Chapter one

The bell above the shop door wouldn’t shut the hell up.
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.

Every time it rang, something in Frank’s jaw tightened, a small, mean muscle clenching like it wanted to crack teeth. He was alone behind the counter, apron stiff with drying blood, hands aching from breaking down one and a half cows before noon. The owner had “popped out” three hours ago. Translation: Frank was the butcher, the clerk, the cleaner, the therapist, and today’s designated punching bag.

The meat didn’t complain. That was the best part of the job.

Mrs Perkins at the counter, on the other hand, did.

“This doesn’t look like a full pound,” she said, squinting at the wrapped mince as though the possibility of it being a few grams short were not just an inconvenience, but a personal slight she intended to carry with her for the rest of the day.

“It’s a pound,” Frank said, flat and level, slipping into the calm, measured tone he’d spent twenty years perfecting. The kind of voice one used so they didn’t get fired, arrested, or banned from polite society.

Mrs Perkins huffed. “Well, it feels light.”

Frank wanted to tell her she felt light. Hollow. All noise and no substance, rattling around in a loose, wrinkled, old shell. Instead, he reached under the counter, pulled out the scale, and set the package down with more care than she deserved.

“One pound,” he said. “Exactly.”

She stared at it, unimpressed. “Can you add a little more? Just to be safe.”

Behind her, the line shifted. Someone sighed, loud and theatrical. The bell dinged again as a guy walked in, his face already twisted with the kind of irritation that said the universe had wronged him somehow. Frank had had nothing to do with it, yet he could have bet his paycheck that he would still pay for it.

He smiled. It was a practised thing, careful and bloodless, never reaching his eyes. “Sure.”

He added more meat, wrapped it, and weighed it again.

“Now it’s over,” she said.

Frank stared at her. Just for a second. Long enough for the thought to fully form. He imagined slamming her face into the counter. Once. Not enough to kill her. Just enough to make the lesson stick.

Instead, he opened the wrapper, took out a pinch, and wrapped it again.

By the time Mrs Perkins finally left, muttering about customer service and standards these days, Frank’s hands were shaking.

He loved this work. That was the worst part.

There was something clean about it. Something honest. You cut. You separate. You reduced something whole into parts that made sense: muscle, fat, and bone. No lies. No pretending. Blood everywhere, and none of it fake.

Then there were the people.

By the time the fifth customer complained about something he had no control over, something inside Frank snapped, like cartilage giving way under a blade.

He slapped the block. “Be right back.”

He didn’t wait for a response from the next customer in line. He just pushed through the swinging door behind the counter and into the meat fridge.

The cold stopped him in his tracks. It soaked through his clothes and into his bones, sharp enough to quiet his thoughts. The smell settled in just as quickly, iron and old blood, the residue left behind after slaughter and draining at the abattoir. What little remained seeped from the meat, spotting the concrete floor beneath the hooks. Sides of beef hung in uneven rows, shifting slightly as the air conditioning cycled, their shadows stretching and shrinking along the walls. He locked the door.

Frank’s breath fogged in front of his face as he grabbed the nearest hind quarter and shoved it.

It swung back.

He hit it.

Hard.

The impact thudded up his arm, dull and satisfying. The meat barely reacted. He hit it again. And again. Each punch landed heavier than the last, rage pouring out of him in short, violent bursts that finally had somewhere to go.

“I’m good at this,” he growled, slamming his fist into it. “I’m wasted here.”

Something cracked.

At first, Frank thought it was bone.

He looked down at his knuckles and flexed his fingers. A dull ache pulsed beneath the skin, the kind you earned honestly, but nothing felt broken. Not him, at least. He swung again.

The second crack tore through the air, louder than the first. He froze mid-movement and stared at the hind quarter. A thin fracture had spread from the top, cutting across the topside, branching and running in a jagged line all the way down to the flank.

“What the fuck?”

He reached out and traced it with a finger.

The moment he touched it, the fracture vanished.

Frank frowned and pulled his hand back, shaking his head. Stress, he told himself. Lack of sleep. Too many hours dealing with people who treated a butcher like a public confession booth, as if he existed solely to absorb their complaints and nod along while not giving a single fuck.

A familiar voice cut through the solid seal of the fridge door, just grating enough to make him bare his teeth.

“Excuse me, Mr Butcher. I’ve decided I need another pound of mince.”

Frank drew in a breath and held it, forcing down the image of walking out there, grabbing Mrs Perkins by the collar, and hanging her up in place of his makeshift punching bag. He exhaled slowly, arranging his face into the best imitation of a smile he could manage.

One day.

He shook his head and drove his fist into the hind quarter one last time.

For a moment, nothing happened. His fist pressed into the meat and stopped there, the impact dull and familiar, the resistance exactly what he expected.

Then it shattered.

The surface of the hind quarter split in thin, pale lines that spread outward from the point of impact. They moved slowly at first, creeping rather than tearing, ignoring the grain of the meat as they travelled. It didn’t look like muscle giving way. It looked like something had been scored and was only now deciding to open.

Frank stood there, watching, unable to make himself step back.

Light showed through the fractures. A faint glow, as if something behind the meat was leaking through where it shouldn’t. He frowned and rubbed at his eyes, convinced the cold or the strain was messing with his vision.

When he lowered his hand, the cracks were still there.

He took a step back.

The floor shifted, just enough to make him widen his stance, the kind of movement you blamed on tired legs or bad balance. The fridge itself stayed still. Nothing rattled. Nothing fell. For a moment, he almost convinced himself it hadn’t happened at all.

He reached out and grabbed the hind quarter to steady himself.

Then the second jolt hit.

The ground lurched hard beneath his boots, and the impact ran up through his legs and into his spine, sudden enough to knock the breath out of him. The hanging sides of beef began to sway, hooks clinking against their rails.

That was when things started to give.

A vertical split opened in the plastic coating of the wall beside him, running from ceiling to floor. It widened as he watched, thin at first, then enough for concrete dust to spill through and drift down onto the tiles. Overhead, the light fittings flickered. One went dark. Another stuttered, then dropped, its plastic casing hitting the floor and shattering with a sharp crack that echoed through the fridge.

The hook above the hind quarter he was holding let out a strained, metallic groan.

Frank looked up and watched it bend, steel warping under a load it had carried a thousand times before, as if the rules it had been made to follow no longer applied.

“Ah, fuck—”

The hook broke.

The hind quarter dropped.

It hit him like a truck.

*****

Frank woke up choking.

Air scraped into his lungs like it didn’t belong there. His hands came up on instinct, fists clenched, his body already bracing to swing before his head caught up with what was happening.

He opened his eyes.

Stone.

Not tile. Not concrete. Rough, dark stone walls slick with moisture. Thin lines had been cut into the rock, shallow channels that glowed faintly, the same glow as the fractures, pulsing at a steady rhythm, like veins visible beneath skin.

He was standing.

That was wrong. He remembered hitting the floor. Remembered the weight of the meat. Remembered the way his ribs had screamed when it landed on him.

He swayed, boots scraping against a floor that felt faintly warm underfoot. There was no drain. No rubber mats. No low mechanical hum in the background. The smell was wrong as well. Less iron. More damp. Old, like something sealed away and forgotten.

He turned in a slow circle, taking it in piece by piece.

Hooks hung from the ceiling.

Same shape as the ones in the shop. Same height. Same spacing.

But they were empty.

Frank froze when he reached the point where the door should have been.

Where the fridge door had always been.

There was nothing there now but stone, seamless and unbroken, the surface dark with moisture. No frame. No handle. No sign it had ever been anything else.

He walked up to it anyway and slammed his palm into the wall.

Solid.

He hit it again, harder this time. The impact rang up his arm and into his shoulder, the sting sharp enough to make him hiss, but the wall didn’t shift. Didn’t crack. Didn’t even acknowledge him.

“What the fuck,” Frank said. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Joke? No. I’m afraid not. This is quite real, I assure you.”

“What the fuck?” He spun toward what had been an empty room a second earlier and found… nothing. No movement. No shape. “Who’s there? Who the fuck are you? What the fuck have you done to me? Where the fuck am I?”

“Down here, genius.”

Frank looked down.

Then he stumbled back, heart slamming into his ribs, caught between the urge to shout and the much stronger urge to step forward and stamp on the thing now occupying the space at his feet. A small pig stood where there had been nothing moments before, pink hide dusted with grime, ears twitching slightly as it looked up at him. Its eyes were dark and far too focused as they tracked his every movement.

“Yes, yes,” it said, tilting its head. “Take a good look. I’m no happier about this than you are, but here we are.”

“You’re a… You’re a pig.”

“Charming. You’re not exactly a treat to look at yourself.”

“But… But… You can talk.”

“No shit, Sherlock. How else would this conversation be happening? I suppose there’s telepathy, but neither of us is anywhere near a high enough level for that yet.”

Frank dragged a hand down his face. “I’m dreaming. This is a dream. A really fucked-up one. I must’ve hit my head when the hind quarter landed on me.” He laughed, short and brittle. “Am I dead? Did I get crushed to death by a quarter-ton of beef? Is that what this is?”

“Goodness,” the pig said. “You’re exhausting already. Take a breath. Calm down. If you let me finish a sentence, I might even explain what’s going on.”

“Explain. Right. Yes. An explanation,” Frank said. “From a pocket-sized pig. Completely normal.”

“Well, for a start, I’m not actually a pig. This is simply the form I’ve been assigned. Apparently, whoever’s in charge this millennium thought it would be amusing, given what you did in your previous life.”

“Previous life?” Frank swallowed. “So, I am dead.”

“No. You’re very much alive. Although, to be fair, a significant portion of your species just wasn’t. You are one of the fortunate exceptions.”

The room tilted. Frank’s legs went weak, and before gravity could finish the job, he slid down the wall and crouched there, his back pressed against the cold stone.

“You need to start talking,” he said, breath coming a little too hard. “Because I’m about to lose my shit, and right now you’re the only thing here I can focus that anger on. And just so you’re aware, I’m a butcher. Pigs don’t exactly have a great survival rate around me.”

“Quite true,” the pig said mildly. “From the footage I reviewed of your previous life, you were very much a butcher. And I don’t mean that as praise. I’ve seen cleaner work from a goblin berserker than you attempting to break down a sirloin.”

Frank stared at it.

“…Did you just critique my knife work?”

“If you can call what you do knife work, then yes.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Very much so. Twenty years in the trade, and it’s like watching a toddler attack a slab of mystery meat.”

“Fuck you. I thought you were supposed to be explaining things.”

“I could explain things,” the pig said. “That rather depends on whether you’re capable of learning some manners. Has the word please ever entered your vocabulary? Honestly, it’s no wonder your customers all seem so frustrated.”

“Oh, fuck this.”

Frank pushed himself up and stepped forward, kicking out without really thinking.

A heartbeat later, the air left his lungs, and he was on his back.

Before his brain caught up, he found himself staring at the ceiling as pain bloomed in his gut, stealing his breath.

“Good,” the pig said calmly. “Now that’s out of your system, I think we can move on.”

Frank dragged in a wheezing breath, then another, his chest burning as the shock set in. The pain didn’t make sense. He’d just been hit by a pig no bigger than a small loaf of bread, yet it felt like he’d taken a full-bodied charge from something feral and heavy, the kind of force you expected from a wild boar, not a pocket-sized insult with opinions.

He lay there gasping, reassessing his life choices.

“Now, sit up, listen carefully, and try to let at least a small part of what I’m about to say make it through that thick, Neanderthal skull of yours. This is going to be a lot to take in, and every moment I spend dragging you up to speed is another moment we’re falling behind.”

Chapter Two

“So,” Frank said, pacing the length of the empty room, “you’re telling me we’re still on Earth?”

“Yes,” the pig replied. “This is still your insignificant little planet. We are merely located in sub-layer one of the Sigma Dungeon Complex, approximately three miles beneath the Earth’s crust.”

Frank stopped and looked at him. “And how did I get here?”

“I suspect the correct terminology would be wasted on you, so let’s keep things simple and call it magic.”

“Magic,” Frank repeated. “As in fairy-tale, made-up bullshit.”

“Yes,” the pig said. “Precisely that. Fairy-tale, made-up bullshit.”

Frank dragged his hands through his hair. “I’m losing it. I’m fucking losing it.”

“Frankly,” the pig said, “I’m beginning to suspect you never had it. Still, I can see why they paired me with you. Punishment, most likely. I made one mildly provocative remark, and now here I am, stuck three miles under your miserable planet, watching you spiral.” It let out a long, irritated breath. “In hindsight, I may have misjudged option three. Death might have been the kinder outcome. For me at least.”

“Please,” Frank said, stopping his pacing and fixing him with a look. “Percy. Just tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“The name is Percival,” he snapped. “And what do you imagine I’ve been attempting to do this entire time? Your difficulty isn’t my explanation. It’s your comprehension. Honestly, you process information like a single-celled organism.”

“Then talk slower.”

“Fine,” Percival said. “I will attempt to lower this to a level you can process, though I strongly suspect I’ll be shaving years off my own mental health in the process. Let’s start at the beginning.”

He paused, just long enough to be irritating.

“It is galactic year seven hundred billion, two hundred million, three hundred and fifty thousand. Or, as far as your planet is concerned, in all its infinitesimal ignorance, roughly the year four billion, five hundred million.”

“But it’s twenty-twenty-six.”

Percival stared at Frank.

“Yes,” he said at last, “and that response is a near-perfect demonstration of the problem. Your understanding of time is provincial at best. In the broader scope of the universe, your planet has barely staggered out of infancy. Frankly, Earth hasn’t even grown its baby teeth yet.”

He took a breath, clearly restraining himself.

“But age isn’t measured by calendars and social conventions. It’s measured by existence. By development. By survival. And when a world reaches a certain point, regardless of how primitive or technologically stunted its inhabitants might be, it is required to undergo the trial.”

Frank stopped pacing.

“The trial?”

“Yes, the trial to determine whether it’s worth your planet being introduced to the wider universe,” Percival continued, “or whether it should be broken down to its component atoms and harvested for resources.”

“And what is this trial?”

“For you?” Percival said. “Survival. At least, that’s the stated objective. Survive, or be eradicated.”

Frank didn’t like how easily he said it.

“You see, once every five hundred million years, the Galactic Council of Elders, along with their sponsors at the BLAST Network, selects three nascent worlds to compete. They’re set against one another in a survival-of-the-fittest contest, wherein the winner earns the right to join the wider universe.”

“And what exactly am I in right now?”

“What you’re experiencing,” Percival said, “is the tutorial stage.”

Frank frowned. “And that means what, exactly?”

“It means that approximately zero point five per cent of Earth’s population has been transported into the Sigma Dungeon Complex to fight for the planet’s survival. This phase is equal parts training and selection.”

“Selection,” Frank repeated. “And why only zero point five per cent?”

Percival let out a small, tired sigh. “Because you cannot reasonably expect twenty-four billion individuals to participate in a single competition. While the population of the three chosen worlds is little more than a statistical footnote on a galactic scale, the logistics of tracking that many contestants simultaneously are prohibitive. BLAST, in particular, has very firm budgetary limits.”

“Who the fuck is BLAST?”

“The Broadcast Liaison for Assessment of Sapient Territories,” Percival said. “One of the five major galactic broadcasting networks. They fund the trials, oversee the infrastructure, and transmit the entire affair to the rest of the universe.”

He paused, then added, “Think of it as entertainment. With consequences.”

“So,” Frank said, “you’re telling me I’ve been dragged out of my life and dumped down here to be entertainment for a bunch of fucked-up aliens.”

“To put it bluntly,” Percival replied, “yes.”

“And why me?” Frank asked. “Why have I been… chosen?”

Percival’s expression soured, as if the question itself inconvenienced him. “That decision sits so far above my authority that I couldn’t answer it even if I cared to. Frankly, you wouldn’t have made my top twenty per cent, let alone the top zero point five.”

He looked Frank over again, as though reassessing an error that refused to correct itself.

“Yet here you are. And here I am.” He sighed. “Which means we should stop dwelling on cosmic injustices and address the only matter that actually concerns us.”

“And that is?”

“Keeping you alive for more than a few seconds once you leave the safe zone.”

A thin, unpleasant smile tugged at his snout.

“Everything else,” he added, “is secondary.”

“I think I need to sit down.”

“You’re already sitting.”

Frank blinked. “Oh.” He hadn’t even noticed he’d stopped pacing, or that he’d slid back down the wall again.

“Right,” Percival said. “Up you get. Come on. No time to wallow. First things first, we cover the basics.” He paused. “Look to the top left-hand corner of your vision.”

Frank craned his neck upward.

“No… That’s the ceiling. You don’t need to move your entire head. Just look up. See it? Floating just above your line of sight.”

“…Why is there a strange blue man squatting above my head?”

Percival muttered something under his breath, his small snout wrinkling as he shook his head. “Fucking provincials. Just press it.”

“Press it?” Frank said, reaching up with one hand and watching as it passed clean through the image as if it weren’t even there.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Percival said. “Not your hand, you absolute simpleton. With your mind. Just… poke it. With your brain.”

Frank looked down at the angry little pig and shrugged. “Right. Poking it with my brain.”

Much to his surprise, the moment he did just that, a strange translucent screen appeared in front of him. He leaned back in surprise, his head cracking into the wall with a loud thud that made his vision turn white for a moment. When it cleared, he could see Percival shaking his head through the floating display.

“This is what you would call your status screen. Some prefer the interface menu,” Percival said. “It’s where you allocate stat points, monitor progression, track objectives, access your inventory, and manage skills.”

“I don’t think I understood a single word you just said.”

Percival turned slightly and looked upward, though his eyes seemed to focus on something far beyond the stone ceiling. “Celestial mother,” he muttered. “Did I truly offend you so deeply as to deserve this?” He shook his head, then fixed Frank with a look. “Right. We’ll simplify.”

He gestured with his snout. “This is your main screen. The status screen. It exists to reveal the essentials at a glance. Name. Age. Race. Your current condition. Basic attributes. Titles as well, though I suspect that section may remain tragically empty for some time.”

Frank looked back at the floating display and read it from top to bottom.

Name: Frank Sanders
Age: 39
Race: Undecided

Level: 1

Stats
Health: 100/100
Stamina: 50/50
Mana: 20/20

Attributes
Strength: 0
Constitution: 0
Agility: 0
Dexterity: 0
Intelligence: 0
Wisdom: 0
Endurance: 0

Secondary Attributes
Luck: 0
Charisma: -10
Alignment: 0
Leadership: 0

Free Attribute Points: 10

Titles: None

Frank stared at it for a long moment.

“…Why is my charisma negative?”

Percival smiled. “Do you really need to ask?”

Frank’s scowl deepened. “And why does it say my race is undecided? What does that even mean? I’m human.”

“For the moment,” Percival said. “But you don’t have to be.”

Frank opened his mouth to argue.

“You see,” Percival continued, cutting him off, “several billion years ago, when the primary network sponsor shifted to BLAST, they decided the process needed… variety. To make things more interesting, contestants were given the option to choose their race at the beginning of the trial.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” Percival said. “Early iterations of the contest were horribly unbalanced. One planet would produce a race that was little more than a moving sack of flesh with teeth. Another would field creatures lacking opposable thumbs. The third might be an advanced insectoid species equipped with natural weapons and the cognitive capacity of what your planet would classify as a genius.”

Frank stared at him.

“As you can imagine,” Percival went on, “the results were predictable. Boring, even. So, the council intervened. Racial selection was introduced to level the field.”

“So, I just… pick?”

“From a predetermined list,” Percival nodded. “Certain races are excluded for obvious reasons. Draconic lineages are prohibited due to inherent power imbalance. Automatons are disallowed entirely, on account of the absurd notion that one might turn flesh into metal.”

He paused, watching Frank carefully.

“What remains are the fundamentals. Human, dwarf, elf, kobold, goblin, troll, gnome, minotaur, and a handful of others best avoided by beginners. Each comes with its own advantages and limitations. None is objectively superior. Preference is the point, not dominance.”

“And once I choose?” Frank asked.

“It becomes permanent.”

Frank nodded, as if that meant anything to him at all.

“Well, do get on with it,” Percival said briskly. “We can’t proceed until you select a race, and there’s little benefit in lingering. The choice is yours.” A pause. “Entirely.”

He glanced up at Frank again, his expression carefully neutral.

“However,” he added, “if you were inclined to accept advice, I would recommend something practical. Kobolds, for example. Unimpressive at first glance, yes, and hardly generous with attribute gains. But they can see in the dark.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“Which,” he said, “is going to matter far more than you currently appreciate.”

Frank looked back at the word Undecided hovering beside his name.

For the first time since waking up, the room felt a little smaller.

“I think I saw a kobold once,” Frank said. “Some fantasy D&D programme my kid used to watch. I don’t think I fancy turning into some fucked-up lizard man.”

“Much like I imagine they wouldn’t be thrilled about becoming a fucked-up sack of flesh in a bloody apron,” Percival replied. “But suit yourself. If not them, then I would suggest—”

“Human,” Frank said, as he mentally selected the option from the menu.

The screen flickered, then settled.

“Well…” Percival sighed, “You’re nothing if not predictable. Though I am mildly confused. The briefing I received before being sent here indicated you were unattached. Yet you just said you have a child.”

“Had a child,” Frank said.

He met Percival’s gaze for half a second, then looked away.

“…Ah. That does clarify a few things.”

“Clarify what?” Frank asked, heat creeping into his voice.

“You,” Percival said. “Angry. Stubborn. Loud. Speaking as though the universe has personally wronged you. Which, admittedly, it now has.” He tilted his head. “You talk like someone who’s already given up.”

“Why don’t you try losing a wife and a child to see how much fight you have left?”

Percival didn’t reply straight away, but his expression turned haunted.

“I’ve lost more than you could ever possibly imagine,” he said at last. “But anger is good. Most see it as a flaw, but it’s not. You’ll need it to survive what comes next.” He hesitated, just a fraction. “For what it’s worth, though, I am sorry.”

That caught Frank off guard.

“Why?” he asked. “You don’t know me. Why should you care? Better question, why are you even here?”

“I am here to guide you,” Percival said. “Think of me as a companion for the path ahead.”

Frank let out a humourless laugh. “Why? To what end? You’ve already told me I’m going to die the moment I leave this place. Why not just let it happen? What’s in this for you?”

“To what end?” Percival echoed. “Because I need you to succeed.”

He shifted his weight slightly.

“And why not simply let you die?” he continued. “Because, if you do, it significantly reduces my chances of survival. Like you, I did not choose to be here. The only difference between you and me is that I know what here is, and I have a fairly good idea of what comes next.”

He met Frank’s gaze, unblinking.

“And while I personally consider you to be a foul example of your species, I still intend to do everything within my limited power to keep you alive. Because if you stay on your feet, I get to stay on mine.”

Frank took a breath and nodded. “Alright. Now that I can respect.”

Percival frowned, the expression almost comical on his small porcine face, but he didn’t comment.

“Now,” Frank said, pushing himself back to his feet and forcing his focus elsewhere, “what the hell are these so-called free attribute points all about?”