Fate had always been a topic to avoid for Sebastian, right up until it smacked him in the face, and even then, he would usually do his best to ignore it. Some people listened, they took heed when the universe sent signs. They found new career paths, they ended—or started—relationships, they followed their dreams. Sebastian, on the other hand, lost his job and went right back out there to find one just like it.

  That was easier said than done, though. He had been looking for a while, but he wasn’t one to give up.

  This was Sebastian’s favorite part of a job interview, sitting in the lobby and waiting to be called in. Many of his fellow applicants, both for this position and others in the past few months, had told him how much they hated the waiting. Their nerves firing, hearts pounding, and anxiety working overtime to make them doubt and second-guess things they were usually confident about. Sebastian experienced none of that. If anything, the waiting only served to sharpen his mind.

  Sitting alongside him were three others applicants, all of them straightened their backs when the door opened.

  A young woman popped her head out. “Mr. Moore, they’re ready for you now.”

  Sebastian, whose posture practically crumbled the moment his name was called, offered an empty look and a strained smile. “Yeah,” he said as he sighed and got up.

  Time for the worst part of the job interview, the actual interview, he thought.

  Before walking through the door, he took a deep breath to settle his mind. As sharp as that mind was, applying that sharpness in any productive sense has always been an issue for him.

  The room was as soulless as he expected, just a bare-bones conference room. Behind a table sat an older lady with glasses on her face and a clipboard in her hands, and a slightly younger man with his hands clasped together on the table. “Welcome, Mr. Moore. Please, sit,” he said, gesturing at the chair opposite them.

  They exchanged the common greetings, and Sebastian sat as instructed.

  Most of the interview went pretty much as they all did. There were generic questions, some quick tests, and then the dreaded topic, his future. For the life of him, he could never understand why almost every interviewer insisted on asking about where he saw himself in the future or what he imagined himself doing or achieving. He was here for a job, nothing else. Sebastian’s usual approach was to follow the script, something he found online; not just for this particular question but for most of the interview. This time, he couldn’t stop himself from trying something new.

  “World domination,” he said, hoping they would have a sense of humor. A soft sigh and tired look told him, they did not. The lady wrote something down on her clipboard, and they somewhat awkwardly moved on.

  The rest of the interview continued on a downward spiral.

  Before they let him leave, however, the man asked one final question. “I can’t help but notice that you seem rather overqualified for the job. You have years of experience, and according to your letters of recommendation you received nothing but praise for your performance. You’ve even been offered multiple promotions, but you turned them down. Just for my own curiosity, why apply for this position and not something higher up on the ladder? Is it the responsibility you want to avoid?”

  After almost three months of continuous applications and interviews, Sebastian had developed something of a sixth sense for how it was going. This one was a bust. It was a relief in a sense, he no longer had to pretend to care.

  He took a breath. “Honestly, to what end?” Sebastian asked rhetorically. “Yeah, I could afford a bigger place, a fancier car, maybe some nice name-brand clothes.” He shrugged and shook his head. “I’ve never seen the point. No, I— I enjoy finding something I’m good at, and seeing it through.”

  His fake smile faded away only as his car door closed twenty minutes later. The blood in his already pale hands gave way as he gripped the steering wheel, hard, and he took a deep breath.

  Betty, the piece of crap car his parents gave him just a few months before they died, sputtered a few times as he turned the key. She eventually relented, and Sebastian sullenly drove away.

  The interview had actually gotten him thinking about the future, something he rarely did. A lack of ambition had plagued him for most of his life—as most of his teachers growing up could attest to—but it was always more of a symptom than the issue itself.

  Mostly, he just did not care.

  Having the biggest house, or the most impressive job title, or the fanciest car never mattered to him. So long as he had a roof over his head, a comfy bed to sleep in, and a full stomach, he was... fine. He was never really great, but he settled for fine. That was more than most people had, and he always felt that fine was the best this world had to offer. No matter how much money or power a person could accumulate, they were always just an accident or a minor mistake away from death after all.

  Deep down, he had always wanted more from life but he never knew of what.

  It wasn't money. His parents hadn't been rich but they had a good deal of savings that had kept Sebastian comfortable. Besides, he never saw money as anything more than that, a tool to keep you... fine.

  It wasn't love, or companionship, either. He had spent some time during his university days dating and socializing, but it never worked out. He tackled his love life with the same lack of ambition or care as most other aspects of his life.

  That’s not to say he was lazy. Once Sebastian found something to dig his claws into, he never let go. He had worked at his previous job for the last three years, doing data analysis, and he would have loved to stay in that exact position for years to come. Cutbacks and layoffs forced his hand, made him have to think about his future and the next step in his life.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Sebastian locked the door behind him when he finally got home, as he always did since an incident last year. He had sold his parents’ house a few years back; it was too big for just him. With the exception of an out-of-order elevator—and the occasional drunken neighbor, the apartment he had called his home ever since was perfect for him.

  He grabbed a can of soda from the mini fridge next to the couch and sat down. Before he even got a chance to open it, a sharp CRACK tore through the apartment. A lingering buzz, like a massive swarm of hornets, grew louder and louder as he scrambled to his feet.

  Rattled, Sebastian cautiously searched for the source of the noise, terrified of what he might discover. His first thought was that there had been some sort of explosion in the street outside, but when he peeked out the window, nothing stood out as out of the ordinary.

  In fact, as he looked closer, he realized that the people walking around outside hadn't even reacted. They didn’t even seem to hear the deafening buzz. Even his neighbors hadn't reacted, and they never hesitated to bang on the walls whenever his TV was played even just a tad too loud.

  As he looked around his apartment, with his hands covering his ears in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the noise at bay, he noticed a strange light emanating from behind his bedroom door. He slowly approached and carefully placed his hand on the handle. Steeling his resolve, Sebastian pushed the door open and took a small step back to prepare himself for whatever might be on the other side. As the door swung open, he couldn't quite make sense of what he saw.

  A massive, silver vortex was suspended in the air in the middle of his bedroom.

  He stared at the vortex, dumbfounded.

  It was as though his mind rejected what he was seeing, as if reality folded in on itself endlessly in swirls within swirls of vibrant silver and the deepest, darkest black. All of it came together to form a sort of whirlpool that simultaneously seemed to draw everything into it and also push everything away. Like it was utterly incompatible with the world around it. These two opposite forces competed with each other and because neither could best the other, the space around the whirlpool trembled.

  His hair stood on end.

  He couldn’t decide whether he would have to fight or flee. Instead he just froze, staring at the anomaly like a deer caught in headlights.

  Without warning, several thin, dark purple tendrils shot out from the vortex. They wrapped around his arms, legs, and torso and dragged him toward the vortex. “What!? No— HELP! Somebody, please!” Sebastian shouted. He tried to resist by grabbing hold of the door frame but he couldn’t get a grip. All he accomplished was falling to the floor. His fingernails desperately tried to gain some traction against the floor but failed utterly. The only thing he managed to grab hold of was the leg of his bed. It scraped against the floor as it failed to even slow him down. When he was finally dragged through the event horizon and entered the vortex, the trembling atmosphere and the loud buzzing sound completely and instantly vanished, replaced by a calm, blinding, white light.

  He found himself floating in a strange empty void where neither direction nor time held any meaning, as if he was all that existed in this bright, white abyss.

  After what could have been mere moments or several hours for all he knew, the void vanished. It might as well have never existed in the first place.

  He sat on a cold, stone floor in a dark room illuminated only by a circle of flickering candles.

  Quickly looking around the creepy room, Sebastian noticed that he wasn’t alone. There were four others in the same circle, all looking just as confused as he felt. Surrounding the circle were several figures in loose, dark red robes with hoods covering their faces. They were all panting and gasping for breath as if they had just completed a marathon. The stone brick walls of the room were bare, undecorated and gave no indication of where they might be.

  Sebastian rose to his feet as he kept a watchful eye on his surroundings. The other four did the same. All except for one who jumped up, ready to defend himself against his kidnappers.

  “Ahem!” coughed a woman, the only one of the robed figures who seemed to be doing mostly alright, and the only one to lower her hood. She was rather plain looking and appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties.

  No one had paid any attention to her, or even noticed her from among the group encircling them, but as soon as she made herself known, everyone’s attention was focused entirely on her.

  “Greetings, Blessed Ones! I understand you’re probably confused, but I assure you that everything is fine. This is Lumeria,” she shouted as she spread her arms wide in a dramatic fashion, “the greatest kingdom this world has ever known, and we have summoned you all here through an ancient, long lost ritual to help us defeat the forces of evil that threatens us all. I am Archmage Lyra, Lumeria’s Arcane Auditor, at your service.” The mage finished her introduction with a graceful curtsy.

  Sebastian’s confusion cleared up, but the shock remained as he wrapped his mind around what was happening.

  So, this is an actual, real life, isekai hero-summoning. I’ve read my fair share of isekai stories in webtoons and webnovels but never thought it could actually happen, least of all to me.

  The woman wore the same robe as the others but upon further inspection hers was different in that it had some gold embroidery on her shoulders which none of the other seemed to have. It matched her shoulder-length, golden hair. She did her very best to put on a disarming smile, although Sebastian’s instincts told him that she failed.

  One of the five who had been summoned, the man who was ready to fight the moment he arrived, stepped up. “Wait, the hell's going on? Are you trying to say you abducted us to another world in order to, what, fight in some war?” he said, confronting the woman as if he had no trouble accepting the fact that they were now in another world. “I'm a handyman, not a soldier. Why me?”

  Another of Sebastian’s fellow abductees raised his hand. “Uhm, yeah. I'm not interested in fighting in some war either, I'd really like to just go home now.” He was young, not a child by any means but certainly the youngest of them all.

  “Go home? What are you guys talking about? We've been summoned to another world! This is amazing!” exclaimed another with the enthusiasm of a kid in a candy store.

  Looking around as the others spoke up, Sebastian couldn’t help but notice that all four of them were oddly calm, given the situation. It was odd. Most people would surely panic if they had gone through what he did to get here, at the very least it was surprising that they all seemed to just accept that magic summoned them to another world.

  Personally, he had always prided himself on his ability to stay calm and collected under pressure but what are the odds that all five of them were similarly inclined, at random. Besides, Sebastian had the advantage of being fairly familiar with stories like this, although there’s no telling how well fiction would translate to reality. But no, even as they confronted their captor, they all acted fairly… normal. Some of them, one in particular, even seemed genuinely excited to be there.

  Did the magic involved in this ritual change us somehow—or perhaps the experience itself—or did the magic that brought us here actively choose people who would be amicable to being summoned to another world? Sebastian questioned in his mind.

  “Now, now, please settle down,” the woman said as she raised her hand, putting on an air of authority as though they were children in a classroom. “I'm sorry to say, there is no way to reverse the ritual. However, if you become powerful enough, it might be possible for you to wield magic strong enough to return to your world through your own means. In the meantime, the Kingdom of Lumeria will support you with everything we have—training, tutoring, food, women, men, luxuries beyond your wildest dreams, and if you succeed in defeating the demonic forces of evil, you will be worshiped like gods!”