AGARES

I had two minutes to build a world. I slapped down a meadow, some deer, a wizard's tower on a mountain, and almost forgot the sun. Then the Player showed up. Mulligan Mercer is the internet's foremost authority on everything your favorite anime did wrong. He's made a career of cataloging plot holes, ranking waifus, and mocking shoddy power scaling. He's the worst kind of Player I could have gotten. He's also pleased as punch to be isekaied. Maybe I could handle that if I were someone else, but I can feel something dangerous deep within me: a desire to tell a meaningful story, one with themes and pathos. I have no memories, no orientation, and they're threatening to delete me if audience metrics dip. But fine. I'm going to beat a good story out of this guy if it kills me. Cover art by Christian Gomez. AI disclosure: No AI was used to write this. Some AI was used to catch mechanical errors. An expanded disclosure is here.