Kirito Kirigaya was used to bad raid parties. He had played Sword Art Online. He had played ALfheim. He had seen noobs pull boss aggro and die in ten seconds.
But this... this was a special kind of headache.
"Form up!" Kirito shouted, dual-wielding his blades—Elucidator and Dark Repulser. His black coat whipped in the wind as thousands of mechanical spiders with red eyes poured out of the portals. "Tank class to the front! DPS, flank left! Healers, stay center!"
He pointed at the approaching horde.
"We need a formation! Switch mechanics are key!"
"Gum-Gum..." a voice yelled beside him.
Kirito blinked. "Wait, don't start casting y—"
"...PISTOL!"
Luffy's arm stretched back forty feet—slapping Kazuma in the face as he tried to hide behind a rock—and then snapped forward.
The fist broke the sound barrier. It punched through twelve mechanical spiders, a concrete wall, and rebounded off a floating island, coming back to slap Luffy in the back of the head.
"Shishishi! They're metal!" Luffy laughed, rubbing his head. "Are they edible robots?"
"NO!" Kirito and Genos shouted in unison.
"Charge!" Goku yelled. He didn't fly. He just ran. On foot. Straight into the horde.
"Wait!" Kirito screamed. "You'll pull too much aggro!"
Goku dove into the sea of metal spiders. It looked like a blender fighting a tornado. Parts flew everywhere.
"So much for strategy," Naofumi sighed. The Shield Hero stepped up, banging his shield. "Air Strike Shield! Second Shield! Instant Iron Maiden!"
A giant iron torture device materialized around a cluster of enemies, crunching them instantly. Naofumi looked bored. He was protecting the backline—which consisted solely of Kazuma, Aqua, and a cowering Kobeni Higashiyama (who had somehow appeared during the chaos and was crying while holding a kitchen knife).
"My car..." Kobeni wept. "I just bought a car in my universe... where is it?"
"Focus!" Naofumi barked.
The battlefield was a cacophony of mismatched genres.
On the left flank:
Tanjiro and Asta were creating a bizarre combo.
"Water Breathing, Fourth Form: Striking Tide!" Tanjiro flowed like a river, slicing hydraulic lines with surgical precision.
"Black Hurricane!" Asta spun like a top, his anti-magic erasing the energy shields the robots were trying to put up.
"Your water is wet!" Asta screamed, getting sprayed as they passed each other.
"It's a breathing style visual effect!" Tanjiro apologized, decapitating a drone. "It's not supposed to be actual water! I'm sorry!"
"IT FEELS WET THOUGH!"
On the right flank:
Vegeta was standing with his arms crossed, blasting anything that came within five feet of him with lazy Ki blasts.
"Filthy tin cans," Vegeta scoffed. He glanced over at Anos, who was sipping tea.
Literally sipping tea.
The Demon King had conjured a mahogany table and a chair amidst the carnage. A spider-bot leaped at him. It turned into a potted petunia before it touched him.
"Won't you join the fray?" Vegeta yelled over the explosions.
"Why?" Anos set his cup down. "The children are having fun. Besides, this tea is excellent. It tastes like... despair."
WHAM.
Mash Burnedead walked past the tea table. He was holding a robot by its leg. He used that robot to club three other robots. Then he threw the crumpled ball of metal at a flying drone, knocking it out of the sky.
"Score," Mash murmured.
High above, Yūma Kuga—the white-haired boy from World Trigger—darted through the air using his Grasshopper trigger. Green pinballs of light bounced him around as he fired precise shots into the robots' sensors.
"Their trion levels are weird," Yūma noted, landing next to Kirito. "No cores. Just data."
"Data..." Kirito's eyes narrowed. He swiped his hand down.
Nothing happened. No menu.
"The menu is locked," Kirito hissed. "If there's no UI, how do we track loot tables?"
"Steal!"
Kazuma's hand glowed green from behind a rock.
One of the robot spiders collapsed instantly. A glowing blue microchip appeared in Kazuma's hand.
"I got something!" Kazuma yelled, waving the chip. "It's a... 'Level 1 Void Core'?"
As soon as he said it, a chime rang out. Not just for him. For everyone.
Ding!
A semi-transparent blue screen appeared in front of every single person on the battlefield—from Goku to the weeping Kobeni.
[QUEST UPDATE: THE CULLING]
Progress: 958/1000 Entities Purged.
Participation Bonus Unlocked.
[NEW SYSTEM INTEGRATION: "The World's System" + "SAO Interface" + "RPG Mechanics"]
"A level up system?" Jin-Woo (somewhere in the shadows) stepped out, his eyes glowing purple. "I'm familiar with this."
"I hate levels," Saitama sighed. He was letting a spider-bot chew on his red boot. It was sparking, trying to pierce the rubber. "They never go up fast enough."
"Finish them!" Naofumi ordered. "If there's a quest counter, let's clear it!"
"Right!" Tanjiro took a deep breath. "Hinokami Kagura...!"
"Serious Series," Saitama muttered. "Serious Sideways Jump."
Saitama hopped.
Just a hop. Side to side.
The afterimages created a wall of sheer kinetic force. The shockwave didn't just hit the remaining fifty robots; it atomized the street they were standing on.
Ding!
Ding!
Ding!
[QUEST COMPLETE]
[LOOT DISTRIBUTION: AUTO-LOOT ENABLED]
Sparkling lights flew from the destroyed robots into the chests of the heroes.
Kazuma looked at his inventory (which he could now see in his mind).
Acquired: Scrap Metal x50.
Acquired: Void Token x5.
"Tokens?" Kazuma squinted.
"This is definitely a game," Kirito said, sheathing his swords. He looked stressed. "And if it's a game that merged 20 universes... the balancing is going to be garbage."
The silence didn't last long.
As the dust settled, the giant eye in the sky blinked. The mechanical voice returned, sounding almost irritated.
[ANALYSIS: PERFORMANCE EXCEEDS PARAMETERS.]
[CALCULATING REWARD...]
A giant chest dropped from the sky.
It was gold. It was tacky. It landed with a thud that shook the junk mountain.
"Loot!" Luffy's arm stretched. "Meat?"
"Wait!" Kazuma and Kirito shouted together. "It might be a Mimic!"
Too late. Luffy threw the lid open.
It wasn't meat. And it wasn't gold.
Sitting inside the chest was a small, trembling creature. It looked like a raccoon mixed with a geometric polygon. It held a sign that said GUIDE.
"Poyo?" the creature squeaked.
"Is that a prize?" Asta yelled. "CAN I EAT IT?"
"No!" Tanjiro blocked Asta. "It smells... helpful!"
"Greetings, Anomalies," the Raccoon-thing spoke. Its voice was unexpectedly deep, like a movie narrator. "I am Pux. Your Tutorial NPC."
Silence.
"A talking raccoon," Naofumi deadpanned. "Sure. Why not? Raphtalia is going to be confused."
"I AM NOT A RACCOON," Pux boomed. "I AM A POLYGONAL UNIVERSAL XENOMORPH. I AM HERE TO EXPLAIN WHY YOUR UNIVERSES ARE BLENDERIZED."
Anos stood up from his tea table. He floated over, looking down at the creature.
"Speak then, small thing," Anos commanded. "Who broke my quiet afternoon?"
Pux swallowed hard. Or emulated a swallow.
"The boundaries of fiction and reality have collapsed," Pux said rapidly. "The Entity known as 'The Author' has gone missing. Without the Author, the narratives are bleeding into each other. This dimension—Vector Prime—is the drainpipe."
"So we're clogs?" Goku asked, scratching his head.
"Essentially," Pux nodded. "If you don't stabilize this world within..." Pux checked a wristwatch that appeared on his fur. "...48 hours, all of your home dimensions will file corrupted data and be deleted. Forever."
Aqua dropped her wine bottle. "Deleted? Like... no more shrines? No more worshippers?"
"No more existence," Pux confirmed. "Poof."
"How do we fix it?" Rimuru asked, transforming back into his human form. "If it's a system error, do we need an admin key?"
"You need to collect the plot holes," Pux said.
"The what?" Mash asked, eating another cream puff.
"Plot Holes," Pux repeated. "Physical manifestations of broken logic. We call them 'Reality Anchors'. There are seven of them hidden across the Sector. Gather them, bring them to the Tower of Convergence, and we can reboot the multiverse."
"Seven balls... I mean, anchors?" Goku grinned. "I like fetch quests!"
"It's not that simple," Pux warned. "The villains from your worlds fell here too. And they've formed a union."
"A union?" Vegeta scoffed. "Please. Villains have egos. Frieza would never work with anyone."
"Normally, no," Pux agreed. "But they have a leader now. Someone who promised them what they never got in their stories."
"What's that?" Tanjiro asked.
"A win," Pux whispered.
High above them, on the dark metal ring, a screen flickered to life.
It showed a massive round table in a dark room. Shadows sat around it.
One figure stood at the head. He wore a long white bone mask and white robes.
Aizen Sosuke smiled at the camera.
"Welcome to the new Soul Society," Aizen's voice echoed across Vector Prime. "Or as I prefer to call it... The Draft Stage."
"Of course," Gojo Satoru (who had just walked out of a convenience store wreckage with a bag of kikufuku) pulled down his blindfold. "It had to be him. Or maybe..."
He looked at the shadow next to Aizen.
A figure with multiple hands covering his face and body.
Shigaraki Tomura scratched his neck.
"Cheaters," Shigaraki hissed. "Too many heroes. Need a patch... need a nerf..."
"This is going to be annoying," Kazuma groaned, collapsing onto his back. "I just wanted a quiet life."
"Quest accepted!" Goku pumped his fist.
Kirito sighed and opened his menu. "Alright. Invite to party. Everyone accept the invite. We need a raid leader."
"I vote for the bald guy," Luffy said.
"I vote for me!" Aqua raised her hand.
"I vote we go home," Kazuma mumbled.
[RAID GROUP FORMED: "The OPengers"]
[Current Members: 14]
[Status: Chaotic/Dysfunctional]
"The name stays," Goku declared.
Saitama looked at his glove. The yolk was finally drying.
"I'm gonna need new groceries," he said. "If these villains have a supermarket, I'm in."