Delhi

Morning

Around 11:35 AM

Inside a room

"Shoot! Shoot! Quick, headshot! Shoot!"

"Bro, revive me!"

"Bro, only one guy left. If we don't get the chicken dinner because of you, I'll come to your house and give you 10 headshots on your ass!"

"Wait! There's an enemy ahead... enemy! Oh no, no! Behind, behind! You idiot! Where are you going?"

Annoyed, Avinash muttered, "Time to mute all these people. They've been driving me crazy for the past half an hour."

Switching on the mic, he said, "Now watch what I do."

"Here, take these headshots..."

Suddenly, a dangerous headshot landed—not in the game, but directly on Avinash's head!

His face slammed into the PC monitor as his mom yelled from behind, "You keep playing games silently! Go and get the groceries quickly. PUBG (BGMI)? No, son, groceries!"

When Avinash turned around, he saw his mom holding another slipper, ready to strike. He immediately realized he needed to leave quickly, or another headshot was guaranteed.

He glanced at his computer screen, where his team had completely lost. Avinash was sure his teammates were showering him with plenty of "polite curses."

A little later

Avinash was walking home with a grocery bag when he suddenly heard a commotion in an alley.

As he approached, he saw—

A boy pinning a chubby boy with glasses against the wall, saying, "Will you hand over the money, or should I take it myself?"

Two other boys stood behind him, cracking their knuckles. The moment they noticed Avinash, one of them said, "Shekhar bro, look! Another target. Double battery!"

Hearing this, Shekhar, who was holding the boy by his collar, turned around to look.

The moment Shekhar saw Avinash, his face turned pale with fear. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

Adjusting his glasses, Avinash said, "Shekhar, meeting after so many days, huh? You haven't forgotten me, right? Won't you snatch my money like before?"

Hearing this, Shekhar screamed, "Run!"

Seeing Shekhar run, his friends followed him, confused about why Shekhar was so scared of a skinny guy like Avinash.

Avinash watched them run away and then approached the boy with glasses. He said, "Hello! My name is Avinash, and I live nearby. What's your name?"

The boy picked up his glasses from the ground and said, "Vivan... and thank you—"

As he looked at Avinash's face, he started trembling with fear. Backing away suddenly, he fell to the ground and stammered, "Please! Let me go... please!" Then, he ran away quickly.

Avinash gave a faint smile and walked back home.

Evening

Around 7:30 PM

Avinash shouted, "Finally! I've created my gaming YouTube channel—Single Baba Gaming! Now it's going to be all money, money, money!"

"What should I do now? Let's start with a live stream."

1 hour later

Reading comments, Avinash said—

"Face 🤡🤡 skills 🗿🗿"

Laughing, he said, "Thank you for the insult, thank you, Amit bro."

"LoL!"

"Bro, you look familiar," another comment popped up.

Avinash: "I don't get it. Can you explain? You've been saying this for the past half hour."

Rajat69 Bhai: "Bro, I have a question for you."

Taking a deep breath, Avinash muttered, "Only 90 people have joined in the last hour, and half of them have already left."

During the live stream

"Bro, the VFX is great. Which app are you using?"

Avinash, confused: "VFX? I don't understand."

"Bro, look down! There's a red light. It looks really cool!"

Startled, Avinash glanced down.

A faint smile appeared on his face as he realized what was happening.

"Ah... Looks like I'm entering another world!"

A glowing red circle had appeared on the floor.

Moments later, Avinash disappeared from there.

Live stream viewers

"Hey! Where did he go?"

"That was a great magic trick!"

"I thought this was a gaming channel."

"₹10 super chat! Please do it again!"

"Lol! I was also thinking it's a gaming channel. Bro, come back now. This trick was fun, but enough!"

"Bro, it's been 5 minutes now. I'm leaving the stream."

In the other world

Avinash found himself in a stone chamber. The walls looked like they belonged to a 15th-century fortress.

There were others present, equally baffled by their surroundings.

A Japanese boy exclaimed, "To hell with that life! I finally got isekai'd without a truck!"

Everyone turned to look at him in confusion.

A Chinese boy asked, "Do you understand Chinese?"

A girl added, "Your Korean is pretty good."

The boy replied, "But I was speaking Japanese. And you all understand Japanese?"

Everyone realized they could understand each other despite speaking different languages.

Suddenly, the sound of heavy footsteps echoed. Moments later, soldiers surrounded them.

One of the newcomers, an athletic-looking Black man, spoke in frustration, "Can someone tell me what's going on here?"

Before he could take another step, a soldier thrust a spear into his knee.

"Ahhh!"

His scream echoed. Everyone else froze in fear.

A boy standing next to Avinash muttered, "Maa ki..."

Avinash glanced at him and realized he was Indian too.

Though Avinash didn't fully understand what was happening, he knew one thing for sure.

The Indian boy finished his thought, "We're screwed."

The Japanese boy, who had initially yelled, trembled as he said, "This is hell. This isn't how it's supposed to be. Tell me this is just a bad dream."

The silence was interrupted by a blood-curdling scream. A soldier had nearly severed a girl's leg. The floor was stained with blood.

One by one, everyone in the room was overpowered and restrained.

A while later

Everyone lay on the ground when a stunningly beautiful girl entered.

Her face looked like a stone sculpture, but a devilish grin soon spread across it.

In a voice dripping with bitterness and hatred, she said,

"Welcome, heroes."

A soldier kicked Avinash and said, "Move quickly, you scum!"

Avinash fell to the ground. A boy extended his hand to help him up. As Avinash looked at him, he uttered three words, "You're insane! You almost got us killed!"

The boy stared at Avinash's face, completely stunned.

"I'm the one who saved you, wasn't I? Ugh, kindness is wasted these days!"

Suddenly, a soldier's loud voice came from behind, "Useless! Stop chatting and move forward silently!"

An American Bald boy walked up to the boy and said, "My name is Johnny."

The boy replied, "My name is Aniket. Okay, tell me, why doesn't your name end with 'Sins'?"

Hearing this, Johnny glared at him and said, "He's right... confirm, you are insane."

Everyone else started staring at Aniket as well.

Feeling a bit uneasy, Aniket said, "Guys, don't look at me like that."

He then went over to a Chinese girl and said, "Hindi-Chinese, brother-brother! Come on, say something… why are you so quiet?"

The girl didn't respond, and as Aniket approached her, she quietly moved away.

No matter whom Aniket approached, they all silently distanced themselves from him.

15 minutes earlier

The soldiers had pinned everyone down.

Some people were still confused and awestruck by their surroundings, but now fear had taken over. The soldiers' actions made it clear their intentions were far from good.

Everyone had been forcibly summoned to a strange world. But this world was nothing like they had imagined.

Avinash struggled to lift his head toward the front, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't see the face.

Standing before them was a girl who was glaring at everyone. Her gaze was like she was looking at insects.

Suddenly, the girl shouted, "What do you want? Why are you doing this to us? What did we ever do to you? Please let me go!"

Following her lead, the others began repeating the same questions.

But just then, a soldier standing behind her plunged a spear into her hand. Her screams echoed around them.

"Ahhh!"

The girl cried out in agony. Suddenly, she released a terrifying pressure from within.

Her eyes began glowing red.

Avinash felt as though someone was choking him. He couldn't breathe.

In his mind, he thought, "Her eyes… they're glowing red. Could she be a vamp…?"

In just a few moments, all the pressure disappeared. But an eerie silence fell over the area.

The people who were shouting earlier had gone completely quiet.

The girl standing ahead laughed and said, "Ah! Everyone's silent now! Let me introduce myself first. My name is Princess Isabella.

And as for all of you… you're all going to die. If not today, then tomorrow, your deaths are certain.

Heroes! If you beg for mercy, maybe I'll consider sparing you."

Her words carried an eerie laughter.

Avinash thought to himself, "Nonsense! They didn't summon us here just to sacrifice us. No matter what, they're not letting us leave this place. This girl just wants to see us helpless and broken."

The rest of the people weren't so foolish; they understood what was going on. An eerie silence had spread across the place.

Princess Isabella was about to say something when a boy, panicking, blurted out, "I… I beg you! Please let me go! For God's sake, spare me! Please!"

Avinash thought to himself, "This idiot doesn't get it. She just wants to see us helpless."

As Avinash looked at the boy, his eyes widened in disbelief. A single thought echoed in his mind:

"This moron is going to get us all killed!"

The others also turned to look at him, but none of them could find the words to respond.

Isabella glared at him and asked, "Why are you holding up the middle fingers of both your hands?"

Aniket, pretending to be frightened, said, "This is how we request someone in my culture. If I rub my nose while doing it, will you let me go? I promise, I won't tell anyone about what happened here."

In his mind, he thought, "Witch, there's no way I'm bowing down to you!"

James, whose leg was already injured by a spear, imitated Aniket, raising his middle finger and groaning in pain, "I'm begging you too… please!"

Although the two of them looked scared, their real thoughts were entirely different.

Isabella laughed maniacally.

"Haaaaa! Haaaaa! Watching just two of you do it isn't entertaining enough!"

She increased the pressure again.

It felt like all the oxygen in the area had vanished. Everyone struggled to breathe, gasping heavily or trying to.

Isabella yelled, "I said, do it quickly!"

Out of fear, some people raised their middle fingers, and others followed, reluctantly but with no other choice.

The scene was almost comical. Nearly 100 people stood there, both middle fingers raised in the air.

Sweat trickled down everyone's faces.

Avinash thought, "If this girl finds out the truth, we're done for. And this Aniket… he's seriously mental."

But no one noticed the dangerous smile on Aniket's face. Only Avinash caught it.

Aniket was about to say something, but Avinash quickly covered his mouth.

"Keep your mouth shut!" Avinash hissed.

Aniket, irritated, whispered, "Hey! Hey! Let me say something!"

But Avinash held his mouth tightly, muffling him. All that came out was a muffled, "Hmmmhmm!"

The rest of the group silently breathed a sigh of relief.

Isabella's expression didn't change much. She signaled to the soldiers, and they began leading everyone away.

As she left, Isabella gritted her teeth in anger and said,

"You will all pay for this. I'll make sure your lives become worse than hell itself!"

Present Time

The soldiers were throwing everyone into separate dungeons.

As Avinash had feared, this place was even more horrifying than he imagined. Black walls surrounded them, and the darkness seemed suffocating.

A soldier shoved Avinash into a cell with sturdy iron bars and locked it shut.

After some time, all the soldiers left the area.

The silence was broken by a girl's voice.

"Did any of you see that thing?"

Avinash was confused. He was about to respond when a familiar voice interrupted—it was Aniket.

"Are you talking about that pool of blood we passed on the way here? At first, I thought it was just colored water. But when I saw an eyeball floating in it, I was pretty sure it was blood."

The girl noticed that the pool of blood was flowing directly toward the room where everyone had been brought earlier.

She said, "And the soldiers' eyes… they looked like there was no life in them."

Aniket, sounding serious, said, "Forget all that. It seems we're in deep trouble. Did you see her face when all of you copied me and showed her the middle finger? She looked furious. That means we're not the only ones who have been summoned to this world."

Hearing this, everyone's heartbeat raced. Even Avinash felt a chill of fear.

Aniket, with a sarcastic tone, added, "If it weren't for someone acting like an idiot, I could've gathered more information."

Suddenly, a nervous voice interrupted, "But she…."

Aniket cut them off and said, "You've seen people with strange obsessions, right? She's just one of them. Where I come from, in Haryana, we call this a keeda—a bug in the brain."

Avinash thought, "Oh, so he's from Haryana. I thought he was just a fool, but there's clearly more going on here. Still, how did this situation get worse because of him? And where did he get this courage?..wait He is making excuses I actually thought he was pretty smart."

Then, a random meme flashed through Avinash's mind: "Man with two little balls of steel."

He quickly shook the thought away, almost as if slapping it out of his head.

Even with all his strength, Avinash couldn't look directly at Isabella's face earlier. But how had Aniket managed to pull it off?

"Forget it," he told himself. "No point stressing over this now."

Inwardly, Avinash wondered, "Who is that girl, really? Forget it, I just want to get out of here, go home, and play video games. I wish this was all just a bad dream!"

Suddenly, a blue screen appeared in front of him:

Loading...

Not enough energy.

Loading...

Failed.

Failed again...

System shutdown.

Avinash was startled, but within two seconds, the screen vanished.

He muttered to himself, "Am I hallucinating now? I think my brain's going to short-circuit. Honestly, this fantasy world isn't what I imagined it to be. My life is officially doomed."