Time passed, and no rampaging hoard of goblins appeared to avenge their fallen comrade.

  Which was great and all, but didn’t really help me figure out my next steps.

  You see, I wasn’t really sure what it was I was supposed to be doing. From all the ‘alerts’ and errors in the notifications I was getting, it sounded to me like there was some pretty important ‘Guarding’ someone should be doing.

  However, in lieu of any actual instructions as to what this involved, I kind of found myself drifting hither and thither around the edge of the clearing, hands buried deep in my coat pockets and fingering the blade of the goblin’s knife. Survive the day to have my ‘Warden’ title recognised. Fine. On it. But between now and then, what should I be up to?

  It didn’t help that all of the adrenaline from the fight had long since bled away, leaving me with that hollow, twitchy stillness which always came to me after acts of intense violence. And that was for scraps without any of the additional‘new life’ context I had here.

  I looked down the space where the goblin’s body had lay—slumped, leaking and still twitching—before it had, abruptly, blinked out of existence. That little surprise had made me keep more than half an eye on the spot the goblin had initially crawled out. Did this realm have some sort of respawn mechanic?

  Not that such a thing would necessarily be an issue.

  I clearly had the measure of that creature, and having a Level 3 goblin on repeat to help me grind out a few more levels might be just what the doctor – did they have doctors here? - ordered.

  But no. No new nasties showed up from the bush. Apparently, I wasn’t going to be allowed to farm wildlife for the lols.

  All this quiet, though, did help me begin to make some sort of peace with how everything all had shaken out. You know, little things like my death, realm displacement and all the rules of my life suddenly being rewritten by an unseen power?

  It was funny, because I’d gone to Wendmere looking for a fresh start.

  Admittedly, I’d imagined something slightly more on the manageable side. Maybe a bit of weeding? Some light, rural brooding? At worst, a few months sorting out Aunt M’s cursed book collection while ignoring the aching gaps in my existence. Not—just to pick an example entirely at random here—being murdered and waking up in a completely different realm with a job title I didn’t remember applying for!

  Still. Beggars. Choosers. Etc etc.

  So, I mean, I wasn’t having any sort of full-on serenity prayer moment here, but I was definitely feeling more chilled than might have been expected. Mind you, I think the setting was doing a lot of heavy lifting for that. The birdsong. The smell of wet grass. The feeling of a life no longer ruinously tangled in the web of the bad guy I’d been trying to be.

  To be honest, I’d been spiralling for years. Living too big and far too wild. I’d been lucky to have dodged any major bad blowback on some major jobs, which just meant spending a lot of time waiting for the other shoe to drop . Sure, Katya had just been a heavier shoeing than I’d expected, but hey. Don’t give it out if you can’t take it.

  So, yeah, this might be a new realm, with rules I couldn’t even pretend to understand as of yet. But it also felt like a bit of a reset. A violent, unasked-for, suspiciously dramatic and strangely timed reset. But still. Right now – if you ignored the slaughtered goblin - my slate was actually clean. Which felt pretty nice.

  For the first time in . . . a very long time, it felt like I had options. I wasn't a guy running from himself in some dim backstreets. I wasn’t hiding behind layers of aliases and burner phones and long walks that never, ever ended anywhere good.

  I was—apparently—required to become the Guardian of the Threshold. Which sounded ridiculous. But was it truly any more ridiculous for that role to have been filled by me rather than Aunt M?

  I was just beginning to plot through how astonishingly strange that little titbit was when yet another blue box blinked into view. This one was a bit less jarring that the previous ones. Maybe I was getting used to things?

  [System Quest Update]

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Quest: Survive the Day

  Progress: 5% Complete

  Elapsed Time: [01:12:00]

  Status: On track

  The Veil remains unstable. Your death would not help.

  Carry on.

  This was immediately followed by another notification, this one with a little countdown ticking in the corner:

  Quest: Survive the Day

  Objective Updated: Defeat 3 Hostile Entities

  Progress: 1 / 3

  Current Status: Reasonably Murderous

  Remaining Targets: 2

  Reward Pathway: Still Calculating | Subject to Adjustment | Not Refundable

  Note: Further aggression may attract attention.

  This is both a warning and a subtle encouragement.

  Carry on.

  One of three. I quickly looked about me, expecting that notification to be the herald for a fresh wave of attacks. But no. I couldn’t see any new threats. Nothing charging towards me with its passions inflamed by my Class. Just the same pleasant landscape stretching away in every direction.

  The prospect of future entanglements got me thinking about the implications of my Class, and I checked myself over once again. I didn’t want to crash the System again, so I kept things on an external check.

  Hoodie with two holes singled through it? Check. Overcoat heavy with the stink of death – both my own and a goblin’s? Check. Cargo trousers clinging to all sorts of dried blood and boots thoroughly scuffed up but still holding together? Check and check.

  Crucially, though - and as far as I could tell - they seemed to be still ‘ordinary’ bits of clothing. My integration hadn’t converted them into, you know, epic pieces of armour. Which, now I started to think things through, really sucked.

  Because, if I accepted I’d somehow been transported into a new realm where I was supposed to be a Tanky Warden, I’d rocked up pretty ungeared for the task. I had no armour, no shield and no glowing Erkelot, the glowing Hammer of Righteous Vengeance. As someone who’d earned a bit of a reputation for having access to the latest swag - all the kit and full of wit, was how Griff had taken to introducing me. I think. I might have actually misheard that – I wasn’t wild about taking on this new role with no suitable toys at all.

  Which, considering I now seemed to be built to piss everything I encountered off, was – I sensed – likely to be a bit of an issue.

  I suppose, if you were given to morbid humour, it was almost funny. Mr Wizard had taken one look at my karma file—spy in the shadows, hidden infiltrator, professional problem solver behind the scenes—and said, “Let’s transform him into the one who stands up front and takes an absolute shellacking. Oh, and to really make this a laugh, let’s also make it so everyone he comes across really hates him.”

  Hilarious. I hoped wherever she was now, Aunt M was having a good old-fashioned giggle.

  From my on-again-off-again gaming, I knew that a Tank with any sort of aspirations towards survival – especially one called an ‘Iron Provocateur’ – was going to need all sorts of plates of steel around him. Maybe a tower shield or two. You know, some sort of damage reduction equipment? But not, and I mean this quite sincerely, not a wool coat and a hoodie with a few too many new holes in it.

  I wasn’t feeling especially Tanky right now. In fact, I felt more than a little bit like bait.

  Still, maybe that was the whole point of all this? Maybe me becoming a . . . Guardian of the Threshold was about me showing the universe what I could do when I had nothing but grit and gumption to rely on.

  I thought back to what the wizard had said about me protecting both of these worlds. Maybe the reason I’d been moved here was about me proving to the powers that be – whoever they were! – that when the chips were down, I didn’t fold. That I’d lean in and start swinging?

  Pfft. I didn’t know about any of that. But I did know that I was not going to be able to figure anything out by mooching around in this clearing any longer. It looked like one Level 3 Goblin was going to be my lot, and I’d have to take the rest of my progression into my own hands.

  I took another few steps away from the clearing and into the woods proper. Nothing immediately attacked me, which considering my unarmed state was a net good. And the little 5% countdown in the corner of my vision ticked upwards to 6%. So, exploration played a part in this little game too.

  Fine. Maybe I could make this work.

  I bent down to pick up a fallen branch and brandished it around like it was Excalibur. To distract myself from how very, very strange this all way, I may or may not have made humming noises as it did so.

  What had Griff said? If in doubt, bring the biggest gun you can to a knife fight. I didn't have a gun, but I reckoned a hefty plank of wood might even the odds somewhat. I wedged the knife into my waistband.

  [System Quest Update]

  Quest: Survive the Day

  Progress: 8% Complete

  Elapsed Time: [01:55:00]

  Objective: Survive the rest of the day.

  Status: Ongoing | Increasingly Unstable

  Environmental hostility projected to rise.

  Resource scarcity: moderate.

  Assistance: unavailable.

  Warden recognition: pending.

  You are not expected to succeed.

  But you are required to try.

  Carry on.