Thunk

The royal hall was completely empty. King Hinata’s harem was nowhere to be seen. The tables at the sides of the rooms had been cleared of all their food. Even the horrible rugs that once littered the floor were all gone. It was just Hinata Oninomiya with his small crown sitting atop the Questian throne.

We warily stepped into the hall as the king chuckled evilly. He kept his eyes down whilst smirking.
 
“Ah, so you have finally arrived,” he said, in his typical meek voice. 

“What?!” Basil said, cupping a hand to his ear.

Even from the other side of the room, I could see Hinata bristle with anger.

“I said, so you have finally—”

“WHAT?!” Basil shouted.

The king shoved himself to his feet and drew in a big breath.

“I SAID—”

Basil burst out laughing. “I was just fucking with you, my hearing’s fine,” he said. 

We looked at each other as the king stood there, motionless. The old man always had a spark of mischief in his eyes, but I never thought it would come out in a time like this.

King Hinata conjured a fireball and threw it at Basil. He exploded into a cloud of ash.

“As I was saying, so you have fi—”

I fell to my knees. 

“Noooooooooo!” I screamed from the bottom of my heart. Tears were streaking down my face. “Is this justice? How dare you? How care you kill one of my friends?!”

The king sneered. “You call that wrinkly old bag a friend? Goodness, and I thought I was a pathetic loser for calling my right hand my girlfriend!”

His joke fell flat among the angry crowd that was at the entrance. Killing their good friend usually does sour the mood. They raised their weapons in tandem. And I did the same.

“You’ll pay for this,” I said with as much venom that I could muster.

From my own inventory, I pulled out the staff that Basil had spent sixty minutes of his life crafting.
The king had no idea of what Basil meant to me or his significance to my own weapon, but upon seeing it he burst into laughter himself.

“You’re going to fight with that ridiculous thing?” he asked.

I perched the staff on my shoulders. 

“Try me.”

From the depths of his arcane magical knowledge, King Hinata Oninomiya wove together threads of mana to summon yet another fireball. He flung it at me.

The very second I woke up in this world, I knew that I was out of my depth. So much of this stuff that Chouji took to like water, I simply drowned in. There was too much stuff going on, so much that I didn’t understand. So on the one singular occasion I could make something truly my own, I did.

The fireball encroached on me. And I swung.

The projectile collided with my baseball bat of a staff. That was actually the first time I had ever used my class weapon. Yet it felt entirely right in my own hands. The maple wood flexed just slightly as I made contact with the fireball, sending it straight through one of the stained glass windows and starting a small forest fire for the trees it landed on.

I’m not sure if it was the inherent magic Basil used when making the thing or the feeling of using your class weapon for the very first time, but that was the best swing I had ever taken in my life.
King Hinata raised a single eyebrow. “Wow. I’m shocked that actually worked. No matter.” He crouched as he drew in more mana from the land, connecting leylines as he muttered words of power under his breath.

And that’s when we all rushed in.

It was awesome.

All of us took turns using our abilities and skills to attack the king. There was a flurry of blades, magic, bo staffs, shields, half-swords, and so many things I didn’t know the name of. I wish I could describe it better, but it must have looked so epic if someone were recording.

We all fell into a distinctive rhythm as we slowly chipped away at Hinata’s defenses. My baseball bat kept coming in clutch. Not only could it deflect magical attacks from Hinata, but the spells would be stronger after I had hit them. I guess that was part of being the sorcerer class. 

You might be wondering: what if Hinata were to use an AoE spell? Or one with a conical zone of damage? Or an environmental spell like Summon Earthquake? Wow, you sure have a lot of questions, and I don’t know what some of those words mean. But it was fine.

Hinata only knew the spell Fireball.

Adventurers as it turns out don’t have many spellslots. Hinata used all of his leveling up this single spell. Later on Gina would tell me stories of how she and he ransacked places. He was the big damage, but he was also a one-trick pony.

It didn’t take long for Hinata to realize he was fucked.

He hadn’t anticipated someone with skills like mine. And as usual, he overestimated himself while underestimating others. He actually thought he could win a 6v1. Or, I guess a 5v1. With each new fireball and each new dinger from yours truly, Hinata grew more sweaty and more desperate.
Soon, he was near his breaking point.

“I call for a pause!” he said, holding his arms upright.

I was about to continue wailing on him, when Gina grasped my arm and shook her head.

“Combat allows any party to pause,” she said. “Those are the in-game combat rules.”

I groaned and rolled my eyes, but otherwise complied. Everyone else was content with putting their weapons down, happy to get a rest themselves.

The hall was filled with King Hinata’s shallow panting. I’m not sure if he’s ever cast that many fireballs recently, or in his entire life.

“It’s useless, you know,” he said. “There’s no point to his.”

“No point to what? Fighting you? Are you trying to say there’s no way to win this? That obviously ain’t true,” I said.

Somehow, I had forgotten to mention that the castle boasted an impressive clocktower. I was reminded when twelve peals of the bell echoed through this hall and the outside always, joined quickly by Hinata’s hyena laughter. 

“It’s midnight! It’s midnight!” His eyes twinkled with sadistic glee. “Your seven days are up, Daisuke. You let your brother die, you pathetic worm!”

His laughs continued as the other members in my party looked at me. They formed a whole spectrum of emotions all of them negative. Pitying, heartbroken, depressed.

I was experiencing none of those emotions.

“When I first got here, I had a long phone call with customer service. I complained about as much as I could, because I was trapped here and my brother was trapped on Earth. The customer service, a real spitfire named Margaret, even asked me: why don’t you just let him die?”
I took a step forward.

“I was horrified by that statement. How the hell could I just let him die? I’m his older brother. And as an older brother, I’ll do anything to protect him. But really, I was just running away.”

I squeezed the grip of my bat, forcing myself to say the words I always knew were true.

“Chouji was always dead. He was the one that was supposed to die, and it was by a total freak accident that he didn’t. This whole week, I’ve been dreaming up ways to run away from that. To deny the truth. To say no to reality. I was running away from that, like you’ve been for the past who knows how many years..” I glared at him like I glared at umpires. “But no more.”

I took yet another step forward.

The king raised a feeble finger. “B-B-But the turn order—”

Because of how new I was to combat, I knew next to nothing about turn order. I had a certain thief to thank for that.

I took my bat and knocked Hinata the fuck out. The beautiful, polished maple wood (courtesy of the now dead Basil) collided into the otaku’s skull with a satisfying thunk. He dropped to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.

And that was that.

King Hinata got his ass beat.