The trouble with dying, I had decided in my final moments, was that it was terribly loud.
There was no white light, nor was there a choir of angels singing in perfect harmony. There was only the wet, tearing sound of the screaming metal walls giving way, the roar of the Tarrasque tearing through the frantic shouts of my battalion, and the distinctive crunch of the Seattle Safe Zone collapsing on top of us like a house of cards kicked by a petulant child.
I remembered looking up at the ceiling or what was left of it and thinking not of my life, nor my regrets, but rather that the structural support beams were woefully insufficient for a Class-5 monster siege.
If I had built this, I thought, as the concrete descended to crush me, I would have used reinforced steel alloy.
And then, everything went black.
I awoke with a gasp that sounded uncomfortably like a drowning woman breaking the surface of a frozen lake.
My hands flew to my chest, expecting to find the jagged ruin of my ribcage. Instead, my fingers met the scratchy, cheap wool of a university sweater. I wasn't buried under a mountain of rubble. I was sitting in a moulded plastic chair that was doing its level best to ruin my posture.
The air didn't smell of ozone, blood, and monster ichor. It smelled of floor wax, stale coffee, and the distinct, dusty scent of boredom.
"As you can see from the projection," a nasally voice droned from the front of the room, "the statistical probability of an anomaly in the data set is negligible."
I blinked, the harsh fluorescent lights stinging my eyes. I knew that voice. It belonged to Professor Halloway, a man whose excitement for Advanced Statistics was rivalled only by a damp sponge.
I looked around. To my left sat a boy with hair the colour of straw, fast asleep with a line of drool connecting his lip to his notebook. To my right, a girl was aggressively typing on her phone, shielding the screen as if she were protecting state secrets.
University of Washington. Lecture Hall 4B. Statistics 301.
I looked at the digital clock hanging crookedly on the wall. The red numbers flickered ominously.
10:48 AM. October 14th, 2026.
The breath left my lungs in a sharp hiss.
I remembered this day. I remembered it with the same clarity one remembers a car crash or a first kiss. In exactly twelve minutes, the sky outside those tall, rain-streaked windows would turn a violent shade of violet. In twelve minutes, a goblin the size of a minivan would smash through the wall and eat Professor Halloway before he could finish his sentence about standard deviations.
In twelve minutes, the System Integration would begin.
I looked at my hands. They were unscarred. The calluses from ten years of wielding the Greatsword 'World-Ender' were gone, replaced by the soft, ink-stained fingers of a twenty-year-old architecture student.
"Miss Thorne?"
Professor Halloway had stopped speaking. The silence in the room was sudden and heavy, like a wet blanket. Thirty pairs of eyes turned to look at me.
"Is there something you'd like to share with the class?" Halloway asked, peering over his spectacles with the look of a toad that had just swallowed a particularly sour fly. "You seem quite... distressed."
"No, Professor," I said, my voice sounding strange to my own ears, lighter, younger, but carrying a cold edge I hadn't possessed the first time around. "I just realised that your calculations regarding the anomaly are incorrect."
Halloway blinked. The girl next to me stopped texting. "I beg your pardon?"
"The anomaly isn't negligible," I said, standing up. My legs felt light, springy. I grabbed my backpack, swinging it over my shoulder. "It's imminent."
"Sit down, Miss Thorne," Halloway snapped, his face turning a blotchy shade of pink. "You cannot simply walk out of my lecture."
"Actually," I said, stepping into the aisle, "I can. And I highly suggest you move away from the north wall. The structural integrity there is about to be compromised by a Level 3 Ogre."
A ripple of nervous laughter went through the room. They thought I was mad. Perhaps I was. You had to be a little angry to survive the apocalypse the first time; you certainly had to be mad to willingly face it a second.
I didn't wait for his response. I marched up the stairs of the lecture hall, ignoring the whispers that followed me like a cloud of gnats. I pushed through the double doors and burst into the hallway.
The corridor was bustling with the ordinary chaos of university life. Students worried about exams, about debts, about who was dating whom. They walked with the blissful, agonising ignorance of sheep grazing in a field where the wolves were already putting on their napkins.
I didn't run. Running attracted attention. Instead, I walked with purpose toward the emergency maintenance closet at the end of the hall.
Ten minutes.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a war drum beating a rhythm I knew too well. In my past life, my future life, I had been the Valkyrie. I had been a hero. I had worn shining armour and charged into battle, screaming battle cries that inspired thousands.
And everyone I loved had died because I was too busy swinging a sword to notice the walls were crumbling.
Not this time.
I reached the maintenance closet. It was locked, naturally. In my previous life, I would have kicked it down. Now, I simply pulled a hairpin from my messy bun, slid it into the lock, and wiggled it with a precise, practised motion. I wasn't a Rogue, but after spending three years locked in a dungeon with a thief named Rat-Face, you picked up a few tricks.
The lock clicked. The door swung open.
Inside, amidst buckets and mops that smelled of industrial lemon cleaner, hung the object of my desire. It wasn't a sword. It wasn't a magical staff.
It was a fire axe. Red, heavy, and beautifully balanced.
I lifted it from the wall hooks. The weight of the wood in my hands felt grounding. It wasn't the legendary blade I was used to, but it was a start.
I checked my watch. 10:58 AM.
Through the small window in the hallway, the light shifted. The perpetual grey drizzle of Seattle was suddenly bathed in an eerie, unnatural purple glow. The air pressure dropped so sharply that my ears popped.
Down the hall, someone screamed. It wasn't a scream of surprise; it was a scream of primal, unadulterated terror.
A blue holographic box, translucent and shimmering like a ghost, appeared in the centre of my vision. It floated there, overlaying the terrified students who were now freezing in place, staring at the sky.
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.] [WELCOME TO THE GAME, EARTH.] [PLEASE SELECT YOUR CLASS.]
A list scrolled before my eyes. Golden letters, dripping with promise and power.
[VALKYRIE] - Recommended based on past potential. [BLADE DANCER] [PYROMANCER]
I looked at the titles that had defined my previous existence. The titles that had made me famous. The titles that had failed me.
"No," I whispered.
I scrolled down. Past the combat classes. Past the mages. Past the healers. I scrolled all the way to the bottom, to the grey, dusty utility classes that nobody in their right mind ever picked.
My finger hovered over the selection.
[ARCHITECT] Description: A builder of structures. A manipulator of terrain. Combat viability: Extremely Low.
"Let the heroes save the world," I muttered, selecting the option with a definitive tap. "I'm going to save the neighbourhood."
[CLASS CONFIRMED: ARCHITECT] [WARNING: SURVIVAL CHANCE < 1%]
I tightened my grip on the fire axe and smiled, a sharp, dangerous expression that felt entirely too big for my face.
"We'll see about that."