The smell was the first transgression. Not the epic stench of brimstone and a thousand dying souls that Kael'thas was used to, but the insipid, complicated, and utterly mundane stink of low-grade human life: stale beer, poorly washed uniforms, cheap parchment, and a faint, cloying hint of desperation.
Alistar Thorne waited in line. The Oakhaven D-Rank Adventurer Guild hall was a symphony of architectural mediocrity—splintered benches, motivational posters featuring grinning, generic heroes (all of whom Kael'thas had, at one point, either destroyed or enslaved), and a perpetually sticky floor.
His heart, a foreign, fleshy engine of anxiety he had painstakingly installed, beat a rapid, annoying rhythm. It wasn't fear; it was the sheer, paralyzing anxiety of a being who had not waited in a queue for twenty thousand years. He was clutching Form R-7: Basic Quest Requisition, its edges crisp and uncreased.
I have commanded the march of armies numbering in the billions. I have negotiated the surrender of interdimensional deities. And yet, Alistar's internal voice, Kael'thas's own dry, ancient thought-stream, noted with profound bitterness, I am currently one place away from speaking to a mid-level bureaucrat who smells faintly of cabbage and disappointment.
The receptionist, a woman named Helga with a face weathered by the trials of inventory management, finally called his number.
"Thorne, Alistar. D-Rank 304. Here for an assignment?" she droned, not looking up.
Alistar managed a slight, practiced nod. "Yes, Helga. I have ensured all my previous documentation is attached. Form C-19 is triple-stamped."
Helga squinted at a screen that looked to be held together with dried porridge. "Ah. High-priority clearance. Due to… well, this." She thrust a new parchment at him, its header screaming 'CRITICAL: VERMIN ABATEMENT.'
"The Guild Master has been complaining," she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, as if sharing secrets of the arcane. "It's the Storage Room 4-B. The Rat King is back. He's massive. They want him dealt with by the end of the fiscal week. Fifty silver piece reward."
Fifty silver pieces. An amount Kael'thas could manifest by accidentally flexing a single toe. It was enough, precisely, for three weeks' rent in his current, meticulously dreary hovel.
The arrogance, the Lich seethed internally, of demanding my eternal attention for a rodent. This is the pinnacle of the grand experiment. I must not fail to be pathetic.
He accepted the parchment, folding it neatly. "Understood. Target: Rodentia Gigas. Zone 4-B. Lethality is authorized, provided collateral damage remains at a zero-percent threshold."
Helga blinked. "Just kill the rat, Alistar."
Storage Room 4-B was dark, dusty, and oppressively small. The low ceiling forced Alistar to hunch, which was inconvenient for a being whose True Form required several miles of vertical clearance. The air was thick with the scent of mildew and the buzzing threat of forgotten paper-wasps.
In the center of the gloom, atop a mound of torn, archaic financial records, was the target: the Rat King. It was indeed large, perhaps the size of a small, underfed dog, its eyes glowing with a faint, malevolent red light that suggested some minor, low-level enchantment. A D-Rank threat.
Alistar drew his longsword—a standard, mass-produced blade whose enchantment of 'Minor Dullness Resistance' was about as useful as a pocketful of sand.
Centuries. I spent centuries refining the Grand Pestilence Curse, a spell designed to unravel the biological structure of every living thing in a five-hundred-mile radius, turning entire kingdoms into a single, cohesive fungal mass. I could cast it now. The rat, the guild, the city… all quieted.
He could feel the power—the cold, beautiful, infinite energy of undeath—coiled at the base of his soul. It was a pressure, a physical ache, like trying to hold a bursting supernova in the cup of one's hands. The effort to not summon his bone legions, to not vaporize the entire structure and thus ruin his rent-payment schedule, was the single most exhausting physical act he had performed in five millennia.
He attempted the mandated D-Rank strategy: a weak spell of distraction, followed by a basic thrust.
"Vagus Sensus…" he whispered, and a single, pathetic spark of orange light flickered from his palm, smelling faintly of cheap sulfur. It missed the rat entirely and merely illuminated a stain on the wall.
The Rat King, unimpressed, hissed and lunged.
Alistar parried clumsily with the sword. The impact jarred his very mortal arm, sending a shock of pain—a truly fascinating, foreign sensation—up to his shoulder. He nearly buckled. His internal composure, the carefully constructed facade of a tired human, wavered.
I have to stop thinking like an Overlord. I am Alistar. I am average. I am terrible at this.
His mind, accustomed to processing interdimensional strategies in nanoseconds, became hyper-focused on the mundane physical reality: the angle of the blade, the slickness of the grime on the floor, the horrifying realization that his shoulder was going to be sore tomorrow.
It's just a rat. Use the Necromancy. Just a tiny fraction. Enough to… to briefly suppress its motor functions. That's D-Rank equivalent!
He fought the instinct. The Lich instinct was always binary: Annihilate or Ignore. It did not understand subtlety or moderation.
He backed into a corner, his breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps—a sign of genuine, terrifying human exhaustion. He concentrated every sliver of his attention on the constraint: D-Rank. D-Rank. D-Rank.
The pressure of the unspent power became a physical headache. In a desperate act of frustration, intending to simply create a minor shield, the immense force he was straining to contain rebelled. It wasn't a spell; it was a leak. A brief, cold, black pulse of genuine, raw entropy escaped his left hand.
It was focused entirely on a forgotten pile of yellowed, dusty parchment in the corner—Form 12-Z: Quarterly Guild Supply Audit from 102 E.Y.
There was no sound, only an instantaneous change in texture. The paper, and the wood shelf beneath it, simply lost the will to exist as organized matter. They did not burn; they were perfectly mummified, flash-dried into brittle, ancient ash that retained the shape of the paper and wood for a second before crumbling.
Damnation. Kael'thas felt a genuine, deep wave of panic—not because he had nearly exposed his identity, but because he had destroyed official Guild property and incurred an administrative violation.
The slip of power had distracted the Rat King for exactly one second. That was all the time Alistar needed. He stopped thinking, stopped analyzing, and let the sword hand move with the instinctive efficiency of a being who had practiced combat for geological ages. A clean, mundane thrust, perfectly placed beneath the rat's ribcage.
The creature squealed, went limp, and fell to the floor, dead.
Alistar stood there, panting, sweating, and shaking—exhausted by the restraint, not the kill. The fifty silver was secured.
He ignored the corpse. He ignored the profound stench. His eyes were fixed on the corner where the perfectly mummified remains of Form 12-Z now lay.
Negligence.
He spent the next hour retrieving the rat (for proof of kill, per Guild guidelines, Section 4-C) and, more importantly, meticulously documenting the accident. He didn't just write a report; he filled out Incident Report 7-A, detailing the material loss, estimated cost of replacement parchment, the exact coordinates of the damage in Storage Room 4-B, and a fabricated, detailed testimony about "unexpected structural decay" to justify the mummified forms.
He was two hours late returning the completed report and the Rat King's carcass. Helga accepted the documents and the corpse without comment.
"Good job, Alistar. Just... try to be on time next time. The filing cabinet closes at four."
Alistar, completely drained by his struggle against a rodent and a mountain of red tape, felt a flicker of grim satisfaction. He had survived. He had adhered to the constraints. He had managed to make existence feel taxing and complex again.
I have exchanged dominion over endless night for the anxiety of a deadline, he thought, walking slowly out of the Guild Hall. It is… hideous. It is perfect.