Oops, I Was Accidentally Transported To A Fantasy World And Taught Dragons About Capitalism - Chapter 1

So traditionally there are a few different ways a story like mine starts.

Getting hit by a truck and dying is probably the most common of them, cliche notwithstanding. Picking up a cursed item or book and getting whisked away is probably the next most popular trope, followed by magical caves, wardrobes, or freestanding circles of rocks. After all that, I think getting summoned as a hero or villain is probably the next most common, though I’m honestly not sure which may win out over the other. But if I’m gonna be truthful here, I really don’t care about any of the other ways, because my way just straight up beats the pants out of all of them.

Which is to say that I was abducted by a trespassing Lust Fairy who wanted to crack me open like a cold beer on a hot day and drink me dry.

Yeah, I bet you’re all sitting up in your seats now with an excited, “Ooo, tell me more dragon daddy.” I know I would be too. That is if said lust fairy didn’t mean it literally when it came to drinking my blood down like the refreshing treat that it was. But I probably should back up a bit before we get into that part of my story, let alone the whole ‘dragon daddy’ bit I just dropped on you all too.

After all, what is a story without a little suspense?

Anyway, like any truly good story, mine begins with a drink, specifically the one that my best friend Joshua handed to me, the golden amber liquid it contained being accompanied with, “so I see you’re still wearing a ring Matt.”

“I am,” I replied as I took the drink, the movement perfect for me to catch a quick glimpse of the dark grey ring that entwined the forth finger on my right hand. “And before you say anything more, I’m not wearing it for the same reason anymore, haven’t for a while if I’m honest.”

“Oh?” Came the all too eager reply from right beside me, its speed telling me all I needed to know about who really had wanted to ask that question. “And what does it mean now?”

“That change is always possible, even if it hurts,” I replied with a smile as I looked over at Sandra, the thin brown haired woman looking back at me with a mix of expectation and worry, as if fearing the answer I’d give her. A reaction that I could fully understand, given that she had been the one who had introduced me to Felicia.

Boom. Yeah, that’s a namedrop. Don’t worry though, we’ll talk more about her later.

“Especially if it hurts,” I added after a second, using the pause to switch my drink to the other hand while using my thumb to spin the ring in place until it revealed a golden half of the once engagement band. “Plus, it’s also the first project I did that turned out really decently, uh, after I wrecked the other half.”

“Hold on, you made that ring?” Joshua asked, the man leaning in to look at the band alongside his wife who had taken my hand into hers, all while letting out appreciative sounds at the craftsmanship. “When did you learn to do that?”

“Shortly after I got bored of baking bread, and it no longer fit my fingers,” I said with a shrug, barely even remembering that phase of my life and all the chaos that it had entailed.

“You mean when you entered your villain phase and devoted yourself to becoming a literal tank,” Joshua corrected his attention going from my hand, to my arm. “Cause I mean, damn man, I know we chatted a hell of a lot online over these last few years, but now... now... uh, you’re—”

“A tasty tree waiting to be climbed?” Sandra helped finish as she let go of my hand, earning chuckle from me in the process.

“I’m not sure if I would go that far.” I said, feigning a not a little bit of modesty despite knowing they were both right. In the past…well in the past I was a huge fan of pizza, beer, and chicken wings, you know, like for every single meal and my body showed it. I still am a fan of all those things, but in much more moderation.

Much, much, more.

“You absolutely should,” she stated, completely ignoring her husband as he tried, and failed, to wrap both of his hands around my bicep, all while holding his beer cup in his teeth. “You most definitely should, Not only do you deserve it, but, let me tell you, it’s true too. Especially after—”

“Sandy, it’s okay.” I said, already knowing where she was going with her words, the woman’s expression becoming more and more unnerved with each word she spoke. “I don’t blame you at all for anything. Felica made her own choices, and while yes they hurt, they were hers, not yours. You’ve got nothing at all, ever, to worry about.”

“Y-you’re sure?” The small woman asked, her voice breaking.

“Super sure,” I said with the most genuine smile I could muster, one made all the easier because Joshua had stopped trying to measure my arm with resigned a note of defeat. “Now, enough of the past, that’s not what we’re here for. Unless Josh here has completely been lying to me, this is both your first night out since the kids, isn’t it?”

“You better believe it is man,” Joshua said as he took his cup out from his mouth. “If it wasn’t for this drink I wouldn’t know what to do with my hands, as it is, this other one feels wrong being empty.”

“Well then use it to hold me down instead of admiring all of Matt’s new muscles,” Sandra said as she leaned in close to her husband and took his free hand in hers. “Because two sips in I’m suddenly realizing how much of a lightweight I’ve become. By the end of this glass I’ll be ready to float away.”

“Woof, then that means we should see about getting some food into you,” I said before going onto motion further down the path whose intersection we were standing in.

“If I remember right, there should be a bench just down that way where you two can sit. I’ll see if I can’t track down one of those plates of food I saw those satyrs carrying. Any requests?”

“Something with meat and bread,” Sandra replied without a second’s hesitation. “Oh, and cheese too.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I replied with a chuckle, giving the pair a wave as they turned to follow my directions, very clearly enjoying their night already. Which was a good thing, after all that was one of the reasons why I’d invited them out here tonight. Smiling at their backs as they shuffled away, I moved to uphold my promise, searching for one of those very aforementioned satyrs.

Here is probably a good place as any for me to mention at this point that what I was actually looking for was not in fact a satyr, which to my knowledge I haven’t actually met yet. A good thing I think given everything I’ve heard about their temperaments and, uh, general all around behavior. Which I will absolutely allow you to research yourself should you want to. Yes, that’s a warning, heed it or not at your own peril.

No, instead what I was looking for, was one of the poor muscle bound waiters that had been hired to not only go shirtless for the entire ‘Enchanted Garden’ theme going on tonight, but to also get dressed in heavy faux fur pants with matching cloven hoof booties. I’m sure I would have found one too, had I been allowed to actually go searching. But instead of being able to handle such a mundane task myself I had barely taken more than five steps before an elf holding a glowing tablet stepped out from a partially hidden gazebo on the path’s edge.

And in case you were wondering, no he wasn’t actually an elf either, just a man who happened to be wearing pointy ears that helped him blend into the theme.

“I’ve already informed the kitchen, Mr. Cross,” He said without any prompting. “And a platter is on its way. Until then however, there is a matter that your advice has been requested on.”

“Already David?” I answered, despite not at all being surprised to see the man appear practically out of nowhere. That was what I paid him for after all. “We haven’t even really started yet. It’s been like twenty minutes since people started arriving.”

“Indeed, and well, it seems that some of them are just clicking faster than we expected. Faster and in unexpected ways at that too, Jennifer and Connor have already met and hit it off well enough that they’ve sucked in Shelia, Anshil, and Patty.”

“Really?” I said, easily recalling the faces behind each of the names, along with each of their respective talents. It was an odd combination, but potentially a good one. A really, really good one. “Do they know about the grant yet?”

“No, we’re fairly certain they don’t,” the customed man replied with a shake of his head. “However given, how well they’re hitting it off, Lissa is wondering if they should somehow find out early. It’ll give them some extra time to cook and put forth a better proposal.”

“Do it,” I said, unable to help but feel curious as to what they might come up with. “Was there anything else?”

“Nope, nothing that we can’t sort ourselves at least,” the elf answered back, his fingers swiping at the tablet. “Oh, and your food should be arriving…now.”

Appearing as if on cue a bare chested satyr bounded out from a path adjacent from ours, carrying a silver platter in his hand while maintaining a rather decent pace all things considered.

“Here you are sir,” was all he said a few seconds later as he handed me the platter before turning on a hoof and making just as efficient as an exit, freeing me to do the exact same but towards Joshua and Sandra.

Now I’m sure by this point you’re all starting to wonder just where exactly this is all going, and likely too when that fairy I mentioned is about to show up. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that, what’s important right now is that we lay the groundwork as to not only why she showed up, but why she picked me instead of literally anyone else at the gala.

And to do that, we have to talk about Felicia. A little bit at least.

Now there’s a lot I can say about her. Happy things. Sad things. Really, really angry things. But truthfully none of that matters because everything that you guys need to know about her and how she affected my life right now can be summed up in a few sentences.

She told me we were having a baby.

We made plans to get married.

She told me that the baby wasn’t mine.

We broke up.

My parents both unexpectedly got sick, and after an all too short battle with the disease, died.

Yeah, that’s pretty heavy and specific stuff as protagonist, or even villain, backstories go. Normally I’m told they just wake up in another world with a suitably vague outline of their past history, and then get right on living without their past ever making a difference.

I wish I could say that my situation was the same, but I’d be lying.

In any case, it was that whole sequence of events that sent my life on a trajectory that I couldn’t have ever imagined. Now as I’m sure you can imagine that trajectory was down. Straight, bullet right into the earth kind of down. So much in fact that if it wasn’t for Joshua and Sandra I don’t know what would have happened. But they stepped in enough to keep me sane, long enough for me to start eating again and start talking to therapist while at the same time throwing myself in more work than I ever thought was possible.

Which again, in its own way contributed to putting me to where I was today.

Now if it wasn’t clear by the way I talk, I used to be a programmer. A really good one that just happened to be working for the right company at the right time as they went public, my work specifically allowing them to fill a particularly obscure niche before anyone else in the industry knew it needed to be filled. A move that earned me a bonus larger than I’d ever seen before. Hell, that bonus was larger than the market value of my parent’s house that I’d moved into, and if any of you remember prices in recent years, that was saying something.

Anyway it was that windfall, plus everything that they had left me that I decided to learn what to do with my money. So naturally of course I joined a community of highly regarded investors, downloaded a stock trading app on my phone, moved my money in, and started trading. Now, in any other situation such a course of action was almost certainly doomed for failure. I barely knew anything about investing, let alone stuff about options, contracts for difference, and all those other fancy trading terms that stock brokers use to take your money.

Not that not knowing it stopped me from getting rich. Like insanely rich.

You guys remember that whole meme stock craze, right? Yeah, well, that was me. Not all of it mind, but pretty much every single stock that took off I had an early stake in, often times an irresponsibly large one. So large in fact that by the time I finally clued into what I was doing I had three commas worth of money in my bank account.

Oh, and before you ask, no, this isn’t that kind of story either, though I have met a pack of insanely rich werewolves once. They were all pretty good people, so long as you never showed your teeth to them and always had a small mountain of meat nearby. Oh and booze too. Lots of lots of booze.

Right, we’re digressing again and we still have more back story to chew through, so let’s get back to it. Once I’d realized what I’d done, I sobered up in every sense of the word. I got even more therapy. I started exercising, enough to lose well over a hundred pounds before putting half that back on in muscle. Along the way, I also picked up a ton of hobbies that kept me away from my computer as much as possible, sure they were still nerdy, but without them I’d be dead by now. Probably. If not worse. Oh and I also moved my money into the kind of broker that only the ultra-mega rich could afford. Yeah, the super-secret double reverse handshake kind that just calls you up on your cellphone out of the blue once they realize you’re One of Them now.

That’s essentially the long and short of how I got here, at this very gala that I was secretly hosting with the intention of giving away millions of dollars in startup grants to people whose companies hadn’t managed to survive the pandemic intact. One thing that I learned early on as I pieced myself back together was that I truly loved helping people, and I saw no better way of doing that than giving away as much of the fortune that I’d essentially gambled my way into as I could. Better yet, if I could do that and help a pair of friends that were quite literally responsible for saving my life in the process, well that was just gravy.

Unfortunately, as I all too soon discovered that later that evening, the universe had a different plan for me.