The servant girl—who eventually managed to squeak out that her name was Sherry—did not take my hand.
Instead, she pressed herself as flat as physically possible against the wooden wheel of the broken carriage. Her eyes were so wide I was genuinely worried they might pop out of her skull, and her breath was coming in short, ragged, hyperventilating wheezes. She was looking at me, then at the massive crimson streak on my pristine white sneakers, and then at the steaming pile of entrails that used to be her captor.
"Hey, breathe," I said, crouching down and resting my elbows on my knees. "The bad guys are gone. Well, technically most of them are still here, just... in several different zip codes. But they aren't going to hurt you anymore."
"Y-You..." she stammered, her voice shaking so violently her teeth clicked together. "Are you... a Demon King? A god of ruin?"
"Worse," I sighed, standing back up and brushing invisible dust off my sweatpants. "I'm a systems engineer. Now, let's get this place cleaned up. I hate messy environments. It ruins the immersion."
I snapped my fingers.
Ping.
The [Cheat Menu] flared to life in its usual neon-green glory. I swiped past the inventory, past the stat modifier toggles, and tapped on the tab labeled [Entity Spawner].
As my fingers hovered over the database directory, a small amber warning text flashed at the bottom of the holographic UI.
[WARNING: Entity Complexity Limit] Summoning entities with complex, self-aware AI (e.g., Level 80+ Dragons, High Demons, Legendary Heroes) may cause localized latency, cognitive overload, or system crashes. Recommended: Use low-tier, basic-AI assets.
"Figures. The local system's rendering engine still has a processing threshold," I muttered, rubbing my chin. "If I force-spawn a high-tier raid boss, I might trigger an environmental crash. Besides, if some local scout spots a giant demon or a horde of undead wandering around, it'll cause a massive panic and draw way too much attention before I even know where I am."
I didn't need a terrifying dark army anyway. I just needed a cleanup crew.
I scrolled through my custom asset folders. Back when I was modding on Earth, I loved ripping standard human NPC models from other games and importing them into YGGDRASIL's engine for testing. I scrolled past the tactical military soldiers and found a folder labeled: Sim_Game_Stock_NPCs and selected Utility_Laborer_Male.
Then, I opened the [Script Injector] command line and added a few custom parameters to their spawn code.
[Console_Target: Pending_Summons] [Command: /equip_set [Modern_Biohazard_Suit]] [Command: /set_behavior_loop [Deep_Clean_Area]] [Command: /set_expression_override [Customer_Service_Smile]]
I tapped [SPAWN] three times.
With a series of soft, digitized pings, three green, pixelated magic circles erupted on the blood-soaked dirt. Out of the glowing light stepped three completely identical, clean-shaven human men.
They were wearing bright orange, sterile, modern biohazard jumpsuits with thick rubber gloves. They carried heavy-duty plastic mops, metal buckets filled with soapy, bubbling water, and thick, black contractor trash bags.
But the creepiest part? Because they were low-tier dummy AI assets with an expression override, they all had the exact same, stiff, unblinking, high-contrast customer service smile plastered onto their perfectly symmetrical faces. They looked like uncanny valley mannequins come to life.
"Get to work, boys," I said, gesturing to the gory scene. "Leave it spotless."
The three human grunts didn't hesitate. Operating on basic, mindless simulator AI, they immediately marched forward in stiff, robotic synchronization, their mops sloshing into the pools of dark bandit blood.
Sherry let out a high-pitched, strangled shriek and scrambled backward as one of the orange-clad men casually walked past her. With that terrifying, unblinking, polite smile still locked on his face, the grunt knelt down and picked up the severed, twitching arm of the bandit leader.
"Have a wonderful day!" the grunt chirped in a pre-recorded, generic voice-line.
With a dull thud, he tossed the arm into a black trash bag, tied it off with a plastic zip-tie, and started mopping the blood-stained grass beneath it with a cheerful whistle.
"W-What are those?!" Sherry gasped, clutching her knees to her chest. "They look like men, but... their eyes... they aren't blinking! Are they dolls?!"
"They're my cleanup crew," I explained, watching one of the grunts struggle to scrape a piece of the leader's shattered jawbone off a tree trunk. "You can't leave biological waste lying around. It attracts bugs, and honestly, the smell of copper and bile is really ruining my appetite."
Another grunt clattered over to the half-body of the bandit leader. With perfect, mindless efficiency, he grabbed the corpse by its remaining ankle. Because the torso was too wide to fit smoothly into the trash bag, the grunt casually raised a wooden broom handle and began aggressively stuffing the ribcage down into the plastic bag like a man overloading a trash can, resulting in a series of wet, sickening squishes.
All the while, his bright, customer-service smile never faltered.
"A bit more grace, please," I called out.
The grunt paused, turned his head 180 degrees toward me with a cheerful, "We aim to please!", and then used his heavy rubber boot to stomp the rest of the ribcage into the bag.
Crack.
"Perfect. Good job."
Within five minutes, the entire clearing was utterly transformed. The blood was gone, replaced by the sterile, artificial scent of pine-fresh bleach. The five bandits, their severed limbs, and their ruined gear had been neatly packed into five tidy, black contractor bags stacked by the edge of the path.
To anyone walking by, it didn't look like a horrific battlefield anymore. It looked like a highly organized toxic waste disposal site run by the most unsettlingly polite humans alive.
I opened the [Asset Creator] again. I didn't want to spawn a massive, gothic castle like Nazarick. That would attract way too much attention from whatever local kingdom ruled these lands, and I didn't feel like dealing with politicians or high-tier knights yet. I wanted comfort.
I searched my offline directory for a file I had ripped from a modern survival-crafting game: Modern_Luxury_RV_Trailer.prefab.
I pointed my finger at a flat section of the cleared dirt and tapped [SPAWN].
With a massive, blinding flash of green pixels, a giant, 40-foot-long, triple-axle luxury recreational vehicle materialized out of thin air. It was a pristine, metallic-grey camper with tinted glass windows, automated slide-outs, a built-in air conditioning unit humming softly on the roof, and a high-end satellite dish slowly calibrating itself against the fantasy stars.
Sherry's brain finally gave up. She stared at the giant, shining metal beast, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
"Wh-What... what kind of dragon is that?" she whispered, her voice cracking. "Is it... is it sleeping?"
"It's a trailer, Sherry. It's where we're staying tonight," I said, walking up to the side door.
The transition from the blood-slicked dirt to the interior of the RV was seamless. I didn't wait for her to process the giant, humming metal beast sitting in the middle of her medieval forest. I simply walked up the automated step, the pneumatic hiss of the door sealing shut behind me as I stepped into the air-conditioned cabin.
I headed straight for the small, stainless-steel refrigerator, pulled out a second cold soda, and cracked it open. The cool air of the trailer hummed, a stark contrast to the muggy night outside. Through the tinted window, I could see Sherry still sitting on the ground, staring at the closed metal door of my trailer like she was waiting for it to sprout teeth and eat her.
I sighed, rubbing the bridge of my nose.
Look, I saved her life because those bandits were in my way and their loud voices were annoying. But I was a software modder, not a babysitter. I had no interest in playing the heroic savior or having some traumatized local girl follow me around like a lost puppy. I needed information, and then I wanted to be left alone.
I grabbed my drink, pushed the pneumatic door open again, and stepped back down into the forest.
Sherry flinched, scrambling backward a few inches, her eyes darting between my pristine white sneakers and my face.
"R-Lord... Lord Demon..." she whispered, her voice still trembling.
"Stop," I interrupted, raising a hand. "I'm not a Lord, and I'm definitely not a demon. I'm just a guy who wants to go to sleep. And frankly, you're looking at me like I'm going to skin you, which is really killing the vibe."
I raised my left hand and snapped my fingers, bringing up the neon-green [Cheat Menu] floating in the air. I swiped past the asset spawner and tapped into my inventory database, scrolling down to the standard currency tab. In YGGDRASIL, gold coins were worthless to a modder who could just edit his stats, but I had kept a few million in a junk folder just in case.
I selected YGG_Gold_Coin and typed a quantity of 100 into the floating console.
With a heavy, metallic clink-clink-clink, a massive pile of oversized, pure gold coins materialized out of thin air, tumbling out of a glowing green rift and landing in a disorganized heap right in the dirt in front of Sherry. Each coin was the size of a coaster, stamped with the elaborate, grand face of an ancient YGGDRASIL deity. In this world, a single one of these was probably worth a peasant's entire life savings.
Sherry stared at the pile, her jaw practically dropping off her face. The sheer, blinding reflection of the gold in the campfire light was enough to make her rub her eyes.
"There," I said, pointing at the heap. "That is more money than you or your entire family will ever see in three lifetimes. Take it. It's yours."
"M-My Lord...?" she gasped, looking up at me in absolute bewilderment. "I... I cannot... this is..."
"I'm not giving it to you for free," I said, leaning casually against the side of my metallic RV. "I have zero interest in taking care of you, and I don't want you tagging along with me. So here is the deal: you are going to pick up that gold, pack it into whatever bag you can find, and then you are going to lead me to the nearest civilized town. Once we get to the gates, we split up. You take your fortune and go live a happy life, and I get to find a decent place to eat. Deal?"
Sherry looked at the pile of gold, then at the five black contractor bags of neatly packed bandit parts sitting by the trees, and finally at me. The terror in her eyes was slowly being warred over by the realization that she was suddenly the wealthiest servant girl in the entire region.
She scrambled forward, frantically scooping the heavy gold coins into her apron, her hands shaking. "Y-Yes! Yes, my Lord! I will guide you! I know the way!"
Good," I said, shoving my hands back into the pockets of my hoodie. "So, what's the name of this place? Where are we going?"
Sherry looked up, clutching the heavy apron of gold to her chest. "W-We are in the outskirts of the Re-Estize Kingdom, my Lord. If we follow the main path north... we will reach the fortress city of E-Rantel by morning."
"Re-Estize? E-Rantel?" I muttered, rolling the unfamiliar, slightly clunky names around in my mouth.
I had never heard of them. During my modding days, I only ever looked at YGGDRASIL's internal system files, rendering engines, and asset directories. I didn't care about the lore of whatever server or world I was playing on. To me, this just sounded like a typical, generic fantasy starter zone.
But a major fortress city? That meant a massive population, a concentrated market, and plenty of local merchants who took themselves way too seriously.
A slow, highly amused grin spread across my face. Let the local kings and nobles sweat over their borders, their tiny peasant rebellions, and their taxes. I was about to drop a neon-lit, air-conditioned corporate anomaly right in their backyard just to watch the local economy implode for my own personal amusement.
"E-Rantel," I said, looking up at the foreign stars. "Perfect. Lead the way, Sherry. Let's go see how the locals handle a guy in a hoodie."