Illuminated by the blue light of the screen, my face must have looked terribly exhausted. Yet, my eyes, locked onto the monitor, burned with a feverish intensity.
"I can do this...! Just a little more...!"
Rampaging in the center of the screen was the newest and most brutal raid boss of the wildly popular MMORPG I was currently playing: the
Ordinarily, it was a monster boasting an unreasonable difficulty level, requiring a full party of dozens of players and precise coordination over several hours just to have a chance at defeating it.
But right now, I was facing this colossal boss with 'just the two of us.'
My avatar bounding across the screen - Dantalion.
Of all the playable races, the Demon race was considered extremely difficult to raise. He was an [Archdemon], perched at the very pinnacle of that race.
Pitch-black twin horns resembling a twisted goat's. Giant bat wings sprouting from his back. A gothic coat that looked as if it had been cut from the night itself, adorned with lavish gold-thread embroidery.
And dancing through the air, nestled close to his side and flawlessly parrying the boss's fierce attacks with perfect timing, was another shadow.
A beautiful young girl with flowing, long silver hair, clad in a luxurious blood-red dress. With translucent white skin and crimson eyes that seemed to lock onto prey, her name was Lily.
Her race was [True Vampire].
She wasn't another player. She was my exclusive support NPC, built and customized from scratch by pouring in almost all the salary and disposable time I had ever spent on this game.
I had always found guild relationships and party coordination bothersome, so I strictly stuck to solo play. However, when it came to endgame content, soloing became both systematically and physically impossible.
The answer I arrived at was to create my own exclusive, ultimate partner (NPC) from scratch.
From the complex logic of her behavioral AI and skill timing, right down to her dialogue phrasing and the flavor-text personality setting of Lawful Evil - she was a masterpiece forged with a borderline obsessive passion. That was Lily.
"Lily! [Blood-Binding Thorns]! Stop the boss's movements completely!"
I shouted into the voice chat. Not that the in-game AI directly recognized voice commands, but I triggered a key macro assigned to match those words.
Onscreen, Lily gave a graceful bow and swung her slender arm.
"As you command, my Master."
Along with the cold, sweet system voice flowing from the speakers exactly as programmed, countless blood thorns erupted from the ground, binding the Seraph's massive wings of light so tightly it couldn't move.
Perfect. My carefully constructed aggro management and behavioral pattern predictions were completely outsmarting the system.
The Seraph's HP gauge finally dropped to its last millimeter—falling below 1%.
"This is the end! [Abyss Nova]!!"
Above Dantalion's head, an all-consuming pitch-black sun manifested. It was the ultimate annihilation magic, permitted only to Archdemons, requiring a massive cast time to activate.
Thanks to Lily risking her life to hold the boss down, the casting was already complete.
I clicked the mouse hard, unleashing the black flames.
A torrent of darkness engulfed the entire screen, and the Seraph's death throes shook my headphones. Immediately after, the screen was enveloped in a brilliant white flash.
The boss's HP gauge vanished completely, and the golden word 'CLEAR' leaped to the center of the monitor.
"...YEEEEEAAAHHH!!"
I thrust both hands in the air, completely forgetting it was the middle of the night, and screamed.
Even dozens of players grouped together couldn't beat this raid boss, yet an Archdemon and a Vampire defeated it—just the two of them. It was undeniably a monumental achievement: the server's first-ever solo subjugation.
My heart was pounding like a firebell. I could feel every pore on my body open up from the sheer sense of accomplishment and extreme excitement.
Now, time to check the long-awaited drop items. The strongest weapon, or an unknown rare material?
I regripped the mouse with trembling hands, hovered the cursor over the glowing treasure chest icon, and—
—At that moment, my vision warped and twisted.
The hard plastic sensation of the mouse abruptly vanished from my right hand, just as I was about to click the glowing treasure chest icon.
"Huh...?"
A dumbfounded voice leaked out. The monitor screen distorted like static on an old CRT TV, and immediately after, an intense flash burned my retinas.
"Whoa!"
I instinctively covered my eyes with my arm. At the same time, the floor seemed to vanish from beneath my feet, and a violent floating sensation - like my internal organs were lifting - assaulted my whole body. It felt like being dragged headfirst into a bottomless swamp.
The whirring of the desktop PC's cooling fan, the distinct silence of my room late at night - everything was rapidly fading away.
Surging in to replace it was an overwhelming sense of 'reality.'
The damp feeling of earth. The grassy smell of vegetation. And the chilly night breeze brushing against my skin.
None of these things could possibly exist in my climate-controlled apartment.
Opening my eyes timidly, I found myself not in my dim room, but in the middle of a dense forest lined with trees so massive I had to look up to see their tops. Through the gaps in the canopy, two moons - one red, one blue - cast an eerie light, instead of the single moon I was used to seeing.
"...This isn't VR, is it."
The MMORPG I was playing was an old-generation game controlled with a keyboard and mouse. I didn't own any full-dive VR equipment that could completely hijack the five senses like this, and frankly, such technology hadn't even been practically applied in the modern era yet.
As I tried to stand up on unsteady legs, I noticed a jarring incongruity.
My line of sight was high. Moreover, my body felt abnormally light. No, it wasn't just a feeling of having a low body weight. There was a terrifying sense of omnipotence, as if unfathomable heat and power were welling up like magma from within me.
I covered my face with both hands, then held them up to the moonlight.
"No way..."
What I saw before me were not the utterly ordinary, calloused hands of a human who constantly mashed a keyboard.
Morbidly pale, marble-smooth skin. At the tips of my fingers grew jet-black claws as sharp as knives.
I hurriedly looked down at my body.
I wasn't wearing a worn-out sweatshirt. It was a pitch-black gothic coat made from the finest velvet, looking as if the darkness of night itself had been woven into it. The intricate gold-thread embroidery reflected the light of the two moons with a dull gleam.
Reaching up to my head, I realized thick horns resembling a twisted goat's were growing from my temples. And on my back, I could clearly feel the weight of giant bat wings folded up like a cape.
"Dantalion... my avatar..."
There was no mistaking it. I had become the very thing I controlled in the game: an [Archdemon], the highest tier of the Demon race.
The texture of the clothes, the hardness of the horns, the torrent of an unknown energy called 'mana' circulating through my body—it was all real. This wasn't a dream or a hallucination.
I desperately suppressed my brain, which felt like it was about to boil over in panic.
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"Calm down, calm down. First, assess the situation. Status!"
Out of my habit as a long-time gamer, I shouted into the void.
Then, a translucent window softly floated up at the edge of my vision.
[Name: Dantalion]
[Race: Archdemon]
[Level: 150 (MAX)]
It was a familiar UI. However, these weren't pixels displayed on a monitor; it was a bizarre sensation, as if they were being projected directly onto my retinas, or into my brain. The massive HP and MP numbers, the array of game-breaking skills I possessed - they were exactly the same as in the game.
"Is the system alive? In that case, I should contact the devs... No, first I need to log out!"
Clinging to a sliver of hope, I darted my gaze to the bottom right of the window.
The system menu, meant to close the game and open the door back to the real world.
However, looking at the items that were supposed to be there, I literally gasped.
Friends, Guild, Report to Devs, and Logout.
Every single one of those buttons indicating a connection to the real world was dyed a translucent gray. No matter how hard I willed it or tried to touch them, there was no reaction whatsoever.
"...I can't log out?"
My dry voice, laced with despair, was swallowed by the silent forest.
Was this inside the game, or had I been thrown into a real, different world in the form of my avatar?
Only one thing was certain. I could never return to that six-and-a-half-tatami-mat room again.
That despairing fact raced through my entire body along with the cold night wind.
This was no game. My mind had been trapped inside the body of a top-tier monster known as an Archdemon, and I had been thrown into the forest of an unknown, different world.
"...This is a sick joke, seriously."
I placed a hand on my forehead, about to let out a deep sigh, when it happened.
Rustle.
From the bushes behind me came the faint sound of shifting clothes.
My shoulders jerked. The presence of a monster? I spun around instinctively, preparing to chant a grand-tier magic spell. Perhaps it was the instinct of an Archdemon, but I now understood how to use magic as naturally as breathing.
However, seeing the "shadow" collapsed there, I gasped.
"...Ah."
Illuminated by the pale moonlight was a luxurious, blood-red dress. And spread out above it was beautiful long silver hair.
It was the custom NPC I had poured my everything into creating in this game. The True Vampire, Lily.
"Lily...! You got sent here too..."
I started to rush over, but my feet stopped dead in their tracks. I noticed something abnormal.
In the game, no matter how realistic her graphics were, she was ultimately just a mass of polygons - just data. She didn't breathe, and it was impossible for her to show any irregular movements outside of her idle animations.
But the Lily before my eyes was different.
Her delicate shoulders were faintly rising and falling. In the quiet forest, I could hear the faint suu, suu sound of her breathing in her sleep. And drifting on the wind was something that electronic data could never possibly emit: the sweet, rich scent of roses... and the faint metallic tang of blood.
She's... breathing? Is she alive?
I timidly reached out and touched her white cheek. Perhaps due to her setting as a vampire, her skin was cold as ice. However, it wasn't the feel of hard plastic or a monitor screen. There was a firm elasticity that my fingertips sank into, and a faint but definite pulse - I felt the beat of life.
At that moment.
Lily's long eyelashes trembled, and slowly opened. Vivid, ruthless crimson eyes, like shattered rubies. Those eyes focused, capturing my figure - Dantalion, the Archdemon.
"...!"
The next instant, her movements defied all logic.
There was no preparatory motion to getting up. As if ignoring gravity, she sprang up smoothly and with superhuman speed, fluttering the hem of her dress as she knelt deeply right before my eyes.
A perfect, flawless prostration, her forehead nearly touching the ground. Then, a 'real voice' - not a synthesized audio file through a speaker, but something terribly sweet yet harboring a cold blade at its core - rang out.
"—Please forgive me, my Master."
The resonance of that voice sent a chilling shiver down my spine.
"To think I would carelessly lose consciousness in the midst of our holy war against the Seraph. This Lily has committed a blunder worthy of ten thousand deaths... I will gladly accept whatever punishment you deem fit."
"Uh, ah, no... wait, Lily," I called out to her in confusion.
These weren't lines programmed into the game. She was now judging the situation of her own volition and weaving her own words.
The flavor text I had written when I created her flashed back into my mind.
[Alignment: Lawful Evil] [Values absolute loyalty and discipline, but her underlying behavioral principles are extremely ruthless. She eliminates anything that becomes an obstacle to her Master without a shred of mercy.]
In the eyes of Lily as she raised her head, there swirled a fanatical devotion toward me, right alongside an unfathomable murderous intent directed at our surroundings.
"...And so, my Master. What kind of place is this? A drastic change from our previous scenery, there is a terribly impure air drifting about."
Lily smoothly stood up, placed her slender fingertips to her chin, and cast a cold glance at the surrounding forest.
"The situation is unclear, but it is obvious that someone has committed the cardinal sin of interfering with our holy war and teleporting us to such a backwater."
A sinister, crimson magical energy began to crackle and gather in the palm of her hand.
"Give the order, my Master. For a start, I shall torture every lowly lifeform lurking in this forest and extract information about the mastermind. After that, I will reduce this entire area to ashes and prepare it as our temporary base."
"...Huh?"
"Naturally, I will not conduct inefficient interrogations. If I tear the limbs off a hundred of them, at least one is bound to spill the beans."
Smiling beautifully, Lily declared something utterly atrocious. It was a tone completely devoid of any joking. Her Lawful Evil setting had manifested flawlessly in this real world, without the slightest deviation.
I had obtained the mighty power of an Archdemon, but at the same time, I had inherited a fanatical, beautiful 'bomb' that could trigger a mass slaughter with a single misstep. At this moment, I finally, completely understood that fact.
Above Lily's pale, delicate palm, crimson mana crackled, scattering ominous sparks.
The surrounding trees, struck by the overwhelming bloodlust and magical energy radiating from her, rustled their leaves as if shivering in fear.
This was no joke. Looking at the dark gleam of joy dwelling in her eyes, I knew at a glance that she was entirely serious about literally "dismantling" every living, breathing thing in this forest.
Bad, bad, bad! It hasn't even been five minutes since we got teleported, and this whole area is going to become a sea of blood because of me!
Desperately hiding my panic so she wouldn't realize I was just an ordinary guy on the inside, I spoke out, consciously projecting the lowest, most dignified voice possible.
"Wait, Lily. Withdraw your mana."
She stopped dead.
Lily's shoulders gave a start, and the lethal magic gathered in her palm suddenly dissipated like mist.
"...I apologize. Did I overstep with my own judgment?"
Lily smoothly lowered her eyes and bowed her head respectfully once more.
It seemed the [Lawful] aspect of "the Master's orders are absolute" had just barely overpowered the [Evil] aspect of her indiscriminate destructive impulses. Letting out a massive sigh of relief in my heart, I offered a plausible facade.
"Indeed. We have been teleported to an unknown territory. In our current situation, where it is unclear what factions operate behind the scenes, burning down the forest recklessly would be akin to broadcasting our location to the entire world."
"..."
"First, calm yourself. We must not provoke our surroundings with unnecessary bloodshed. Everything must wait until we have an accurate grasp of the situation."
I had intended to coat my true feelings of "I'm scared, so please stop" and "I don't want to stand out" as thickly as possible.
"...!"
Lily's head snapped up as if she'd been struck.
Her crimson eyes were now piercing me with a heated, reverent gaze, as if she were overcome with emotion.
"I see...! As expected of my Master. Yielding to momentary emotion and feeding the enemy information through pointless slaughter is the height of folly. First, you intend to uncover the laws and power dynamics of this world beneath the surface, to flawlessly 'smoke out' the enemies behind the scenes...! Ah, I am so ashamed of my own short-sightedness!"
...I feel like she's independently arriving at a terrifying interpretation, but at least she stopped trying to burn down the forest, so whatever.
Feeling like correcting her any further would expose my true colors, I remained silent and gave a magnanimous nod.
"As long as you understand. Rise, Lily."
At my words, Lily stood up with graceful movements.
I looked out over our surroundings once more.
It was a dense forest lined with trees so massive I had to look up to see their tops.
"Now then..."
I focused my consciousness on my own back.
The giant bat wings growing from around my shoulder blades. When I concentrated on them, they spread wide with a loud whoosh, acting exactly as if they had been there since I was born.
They move. They really are a part of my body...
As I clenched my hand, tipped with sharp claws, I felt the torrent of an immense "mana" circulating within my body.
Right now, I was undoubtedly a monster wielding game-breaking power.
However, as long as I didn't know the "standard of strength" in this world, there was no guarantee I could run rampant like I did in the game.
"First, we either need to clear this forest or find a vantage point where we can grasp our current location. I want to avoid moving around recklessly and exhausting our stamina, though..."
"As you will. Then, I shall go ahead and scout the perimeter. Should any enemies lurk about, too repulsive for my Master's eyes, I will 'dispose' of them without a sound."
Lily made this deeply disturbing proposal without batting an eye.
Her loyalty was appreciated, but if I let her act on her own, there was no telling what kind of atrocities she'd commit behind my back.
"No, we go together. I cannot afford to lose you, after all."
"...! Master...!"
Lily's cheeks flushed. She clasped both hands in front of her chest and floated a rapturous expression.
Just as the words implied, she was my sole ally in this unknown world, an existence I couldn't let go of. But apparently, in her mind, it had been translated into the ultimate killer pick-up line.
"Let's go. Do not neglect your guard."
I folded my wings and began to walk, feeling the cold earth beneath my feet. Slightly behind me, the vampire in the blood-red dress followed without making a single footstep.
What would happen from here on out? How were we going to survive? My anxiety was endless, but I couldn't just stand there.