When the three most powerful men on Earth re-entered consciousness, it was not to the hum of jet engines or the soft leather of luxury seats. No. It was to the squelch of cold mud, the pungent stench of livestock, and the unmistakable sound of someone haggling loudly over fermented goat cheese.
"Ughhh… what the hell," Kael groaned, pushing his face out of the muck. A cabbage rolled past his head like a taunting, leafy reminder that he was no longer in Silicon Valley. "Tell me this is a dream. A horrible, peasant-infested fever dream."
"I think… I'm lying in a dead chicken," Damian muttered beside him, disgust plain in his usually emotionless voice.
"You're not," said Riven. "I am."
The three of them scrambled upright, slick with mud and grime, slipping and crashing into one another like drunk toddlers. Around them, a massive medieval market bustled on, barely noticing their sudden appearance—though a few beastfolk vendors paused to stare at the trio now sitting in a mud puddle like confused, overdressed lunatics.
"Oi! You buying somethin' or just makin' love to the dirt?" shouted a toothless man selling glowing fish out of a barrel.
Kael blinked. "Did that cat-person just talk?"
The man was, indeed, a humanoid feline. Tall, scruffy, orange-furred, with a merchant's apron and an attitude that could curdle milk.
"Oh gods," Kael whispered, spinning around. "Oh gods, it's real. We're in another dimension. This is isekai. I've been isekai'd. I knew I should've signed that manga deal."
Damian stood slowly, inspecting the crowd with calculating eyes. Elves. Beastfolk. Dwarves. Strange beasts hauling carts of glowing fruit. Human peasants bartering with what looked like insect-headed monks.
A young girl tugged on her mother's cloak and pointed at the three muddy men.
"Mommy, why are those nobles covered in poop?"
"We're not nobles," Riven snapped. "We're—"
He stopped. Because no one knew who they were. There were no bodyguards. No cameras. No name recognition. In this world, they weren't CEOs.
They were just three strangers covered in crap.
"This is… inconvenient," Damian said, deadpan.
Kael groaned again. "My neural-linked satellite network is probably floating in low orbit with no idea where I am. My AI is going to have a panic attack."
Suddenly, a massive bell rang overhead. The crowd hushed. A procession of armored knights—half-human, half-lion—strode through the marketplace with ceremonial banners trailing behind them. At the head, a tall woman in gold-encrusted armor stopped directly in front of the trio.
"You three," she said sharply, her golden eyes narrowing. "You don't belong here. I can smell the strangeness on you."
Kael opened his mouth. "Okay, that's vague and mildly offensive—"
"Silence." She turned to her guards. "Take them to the Magistrate. They will answer for their sudden appearance."
"Wait, wait, hold on," Riven raised a hand. "You people have laws about… falling from the sky into a pig cart?"
"No," she said coldly. "But when men appear in the center of the capital market during the Dragon Festival and cause a stampede, we tend to ask questions."
Kael looked around. "Wait, this is a capital?"
"Of course it is," Damian said dryly. "What, did you expect a glowing crystal palace and airships?"
"Yes!" Kael replied, indignant.
The three were promptly shackled with glowing magical cuffs and marched off through the crowd. Riven sneezed as a passing merchant threw spice powder on him for good luck. Kael grumbled under his breath, computing a plan. Damian was already observing every guard's weapon and armor quality.
None of them had a clue where they were. None of the people here knew they were three of the most dangerous men Earth had ever produced.
But something was already stirring in the back of each of their minds: this world wasn't ready for them.
And they were about to make very sure of that
The trio had barely made it a few steps out of the market when the sound of marching boots echoed through the alleyways.
Kael froze, glancing over at Riven. "You know, I'm really not in the mood for a royal procession right now."
"They always seem to find us," Riven muttered, already slipping his knife from his boot. "Let's just take out a few of them, grab some horses, and ride into the night."
"No," Damian said coldly, his gaze scanning the surroundings. "We're in a foreign world with unpredictable magical laws. A direct confrontation would be… inefficient."
As if on cue, the alley in front of them was suddenly blocked off by two dozen armored soldiers, their heavy boots kicking up the dirt like a thunderstorm on the march. These soldiers weren't just any foot soldiers—these were elite guards, clad in shining armor inscribed with glowing runes. They were beastfolk, towering, wolf-headed creatures with claws that could cleave through stone.
One of the soldiers stepped forward. "You three are not from here," he growled. "Surrender peacefully, or we will take you down."
"Yeah, that's not happening," Riven muttered, eyes narrowing. "We're not going down without a fight."
Kael immediately reached for his tech—an emergency gadget stashed in his coat pocket—but it fizzled and sparked uselessly. "I don't know what kind of insane magic this place is running, but it's not compatible with my systems."
Damian was already eyeing the nearest exit, calculating the distance to escape. "We should move—"
But before they could react, the soldiers struck.
The first one lunged at Riven with lightning speed, swinging an enchanted spear. Riven ducked, slashing with his knife and catching the beast's arm. But even as the beast recoiled, two more guards were on him, weapons raised and glowing with magical energy. One of them swung a massive warhammer, the enchanted runes on its surface pulsing with a deep blue light. Riven blocked the blow, but the force sent him crashing to the ground, pinned by the weight of the weapon.
Kael shot a blast of energy from his wrist device—nothing. The magic around them absorbed the energy like a sponge. The guards were well-prepared for anything.
Damian raised his hand, a cold glint in his eyes. "Move," he ordered, trying to push through them with sheer force. But as soon as he attempted to break through their formation, the air itself seemed to fight back. Invisible forces wrapped around him, magic—something that no gadget, no weapon, and no human strength could counter.
"Give up," the lead guard snarled, stepping forward and placing a clawed hand on Damian's chest. "You'll only make this harder on yourselves."
The trio struggled, but it was hopeless. The beastfolk used their own magic to bind their limbs—Riven was chained with enchanted iron, Kael's wrist devices were disabled with a powerful enchantment that blocked all his tech, and Damian was restrained by invisible arcane chains.
They were outmatched.
"Don't make a scene, or you'll regret it," the wolf-headed soldier warned, and with that, they were dragged off, their weapons and tech confiscated.
The cell was made of something between stone and bone, with glowing blue veins pulsing along the walls. It was cold, damp, and smelled vaguely like old bread and dragon sweat.
"Okay," Kael muttered, yanking at the glowing cuffs around his wrists, "I hate this. I hate this. I am a Tier-1 government contractor with a 97% success rating in orbital propulsion tech. I am not supposed to be in fantasy jail."
"Shut up," Riven grunted, already halfway through digging into the floor with a broken spoon he'd stolen from lunch.
"You're not going to tunnel through fantasy concrete with a spoon, Rambo."
"Worked in Colombia."
Damian sat in the corner, deep in thought, legs crossed, eyes closed.
"We need information," he said calmly. "Escape is easy. Orientation is not."
Kael threw up his hands. "Fantastic. So we'll break out of jail, walk out into Dragon-Town, and politely ask the locals for a map?"
Riven looked up. "Exactly that. Except I'm stealing a sword first."
Damian finally opened his eyes. "We start with observation. Every guard here is using low-grade enchanted steel. The runes are crude—early-stage crafting. Not industrialized. The kingdom's tech ceiling is somewhere between Bronze Age and Magical Renaissance."
Kael blinked. "You figured that out from a sword?!"
"From the pattern of their boots."
"God, I hate how you're good at that."
Just then, one of the guards approached. A burly beastman with a wolf's head and a tail sticking out of ill-fitting plate armor. He opened the door with a gruff grunt and dropped a bucket of lukewarm stew on the floor.
"Don't eat that," Damian said instantly. "It's laced with mind-softening herbs."
Kael was already reaching for a spoon. "How do you even know that?"
"I used it on test subjects once."
Kael retracted the spoon like it was radioactive.
Riven stood. "Alright, time's up. Let's do this."
Ten Minutes Later
There were two unconscious guards in the hallway, one of them missing his pants, and Kael was hacking into a glowing orb on the wall that looked like it had Bluetooth but ran on fairy dust.
"I think this is the security orb," Kael muttered. "And I think I'm rewriting its core sigil."
"You think?" Damian asked.
"Well I'm not certified in fantasy cybersecurity, Damian!"
The orb sparked, fizzled, and died. The hallway darkened.
"Lights out. Cameras down," Kael said, smug. "We're ghosts."
"Not yet," Damian said. "We still need recon."
Riven looted a sword off a guard and gave it a lazy spin. "Let's go find out where the hell we are."
Thirty Minutes Later
The trio slinked through back alleys, hopping over crates and stepping around confused chickens with rainbow feathers. They finally emerged onto a rooftop overlooking the kingdom's capital.
It was… insane.
A city of marble towers and glowing windmills stretched before them. Floating islands drifted lazily through the sky, chained down by massive anchors and powered by spinning crystals the size of SUVs. Below, canals filled with bioluminescent water crisscrossed the city, boats steered by fishfolk merchants and golem laborers. Giant, slow-moving wyverns flew overhead with armored riders, while nobles in ornate robes rode horse-sized beetles across stone bridges.
Kael's mouth dropped open.
"Okay, this place is on actual crack. I don't even know where to start with this."
"Magic-based civilization," Damian said. "Functional economy. Mixed racial structure. Heavy reliance on enchantment tech."
"Still no Starbooks, though," Riven grunted.
Kael rubbed his temples. "So we're stuck in a world with beast people, magic water, glowing bugs, and floating land. Great. Awesome. I left a date on read for this."
"We're not stuck," Damian said. "We're stranded. For now. But we're alive. We're skilled. And this world doesn't know who we are…"
His gaze darkened slightly, calculating. "...which means it doesn't know what we're capable of."
Kael cracked his knuckles. "Alright. Operation: Build A Wi-Fi Router From Sticks and Goat Horns is a go."
Riven drew his stolen sword and grinned. "Let's start with stealing some pants. Then we find someone who can explain this messed-up, magic-loaded, feather-dragon infested hellhole."
The three men vanished into the night, shadows moving through an unknown city.
They had no allies, no resources, and no plan.
But they did have ambition, genius, and decades of real-world domination experience between them.
And in this world? That was going to be more dangerous than any magic spell.