My entire body ached, my head pounded with a dull, unrelenting throb. I had just woken up from another nightmare. At least this time, it wasn’t the one where everyone I knew was gunned down, no, this time they were killed by walking skeletons. The nightmares were getting a bit too bad. Maybe I should try to get my hands on one of those productivity therapist programs? I had no idea where to even start.

  Opening my eyes, I saw… nothing. No ceiling of the rundown trailer I called home, no murky gray-yellow skies of Earth. Not white, not black—just an emptiness so absolute, it made me question if I even had eyes at all. If I was still asleep. And yet, I felt the sensation of my eyelids blinking. Over and over, my brain registered the movement, but the void remained. Slowly, I opened my eyes and I closed them just as slowly but nothing changed. Had I been blinded somehow? It didn’t feel like there was a blindfold.

  I tried to sit up but my body didn't respond. I was entirely aware of my limbs—their pain, the faint pressure of contact against some kind of surface—but I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t even scream. And still, the pain lingered, sharp and undeniable. Stamping down on my surging panic, I seriously started to entertain the absurd notion that maybe, just maybe, it had not been a nightmare. I wasn’t particularly religious, nor did I believe in an afterlife. But if I’d died—perhaps to that horrible bone monster—shouldn’t death at least have the courtesy to end the pain?

  Then, a voice tore through the silence, loud and unyielding.

  

  “GREETINGS AND CONGRATULATIONS, MORTAL. YOU HAVE FULFILLED THE CONDITIONS TO BECOME THE NEXT QUIRAION’S KNIFE. UNFORTUNATELY, YOUR UNIVERSE—AND BY EXTENSION, YOUR PLANET—ARE NOW CONDEMNED. THIS ONE CANNOT AND WILL NOT INTERVENE. WHAT THIS ONE CAN OFFER IS SOMETHING ELSE: A CHANCE AT VENGEANCE.”

  

  What? I tried to speak, to demand answers, but my body refused to cooperate. The voice continued, booming obliviously.

  

  “LORD QUIRAION, THE LORD OF FIRE AND MAGIC, OF THE SHADOWED FLAME AND THE MIRAGE OF THE DESERT, OF THE ILLUSORY VEILS. THE GOD OF MISCHIEF AND ASSASSINS AND SCHEMES AND TRICKS HAS PERISHED. HIS GREAT SYSTEM OF UNIVERSAL GROWTH HAS BEEN SUBSUMED BY BONELORD ASTER’S FORCES FOR THEIR OWN ENDS.”

  That's a lot of oddly specific domains for a single god, a part of me that loved to provide commentary noted. I still couldn't see with eyes but images flashed in my mind as the voice spoke.

  An endless tide of bony horrors, some biped, some quadruped and others that burrowed like worms or had too many legs to count, and yet others had wings of thin membranous gray. They all marched as one, on the land as on the sky across a vast desert.

  The sky was aflame. Meteors raining down across a surface already on fire. Great hulking beasts made of living flame ravaged the broken crust of the world as cracks in the ground belched out lava. No, it wasn't an attack. It was a ceremony, a funeral, a mourning. The whole world was facing something. Something that was slumped on a giant red throne. Something that fractalized and wavered in the air, never settling into a form that was cognizable, like it wasn't entirely there. But where was ‘there’? A white flame slowly rose up, consuming the throne and the thing seated there, a bonfire that left nothing behind, not even ash. The flame engulfed me, entered me, and yet I wasn't burned. I swam in the fire, reaching towards the throne. Guided by something I wasn't exactly sure about. I swam in that ocean of white fire, never once feeling hot. I might have swam for hours, or minutes, or days. I wasn't sure. I kept swimming, trying to reach the throne. I just knew that I had to get to it. As soon as I could. I had to.

  As I drew nearer, I felt . Thousands of other swimmers, all racing towards the throne, strange vibrations reverberating across fire. I felt the throne, resonating across a sense I had never had before. The resonance rose, intensifying, echoing until all I could feel, all I could think, all I was the throne. And finally I found it, a brilliance that shone all possible colors at once. Colors that didn’t and shouldn’t exist. The radiance of the throne illuminated and burned me. I tried to resist in vain but the flame consumed me, consumed the girl I was. Until I was nothing but an ember.

  I jolted back with a scream that I couldn't vocalize. It was me, I was still me.

  While I was still reeling from the vision’s intensity, the voice continued unbothered.

  “THE SYSTEM WAS THE GREATEST WORK OF MAGIC IN THE MULTIVERSE, SO GREAT WAS ITS SCOPE AND MIGHT THAT IT SPREAD ACROSS ENTIRE UNIVERSES. FOR SOME, THE SYSTEM ARRIVED INTACT AND IN OTHER MORE MAGICALLY INERT UNIVERSES, ECHOES OF IT MANIFEST AS ART, DREAMS OR IN VISIONS. YOUR UNIVERSE IS ONE SUCH CASE NEAR THE TIME OF YOUR DEMISE.”

  Another vision, a much less intense one than what had come before. An uncountable number of small spheres formed a band that stretched infinitely in both directions. What looked like almost endless glowing nerves snaked around and within the band, often splitting off into smaller nerves.

  “THE SYSTEM TAPPED DIRECTLY INTO THE CONCEPT-LINES OF THE MULTIVERSE TO GROW AND GRANT POWER FAR BEYOND THE CAPABILITIES OF A SINGLE GOD, EVEN ONE AS GREAT AS LORD QUIRAION. BUT THAT POWER ATTRACTED ATTENTION.”

  “THE UNAUGURED GOD’S REALM CHALLENGED QUIRAION’S DEMESNE TO A GODWAR OF DOMAINS. THEIR GOD FORESAW THE FULL POTENTIAL OF THE SYSTEM AND SOUGHT ITS POWER. THE WAR WAS LED BY BONELORD ASTER, THE CHAMPION OF THE BONE REALMS. ASTER WAS AND IS REMAINS ONE OF THE GREATEST WARRIORS IN THE MULTIVERSE. LORD QUIRAION KNEW THAT HE COULD NOT BEAT HIM IN A DIRECT CONTEST. BUT HE ALSO KNEW THE BONELORD WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO RESIST TAKING THE SYSTEM INTACT, FOR THE GLORY OF HIS GOD AND KING. A CONTINGENCY WAS THUS LEFT IN THE SYSTEM. A SMALL GIFT THAT COULD ONE DAY BRING THE BONELORD AND HIS GOD ALIKE DOWN. THIS ONE IS THAT CONTINGENCY. AND YOU, MORTAL, SHALL BE THE ONE TO WIELD THIS ONE'S TRUE POWER AGAINST THE BONELORD.”

  “IF YOU SURVIVE THAT IS, THE MULTIVERSE IS VAST AND THE CONTINGENCY CAN'T BE SEPARATED FROM YOU WITHOUT YOUR ALMOST CERTAIN DEATH. YOU ARE FROM THE 286th BATCH OF KNIFE CANDIDATE SO FAR. TWELVE HAVE TRIED AND TWELVE HAVE FAILED BEFORE YOU. PLEASE TRY TO ENSURE THAT A 287th ISN'T NEEDED.”

  “TO LET YOU GROW IN POWER TO COMPLETE YOUR DIVINE TASK, YOU, AND 11 OTHERS FROM YOUR WORLD SHALL BE TRANSPORTED INTO A SANCTUARY WORLD DEEMED IDEAL FOR YOUR COLLECTIVE DEVELOPMENT.”

  I really wished I could speak right now. Or at least ask questions. Or hell, just tell the loud voice to stop shouting. My head hurt so much, it was almost as bad as that one hangover I had when I had whatever chemical weapon Julia called alcohol. How did I have a head if I had no eyes or mouths or limbs? Was it even my that hurt? No focus.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Oh god, this was just one of those isekai shows that my friends watched while high.

  As the climate wars intensified, stories about escaping to a new world where people didn't have to work to the point of relying on drugs to not collapse on their feet rose in popularity. For obvious reasons, sacrificing everything including their lives for the rich made people wish to escape their broken little world and so a genre that had been popular a few decades ago had a resurgence. Of course, the irony was not lost on anyone that the studios and publishers that distributed these stories were also owned by the corporations that shaped the world that everyone so desperately wanted to leave behind.

  And then of course, there was the subgenre where it was just random rich people hooking up people to simulations for their enjoyment. Those stories tended to end up being horror stories about psychopaths finding the perfect way to torture people to any and all limits without any risk of them dying. They usually ended with said rich psychopaths getting brutally murdered. I hope I hadn't been hooked up to such a simulator but with my luck, who even knows? I tried to actually digest what the disembodied magic voice was saying but my thoughts were a lot more scattered than normal, breaking down into meaningless noise the moment I let myself be distracted.

  A GODwar? I was being conscripted into a multiversal war? Somehow getting into the Northern Lands seemed easier than this insane task. Usually the isekai stories that were popular were relatively low stakes at the beginning. Kill slimes or rats or survive in a cave or something.

  Once again a sequence of images. People, heroes, some that looked vaguely humanoid and others that looked more like something out of the Lovecraft stories I loved reading so much as a kid. All faced the bone army and manipulated the forces of nature or had world shattering physical strength and all died. Some fought alone and others helped vast armies. All died, and all of them died screaming as their powers were wrenched out of them with force. Those screams sounded way too visceral, +1 to the ‘psychopaths got to me and are fucking with me’ hypothesis.

  “TO BECOME A KNIFE, A MORTAL HAS TO DIE WHILE KILLING A VASSAL OF ASTER, HUNDREDS OF OTHERS FACTORS ALSO INFLUENCE THE LIKELIHOOD OF A SUCCESSFUL TRANSFORMATION. THE UNCOMMON CONFLUENCE OF FACTORS WERE NECESSARY TO MAKE THE CONTINGENCY IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE BY THE BONELORD. YOU ARE FORTUNATE TO HAVE MET ALL THE CONDITIONS.”

  Thanks?

  “YOUR TASK IS SIMPLE. SURVIVE, SEEK POWER IN ALL ITS FORMS AND ELIMINATE THE BONELORD ASTER.”

  Another vision. This time of an indistinct figure wielding a whip several times his size. No, that was not a whip. It was a spinal cord. A spinal cord that had to be the size of a bus if the figure was comparable to humans in size.

  “THE BONELORD ASTER IS THE HIGH CHAMPION OF THE BONE REALMS AND ONE OF THE MOST FEARSOME WARRIORS IN EXISTENCE. BUT THAT'S NOT WHY YOU ARE CHOSEN TO FACE HIM. HE ALSO HOLDS THE SINGULAR SKILL OF GODSBANE THAT MAKES HIM NIGH INVINCIBLE TO GODS. BUT YOU ARE NOT A GOD. THUS YOU MUST KILL HIM.”

  Okay. Kill a godkiller. Nothing unreasonable. Maybe if I had a free Saturday.

  “WITHOUT HIS SUPPORT, THE UNAUGURED GOD WILL FAIL. HE SHALL FALL, BY YOUR HAND OR BY THE HAND OF ANOTHER ONCE HE NO LONGER HAS ASTER’S PROTECTION. THE UNAUGURED GOD IS NOW COMMANDING A CONQUEST OF YOUR MANA DEAD UNIVERSE. THIS CONQUEST HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR CENTURIES AND BECAUSE OF THE WAR, THE INFLUENCE OF THE SYSTEM HAS SLOWLY BEEN SEEPING FURTHER INTO YOUR UNIVERSE.”

  Wait. If this system was anything like what I was used to from stories and the system manifested as art… yep. That was not a can of worms I was touching. Worrying about what other ideas were just bleedover from multiversal magic shenanigans was above this girl’s paycheck.

  “IF YOUR UNIVERSE FALLS ENTIRELY, IT COULD BE HARVESTED FOR POWER TO LET ASTER’S GOD HAVE AUDIENCE WITH A HIGHER PRINCIPALITY. SUCH A SCENARIO IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO LORD QUIRAION.”

  More images, now of a singular point of both light and dark situated in a cluster of those nerves. A star from which emanated energy and from that made and unmade entire universes in the light and shadows it cast. I knew without even being told that this was one of the so-called ‘higher principalities’.

  “THE KNIFE SHALL NOT BE AN ADVANTAGE THAT CAN BE SQUANDERED, IT WILL LEAVE YOU IF IT DEEMS YOU UNWILLING OR INCAPABLE OF FULFILLING ITS TASK. THIS WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY KILL YOU. THE KNIFE HOWEVER IS GENEROUS AND WILL NOT RUSH YOU AT ALL TIMES OR FORCE CONFRONTATION NEEDLESSLY. PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU DO NOT ABUSE LORD QUIRAION’S GENEROSITY.”

  Now, I wasn't the most hard working of women, actually I was rather the opposite if anything but I thought that it sounded generous in the same way a billionaire working people for over 100 hours a week for just enough that they could afford the cheapest grub was considered ‘generous’. I had a lot of questions though and being unable to ask any of them was worrisome because the message sounded like it was mostly pre-recorded and nearing its end.

  “GOOD LUCK MORTAL. MAY YOU BE THE KNIFE THAT FINDS ITSELF IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE THAT CONDEMNED YOUR WORLD AND COUNTLESS OTHERS.”

  ‘Nooo, wait.’ I screamed internally before my skull split open in a flash of white. I didn't even get to ask for any additional information!

  Lines of softly glowing blue text greeted me when I regained consciousness.

  //INITIALIZATION COMPLETE

  //ENTITY NAMED ‘ANANYA HARTFORD’ SUCCESSFULLY TRANSLOCATED

  //Calculating base stats…

  I opened my eyes to a blue sky that I had never seen except on old videos. The sky I was familiar with was all dark and cloudy. The text was still floating there, now enclosed in a semi transparent box of gray. It shifted and elongated until it was a vertical scrolling window on the left side of my vision. Can I make it disappear? No sooner than I had that thought, it did. And then it came back when I tried to imagine it coming back. Satisfied that it responded to my thoughts without any problems, I turned my attention to myself.

  My head was thankfully not hurting so much anymore, no, now my entire body was. I turned on my side with a hiss and used an arm to push myself into a sitting position. Thankfully, I still had my dirty brown tshirt and jeans on. They were just ripped and covered in blood. That was weird because I didn’t have any of the injuries that led to said bleeding anymore. I seemed just like I remembered being before the bone monster, no bones sprouting out of my abdomen and no more or less parts. I was just like I had been before, same hands, same unhealthily skinny body, same brownish skin, same mangled legs.

  Same. Mangled. Legs. In a new world. My right foot was still a blobby stump and my left still had toes missing. Just perfect. Exactly what I needed.

  \\Starting stats determined and analyzed

  STRENGTH: 6

  CELERITY: 5

  VITALITY: 5

  ACUITY: 11

  WILLPOWER: 13

  PERCEPTION: 11

  ATTUNEMENT: 10

  I had played enough games before the exodus to guess what most of those stats meant. Attunement I assumed was related to magic, I hope I got magic. My physical stats being in the gutter was probably due to a mix of a long list of badly healed injuries and malnutrition, not even counting my disability.

  \\Subject has debuff: severely crippled

  \\Subject has debuff: malnutrition

  \\Subject has debuff: improperly healed bones

  And on and on it went.

  \\Subject has debuff: unhealthy coping mechanisms

  \\Subject has debuff: addiction prone

  \\Subject has debuff: CPTSD

  \\Subject has trait: mental resilience

  \\Subject has trait: Enduring

  \\Subject has trait: Low Maintenance

  \\Subject has trait: Unhesitant Murderer

  \\Subject has trait: The Knife Of Quiraion

  \\Subject has trait: Dead Quiraion’s Blessing

  \\Subject is determined to be weak

  Wow, that was just being rude at this point.

  \\GENERATING STATUS

  NAME: ANANYA HARTFORD

  RACE: HUMAN

  ACTIVE CLASS: [NONE]

  CUMULATIVE CLASS LEVELS: [0]

  MASTERED CLASSES: [0]

  AGE: 19

  STATS:

  STRENGTH: 6

  CELERITY: 5

  VITALITY: 5

  ACUITY: 11

  WILLPOWER: 13

  PERCEPTION: 11

  ATTUNEMENT: 10

  SKILLS:

  PASSIVES:

  

1. Basic Earth Education: 2
2. Dirty Fighter: 3
3. Quick Killer: 1
4. Neurotic Observer: 2
5. Knife User: 2

  ACTIVES:

  

1. Find Weakness: 2
2. Improvised Tool Use: 1
3. Scavenging And Scrounging: 2
4. Intimidation: 1

  TRAITS:

  

• Mental Resilience:

  

• Enduring:

  

• Low Maintenance:

  

• Unhesitant Murderer:

  

• Dead Quiraion’s Blessing:

  

• The Knife Of Quiraion: