I Was Reincarnated as the World's Final Boss but I Just Want a Quiet Life

[Harry Styles]

The stone wall exploded outward with no ceremony, no warning, no sound beyond the soft crack of ancient masonry giving up its structural integrity all at once. Ren had tapped it twice with his knuckle, a polite knock really, and the entire northern face of the dungeon's final chamber ceased to exist in any meaningful architectural sense.

He stepped through the rubble cloud with his hand raised to shield his eyes from the sudden influx of actual sunlight, which was frankly offensive after three hundred years of ambient dungeon glow. Or was it three hundred? Time got weird when you were a magical construct designed to murder adventurers. The memories of being Akatsuki Ren, seventeen-year-old student who'd fallen asleep during a late-night gaming session, sat uneasily next to the memories of being the Archon of the Abyss, terror of the deepest dungeon level, commander of seventeen lesser demons and one very apologetic lich.

The lich was probably still waiting in the throne room for instructions. Ren made a mental note to feel bad about that later.

Outside the dungeon, the world was aggressively green in a way that suggested nature had opinions about proper color saturation. Trees lined a valley that sloped down toward what might have been a road, if roads in this world were the kind of packed-dirt affairs that wouldn't pass a basic infrastructure inspection back home. The air smelled like pine and dirt and the absence of recycled dungeon atmosphere.

Ren took a breath. It tasted like freedom, which was sort of like regular air but with more existential implications.

A translucent blue window materialized in front of his face with the cheerful persistence of a pop-up ad.

[SYSTEM INTERFACE INITIALIZED]

Name: Akatsuki Ren

Title: Archon of the Abyss, Dungeon Core Entity (Unbound), He Who Waits in the Deep, The Final Question

Level: MAX

Class: Sovereign Mage (Mythic+)

Magic Power: [ERROR: VALUE EXCEEDS DISPLAY PARAMETERS]

Status: Dungeon-Unbound / Core Integrity: Stable / Existential Crisis: Moderate

Ren dismissed the window with a thought, which was convenient because his actual hands were busy brushing rock dust off the black coat that had apparently come standard with his reincarnation package. The coat was nice, he had to admit, some kind of enchanted fabric that repelled dirt and probably low-tier offensive magic. It made him look like a final boss, which was accurate but unhelpful given his current objectives.

Those objectives, in order of priority: Don't let anyone figure out he was an apocalypse-class magical entity. Find a town. Acquire tea, if this world had invented tea. Live quietly.

The problem with being catastrophically overpowered was that it showed. His magical aura was currently suppressed down to what he estimated was Archmage-level output, which was still probably enough to make every sensitive creature within a mile radius nervous. He needed to go lower. Much lower.

Ren closed his eyes and pulled on the mental thread connected to his power, the vast reservoir of magical energy that had been designed to make him an unkillable raid boss. He pushed it down, compressed it, wrapped it in layer after layer of containment spells he'd learned from absorbing the knowledge of every mage who'd died in his dungeon. Which was a lot of mages. Frankly an embarrassing number of mages.

The air around him stopped vibrating. The faint corona of purple-black energy that had been leaking from his skin faded to nothing. Birds, which had gone silent when he'd demolished the wall, started making bird noises again in the distance.

Better.

He pulled up the system interface again and focused on the appearance settings, which apparently existed because even magical reincarnation had a character creation screen. His current body was an idealized version of himself, aged up to maybe twenty, with the kind of bone structure that suggested "final boss" more than "wandering adventurer looking for honest work." The silver-white hair probably wasn't helping.

Ren cycled through options with the speed of someone who'd spent too many hours on character customization in games he barely remembered playing. Dark brown hair, ordinary. Eyes less silver, more dark gray. Facial features slightly less symmetrical, because perfect symmetry read as inhuman to most people. He kept the height, because he'd been short in his previous life and spite was a valid motivator.

The changes rippled across his reflection in a nearby puddle. Better. He looked like a moderately attractive human in his early twenties, the kind of person who might know a few spells and could probably handle himself in a fight but wasn't going to accidentally crack the continental shelf if he sneezed wrong.

Ren permitted himself a small smile and started down the slope toward the road, carefully not thinking about how each step covered about three times the distance it should have because his body still defaulted to movement-enhancement magic as a baseline state of existence.

He made it perhaps two hundred yards before he heard the scream.

It was a good scream, as screams went. Clear projection, genuine distress, the kind of scream that indicated an actual problem rather than someone being startled by a spider. Ren's feet changed direction before his brain finished processing the decision, carrying him through the trees at a speed that was definitely not normal human velocity but probably fell under the acceptable threshold for "talented adventurer in a hurry."

He found the source in a small clearing where the trees opened up around an ancient stone marker. A woman in traveling leathers was backed against the marker, her bow drawn but the string slack, facing down a creature that Ren's dungeon-boss knowledge base immediately classified as a Forest Maw. Six legs, crystalline hide, mandibles designed to shear through leather armor and the soft flesh beneath. Threat level: moderate for trained combatants, lethal for civilians, basically a nuisance for anyone with actual magical firepower.

The woman was an elf, he noted with the part of his brain that wasn't calculating threat vectors. Pointed ears, silver hair pulled back in a practical braid, the kind of face that would be pretty if it wasn't currently locked in an expression of controlled panic. Her quiver was empty, three arrows already buried in the Maw's hide with all the effectiveness of toothpicks.

The creature lunged.

Ren flicked his wrist, a gesture so small it barely qualified as movement. A lance of compressed force punched through the air and caught the Forest Maw mid-leap, stopping it dead. Not killing it, because that would require actual magic and he was trying to keep a low profile, but definitely ruining its day. The creature hit the ground hard, stunned, its legs scrabbling for purchase.

The elf spun toward him, her bow coming up again with the smooth speed of trained reflex. Her eyes were green, he noticed, and currently very wide.

"You should run," Ren suggested, keeping his voice level and non-threatening. "It'll recover in about thirty seconds."

She stared at him. At the Forest Maw, which was indeed starting to shake off the impact. At him again.

"What did you do?" Her voice had an accent he couldn't place, musical in the way elf voices apparently were in this world.

"Kinetic pulse. Basic force magic." Ren was already turning to leave, because standing around explaining things was how you ended up in conversations, and conversations led to questions, and questions led to people figuring out you were a walking apocalypse in a nice coat. "You're welcome. Goodbye."

"Wait!"

He did not wait. Waiting was for people who wanted social interaction. Ren walked back into the trees at a brisk pace that definitely wasn't enhanced by movement magic, no matter what the small trench his footsteps left in the soft earth might suggest.

The elf followed him anyway, because apparently "goodbye" was a suggestion rather than a command in this world.

"That wasn't basic force magic," she said, jogging to catch up. The Forest Maw was making angry chittering sounds behind them but didn't seem interested in pursuing, which was wise of it. "I've seen force magic. That was something else. That was..." She trailed off, her eyes searching his face for something.

Ren kept walking. "You're imagining things. Adrenaline does that. You should get to safety."

"The nearest town is three hours south." She was keeping pace with him now, her longer legs compensating for his magically-enhanced stride. "You're going the wrong way."

He was going the wrong way. Ren adjusted his trajectory without acknowledging the correction, which earned him a look that suggested the elf was reassessing her opinion of his competence.

"I'm Lysera," she offered after a moment of silence. "Lysera Windcrest. I'm a ranger for the northern territories. Well, I was. I'm currently between postings."

Ren made a noncommittal sound that could have meant anything from "fascinating" to "please stop talking to me."

"You're not from around here," Lysera continued, apparently immune to social cues. "The accent is wrong, and you're wearing dungeon-craft. That coat is warded against at least six different damage types. I can see the spell matrices from here."

Of course she could. Ren added "find less obviously magical clothing" to his mental checklist, right below "acquire tea" and above "figure out if this world has invented coffee."

"I bought it from a merchant," he said, which was technically not a lie if you considered "manifested it from ambient magical energy when I gained sentience as a dungeon boss" to be a form of transaction.

Lysera's expression suggested she was not buying this explanation, but to her credit, she didn't push. Instead, she said, "The town I mentioned. It's called Millbrook. Small place, but they have an adventurer's guild hall. If you're looking for work, or just a place to rest, it's your best option for fifty miles."

An adventurer's guild. Ren turned the concept over in his mind, prodding at the memories he'd inherited from his dungeon-boss existence. Guilds were where adventurers registered, took jobs, formed parties. They were also where people asked questions about your background and abilities, which was exactly the kind of attention he was trying to avoid.

But they were also where you could establish a cover identity, blend in, become just another face in the crowd of people trying to make a living by hitting monsters with swords.

"I might stop by," Ren said, which was apparently enough of an opening for Lysera to smile.

It was a nice smile, warm and genuine, the kind of smile that probably got her out of trouble on a regular basis. It also made Ren deeply suspicious, because people didn't just smile at strangers who'd saved them from monsters unless they wanted something.

They walked in silence for a while, the forest gradually thinning out as the road became more defined. Other travelers appeared, farmers with carts, a merchant caravan with guards who eyed Ren's coat with professional interest. Lysera waved at a few of them, exchanged brief greetings, played the role of friendly local ranger with practiced ease.

Ren kept his head down and his magical aura compressed so tightly it was practically non-existent. Just a normal person. Nothing to see here. Definitely not a former final boss trying to retire from the apocalypse business.

Millbrook appeared around a bend in the road, a collection of timber buildings clustered around a central square. Smoke rose from chimneys, people moved through the streets with the purposeful chaos of a functioning community, and somewhere a blacksmith was hammering metal in a rhythm that suggested either great skill or profound stubbornness.

The adventurer's guild hall was impossible to miss, a three-story stone building with a sign depicting a sword and staff crossed over a shield. People came and went through the main entrance, a mix of armor types and weapon configurations that would have made a raid coordinator weep with joy.

Lysera stopped at the edge of the square and turned to face him, her expression suddenly serious.

"Before you go in there," she said quietly, "I should tell you something. That spell you used on the Forest Maw? I've only seen magic like that once before, in an old temple in the eastern mountains. The elders there called it divine intervention. They said a spirit of the forest had blessed us."

Ren's stomach dropped. "It wasn't divine intervention. It was basic force magic."

"I know what I saw." Lysera's eyes searched his face again, and this time there was something else in her expression. Not suspicion. Reverence. "The elders were wrong about it being a forest spirit. But they weren't wrong about it being divine."

Oh no.

"I'm not divine," Ren said, putting as much mundane certainty into his voice as possible. "I'm a mage. A normal, regular mage who knows a few tricks."

Lysera nodded slowly, but her eyes said she didn't believe a word of it. "Of course. A normal mage. I understand."

She didn't understand. She understood the exact opposite of the situation. Ren could see the misunderstanding crystallizing in real-time, could see her mentally filing him under "mysterious powerful entity pretending to be normal," which was accurate but deeply unhelpful.

"I should go register," he said, because standing around trying to convince her he wasn't a divine being was only going to make things worse. "Thank you for the directions."

"I'll be staying at the Broken Wheel inn," Lysera offered. "If you need anything. Or if you want to talk."

Ren nodded and fled toward the guild hall before she could say anything else that would complicate his life further.

Inside, the hall was exactly what he'd expected: quest boards covered in notices, tables full of adventurers comparing scars and exaggerating stories, a bar that served food of questionable origin and alcohol of certain potency. The noise level was substantial, the smell was a mix of leather and steel and too many people in close quarters, and absolutely nobody looked at him twice.

Perfect.

Ren approached the registration desk, where a tired-looking woman with ink-stained fingers was processing paperwork with the enthusiasm of someone who'd processed ten thousand identical forms and expected to process ten thousand more.

"New registration?" she asked without looking up.

"Yes."

"Name?"

"Ren."

"Just Ren?"

"Just Ren."

She made a note. "Class?"

"Mage."

"Specialization?"

Ren considered saying "apocalyptic destruction" but settled for, "General practice."

The woman finally looked up, her eyes scanning him with professional assessment. "You'll start at Iron rank. Standard probation period, no solo contracts above threat level two, mandatory skill assessment within thirty days. Registration fee is five silver."

Ren produced five silver coins from his coat pocket, which he'd manifested from ambient magical energy about three seconds ago but which looked and spent like regular currency because matter transmutation was a basic skill for Sovereign-class mages.

The woman took the coins, stamped a card with practiced efficiency, and handed it to him. "Welcome to the guild. Try not to die."

"I'll do my best," Ren said, and meant it in ways she couldn't possibly understand.

He was turning to leave when someone behind him said, "Did you see that?"

Ren froze.

"See what?" another voice responded.

"The way the air sort of... shimmered around him when he paid. Like heat distortion, but cold."

"You're drunk."

"I'm not drunk yet, it's only noon."

Ren walked faster, keeping his expression neutral and his magical aura clamped down so hard it was probably giving him a metaphysical headache. He made it to the door, out into the square, and halfway to what looked like a general store before he allowed himself to acknowledge the fundamental problem with his plan.

Hiding his power was going to be a lot harder than he'd thought.

Behind him, in the guild hall, someone was asking the registration clerk about the new mage who'd paid with coins that smelled like ozone and possibility.

Outside the town, in the Broken Wheel inn, Lysera Windcrest was writing a letter to her elder council about a chance encounter with what she was absolutely certain was a divine spirit walking in mortal guise.

And in the dungeon he'd abandoned, the lich was still waiting for instructions, patient and confused and increasingly concerned about the structural integrity of the north wall.

Ren bought a cup of tea from a street vendor, found a bench in a quiet corner of the square, and tried very hard to pretend he was just a normal person having a normal day in a normal town.

The tea was terrible, but at least it was hot.

 

[StormFalcon7]

This seems like a fun spin for an adventure! Excited to see where it goes.