, and fleeing to the not-sun-facing side of the planet.

The gulf between his expectations and the actual reality was large enough that Matt completely froze up, if only for a moment. This inaction might have resulted in disaster. Fortunately, Lucy took that moment to say the sweetest thing.

“Matt! Gelatinize him!”

Matt didn’t need to be told twice. Sergeant Swordguy was on the ground and struggling to deal with the aftereffects of a full shovel-blow to the face. Before he could recover, Matt moved forward, planting one foot on the light armor like a villain. A quick golf-style swing with the shovel caught the pommel of the giant claymore, ripping it away and putting it out of play.

The bad guy was now fully unarmed. But he was still dangerous, loaded with the kind of stats that could reverse the scenario in a single second. Matt didn’t waste any time, immediately cueing off a series of moves that would later be dubbed as The Storm of Shovels.

The Storm of Shovels was not a complex move. Matt knew that his full-force smacks could barely hurt the guy, but his best chance was to keep his opponent off-balance and disoriented. The best way to do this? A frantic series of blows to the head. Grasping the shovel in both hands and putting every inch of his digging-hardened back muscles into every strike, Matt proceeded to pelt his opponent’s helmet with overhand blow after overhand blow, ringing it like a church bell made of pain.

For the first few strikes, the other reincarnator tried to resist, but repeated blows to his arms removed even that token defense pretty quickly. The next few blows had obvious disorienting effects, and soon, every hit sent the guy’s skull whipping around like a jack-in-the-box head on a spring.

After a few more blows, it was clear what metal won in the face-off between Matt’s Gaian steel and whatever his enemy’s headgear was made from. Matt doubted the swordsman could even get the misshaped helmet off at this point.

At the same time, the swordsman was holding up remarkably well in terms of how he looked. He wasn’t jelly, he wasn’t even bleeding.

Oh well, just more work for me.

Matt kept at it.

For most of Asadel’s trip to Gaia, the word that best described his emotional state would have been frustrated. He was frustrated that it took so long to find the demon lord, then frustrated that he wasted so much time dealing with the fake garden illusions. He was frustrated that the demon lord chose to trick him instead of doing a cool I’m-the-bad-guy-kill-me-now monologue, and he was frustrated when he couldn’t even touch the demon lord during their first engagement.

Things got worse when he got caught in a fun house of pain. The tornado of traps never seemed to end, and the catapult actually knocked him out cold for a second. For the first time, his health bar had dipped into dangerous territory.

This trip to another world wasn’t supposed to be a long slog to the easy, cool life he wanted. It was supposed to be a part of the easy, cool life. Instead, it had just been a giant pain in his ass. Frustrating was absolutely the right word for it, until ten seconds ago.

Now, he was terrified. He had lost his sword, and every move he made to get back to his feet was hard-countered by yet another blow to his head. He was dizzy. He couldn’t think. He was taking real damage and couldn’t fight back. He didn’t have the time to check, but he suspected his debuff list now featured entries like “concussed” and “skull fracture.” Vitality was keeping him awake, but it was getting harder to see.

Even when he faced demons on Ra’Zor, it was in a controlled way, monitored and assisted by higher-level fighters. This was not that. The demon lord’s eyes didn’t look angry or amused. They looked determined. The same eyes that crazy people had. This, more than anything else, finally sent Asadel’s hand towards his pocket, where he grabbed the only stone he had kept.

Evacuation Stone

If you are holding this stone, the system asked you to undertake an unusual task under circumstances normally outside the normal reincarnator purview. Safety is never a guaranteed component of system-issued quests, but in this case, the system’s own ruleset requires that it provide you with some method of preserving your life should things go wrong.

This stone ensures that you can escape with your life by forcing a transmigration back to the world from which you came. But be warned: that is all this stone guarantees. In the event you activate this stone without completing your mission, all mission rewards are forfeited, and severe additional penalties may be applied.

Use this stone only as a last resort.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. This can’t be happening.

Asadel held on as long as he could. He tried his hardest to push the bad guy off his chest. It didn’t work. His balance was shot. His arms were probably broken from trying to block shovel blows. He was still unarmed, and even laying on the ground, he could tell his legs had become weak and wobbly. Still, he held on. He waited until unconsciousness started creeping in before he gave up and activated the stone.

Amidst the pain and disorientation, the very last thing Asadel felt on Gaia were tears of disappointment.

And then, the pain and blows were all gone.

Asadel opened his eyes to see the same old cobblestone streets of his surrogate home, the same soup stands and taverns that were always packed. It looked like the system had skipped the orbit-drop entry this time, sending him directly back to his Ra’Zorian starting point without all the crater-filled pomp and circumstance.

My gear!

Asadel’s hand dropped in panic to his side, where he felt only the cool, rough fabric of the system’s reincarnator starter tunic. Every bit of gear he had brought with him to Gaia had been left behind. It only took a moment for him to remember that all his good gear, the high quality Blademaster stuff, was probably still safe and sound somewhere. He could scoop it up and just use that.

Unless …

The system had said there would be significant penalties for using the stone, yet here he stood, with all four limbs. As much as he liked the Gaian claymore, it didn’t seem like quite enough to count as a severe punishment for failure. He shivered a little as he called up his status screen, already anticipating the kind of thing he’d see.

Derek Cyrus

Level 1 Unclassed

HP: 25

MP: N/A

STAM: 10

STR: 5

DEX: 5

PER: 5

VIT: 5

WIS: 5

INT: 5

Warning: The unclassed do not have class goals, and thus cannot gain levels. Their stats can only be improved through great effort. There is no advantage in putting off class selection.

No. No. It even took my name. No.

He was back to square one. All the time he had spent leveling was gone. Everything was gone. He was weak again. He was no longer Asadel the Blademaster, but rather Derek the Unclassed.

Desperate to feel even a tiny bit less vulnerable, he ran as fast as he could to the cathedral of the Estiguan church, cursing his low-DEX running speed. By the time he got there, his feet were bleeding from the sharp cobblestones, but he didn’t care.

He dashed to his guardian stone, one of many plinths erected in the courtyard of the church, each representing a reincarnated hero of Ra’Zor. The church had explained to him that each plinth had the help and guidance he’d need, a special gift from the system. Could he choose his class without one? Sure, they had said. But the best outcomes were those driven by the guardian plinths, and their deeply sealed wisdom.

Pressing his palm to the plinth, Asadel muttered the class selection words, “I choose the Blademaster class.”

Error. The Blademaster class has been restricted as part of a system-enacted penalty. All skills and stats have been consumed to repay a system-owned transport energy debt. Please select another class.

Plenty of people had seen Derek running to the cathedral. It didn’t take long for Brennan and Artemis to find him there, sitting in the grass and weeping.

“Help,” he said, sobbing, “I need help.”

Later, Derek would be surprised how little he was actually scolded or yelled at. He had been called into an impromptu meeting.

In the moment, everything felt like an attack, but looking back on it, he realized that all anybody had really done was ask questions and make statements of fact. His corpse had been found. Apparently, there was a tomb containing a slowly decaying replica of his body somewhere on Ra’Zor. Or he was the replica. Brennan was distracted trying to sort through the logic for a few moments before Artemis got him back on track.

There had been costs related to Asadel’s adventure, and everyone had scrambled to find his cause of death. A lot of resources that would have been better spent on the demon war were gone, including Asadel the Blademaster. And now Derek, just Derek now, was back to square one. All the resources that had been poured into him up to that point were wasted.

The worst part wasn’t that they were right.

Something about his last couple of days, including the experience of being beaten in the head with a shovel, had shaken some realizations loose. Main characters didn’t lose in humiliating ways to demon lords. They didn’t fail big, important missions.

Derek was not a main character. He spent so little time trying and so much time drinking. He hadn’t really trained. He had been in such a hurry that he had nothing but his stats. Now that his levels were gone, he had nothing to fall back to.

By the time he staggered out of their meeting in the back of the cathedral, he was, for maybe the first time in his life, actually sorry. Brennan was nice enough to give him money for the next few days, just in case reincarnation shenanigans made it hard to access any of his former funds. Brennan had always been considerate in that way, Derek realized. Now that Derek was looking, it wasn’t that hard to see why Brennan was a real hero, and he wasn’t.

Before he left, he walked over to his guardian plinth. If Blademaster was closed to him, and it was, he’d have to find something else. Something different. Something that would help him be different.

Maybe later he’d go apologize to the old blacksmith. With his newfound clarity, he guessed that the old man knew Asadel had never taken his training that seriously. That was about to change. He was Derek now.

Alone in the room now, Brennan and Artemis finally had time for a private word. Brennan, as always, was calm. Artemis was less so.

“That dumbshit, Brennan. That dumb, dumb little shit,” Artemis cursed.

“It’s ok.” Everything was always okay to Brennan.

“We spent a week trying to figure out who murdered him, Brennan! It was all we could do to keep it under wraps,” Artemis’s voice rose an octave. “People could have panicked over this. People have been lynched for less. This was the murder of a hero.”

“He’s a kid. He didn’t think.” Brennan kept his low baritone.

“No shit.”

“I’m serious. You don’t know how it is. I was his age when I came here, and all I wanted to do was to save the entire world the first day. It’s not a normal childhood.” Brennan paused. “It’s hard to adjust to. I just hope this will help him slow down a bit.”

“I guess.” Artemis was only slightly mollified, but part of what made Brennan work as her secret hero-boyfriend was his knack for calming her down. “Do you believe him? About the ‘demon lord’ that he mentioned?”

“In a way. He’s a kid, and whatever happened is going through kid-filters. I might not believe him if he just disappeared for a week, but we buried him. We know something weird happened,” Brennan replied.

Artemis nodded in agreement, and they both sat in silence for a moment before she spoke again. “You know what I can’t believe?”

“What’s that?” Brennan asked.

“He didn’t ask a single question about the system. He doesn’t have any doubts at all?” Artemis sounded unsure.

“Not yet. It will take a while for him to calm down, and for what happened to sink in. He might not ever ask, you know. He’s not really the thinking type.” Brennan smiled.

He stood up and began walking towards the door, and Artemis followed.

“But he might,” she added.

“Yes. And we need to plan what we will say, if he does.” Brennan leaned over and kissed Artemis on the cheek. They wouldn’t be able to have displays of affection like that outside this room, and he wanted at least that to tide himself over, even if he’d see her again in private soon enough. “But that’s tomorrow’s worry. For now, let’s go get some soup.”