Blaze.
Sunlight.
No, it wasn't.
Hiro leaped back as a blazing boulder—which had been inches from his face moments ago—flared with the intensity of a dawning, artificial sun. It slammed into the trenches, spraying fiery debris against the fortress walls like a summer festival's fireworks display gone horribly wrong.
Hiro crept to the edge of the trench, peering out at his warzone for the day.
Thousands of them. Shrieking creatures with disproportionate limbs, a patchwork of rotting flesh and armored scales, pulsating with a malevolent energy. "Abominations." The branding was accurate, at least.
Out of the frying pan into the fire. Hiro thought, a dry smirk tugging at his lips.
His resolve to punch out of this world and return home had steeled his mind. Mostly.
The rest? That was likely a courtesy of Einar Vane's muscle memory—fragmented instincts reacting before Hiro's brain could even process the threat.
And maybe that "Stiffening" ritual actually did more than just meeting the "Thing."
No one had bothered with a proper orientation. He hadn't caught a second to grill John for details once the march began. Now, here he stood in a mud-choked trench outside the West Gate, waiting for the shift from hell to truly begin.
"Wait until their artillery sighted!" Reinhardt barked.
Bark. Bark. Bark. His second boss was the king of the micro-managers. Since the march began, Reinhardt had been hovering over every tiny detail like a supervisor obsessed with a cleanliness checklist.
Move here.
Stand there.
Watch this.
Kill that.
The guy was micromanaging on a hardcore, biblical level.
That's not how you lead, Sir, Hiro mused internally. You set the goals, communicate the vision, and trust your associates to execute. Then you evaluate the performance later. Of course, if we're still alive.
"Artillery sighted! Two hundred meters, Sir!" a scout reported, skidding into the trench.
"Good. Let them come!" Reinhardt bellowed. He leaped onto the parapet, turning back to the line of Black Templars with a zealot's grin.
"Tonight, we dine in hell!" he roared.
The unit erupted in a guttural response, surging forward in a unified charge.
Before Hiro's brain could even process the happening, his legs had already kicked into high gear. Einar's muscle memory was taking the lead again.
Oh, shit, Hiro winced, his body hurtling toward the shrieking horde. I didn't even get a safety briefing.
The biological horror let out a guttural scream at the charging Templar. Steel met decaying flesh with a sickening squelch. Armored scales deflected the swords with a metallic clank, but the sheer downward pressure was enough to crush bone beneath the plate.
The scene looked like a high-budget, grim-dark fantasy flick, but the screeching reminded Hiro that there was no "Cut!" coming. This was the real deal.
Sniff.
The stench of putrid sulfur hit Hiro from the flank. Two elongated jaws, dripping with bile, snapped toward his helmet.
"How are you that fast?!" Hiro yelped, scrambling backward.
Schwing.
Before his conscious mind could even process the threat, his hand had already blurred, drawing the heavy blade from his hip.
Swoosh. Swoosh.
Hiro swung the sword frantically in a desperate arc. He was hoping to at least spook the damn thing—maybe buy some space.
It didn't work. Not in the slightest.
"Fuck!"
The creatures lunged, a blur of teeth and rot.
Hiro's mind went blank; for all his talk before, he wasn't trained for a death match. His mind couldn't react in time.
But his body could.
Squelch!
The abominations fell in a spray of black ichor, dismantled by precise, brutal slashes. Einar's slashes.
Hiro had been right all along.
Since the march began, he'd noticed these "glitches" in his motor functions—reflexes that didn't belong to him. When he let his instincts take the wheel and gave full control to his five senses, the "Immortal Einar" took over. Einar's muscle memory was proving to be much more reliable than Hiro had given it credit for.
"I have to sync my mind to this body, and fast," Hiro huffed, glancing down at the twitching corpses. "Or there won't be a next time."
There was no guarantee his reflexes would punch the clock for him every time. Working with a blank mind was a workplace hazard he couldn't afford. After all, only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The Black Templars had already surged forward, carving a path through the horde and leaving a trail of abomination corpses scattered like wind-blown autumn leaves.
Hiro sprinted to catch up. He couldn't afford to get isolated and surrounded while he was still on his "probationary period."
"This isn't getting any better," Hiro huffed, skidding to a halt.
Up ahead, his "coworkers/brothers" were embedded in the mass of monsters, their glowing steel flickering like dying candles trying to illuminate a vast, dark cavern of abominations.
He had to get in sync. Standing still meant getting flanked again; retreating meant a date with Reinhardt's halberd; and deserting? That was a logistical nightmare. He had zero knowledge of this world's map, and he still had to locate the "Gate of Hell" to punch his ticket home.
Kaizen Rule One: Everything in life is a win if the goal is to gain experience, Hiro reminded himself, bracing his shoulders.
He charged.
"Empty your mind... empty your mind," Hiro chanted under his breath.
He invited the blankness in. He let his five senses take the wheel, hoping to trigger the "Einar Vane" autopilot—
His jaw dropped. Wide.
"Wait—not that empty!" he reprimanded himself.
Hiro stepped in to fill the gap in the line. Almost instantly, three abominations lunged. Hiro ducked a claw aimed for his head, caught a snapping maw against his vambraces, and spun on his heels with his sword raised high.
Slash!
Three down.
It worked! Hiro cheered internally.
When his mind had achieved tranquility, Einar's muscle memory took over, moving his heavy plate with fluid grace. He began treating the abominations like a frantic lunch rush. With their contorted faces and ravenous, shouting jaws, the resemblance was actually uncanny.
"Don't get lax, Hiro," he muttered under his breath. "The rush has only just begun."
More creatures swarmed, but the line of Black Templars didn't falter. Claymores slashed, spears pierced, and halberds cleaved. Again and again, the abominations fell like wheat before a scythe.
Hiro mimicked their rhythm perfectly.
A satisfied smile tugged at his lips. It was a good thing his helmet was locked tight; otherwise, he'd look like a complete lunatic grinning in the middle of a bloodbath.
"Push through! Get to the artillery!" Reinhardt barked.
Dozens of his brothers formed two vertical files, piercing deep into the shifting mass of the horde. Reinhardt followed from the rear, and Hiro instinctively fell in behind him. In this chaotic situation, no place felt safer than right next to his second boss.
Where are John and the others? Hiro wondered, his eyes scanning the chaos.
Slash.
Steel danced in an ocean of decaying flesh. But then, the momentum died. The penetrating lines ground to a halt—stuck, swarmed, and boxed in from every side.
Crash!
Reinhardt swept his massive halberd in wide, horizontal cleaves, momentarily forcing a pocket of breathing room in the suffocating press of abominations.
"Brothers! What are we?!" Reinhardt bellowed, his voice cutting through the screeching of the horde.
"BLACK TEMPLARS!"
The thundering response shattered the grim atmosphere.
"Are you afraid?!"
"WITHOUT HOPE! WITHOUT FEAR!"
The unit roared in unison, their blade-work turning feral with every shout.
"Death is not enough for us!!" Reinhardt screamed, leaping into the thickest part of the swarm.
"DEATH IS NOT ENOUGH!"
The disciplined lines disintegrated into a fanatic frenzy. His brothers followed Reinhardt's lead, charging blindly into the teeth of the storm, seemingly indifferent to the claws and fangs tearing at their plate. The raw, suicidal momentum actually worked—the entrapment broke as the Templars turned themselves into a human battering ram.
Hiro was already deeply regretting joining this "Company Outing." These people are complete lunatics.
Father, Mother, Sister... just wait for me. Hiro grit his teeth, the 21st-century survival instinct over-riding the Black Templar fanaticism.
"Enough! No death for me!" Hiro scrambled to the front, his panic fueling a burst of speed. I'm not dying on my first shift!
Dozens of hacks and slashes later.
Hiro locked his eyes on the "artillery" his second boss had been aiming for. It wasn't what he'd expected from the medieval world he'd been thrust into. No historical war movie could explain this level of absurdity.
An iron, bow-like catapult was bolted onto the back of a gargantuan tarantula. Its webbing served as the tension rope, the creature's own rear legs acted as the propeller, and a crew of frantic goblins on top ignited the payload before slamming the lever home.
Swoosh—-Boom.
And there were three of them.
"Haha… ha." Hiro let out a hollow, dry laugh.
He'd thought the "Abominations" were the only glitch in the medieval theme. Now they'd added giant monsters to the logistics. At this rate, he wouldn't be surprised if an Orc popped up to ask for french fries.
"Charge!!"
His brothers swarmed the Tarantula Artillery with feverish, cult-like chants. They attacked indiscriminately; some even leaped onto the hairy abdomen. The spider slammed its massive legs down, trying to shake them off like persistent pests.
True to their "SOP," the Black Templars didn't falter, even as one of their brothers was pulverized into the mud. They swarmed the first tarantula like a colony of vengeful ants.
Seeing a glimmer of hope—or maybe just catching the local madness—Hiro joined the anthem of the lunatics.
He started with a small, manageable task: slashing at a leg.
Squelch.
"Eat that!" Hiro shouted, before his face fell. "Goddamnit, how hard can a spider leg be?!"
His sword was wedged deep into the thick, fibrous exoskeleton. He'd just committed the ultimate workplace sin: he'd gotten his primary tool stuck in the machinery.
Hiro wrenched his sword free with a desperate kick and went back to hacking with everything he had.
Slam.
The tarantula went into a blind rampage, stomping its six remaining legs in a furious attempt to clear the "ants" from its undercarriage.
"Whoa!" Hiro rolled through the mud, narrowly evading the fate of becoming a human patty.
SPLAT.
Another one of his brothers wasn't as fast. Hiro turned a sickly shade of pale green, his stomach lurching. Seeing the workplace hazards in 4K Ultra-HD was a bit much for his morning coffee to handle.
Survive! Just survive! Hiro chanted.
He fought back the nausea. He needed these spiders dead—the faster this "project" was completed, the sooner he could clock out.
Slash. Stab.
Hiro continued his frantic rhythm of striking and evading until one of his senior brothers finally gutted the beast. The spider's stomach split open, painting the ground in a neon spray of foul-smelling ichor.
Thump.
It collapsed like a condemned building. The goblin crew scattered, shrieking as they tried to flee, but the Black Templars were strictly "no survivors" when it came to their termination policy. Now, only one Tarantula Artillery remained.
"Kill the last one! Charge!" Reinhardt led the final push, his halberd raised high.
Hiro strode forward, clearing every abomination that stood in his path.
He watched as Reinhardt leaped—a mountain of black plate—straight onto the spider's head.
Squelch.
The creature let out an inaudible, high-frequency shriek and crashed into the dirt. The rest of the unit finished the job, hunting down the fleeing goblins like chickens destined for the skewer. Hiro felt a twinge of pity at the gruesome sight. Just a bit. Then he remembered the boulders they'd been lobbing at his head. They definitely deserved it.
Seems like this was the end of his shift.