Great. He could hear my thoughts. This crazy old guy was the god who brought me here.
“Watch your mouth, boy! I’m not some senile old man!”
Hah, this guy will be easy to mess with, I thought. He’s so senile that he starts screaming for no reason.
“I’m not senile! Listen, boy! This is important!”
But no one actually believes they’re crazy, especially not crazy people.
“That’s enough! Stop already! Just tell me why you’re here!”
What? He was the one who summoned me here. Why was he asking me? And by the way, it’s pretty hypocritical for someone who’s constantly peeping into my private thoughts to tell me to stop.
We were in an epic tale of old people with dementia aimlessly milling about. The title: The Demon King Hasn’t Had Breakfast Yet?! The latest smash hit!
“Why won’t you take this seriously?” The old man sighed. “Everyone else is already over there. Why weren’t you with the rest of them?”
Uh, how was I supposed to know that it would make a difference if I was out of the room?
“I wanted to summon all of you at once,” he said. “But you’re the only one out of place.”
Is that supposed to be my problem?! You’re the one who decided to bring us here! I recalled my escape from the classroom.
“What in tarnation? You got to the roof through a hidden hatch?” The old man was exasperated.
I chuckled. I’d eluded the clutches of an all-powerful god by climbing a locker to reach an emergency hatch. What a stupid oversight on his part.
“Why would I know about some escape hatch?” he shouted. “I don’t have time to mess around with architecture!”
So why wasn’t I safe after I got out of the building? It should have worked.
“I summoned you all according to a wavelength that matched the number of people. If one person was missing, the waveform wouldn’t line up. But it all worked out in the end and you got here just in time…”
So, he really could read my thoughts. That meant…Amazon probably didn’t deliver here. I’d have to settle for whichever book stores franchised in this world.
“I’m not summoning anything big like that just for your entertainment,” he said. “I can’t just make the latest volumes of your favorite series vanish from the store shelves and appear here every time they’re released. That would inconvenience the employees.”
He was quick to find faults with my plans. And I realized he was even reading my subconscious thoughts. But talk about inconveniencing someone! He was treating bookstore employees better than me! He could stand to treat me a little better, considering everything.
“Unfortunately, it’s my judgment upon your world to summon your group here according to the wavelength I sent out. I didn’t choose to summon you in particular.”
Damn him. I had no clue what he was rambling about, but if it meant I couldn’t read books, then that was just the worst! It seemed like this world wasn’t satisfied with just making life hard for bookworms; they wanted to stop us from reading altogether. So I guess this is a battle royale scenario? I was summoned to this world to take them all down! I thought.
“Wrong!” the old guy said. “You’re not here to fight your school buddies. If you do that, it’ll just be you bearing a grudge.”
Is he telling me to forget—
“Just shut up and listen to me!”
So then get on with it! The old guy kept prattling on and on. Just hurry up with the “Howdy, it’s me, a self-proclaimed god. Now go fight with swords and magic in a fantasy world! Tee hee!” already.
“What do you mean, ‘tee hee’?! And I’m not self-proclaimed either! Everyone else is done preparing and already on their way. If you don’t hurry up, you’ll get to the other world utterly alone. Then you won’t be able to meet back up with your classmates. You’ll be left behind, gosh darn it!”
So everyone else was together. I could tell this was going to be some cliché Middle Ages world. That meant no books, and definitely no chain bookstores. Who knows, maybe I could still get something delivered by Amazon.
“Of course there’s no Amazon delivery!” the old guy yelled. “People would order things left and right! Just what are you hoping to do in a fantasy world with a bunch of chain bookstores and books you ordered on Amazon?”
Dude, I just want to read books, I don’t want to do anything else at all. And what was so wrong with books, anyway? It wouldn’t’ve been so bad if he decided to summon all of the aspiring novelists to one place—
“Be quiet! That’s enough!”
The old guy started explaining stuff, but I didn’t listen to most of it. It sounded like the usual clichés; a typical fantasy kingdom filled with monsters and legends and all that junk. This explanation is so bo-o-oring, at least you could do me a favor and write it down? Then I’d have something to read. I doubted the old dude would be much of a writer, but still.
“So, let’s get started with the preparations,” he said.
Oh great, I felt like I’d been here all day and we were only getting to preparations now? Just how long was this going to go on for? Were we going to have a food budget? Did we have to argue over which restaurant to eat at? Were there even restaurants in this world?
“Choose your skill. It’s first come, first served,” he added with a sigh.
“First come, first served?” I screamed. “You useless old geezer!”
“Excuse me, I am a god,” he snapped. “I’m not just some old geezer! Your thoughts are bad enough, why does the first thing out of your mouth have to be an insult?!”