Seijirou kept his expression blank as he slid the iced tea across the counter and pulled out some bills from his pocket.
He didn’t even glance at Tachibana Rei, as though she was just another faceless cashier and nothing more.
When she timidly called out, "Kageyama-kun..." her voice uncertain and trembling, he didn’t respond.
He grabbed the change, turned on his heel, and walked out with measured steps, the soft jingle of the bell marking his exit.
Outside, the cool night breeze brushed against his skin, carrying the faint scent of asphalt and cigarettes from some distant corner of the street.
He twisted the cap of his drink open with a quiet snap, raised the bottle, and took a long swig.
The sweet, cold tea slid down his throat, refreshing yet bland compared to the taste of adrenaline still lingering from earlier.
He walked slowly, his shoes tapping lightly against the pavement, eyes lifting toward the faint glow of stars above the city lights.
It wasn’t long before he arrived at a wide, imposing house surrounded by a high gate.
The place was far larger than most homes in the area, a quiet testament to his family’s wealth and political influence.
He pulled a key from his pocket, unlocked the gate, and made his way up the path. With a click, the front door opened, and silence greeted him.
The house was spotless, well-furnished, but empty of life. No parents waiting, no warmth of family. His father and mother lived far away in their manor, tangled in political webs and social obligations, leaving Seijirou free to do as he pleased.
He had moved here the moment high school started, preferring solitude to the suffocating expectations of his household.
He tossed his bag onto the floor, slumped into the leather couch, and grabbed the remote.
The large television flickered to life, spilling shifting colors across the dimly lit living room. He flipped through the channels without much interest until one caught his eye—an anime channel.
The title card read "Destiny: Zero."
He raised an eyebrow, leaning forward slightly. The animation quality was crisp, the backgrounds lush, and the tone heavy with tension.
Within minutes, he pieced together the premise: seven mages summoning historical heroes to fight for an all-powerful, wish-granting cup.
Seijirou chuckled dryly. "Really? They’re just straight up ripping it off."
The resemblance to a certain famous anime from his past life was too blatant to ignore.
He leaned back on the couch, resting one arm over the backrest, deciding he might as well indulge in the nostalgia.
As the story unfolded, his amusement grew. The political intrigue, the over-the-top battles, the constant tension between ideals and desires—it was all there.
He lifted the bottle of iced tea to his lips again, drinking idly while following the dialogue on-screen. But then, his relaxed posture stiffened.
The camera zoomed in on one of the mages as they began a summoning ritual, the atmosphere heavy with magical energy.
Circles of light flared across the screen, runes glowing as the air distorted. And then, with a burst of brilliance, a warrior appeared—a man clad in regal armor, exuding a presence that dwarfed everything else around him.
The warriors voice rang out, proud and certain, "Rejoice, mage. This war is yours to win, for you have summoned Herios, the King Where All Began."
Seijirou choked. The tea he had just sipped sprayed from his mouth, splattering onto the floor in a wet mess.
He coughed, his eyes glued to the screen, disbelief washing over him.
"Herios...?" His voice was a whisper, but the weight behind it was heavy.
His mind reeled. That wasn’t just any name. That was the Hero King, Herios. A character he remembered not from anime, but from a novel he had read in his past life—"The God of Underworld."
He remembered this name because he was one of his favourite characters in the novel after the main character, Hades.
He was simply too cool that he felt that he needed an entirely different novel of his own.
His grip on the bottle tightened, knuckles whitening. The absurdity of it all hit him like a sledgehammer.
A novel he had read, something from his previous life, now appearing in an anime here. A Hero King pulled straight from fiction that should not exist in this world.
"What the hell..." He muttered, staring in shock at the screen as if the image might vanish at any second. "Don’t tell me... it’s not just the game that got dragged into this world...?"
Seijirou didn’t waste a second. He snatched his phone off the table, fingers flying across the screen as he typed "Herios" into the search bar.
The results loaded instantly, and his stomach sank.
Herios wasn’t just some fictional character adapted into an anime here. No, the search results painted him as an actual mythological figure.
Article after article, entry after entry described him as the First King, the Hero King, the man from whom the very word "Hero" itself had supposedly been derived.
Legends spoke of him uniting fractured tribes, slaying monsters of unfathomable might, and bringing order to chaos in the dawn of civilization.
His existence, even if shrouded in myth, was treated as mythological fact in this world.
Seijirou’s eyes widened, his breath caught in his throat. He muttered under his breath, voice trembling between disbelief and panic. "No way... This can’t be real..."
And yet, the evidence glared back at him. Herios wasn’t just a story in The God of Underworld. He was a cornerstone of this world’s mythology.
"Shit..." he hissed, leaning back on the couch and gripping his hair tightly. He cursed again, louder this time, the frustration and dread boiling over.
Now he remembered. In some obscure forum back in his old life, he had once read that the developer of this twisted NTR game had been an author before.
That their first published work was a dark fantasy epic titled The God of Underworld. He hadn’t thought much of it back then, dismissing it as useless trivia. But now?
That tiny detail was a knife twisting in his gut.
If Herios was real here... if the myths of this world lined up with the novel... then what about the rest?
What about the pantheon of gods Herios defied? The underworld that pulsed beneath the surface of reality? The Giants and their armies that shattered nations?
The Outer Gods that lurked beyond the veil of existence, the ones that only appeared in the later arcs, beings so vast and incomprehensible that even the gods himself could only kneel and bleed before them?
His breath grew unsteady, his chest tightening as the weight of the truth pressed down on him.
"This world is... completely screwed..." he whispered, his voice trembling with raw fear.
He slammed the phone down on the table, pacing across the room, his thoughts spiraling. "Fucking hell... gods, demons, outer gods... If all of that’s real... then what the hell am I supposed to do?!"
He cursed again, over and over, the words spilling out like a chant as he tried to process the enormity of it.
He wasn’t just stuck in a shitty NTR game anymore.
No, he was trapped in a world stitched together from the worst nightmares of multiple works, a place where gods walked, demons ravaged, and horrors beyond reason slumbered in the dark.
This wasn’t just bad.
This was catastrophic.