Isekai'd, My Posterior!
"Ohh…"
William rubbed his noggin as he sat up in the confined space that was, by all means, a crap-shack with flies. He knew it had been a while since he had last showered due to joining a mate in a three-hour long quest on PUBG and then bingeing the last season of that titan-killing series on Crunchyroll but he knew this stench wasn't coming from any orifice that he possessed… at least he didn't think so.
He reached a hand up to plug his nose as he stared down at a familiar line of cockroach's march around a familiar bowl of rotten food within a familiar looking square of mottled cobblestone and mossy walls before his gaze found his hand.
It was slender, as he remembered it to be (from all his time devoted to the confines of his home) but surprisingly bereft of much flesh… and coloured a rusty brown. A familiar rusty brown. It was after a moment later that William realised the nose he had been meaning to plug apparently did not exist – or at least the skin and cartilage didn't.
With a start, William hopped to his bony feet.
"Slap my momma, I was just Isekai'd."
The individual proceeded to feel around himself as he noticed the skinny jeans and Blink-182 T-shirt he had been wearing was swapped out for light leather and stifling gloves when a trapdoor opened up above him to deposit one leathery, stinky and dead hollow. William glanced at the corpse that wetly smacked the ground beside him before staring up at the figure dressed in fine armour above him. A familia- okay, that was starting to get annoying now.
Oscar stared down at him through his visor before nodding, as if his decision had been reaffirmed, before he stepped away from William's line of sight.
The span of three seconds passed before the newly turned undead reacted.
"Nope. I read Dying Tickles that one time, I ain't gonna do it." he shook his head adamantly before stopping when his wrinkled left ear detached from his head and fell to the floor due to the fast motion. He stared at the ear with what he hoped was a deadpan expression.
"I may be an intense fan but I am not a fanatic to be left excited by the prospect of being dumped in this shithole. Get me out. Now."
Complete silence followed as William stood there, hands on his hip as a hollowed rat squeezed through the bars of his cell and crapped on his boots. He sighed out. At least the vermin had confirmed it.
"Okay, let me just place the cards down clearly for whichever deadbeat god or goddess may be scrying me with their overly perverted eyes. I am not the Chosen Undead. I am William. My limbs are scrawny, I suck at physical confrontation and I'm late for tonight's episode of Dancing With the Stars. Also, I have asthma, the worst enemy of any Chosen One that needs to run up and down endless flights of stairs, fat roll around balls of fire, bolts of lightning and the occasional upchuck from a bloat-headed hollow. And if that doesn't convince you, my lack of determination to do anything besides eat, game and drink an absurd amount of Pepsi would most likely end in this world dying anyway. And you don't have half of the things I entertain myself with, thus, you have no way of persuading me to act. Long story short: find another undead. The guy that rescued me is more than enough. I mean, the Dev's cut his content but he's still capable. Drop a humanity sprite and he'll be up in no time."
Again, William was met with nothing else but the thick stench of rot, excrement and hollows moaning like they were anal busted with a Titanite Pole.
"Ah, for shit's sake. Listen up, that Douchy Narrator, Velka, Miyazaki or whichever dimwit brought me here, I want out, ya' here? I'm a complainer, not a fighter. You want me to change the world? I might just start a trend where everyone dabs in greeting to one another before doing the hokey-pokey when they have to depart. You wouldn't want that. Nobody would want that. So be a doll and open another Isekai portal to zap me the hell outta here!"
William stomped his foot against the head of the hollow at his feet in anger. That anger backfired on his when said skull below him was sturdier than he anticipated, causing his foot to slip and for him to crash to the ground, his rear smacking the pile of bugs and old food with a squelch.
For the umpteenth time, William sighed.
"Alright, fine. You want me to do something, I'll freaking do something."
He huffed as he rose to his feet, bending over with dry bones to snag the key from the dead hollow, unlock the gate to his cell and walked out with a wrinkled frown as the hollow next door waved at him.
He hadn't known these meat sacks were that intelligent, although perhaps the game hadn't done them enough credit. After all, he remembered that one time when a hollow in nothing more than a loincloth had backstabbed him in a sick twist of events. Of course… maybe that was because he was playing on NG6.
Reluctantly, William raised his hand and reciprocated the greeting. To his ire, the hollow failed to acknowledge the gesture and settled for smacking its ugly head into the wall of its cell, staining more congealed blood around him.
The newly turned undead clenched his fists. His first encounter with another lifeform in more than six months besides the monthly visits from his mother and even a hollow thinks him to be worthless of its attention. He wasn't lying when he said he sucked at physical confrontation but this was just rubbing salt into his gangrenous wound. And to make matters worse, whoever had put him here still wanted him to continue this pointless journey to lies and despair.
William muttered under his breath as he walked past the fat-ass demon staring at him through the flimsy bars to his right.
"And I thought Zeus and his crew were sick in their amusement of humanity's suffering."
It didn't take him long to find the first bonfire in Lordran. He was at least glad that most of the game seemed to be directly imported into this recreated fantasy. Quite frankly, he was happy it was that way. Because if he were to actually go through the agonising ass-whooping that was the Undead Quest, he would be thoroughly pissed if the structures of Sen's Fortress were altered, or Seath's Archives were actually bigger than they were in the game. Seriously, all that walking and getting lost when he knew he would barely make it to the Parish made him conjure up a headache.
Surprisingly, William was able to commune with the bonfire as easily as it was for his avatar In-Game. There wasn't much he needed to do, just stand over the fire like a pedophile, reach out a hand and feel the flames – whatever that meant. All he really did was tell the thing to light up and it did. So much for the complicated shit some people theorised about on Discord servers.
He was sitting in the same courtyard as the game had, spaciously needless with a hint of frost hugging the virgin blades of grass growing out of the corners of the stone pillars. To his right was a rusty door with what seemed like a latch for a lock. William hummed in thought.
The odds of actually finding that door unlocked and reaching Oscar first would be as likely as figuring out how the Nameless King kept his white shock of hair so silky whilst in (what looked like) the Fourth Age. But, for the lack of damn the undead gave, he decided to try it out anyways.
Rising up like an old man's erection after decades of disuse, William groaned before striding toward the door on his toothpicks for legs, examining the lock with his eyeless sockets.
It was as he suspected, a plain ass gate with a plain ass latch for a lock. The only real issue was that he was running out of things to attach 'plain-ass' to. With a bored 'hn', William reached out and tried to open said latch. He might as well since he was this far, and he wanted to test whether bullshit game mechanics still existed in this recreated universe, like those doors in Anor Londo you needed to open from the other side despite the fact that your character possesses an arsenal of weapons strong enough to tear a hole through the very walls themselves.
Fortunately, or unfortunately given the next turn of events, the gate William stood at did open. The unfortunate part was that the entire gate had broken off from the hinges and fallen the moment he had touched it… fallen right onto his head.
"Ssss! That freaking hurts!" he hissed, rubbing his head tenderly as he passed through the new entry and up the first flight of frozen stairs.
William frowned as he baited the hollow upstairs to roll down his signature boulder before ducking back and watching it crumble a wall to pieces. Was he using too much alliteration in his thoughts? Meh, who cared anyway? Not like anyone could read them anyway.
Waiting for the dust to settle – because even undead, his sinuses could act up – William waltzed into the dilapidated little cell and stared at the thing he had been looking for from the time a bloody body had been thrown into his face.
"Well now… you look like shit."
And Oscar did, a bleeding mess – contrary to the game's obvious lack of description – with more bones visibly broken and prodding the platemail of his armour than there was torn fabric and slimy water covering his lower half.
"Agh… h-hm?" the knight weakly murmured before managing to look up. William didn't need to see his face behind the visor to know that the knight was glad he had rocked up.
"Oh," Oscar said more out of relief than realisation. "You're no hollow… eh?"
William internally groaned. So whoever had sent him here had seemingly recreated the entirety of Dark Souls but hadn't possessed enough imagination to make the NPC's dialogue different. Great. Just. Bloody. Great.
"Regrettably," the Astorian continued, ambling on as his blood formed a hazy red cloud in the murky water below him. "I have failed in my miss-"
"Yeah, yeah. Give that man a Bell's, Oscar." William dismissed him with a sigh before reaching up a hand to pinch the bridge of his… he suddenly looked at his wrinkled hand and growled. This… was intensely infuriating.
"You… You know my name?" the knight gasped in pain as he tried to sit up, only to crash back down against the bed of rubble most likely impaled into most of his spine. William curled his lip sympathetically. All the guy needed now was some piercings and he could call himself Pein.
"B-But how? We've only… just met."
William opened his mouth in shock as he mentally stabbed his idiotic brain with a pitchfork. He had just dropped a wisdom bomb after stating he wouldn't play along like every other Isekai'd shmuck in Dark Souls. He really needed to exercise some self-control. But first, he would need to rectify this erroneous mistake – and yes, he was aware those two words meant the same thing.
"Oh! Did I say your name was Oscar? What I actually meant was 'Give that man an Oscar'."
The knight seemed confused as he huffed and gasped in response. And quite honestly, William didn't blame him. That was a lie more pulled out of his rectum than formulated in his brain.
"I… don't believe I understand." Oscar replied softly and William forced a smile on his leathery face.
"I don't blame you. It's a saying where I come from, you see. When I said: 'Give that man a Bell's, Oscar', I should have said: 'Give that man a Bell's or an Oscar'. Ha-ha-ha!"
"So… my name is an object where you come from?"
"Indeed!" William cheered as if he were talking to a toddler. "A very prized object too, if I might say. I can see why you were confused that I knew your name already. But I am glad to note that now we have the introductions out of the way."
"I… suppose you're right…" the knight murmured still quite confused before nodding his head back at William.
"What are you called?"
"Who? Me? Folks call me William, whilst friends call me… well, William." It was a complete lie, he didn't have any friends save for the weird neighbour he had that always left space cookies in front of his door.
Oscar nodded in understanding, uttering a pained laugh at the small joke before he grunted and returned to the task at hand.
"Well, as I was saying before, I'm afraid I don't have long in this world."
"Yeah, strikes me as odd that you can still have this lengthy monologue with more than half your bones sticking out of your skin." William retorted, cupping his chin in thought.
"Uh… yes." Was all Oscar could think to say to him before he too frowned at the strangeness of it all. William was quite correct, if not tactlessly blunt, how was it he could speak so much when he was on his deathbed? Were the gods offering him this semblance of being so that he could pass on the duty to a more worthy successor?
"In any case, we'd better fix you up before you hollow." William sighed out, feeling like this whole scene was just to cliché. Or perhaps that was because he had only seen and re-enacted it a couple bajillion times?
"Y-Yes," Oscar agreed, "we should- wait. What?"
"I said we need to heal you. C'mon, get with the times, old chap." William muttered, putting on an accent the Astorian couldn't place.
"B-But I'm here to pass on my will to you." The knight said in confusion.
"Mm-hmm. And I'm here to prevent you from doing just that." William nodded his head, as if to a beat only he knew.
The knight sputtered despite his injuries. "I-I don't understand. Are you not the Chosen Un-"
"Nope, just some shmuck that got pulled into this world by force, and without any breakfast to boot!"
Oscar gasped. "They imprisoned you without a final meal?"
"Precisely, can you believe it?" the undead shook his head and crossed his arms whilst the Astorian suddenly remembered that they were still meant to do something here.
"Anyway, you are not the Chosen Undead?"
William grinned at the knight. "Now you're getting it. Could you say that one more time but as if you're confirming it?"
"Alright, you are not the Chosen Undead."
William shivered in delight. "Ohhh! Just like that but enunciate the 'not' part."
"O-Okay… you are not the Chosen Undead."
"Yes! I've been waiting for someone to say that to me from the time I got here!"
William jumped for joy whilst Oscar sighed out in disappointment. He had been sure that he would find the Chosen One here, the rest of the prophecy had held true, after all. But to go through such tremendous terrors and suffer such excruciating pain only to discover that the last sane being here was just a forcefully imprisoned…
Oscar glanced up at William's attire.
Thief, just great. He had saved a maddened thief. Suddenly, the undeads claim of being imprisoned against his will seemed to lose more ground than it had originally gained.
The Astorian closed his eyes from behind his visor and breathed out. Well, at least he had saved someone's life before he died an excruciating death. If only his hope had not been crushed so quickly, perhaps he could have imagined a Chosen Undead taking up his mantle and departing with passion in his or her chest.
As he began to feel the corners of his mind cave in from the influx of depression and his hollow influence, the knight thought about what it would have been like to save the world. There wouldn't be many people to hail him as a hero since Lordran was more of less abandoned if all the stories held true. The upside would be that he could finally rest his sword, having fulfilled his destiny and reaping more than just one reward. But since that was but a pipedream and he was about to die… he might as well dream it up as best he coul-
SMACK!
"Hey, don't fall asleep on me. I ain't done talking to you." William stared at him blankly as Oscar was shaken from Death's gentle embrace. Why was he still alive? And why was the thief still here instead of pillaging his corpse and walking off?
"Okay, firstly, you're actually speaking your thoughts out loud. And secondly, I may be dressed as a thief but I haven't managed to steal a decent thing in my life besides morsels of food from my parent's plate at the dinner table when they weren't looking."
The Astorian frowned. Then William must have been a terrible thief.
"Oh, Frampt's sake. You're still not keeping your thoughts to yourself." He said, jostling Oscar forward as he dug a hand into the knight's satchel and withdrew an almost empty bottle of Estus. Well… it was empty save for a few minor drops of amber liquid.
"Damn. Was hoping there was at least a sip of Sunny D in there." William said peeking into the emerald flask before rummaging through his personal belongings once more.
"Why are you delaying the inevitable?" Oscar whispered through bruised lungs. "My time here is up. Thus, the title of Chosen falls to you."
He heard William snicker as he continued to dig into Oscar's stuff. "I don't like that plan. Looks like too much responsibility for a thief. How about I help you become the Chosen Undead instead?"
The knight looked at the strange stranger, befuddled. Somehow, the undead understood his silence and chose to continue.
"I'm not the undead you're looking for and even if I were, you'd be better off taking up the role yourself. Besides, since you helped me out of that cell, I figured I'd pay you back by saving your life in return."
There were three lies William told Oscar in that explanation that the knight blindly accepted. The first was obvious, if he was stuck in that cell, saved by Oscar only to find him rasping against some bricks… there was no doubt that he was supposed to be the Chosen Undead.
The second was that he said Oscar would make a better Chosen One. From what the original game content possessed, Oscar was swayed to follow the opposite direction of whatever the Player had chosen to do after killing Gwyn, meaning that although the knight was capable, he was also naïve. Either Primordial Serpent would have him on their side, it was just a matter of which got to him first. Therefore, Oscar was actually a pretty sad choice as the Chosen Undead.
And finally, the reason William was saving this careless idiot's ass in the first place. He didn't want to repay his kindness – although he did appreciate it – he just wanted to pawn off his destiny to someone other than himself.
It didn't matter who had brought him here, made him go through the same trials and set the scene for him to go through hellish devastation. He was not going to sacrifice his life to burn for eternity or become the Dark Lord of no legend. That was the dumbass Oscar's job, not his.
"But I don't under-"
"If you say you don't understand again, I'm gonna- ooh!"
William blinked. Well, he would have blinked if he had eyes. He stared at the pillaged object within Oscar's satchel before looking to the sky and nodding in respect. It seemed whichever cowardly deity or fanatic game developer that brought him here – he had high hopes for the latter – had, incidentally, heard his plea from earlier.
The undead fished out the small sprite of humanity from the Astorian's travel pack and grinned like new-born that had just laid its first turd in a clean diaper.
"Uhm… I still don't understand." Said Oscar, ruining the joyous moment for the undead. William simply sighed and placed the flickering wisp into one of the knight's broken hands before stating a simple command.
"Crush it."
The knight tilted his head to the side quizzically.
"Go on. We don't have all day. Okay… we actually do, but you don't need to know that unless you go looking for it like an idiot."
"But my sanity has not depleted," argued the knight, managing to lift his arm to some degree. "How would reinvigorating my mortality aid in healing my body?"
Again, William sighed out. This game of twenty questions was growing old too fast. The more time they spent exchanging words the more the previously introverted weeb could feel his dream of killing Lautrec with a hammer going down the drain. So… he resorted to something a mortally wounded man wouldn't be able to fight against: brute force.
"You really have no idea how versatile these sprites are. And while that's a shame, I really don't want to stop at every shortfall and cliff to give you a brief history lesson. I have a world to reluctantly see and a trap to tease."
Without further banter, William forced Oscar's fingers to curl around the innocuous gist of humanity before the sound of it being promptly smooshed reached his ears. The result was instantaneous.
Oscar gasped loudly as the bones and organs in his body automatically repaired themselves at a rate so impressive, Doctor Connor's would be envious. Unfortunately, although the sprite did its job as William had anticipated, it had also left its drawback.
The Astorian groaned, cussed and hacked as his nerves forced him to experience the sensation of his joints realigning, his bones snapping together and his blood being reworked into previously empty vessels without any anaesthetic. William winced at each snap, crackle and pop Oscar's body made. He would hate to have such a thing happen to him. And that was another reason why he was forcing his burden onto the Astorian's shoulders. 'Waste not while you have a gullible specimen', his biology lecturer had once said when he was high on morphine.
The task of the humanity sprite ended sooner than anticipated, leaving Oscar a panting, sweating mess as he leaned forward to rest on his knees. William stood there in silence before the knight lifted his visored gaze to look at him.
"Who… are you?" he huffed out. William grinned.
"I thought I told you introductions had already been handled. Now get up, you're going to kill us an Asylum Demon."
Pretty short compared to the other stuff I've done, but it seems to be coming along well. Hope you've enjoyed it thus far, the profanity aside.
As for the person whose name I have taken and persona I've morphed (quite heavily) to create the MC… I don't think you knew that I knew that I know your name but… I do. Funny story that. Here's the Easter Egg I was talking about… Surprise!