Lucas hit the button, and everyone vanished. Then, a second later, the three guards that had left reappeared in the room with him.

Well, that’s odd, Lucas thought as he walked forward a little. It was strangely quiet, but when he walked forward a few steps, the door burst open and a group of adventurers rushed into the chamber. He quickly apprised the group and saw that they were of the usual class distribution: one Fighter, one Healer, one Mage, and one Rogue with a bow.

They froze after entering the room, however, and a prompt appeared:

If you would like to create an entrance monologue to greet players with, please do so now. When you are satisfied, press the Finish button. If you want to try again, press the Retry button.

[Finish] [Retry]

What the heck am I supposed to say? Huh? Lucas had been expecting to fight, not do improv. He knew that every good villain needed a speech, but he hadn’t actually planned anything out. Hmm . . . It shouldn’t be too long, but still impactful. But a bad opening line would be a disaster. I’ll be mocked across the Internet forever and turned into a meme if I screw this up. But . . . Wait, wouldn’t that draw even more attention that way? And isn’t my goal to get as much attention as possible so that people are interested again? The more he thought about it, the more it seemed obvious that the more cringe-worthy and meme-tastic it was, the more people would post and share it with each other.

Yup, gonna go the other direction. He clicked the “Retry” button so that he could start fresh, instead of just sitting there for two minutes not saying anything.

“Away, you scullion! You rampallion! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!” Lucas shouted, having no idea if the literary reference would actually make a good taunt as he blurted out the first words he could think of.

Your entrance monologue has been recorded. Combat will begin in three seconds.

Great. Lucas readied his staff and watched the four enemies, who were slowly starting to move again as if coming back to full speed. If he had to guess, he would have said that he only had a few seconds before the Mage finished channeling his first spell. That might be trouble depending on what he cast, but Lucas knew that he could always blast the group into nothing with a series of Chain Lightnings if he had to. Before that, however, he was anxious to try out his new spell, Meddling Minds. The fact that he had been handed a combat scenario that mirrored a real raid was just an added blessing.