The rain was relentless. It beat down like a particurly angry toddler with a frying pan. Li Xue sat on a cold, slippery stone, soaked to the bone, dressed in elegant silk robes now clinging to his new delicate body. The thunder grumbled above like the heavens themselves were gossiping about him.

  He crossed his arms. “Hey, voice thing.”

  [Yes?]

  “Who are you, exactly?”

  There was a dramatic pause, followed by a snort that somehow echoed inside his brain.

  [Pfft. You’re asking that already? How typical. You newbies are always like this. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Where am I?’ ‘Why am I a pretty woman now?’ Honestly, can you not be so basic?]

  Li Xue rolled his eyes. “Great. My new omnipotent guide is a sarcastic teenager.”

  [Thank you for noticing.] The voice sounded pleased with itself.

  Li Xue sighed through his nose, feeling the beginnings of a headache, and repeated ftly, “Okay, I’ll try this again: who. are. you?”

  [Fine, fine. I’m Zen. Your assigned assistant, courtesy of the Dark Zone. You’re welcome.]

  Now that stopped Li Xue cold.

  “The Dark Zone?” he said slowly, blinking up at the stormy sky. “As in… the infinite flow world’s control center? The pce I died in? The one with killer mazes, blood-drinking dolls, and floors that try to eat you?”

  [That’s the one!] Zen said cheerfully.

  Li Xue squinted into the rain. “Why would the Dark Zone give me an assistant? I’m not even that special. I didn’t have some OP golden finger. I wasn’t the smartest. I died on floor six, Zen. Six. That’s not even halfway to the good stuff!”

  [Oh, Li Xue, Li Xue… my dear mediocre protagonist…] Zen’s voice was suddenly pitying. [It’s because you’re just unlucky enough to mess up a perfectly good plot by dying in the wrong pce at the wrong time. You are a statistical anomaly. A miscalcuted pebble in the universal soup. And now we have to clean up your mess.]

  Li Xue felt his eye twitch. “You’re bming me for the lightning strike?”

  [Oh no, not bming. Just assigning cosmic responsibility with fir.]

  “…You’re annoying.”

  [Thank you! I try.]

  Li Xue took a deep breath, then exhaled dramatically and sat back on the stone again. “Fine. Whatever. You’re Zen. You’re my so-called assistant. What now?”

  Zen paused for effect.

  [First, you need to bance the plot. Make sure the story doesn’t derail so badly that the world colpses into chaos. Easy peasy.]

  “Easy peasy, he says,” Li Xue muttered. “I just have to pretend to be a dead noble dy and marry a psychotic warlord. No pressure.”

  [Second task.] Zen’s tone turned smug, like he was about to drop a punchline.

  Li Xue side-eyed the empty air suspiciously. “There’s a second task? You couldn’t have just stopped at one?”

  [You need to retrieve the Dusk Star from this world.]

  The stone beneath him suddenly felt a lot less stable.

  “…Excuse me, what?”

  [You heard me.]

  “No no no, say that again, but slowly, and preferably in a tone that doesn’t sound like you're telling me to fetch a stick.”

  [Retrieve. The. Dusk. Star.]

  Li Xue’s jaw hung open. “That’s—that’s impossible! The Dusk Star is the wish-fulfilling artifact! The most overpowered, reality-bending, luck-breaking object in the entire multiverse! It grants whatever you want, as long as you wish hard enough! And you’re telling me, a damp, confused programmer in a stolen body, to just go get it?!”

  [Mhm.]

  “You don’t even have a proper body! I could sneeze you into oblivion if I tried hard enough!”

  [Try it. I dare you.]

  Li Xue groaned, rubbing his temples. “Zen, I am one bad day away from just face-pnting into this mud and letting fate take the wheel.”

  [And yet you haven’t. Which means there’s still hope for your survival instincts.]

  The wind howled, and the trees swayed ominously like they were waiting for round two of lightning barbecue.

  Li Xue muttered under his breath, “Why me? Why not one of those genius-types who survived floor 100 and became gods?”

  [They’re all busy being overpowered and unavaible. You, however, have nothing better to do.]

  Li Xue stared at the sky, raindrops plunking off his nose. “You’re horrible at pep talks, Zen.”

  [And yet here we are, bonding.]

  “Bonding? Is that what this is?” Li Xue scoffed. “I thought this was you mocking me into a slow, dramatic breakdown.”

  [Tomato, tomahto.]

  Li Xue drew his knees up to his chest. “So let me get this straight. You want me to impersonate a dead noble girl from the Nine-Tailed Fox Cn, marry the madman who chokes his spouse on their wedding night, avoid being murdered, stabilize the storyline, and, oh yeah—steal the most powerful artifact ever created.”

  [Correct.]

  “…I hate this world.”

  [It’s mutual, I assure you.]

  They sat in silence for a while. Well, one of them sat. The other floated somewhere in his subconscious making sarcastic comments like a snarky ghost.

  The rain slowed to a drizzle. The trees stopped trembling. The thunder faded into distant growls, like a monster too zy to commit.

  Li Xue sniffed. His nose was running.

  “You know,” he murmured, “when I was alive, my biggest problem was whether the server would crash before lunch.”

  [And now your biggest problem is whether your husband will strangle you before breakfast.]

  “…You're not helping, Zen.”

  [I live to serve.]

  Li Xue sighed again, brushing his now-drenched silky bck hair away from his face. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

  [You will?]

  “Yes. But not because I believe in fate or destiny or any of that nonsense. I just want to go home and never see another plotline again.”

  [That’s the spirit.] Zen’s tone turned oddly smug. [Also, just so you know, your first trial begins tomorrow. You’ll be found by a search party sent by the pace. Get ready to cry, faint, or scream about your tragic encounter. Be dramatic.]

  “Drama?” Li Xue cracked his neck. “You’re talking to a guy who once pretended his office chair broke so he could go home early. I invented drama.”

  Zen chuckled. [That’s the spirit, my fox princess.]

  “…Don’t call me that.”

  [Why not, your highness? Should I get you a sparkly tiara too?]

  Li Xue stared at the empty air, deadpan. “I swear, if you keep calling me ‘fox princess,’ I will walk into a lightning bolt on purpose this time.”

  [Then who will retrieve the Dusk Star?] Zen said smugly.

  Li Xue grumbled. “You’re lucky you’re just a voice in my head.”

  [And you’re lucky your new face is pretty enough to make a tyrant hesitate before choking you.]

  Li Xue groaned and colpsed backward into the wet grass. “I take it back. I don’t hate the world. I loathe it.”

  Zen’s ughter echoed in his head, pyful and victorious.

  And as the sky finally cleared and a sliver of moonlight lit the forest clearing, Li Xue whispered to no one in particur:

  “This is going to suck.”

  [Indeed.]