The cursor blinked mockingly at the end of line 847 in the digital script for Hero's Dawn Chapter 321.
Kiriti Kolluru pushed his glasses up his nose and stared at the sentence he'd just typed: "Even if the whole world abandons you, I'll always believe in you, Akira!" His stomach churned.
Not from the seven cups of coffee he'd consumed since midnight—though that wasn't helping—but from the pure, distilled cliché of it all. Friendship conquers despair. The power of believing in someone. The unbreakable bond between protagonist and deuteragonist. Absolute narrative garbage. And it would make his readers cry.
Kiriti's fingers hovered over the keyboard. He could already picture the comment section: "Makoto's loyalty is everything 😭😭😭" and "This is why Hero's Dawn is peak fiction!!!"
The crying emojis would outnumber the actual words by a ratio of roughly 3:1, based on the metrics from chapters 298 through 320. His phone buzzed against the cluttered desk, vibrating against an empty energy drink can.
Tanaka-san [3:47 AM]: Status update? Upload deadline is 6 AM. Kiriti glanced at the timestamp.
Two hours and thirteen minutes. His back ached from the cheap office chair, and his wrist was starting to cramp, but he was almost done.
Chapter 321 would be another perfectly executed exercise in emotional manipulation disguised as character development. He typed back: On it. Final scene in progress.
Tanaka-san [3:48 AM]: Reader engagement on 320 was insane. Whatever you're doing with Makoto's character arc, keep it up.
Whatever you're doing. As if it were magic instead of simple psychology. Take one deuteragonist with abandonment issues, add precisely timed moments of vulnerability, season with unwavering loyalty, and watch readers project their own friendship fantasies onto the page.
The formula was so obvious it hurt. Kiriti scrolled up through the chapter draft, scanning his work with the cold efficiency of a coroner examining a body. The pacing was flawless—tension building through the first two-thirds, emotional crescendo at exactly the right moment, resolution that left just enough loose threads for the next installment.
He'd even included a callback to Chapter 285's training sequence, because his readers loved when he pretended the story had been planned all along. Technically perfect. Emotionally bankrupt. His phone buzzed again.
Tanaka-san [3:49 AM]: BTW, got early response from the focus group on your character interview answers. They loved your insights about "writing from the heart." Very authentic.
Kiriti stared at the message. He'd spent exactly four minutes on that interview, giving the same recycled answers he'd been using for three years. "Every character needs to feel real to me before they can feel real to readers."
"I try to write the stories I'd want to read."
Standard deflection techniques to avoid explaining that he analyzed his characters like lab specimens and crafted his stories like statistical models. The worst part? It worked. Every lie made the sales numbers climb higher. He minimized the messenger app and returned to the script.
Akira was supposed to have his breakthrough moment now—the scene where he realizes Makoto's faith in him was justified all along. The readers would eat it up. Another victory for the power of friendship, another emotional manipulation disguised as character growth. Kiriti's fingers moved across the keyboard with practiced efficiency.
He knew exactly which words would trigger the desired emotional response. Which sentence structure would maximize impact. How to balance dialogue with action to maintain engagement without seeming overwrought. "You're right," he typed. "I was so focused on not becoming like my father that I forgot... I already wasn't him. Because I had you." His chest tightened.
That was... actually good. Not good in the technical sense—he'd written better dialogue in his sleep. Good in the dangerous way. The way that made readers feel like they were discovering something true about themselves instead of being fed a carefully crafted emotional experience. Kiriti stared at the line.
When had he stopped noticing the difference between emotional manipulation and... whatever this was? His heart was beating faster now, though that was probably the caffeine. His hands felt shaky as he typed the final stage directions for the scene.
He'd been writing Hero's Dawn for over two years, had crafted 320 chapters of precisely calibrated emotional content, and suddenly— The pain hit his chest like a sledgehammer. Kiriti's vision blurred. His left arm went numb. The coffee cup slipped from his fingers and shattered against the floor, splashing cold liquid across his script notes. Through the crushing weight in his chest, one thought managed to surface with perfect clarity: He was having a heart attack while writing the most sincere dialogue of his career.
The irony would have been funny if he weren't dying. The last thing Kiriti saw before the darkness claimed him was the blinking cursor at the end of line 847, waiting patiently for him to finish the story.
[System Initialization...]
[Welcome, Creator.]
[New World Loading...]
The first thing Kiriti noticed was the absence of pain. No crushing weight in his chest. No numbness in his left arm. No coffee-stained script pages scattered around a cramped Tokyo apartment. Just... brightness.
Clean, warm light filtering down from somewhere impossibly high above. Well, he thought with detached curiosity, this isn't what I expected hell to look like. The second thing he noticed was the noise.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of voices created a constant murmur that echoed off what appeared to be massive stone walls. Kiriti blinked, his vision slowly focusing. He was sitting on something hard and uncomfortable, surrounded by endless rows of similar seats carved directly into the arena's sloping sides. Because that's exactly what this was. An arena. Colosseum-style architecture stretched in every direction, easily large enough to hold fifty thousand people. The scale was so vast it made his eyes water trying to process it.
Definitely not heaven, he amended. Unless the afterlife has a serious infrastructure budget. He tried to stand and immediately stumbled. His legs felt wrong. Too short. Too weak. Like someone had replaced his bones with overcooked noodles. Kiriti looked down and froze. Those weren't his hands. Smooth, unmarked skin. No calluses from years of gripping pencils and styluses. No ink stains under the fingernails. These were the hands of someone who'd never worked a day in their life.
A teenager's hands. "You okay?" The voice came from his left—a boy with dusty brown hair that stuck up at odd angles, like he'd been running his fingers through it. His clothes were simple homespun fabric, patched at the elbows and knees with thread that didn't quite match. Freckles dotted his nose and cheeks, and his green eyes held the kind of earnest concern that belonged in a children's book.
"I'm..." Kiriti's voice cracked. Actually cracked, like he was going through puberty again. "Fine. Just... where exactly are we?" The boy's eyebrows shot up. "You seriously don't know? Man, your barony must be really out in the sticks."
He gestured toward the arena floor far below. "Annual Ranking Ceremony. Every fifteen-year-old in the kingdom has to attend. I'm Tam, by the way. Tam Millbrook." "Has to?" "Well, yeah. It's the law." Tam shifted uncomfortably on the stone seat.
"I mean, that's what they told us when they collected me from Millhaven. You get tested, you get ranked, you go home. Pretty simple." Kiriti followed Tam's gaze downward. The arena floor was a perfect circle of white stone, empty except for what looked like an altar or platform in the exact center. Even from this distance, he could see intricate geometric patterns carved into the surface.
"Tested for what?" he asked, though something told him he didn't want to know the answer.
"Your stats, obviously." This came from a girl on his right, and the difference between her and Tam was like comparing silk to burlap. Her auburn hair was arranged in an elaborate style that probably required a team of servants, held in place with golden pins that caught the arena's light.
Her dress was deep blue velvet with silver threading, and she sat with the kind of perfect posture that screamed expensive tutors. When she looked at Kiriti, her gray eyes held the cool assessment of someone used to categorizing people by their worth. "Strength, Agility, Vitality, Intelligence, and Luck. Though I suppose if you're from one of the outer baronies, your family might not have explained the specifics."
She said it with the casual condescension of someone used to being the smartest person in the room. Under normal circumstances, Kiriti would have appreciated the precision of her verbal dismissal. Right now, he was too busy trying to process the words "your stats." "Right," he said slowly.
"Stats. Like... numbers?" The noble girl actually laughed—a sound like silver bells with an edge of ice. "What did you think determined how strong you are? How fast you can run? Whether you can solve complex magical equations or survive a plague? Your feelings? I'm Seraphina Ashworth, by the way. Third daughter of Duke Ashworth."
Kiriti's analytical mind kicked into overdrive despite his confusion. This girl was describing a world where human capabilities were quantified and measurable. Where physical and mental abilities had discrete values rather than existing on subjective spectrums.
It sounded exactly like a video game. More specifically, it sounded exactly like the kind of generic fantasy RPG setting he'd spent his career systematically deconstructing.
"And everyone gets tested when they turn fifteen?" he pressed. "On their fifteenth birthday, or as close as possible," Tam confirmed. "Been tradition for... what, three hundred years? My gran says her gran used to tell stories about the time before the Ranking System, but that's probably just old wives' tales."
Three hundred years. So this was an established system, not some recent innovation. Kiriti filed that information away as he tried to make sense of his physical situation. He attempted to stand again, moving more carefully this time. His body responded like he was underwater—every motion felt sluggish and imprecise.
When he finally managed to get upright, he swayed slightly, fighting to maintain balance. This wasn't just unfamiliarity with a younger body. This felt like... weakness. Genuine, measurable physical limitation.
Your stats, Seraphina had said. Strength, Agility, Vitality, Intelligence, and Luck. If this world really operated on numerical values for human capabilities, and if his current physical coordination was any indication, then his stats were probably...
"When do we find out our numbers?" he asked. Seraphina glanced at him with mild surprise.
"Numbers? Oh, you mean your actual attribute values. Most people just care about the rank classification." She pointed toward the arena floor.
"See those banners?" Kiriti squinted. Hanging from the arena walls were enormous fabric banners, each displaying a single letter: G, F, E, D, C, B, A, S. "Ranks," he murmured. "G-Rank through S-Rank," she confirmed.
"Though honestly, if you're asking basic questions like this, you're probably looking at E-Rank, F-Rank, or even worse—G-Rank.
No offense." Kiriti's analytical mind caught on something.
"G-Rank? The worst I know is F-Rank. What's G?"
The change in Seraphina was immediate and startling. Her confident expression faltered, and she looked away quickly, suddenly finding great interest in her elaborately embroidered sleeves. "It's..." she started, then stopped.
The silence stretched uncomfortably. "Sera?" Tam prompted gently. "What's wrong?" "Nothing's wrong," she said, but her voice had lost its aristocratic certainty.
"It's just... well, G-Rank is... they go to the training grounds."
The way she said "training grounds" made Kiriti's skin crawl. Like the words themselves were carrying more weight than they should. "Training grounds?" he pressed.
Seraphina's jaw tightened. "I don't want to talk about it."
But Tam, with the earnest helpfulness of someone who'd never learned when to keep his mouth shut, leaned closer.
"The training grounds are where they send people who can't contribute to society normally," he whispered. "
To help them... find their place. Build character through practical experience."
The euphemisms were so thick Kiriti could practically taste them. Training grounds. Practical experience. Build character. In his professional opinion, this sounded exactly like the kind of bureaucratic doublespeak used to disguise something unpleasant.
A horn sounded from somewhere in the arena depths—deep, resonant, and loud enough to silence the crowd of thousands instantly.
"Oh," Tam whispered. "It's starting." Kiriti looked down at the arena floor and saw figures in elaborate robes filing out from hidden entrances. They moved with the kind of fluid grace that suggested their Agility stats were significantly higher than his.
As the ceremony began, one thought crystallized in his mind with uncomfortable clarity: He was about to be quantified and ranked in a system he didn't understand, trapped in a body that barely functioned, in a world that operated on the exact narrative principles he'd spent his career proving were intellectually bankrupt.
And if Seraphina's reaction was any indication, there were worse fates than being a supporting character in a generic fantasy story.
Much worse.