The blinding light didn't fade gently; it shattered like glass, dropping Elian face-first into a puddle of freezing mud.
He gasped, spitting out grit and dirty water, his lungs burning as if he had just run a marathon. The sterile silence of the Library was gone, replaced by a cacophony of screams, the roar of flames, and the wet, sickening sound of steel cutting through flesh.
Elian scrambled to his knees, wiping mud from his eyes. He was in the middle of a village square, but it looked nothing like the idyllic hamlets described in high-fantasy novels. It was a slaughterhouse. Thatched roofs were engulfed in orange infernos, casting long, dancing shadows against the night sky. Villagers ran in chaotic circles, pursued by creatures that looked like goblins, though they were far more muscular and vicious than any low-level mob had the right to be.
"Classic," Elian muttered, though his voice trembled. "The 'Village Raid' trope. Lazy writing, but effective for an inciting incident."
He tried to stand, his legs wobbling. According to the standard plot progression, the Protagonist—usually a farm boy with a mysterious lineage—should be stepping up right about now. He would pick up a pitchfork, display a sudden burst of latent magical talent, and drive the monsters back just enough to escape.
"System," Elian hissed, looking around frantically. "Where is the Hero?"
[Target Identified: Arthur, Level 1 (Protagonist).]
A red marker appeared in Elian's vision, hovering over a young man standing near the village well. Arthur looked exactly the part: messy blonde hair, a tunic that was slightly too clean for a peasant, and a rusty sword gripped in shaking hands.
"There you are," Elian exhaled, feeling a wave of relief. "Okay, kid. Do your thing. Use the 'Hidden Power' blast and save us."
Arthur screamed a war cry that cracked in the middle and charged at the nearest goblin. The goblin, a hulking brute with green skin and a jagged scimitar, didn't even flinch. It didn't pause to let the hero monologue. It simply swung its blade in a brutal, horizontal arc.
Thwack.
Arthur's head flew off his shoulders, spinning through the air before landing with a dull thud in the mud a few feet away from Elian.
The headless body of the Protagonist stood for a second, spurting a fountain of blood, before collapsing like a puppet with cut strings.
Elian froze. His brain refused to process what he had just seen. The Protagonist—the anchor of this entire reality, the being with absolute plot armor—had just been one-shotted by a trash mob in the first thirty seconds of the story.
[Critical Alert!]
[Protagonist Status: Deceased.]
[Narrative Integrity: 0%.]
[World Destruction Imminent in: 10 Minutes.]
"You have got to be kidding me," Elian whispered, horror dawning on him.
The goblin that had just killed the hope of the world turned its head. Its yellow, slit-pupiled eyes locked onto Elian. It licked the blood from its blade and grinned, revealing rows of serrated teeth.
This wasn't a story anymore; it was a execution, and Elian was next in line.
[Skill Activated: Annotate.]
Text flooded Elian's vision, overwriting the terror with cold, hard data, revealing that the goblin wasn't just a goblin—it was Level 50, a statistic that shouldn't exist in a starter zone.
"That's a bug," Elian realized, scrambling backward as the monster raised its blade. "That's a massive, game-breaking bug."
He didn't wait for the system to reply; Elian turned and ran toward the burning treeline, just as a shadow larger than the village itself blocked out the moon.