"Shut up!"

  "Do you think we're fools?!"

  "Defenders, my ass!"

  "We should take them out—just a bunch of pranksters who think they can make us work on an easy day."

  "How? We can’t get in there."

  "Pft. Did you forget who I am? I’m Yuen, the great."

  They kept talking, but one thing stood out: they wanted us dead. Each of us pressed our faces against the door, shouting, "We are NOT intruders!"

  Were they planning to smoke us out?

  I dropped to the floor, wedging myself into the tiny gap beneath the door, and shouted, "Don’t try to smoke us out!"

  They didn’t respond, just laughed. My brows furrowed as a flood of tiny green spiders began to pour toward my face. They were crawling through the gap from outside—there were so many that when I jumped back, the entire area around the door was swarming with them.

  "What the hell?!" Hessien panicked, summoning his card.

  Honestly, creating mist might have helped right about then.

  His card glowed. He moved his hands toward the army of spiders and released a white mist. It only made the air thicker, harder to see through. We needed to level up these skills for them to actually be useful. Ugh!

  Ghomas scoffed in disappointment. "This is pathetic."

  "I know, damn it! I’m the one stuck with it!" Hessien cried.

  Vacinay’s cat form wasn’t much help, and her other skills probably wouldn't be either. Though, I wasn’t sure she had the points to buy anything else.

  "What’s going on with them?" She ran to the edge of the room.

  There was Ghomas, but his skills were next to useless. Wait, maybe... Oh! He could help.

  "Ghomas!" I rushed toward him.

  "What?"

  "Create a body double and send it into the swarm of spiders to distract them!"

  "Oh." He summoned his legendary card, which I’d called far worse names.

  With a flash, he clenched his hands and shouted, "Playdead body double!"

  Flesh bubbled from his side, twisting and contorting until a face formed, followed by the rest of the body.

  ...

  Oh... I felt...

  "Grughhh!" I gagged. Why did I have to see that? Why did I watch that? WHY?! Why must I suffer so much?!

  Tears welled up, and as they fell, I felt like I could hear the scream of that body—a cry of despair, begging, Take me with you!

  I tried to reach for the tears, but they splattered on the ground. My knees buckled. "I... they left me behind..."

  Before I could finish, Hessien, Vacinay, and Ghomas were staring at me like I was some kind of embarrassment.

  "Cringe."

  "So corny."

  "Typical loner behavior."

  ...

  "To hell with all of you! You always pull that over-the-top, anime crap! Hell, you did it just today in this room!"

  Vacinay laughed dismissively. "And when you did it back on Earth, we mocked you for it."

  Damn them! "Let me join in on the fun!"

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  With that, Ghomas tossed one of his naked clones into the spider mass. They devoured it, but dealing with them was more pressing than dealing with carnivorous spiders.

  The others exchanged looks—glanced back and forth between me and the spiders—then started shaking their heads.

  "No," Hessien shrugged.

  "Hmph. The absurd demands of peasants are unsettling," Vacinay quipped, pretending to fan herself.

  "I give up..." I muttered, walking toward them as Ghomas hurled more lifeless clones at the spiders.

  Then I locked eyes on the paintings in the room.

  The outside guards shouted, "Are you all dead yet?!"

  Hmm...

  I approached the paper paintings, yanked them off the wall, and gripped the edges, preparing to tear them for maximum sound.

  RIIIP!

  With a sharp yank, I ripped the edges apart as loudly as possible and shouted, "Wow! These old paintings must have depicted some important figures!"

  "Wait. What?"

  "Eh?"

  The guards confused exclamations replaced the earlier laughter.

  I rushed to another painting.

  RIIIP!

  I hoped these paintings featured historical figures—heroes, perhaps, or people they admired.

  The others caught on and started doing the same.

  "Oh, oh! This one is of a happy family!"

  RIIIP!

  "STOP!" They begged.

  "These paintings depict past presidents, you fools! How dare you disrespect them!"

  "Call off the damn spiders!" I demanded. "And open the door!"

  "No—"

  Vacinay grabbed a flag—a sinister grin spreaded across her face. "How patriotic are you to your country? Does the flag mean anything to you?"

  "We’ll open the damn door!" They shouted shouted.

  "Just don’t tear the flag!"

  Their screeches rang in the air.

  Our plan had gone smoothly, save for one thing: the muttering behind the door.

  "Who had the key?"

  "I had no damn idea. I didn’t even know if one existed."

  "Uh... maybe our boss would have known?"

  Then, silence.

  You had to be kidding me. This place better have had a key for the door. It was just a door! Why would it be sealed shut? Had the past reality defenders been so unhinged that they sealed themselves in here, trapping future arrivals until they died?

  But no, something hadn’t added up with how the guards had reacted to us.

  Hessien sighed heavily. "I’ve got a bad feeling about this."

  "Same," Vacinay agreed, hitting Hessien on the shoulder with a bored expression.

  Ghomas folded his arms, his voice dry. "Yep. We’re going to starve here."

  Not exactly inspiring words.

  Fifteen minutes passed, and voices emerged from behind the door, their words laced with doubt.

  "There’s no way that happened!"

  "I’m telling you, sir! They say they’re reality defenders."

  A third voice, more dignified, cut through the air. "That... would be something else."

  They had to be important!

  We rushed to the door, shouting in unison.

  "Open up!"

  "Let us out!"

  "Hurry up!"

  "This is a demand!" Ghomas slammed his shoulder into the door.

  A voice, tinged with worry, answered. "Uh..."

  Then a sharp cough, followed by, "If you claim to be reality defenders, answer me this—"

  NO. Not again. They would ask us some trick question, we’d think we had it right, and then they’d switch to a doom-filled voice and say, "This is a lie. You all will die."

  We needed to try something else, but what? Think... think...

  Vacinay raised her arm, about to slam it against the door, but I stopped her.

  "Turn off the auto-translation," I said.

  She frowned, the others exchanging confused looks. Ghomas, however, caught on first.

  "Oh! I see what you’re planning." He fiddled with his UI and then bellowed in the harshest accent he could muster.

  "AYEEEEE! You better open up now, or we’ll kill all of you!"

  I followed suit, and the others quickly joined in with expressions of realization.

  "Ooo, that’s smart!" Vacinay grinned.

  "Hmm, I think I get it," Hessien muttered.

  Then we all shouted, louder and wilder. Ghomas continued in sentences, while I opted for chaos.

  "We are Zeus! We bring thunder! We bring death! Death! All death! Just death! This— we— do! Cry mothers! Beg fathers! Scream heralds! Shop death through death and life!"

  I had hoped the repetition of words and disjointed fragments would make them feel the weight of our words.

  Hessien stomped the ground, his voice a banshee wail. "Youuuuuuuuuu! Sufffferrrringggg! Onnnnnnnnnn! Yooooooouuuuuurrrrr kind!"

  "Yeah, yeah! We kill! Bathe in the blood of the damned innocents!" Vacinay kicked the door with increasing ferocity.

  Panicked voices erupted from the other side, a mix of confusion and fear.

  "Lesrs! Grash! Mayu!" Uh...

  "Lers frez mah shul!"

  "Lerzr Yoyn Refyu!"

  What had 'ler' even meant? They had used it a lot. Whatever. I guessed it was time to switch the auto-translate back on.

  The conversation on the other side revealed them arguing.

  "Give me the damn key! Give me!"

  "S-stop the president! Sir, don’t try to strangle me!"

  "Did you hear that evil language?! Give me the damn key you have!"

  A man, his voice trembling with fear, shouted, "Guards, stop the president!"

  Hell no!

  Vacinay was the first to disable the auto-translate again, her voice rising to a screeching crescendo. "DEATH DEATH DEATH DEATH!"

  It sounded like a banshee wail.

  We joined her in a chorus. "LAAAA BOMBBBB! BOOMMMMBBBB."

  "EAT THE YOUNG! THEN TRASH THE FOOLS!"

  Ghomas seemed to be enjoying this a bit more than usual, his back arched as he let out a maniacal laugh. "GHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!"

  The argument on the other side died abruptly, replaced by the unmistakable sound of metal hitting the door.

  Auto-translate... back on.

  "Shit... fit! Damn it, fit!"

  Ah, it had worked.

  "The damn key is too big for that tiny-ass hole."

  What?

  "What?" One of them sounded confused.

  "You know what I mean!"

  "No, I don’t."

  "I used ‘tiny-ass’ as an adjective!"

  "No, you didn’t."

  Had they been mocking us?

  Then, with a frantic motion, the door swung open. The one who had opened it leaped back behind a group of guards, their weapons trained on us.

  They were trembling. They... looked odd. Tattoo-like patterns marred their skin.

  "Shit... what the hell are they?" one muttered.

  "Monsters... they have no flow patterns..."

  Damn it. We had been isekai’d into a world where we were the outcasts, hadn’t we?