The summoning was the largest disaster in Grisiah’s history.

30 mages lost their lives powering the spell to summon a hero to rescue the country from the forces of the Demon King, and when the spell was completed, what they saw left the survivors scarred.

A man, wrapped in black demonic energy, screamed as the remaining mists of the magical forces parted. The demons that had been gnawing on him found themselves surrounded by fresh prey and began to lash out.

Pope Asigor VII lost his life battling the demons that had been gnawing upon the summoned hero, and had Princess Anasia, the saintess, not been there alongside him, everyone in the castle would have died that day.

But at the end of an exhausting ritual, with all of the country’s best surviving mages and the Saintess and the Pope all working together, the demons that they had summoned alongside the hero were vanquished.

At the end of their gruesome battle, the hero that they had summoned lay in a puddle of blood, barely clinging on to life, surrounded by the dead and dying.

A week later, the hero Joshua awoke in a bed he had never seen before. He felt… new. It was a strange sensation, something that he could only remember from ancestral DNA. Somehow he knew that he had never felt the way he felt at this moment, even from the moment he was born.

A serenity consumed him.

His reverie was interrupted by a woman dressed in a maid outfit.

“Oh! Finally awake! Pardon me, I will let them know”, she said, curtsying before she departed.

Joshua heard the scrambling of footsteps outside his door as many people arrived and entered, politely knocking first.

The first person to enter the room was Anasia. Joshua could tell that there was a regal bearing about her, something that he had seen in movies but never experienced in real life prior to this moment.

She wore a long pink flowing gown that was still somewhat practical in design, lapis Lazuli earrings hung from her ears and perched upon her head was a thin, yet priceless looking crown.

“Greetings, hero”, the princess said, curtsying before him.

“Hello, uh, your… Majesty?” Joshua responded, somewhat timidly, bowing his head as best as he could from his bed-bound position.

“You were summoned to our country at great cost, and without our asking you to come”, Anasia began.

“Unfortunately, and tragically, you are not what we needed”, she continued. “the hero summoning ritual was supposed to bring a powerful person to us to help us with our many troubles. Alas, while you were unconscious, we measured your power, and one of our infants could easily overpower you.”

This was a lot of information for Joshua to take in and he could not quite understand what they were saying even though he comprehended the words. “What do you mean?” he sputtered in reply.

“Bring the crystal” said Anasia, and the maid from earlier walked forward and gingerly set a crystal on Joshua’s lap. “Place your hand upon the crystal”, she commanded.

Joshua did as instructed, and a screen popped out of the crystal floating in the air. It showed RPG stats to Joshua of his own abilities, and all but one of them were in the negatives.

The negatives were:

Strength -27, Intelligence -39, Dexterity -20, Wisdom -17, Charisma -12.

The one positive was:

Constitution: 45,963

Anasia continued, “the average score for a newborn infant is in the single digit positives, typically between 1 and 4. For most of us, any of these scores reaching the negatives results in death. The only reason you are still alive right now is because of your insanely high constitution score. It’s probably also the reason why you were able to survive being brought here in the first place, with the demons that had been eating at you and eating at your soul your entire life.”

“Demons? What do you mean?”

“Do you not remember the summoning?” Anasia asked.

“All I remember is one moment I was getting off the bus on my way home from work and then I was enveloped in a warm light and then everything hurt like I was being killed over and over again and then I woke up here.”

Anasia paused for a moment. “Well, either way, your entire body was racked with demons, and many of our people, including the Pope, lost their lives, killing the demons that had been eating you.”

Joshua looked on, shocked as this was revealed to him. “Died?”

“Died. All in all, 47 people are no longer alive because of us bringing you here. But…”, Anasia paused again. “This is not your fault. It is our fault, and we will take responsibility for it. We will have another opportunity to perform the ritual in six weeks. At that time, you will have the opportunity to return to your home.”

Joshua thought for a moment and realized that he wasn’t at his home. He was in some weird house with some weird person telling him weird things and he didn’t do anything to deserve this and now they’re saying that he’s responsible for 47 people dying and that an infant could kill him. If this was some kind of trick, it was a hell of a trick, but then he looked at the crystal in his hand, and he looked at the status screen still floating in the air in front of him. Not a hologram, not some weird tech thing, and nobody he knows has the kind of money needed to pull off a prank like this, or if they did would use it on a prank like this…

This is real. He’s in another world. And he is the weakest person in the entire world.