Chương 2: (2) B1 C2: Waking Up in a New World

I didn't know how long I was asleep, but when I awoke, I found myself staring at a dazzling night sky the likes of which I hadn't seen since I was a child. An impossible number of blinking lights, each brighter than the last, dotted the sky above me. It would've been beautiful if it hadn't been for how wrong it was.

The world's pollution had been horrible for years, and had gotten so bad that some communities had simply forgotten how beautiful the night sky truly was, so the sight above me only left me alarmed and confused. As my gaze continued to bore at the expanse above me, my attention was drawn to the side, where I found two moons, both double in size and different in color than the pale moon I was used to, hanging in the sky like a pair of watchful eyes.

One moon was bright orange, like the setting sun, and lacked the usual craters and scars I'd expect dotting its pristine surface. It was strange to look at, as its flawless surface made it feel more like a hole in the atmosphere than a celestial body circling the planet. The other moon, on the other hand, was a little larger than the orange one. Its purple surface was marred with scars, craters, and even a few dark green lines of energy that reminded me of a botched surgery that hadn't fully healed yet.

Unfortunately for me, I recognized both of those moons. They were Shadow and Dawn, the twin moons of FFO. According to the lore, Dawn was killed in a hunting accident that left Shadow, her elder sister, traumatized for life.

She spent the next few decades studying the dark art of necromancy in an attempt to bring her sister back to life, but ultimately failed during a cataclysmic ritual that killed hundreds of thousands of people, including herself, while leaving half of her homeland inhospitable for hundreds of years. The devastation was so severe that the gods, recognizing the dangers of necromancy, created the two moons as a warning to the mortals of the world to keep away from the dark school of magic.

I sat up, my mouth gaping in shock as I stared at the two moons. Then, I looked down at my body. My eyes first caught sight of my knees. They were smaller than I remembered, each one as large as a small baseball, and completely flawless. The skin upon my legs was pale, but pristine in a way that I could only describe as polished. My thighs were smooth and lean, not thin and frail like they were supposed to be, and there was a layer of muscle underneath that I had no right to wield.

When I looked at my torso, I saw two round lumps of flesh hanging from my chest. Two breasts, each just a tiny bit larger than the ones I was born with, hung proudly from my flesh. For a moment, bewilderment and confusion coursed through me. Was I dreaming? Had I gone into a coma, and was now experiencing what coma dreams were like? Was I dying? Has somebody force fed me their latest concoction of hallucination-causing drugs?

I stood up in a daze, my mind scrambling to find an explanation for the strange body I now controlled. My hands twitched, almost tempted to explore the strange form I now controlled, but my mind was too overloaded with concern for me to move a muscle. After a few seconds of panic, my voice finally released a loud sound that seemed to summarize all of my thoughts into one phrase.

"WHAT THE FUCK!" … It took me a few minutes to calm my breathing and regain control over my own mind. I looked up, toward the moons hovering in the night sky. The twin moons were a well-known lore point in the game, though they sat at a point in the sky that most players never bothered to turn to. The average gamer, after all, never looked up. Most of the time they were only ever seen inside cutscenes or lorebooks, but the sight in front of me was more real than any cutscene could ever be.

"I'm inside FFO?" I muttered in disbelief. The sound of my voice was about as natural as an indoor snowstorm, as it was light and full of youthfulness that I'd never heard from myself before. I was in a new body, and in a world that I was more familiar with than normal life. I took another deep breath as the truth of my new surroundings sunk deeper into my mind. I was inside FFO. It was an impossible thought, yet the truth was obvious simply by looking into the night sky.

I thought back to my years of playing, specifically to my actions and the consequences that I'd ignored while making them. On one hand, FFO was a video game that I spent an entire 15, 000 hours in. It was my entire life. I knew everything there was to learn. I knew every line of lore, every secret boss, every unusual trader that sold things that they shouldn't have had access to, and every secret the major NPC factions kept close to their chests.

I knew knowledge that should've been impossible to know, like the locations of where the rarest gathering materials spawned, where the nests of the most valuable monsters were, and where certain Treasured items were found. On the other hand, FFO was a video game that I never really took seriously, from a moral standpoint. Although I'd sunk 15, 000 hours into it, FFO was still only a source of entertainment that I, along with millions of other players, messed around in because we were bored with everyday life.

Although I played a vitality-focused tank during my career, that didn't mean my character was a lawful person. I was no paladin, nor was I the stereotypical knight in shining armor. I had killed innocent NPCs in the name of acquiring good loot, had completed evil quest lines just so I could see the progress bar go up, and had destroyed entire organizations when their NPCs annoyed me. It was, again, a video game, so it never really mattered what I did.

If FFO was real, and I now found myself inside of it, did that mean my previous actions had really happened? I'd done some truly horrible things. I quickly shook my head, desperately hoping to distract myself with something else. The thought of item rarities brought my mind to my memories and, in a panic, I immediately turned back to my body as I examined my skin in more detail. I was pale—unbelievably so, with skin almost as blue as icewater.

When I looked down at the tips of my fingers and toes, I saw that my skin had taken on a dark tint that reminded me of frostbite. My fingers were bony and thin, almost like I had the hands of an elderly person, and the dark blue veins of my flesh popped out in the places where my skin was thin and weak. I touched the tips of my fingers together. My fingers didn't feel wet, but they were as cold as winter snow. I flexed my fingers, turning my hands as I examined my hand in more detail.

My nails were long and black, as if made out of obsidian, and were curved into sharp points that reminded me of slender arrowheads. I put a finger against my neck and concentrated on the feeling of my skin beneath my fingertips. My body was as cold as ice, but I ignored the temperature as I sharpened my focus. The flesh beneath my fingers was still, like a statue, and I felt myself take a shaky breath as another realization dawned on me. I had no pulse.

I brought my fingers up to my mouth and paled even further when I felt four sharp fangs growing adjacent to the front of my mouth. Each of them was just a tiny bit longer than the regular teeth adjacent to them, though the pair of fangs on my bottom jaw were slightly shorter than those on the top. When I clenched my jaw as hard as I could, I was barely able to feel the sharp edges of my fangs poking the lining of my inner lip. A new body, pale skin, no pulse, and fangs exactly where I'd put them only moments ago.

Oh, God. I was the vampire character I'd just created. There was no other explanation. The chalice had done as promised, but in a fucked up way that I hadn't expected.

"Fuuuuck," I groaned in horror. The realization of what I was sent shivers down my spine, and the sensation twisted my gut until something unwanted began to arise from within my stomach. I put a hand against my abdomen as I crouched down to take a deep breath, "Okay… Calm… I need to stay calm…" Did this mean my old life was over? Was I now a vampire, permanently, or was this all an elaborate attempt to introduce some sort of game update that the developers wanted to test? I had to be, right?

After another moment of contemplation, I nearly laughed at the thought before I shook my head. I turned back to the forest around me, my eyes examining my surroundings as I continued to focus my breathing. Everything was too real—this was no dream, nor was it a surprise game update. This was really happening.

"If this is truly the world of FFO, then it's likely it'll use the same leveling system from the game," I realized after a moment. I took another deep breath to calm my nerves. Then, with a firm voice, I called out, "Status." Immediately, a red and black status screen appeared in front of me, as if hovering in the air. Its appearance was slick, like glass, but without the fine and dangerous edge normal glass would've had.

I first tested to see if it was solid, and found my answer to be 'Yes' as my fingers pressed firmly against it. I couldn't move the screen, but I could at least touch it. I briefly wondered if I could use it as a stepping stone, but then I shook my head and focused on the contents of the window itself.

Evelyn Moore Untitled Vampire Fledgling - Level 1 VP: 100 / 100 (+20 /Min) BP: 0 (+100 /Bite) BB: 100 / 100 (+20 /Min) CE: 100 / 100 (+20 /Min) 100 Blood Points Required to Reach Level 2 Attributes Menu MALICE: 10 25 Devour Damage If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

20 /Minute VP Regen HERESY: 10 25 Hex Damage 20 /Minute BB Regen UNDEATH: 10 100 Vitae Points (VP) -0 BP Cost for Devour Abilities AUTHORITY: 10 100 Blood Barrier (BB) 20 /Minute MP Regen THIRST: 10 100 Bite Capacity 75 Critical Devour Damage PROFANITY: 10 100 Curse Energy (CE) 75 Critical Hex Damage Equipment No Equipped Weapon DMG: 0 CRIT DMG: 0 No Equipped Amulet No Equipped Left Ring No Equipped Right Ring No Equipped Armor Total Defense: 10% Fortitude, -10% Resilience Evelyn Moore.

I'd expected to see 'Evelyn' there, as that was the name I'd given my new character, but I didn't expect to see my real last name alongside it. Never in my five years of playing had I ever given FFO my real information, not even when I was tempted to buy cosmetics with real money. I was a free to play player, and I was damn proud of that fact. Turning my attention back to the status screen, I looked up at the name displayed at the top.

'Moore' was my real surname. How in the Hell did FFO know that? My name being 'Evelyn' meant that I had indeed successfully used the Lost item from the Azakazan boss fight, as if my pale body and unbeating heart weren't proof enough. Where the screen displayed my class and level were new terms, 'Untitled' and 'Fledgling Vampire'. Monsters in FFO were classified by their ranks, rather than their levels, and 'Fledgling' was the monster rank that spanned from level one to level one hundred.

It was nice that I still had a level, and not just a rank that generalized how powerful I was.

'Untitled' on the other hand, wasn't as easy to understand. From its position, I knew it was going to be my equivalent of a class, though as far as I knew Monsters didn't have classes. Near the bottom, my Fortitude and Resilience stats were unexpected. Not the stats themselves—I was familiar with them—but the values. They were both defense stats. Fortitude protected me from physical damage while Resilience did the same for magical damage, but both were usually only acquired by wearing equipment.

I was quite literally naked, with no equipment in sight, so finding both of these values different from the 0% I'd otherwise expect was unusual. I took another breath before I turned my attention to the attributes menu so I could inspect my new attributes and affixes. I hesitated upon looking at my pitiful stats, but managed to push through the disappointment so I could recognize the changes.

Might, Vitality, and Agility had been replaced with Malice, Undeath, and Thirst, while Will, Arcane, and Clarity had been replaced with Heresy, Authority, and Profanity. Each of my new attributes were very vampiric and evil sounding, as if a middle schooler was the one responsible for deciding their names, though the exact details of each attribute hadn't strayed far from their original purpose.

Malice and Heresy, my primary damage attributes, still seemed responsible for my physical and magic damage, though they were now called Devour and Hex Damage, as well as my Health and Barrier regeneration rate, though the exact terms for my health and barrier had changed as well. Undeath and Authority were responsible for my survivability, though my Health had been changed to Vitae and my Arcane Barrier was now a Blood Barrier.

The CE regen from Authority mirrored the original MP regen given from the Arcane attribute, though the 'BP cost for Devour Abilities' was a new affix I'd never seen before. It seemed to be a skill cost discount, which I thought was strange, but when I saw that Thirst didn't give me a max resource like Profanity did for Curse Energy, I understood why. BP, which I assumed stood for 'Blood Points', was most certainly a finite resource.

I had to be careful how I used them, considering I wasn't guaranteed to have access to regenerating that resource at all times. When I looked toward the bottom of Thirst and Profanity, I found that my Critical Devour Damage and Critical Hex Damage didn't seem different from how I expected them to be, though I was left wondering how exactly each of those would function. In the game, there was a default 10% chance for any attack to be a critical hit.

Certain skills or equipment items could increase that chance, of course, but often not more than 25%. Now that I wasn't limited by my keyboard and a monitor, were my attacks still limited by chance, or were critical hits now something I could replicate by skill, rather than luck?

The thought left me feeling queasy, but I wondered if, for example, one of my attacks landed on an opponent's head, was it going to be considered a critical hit, or were my opponents going to be kept alive by their health bars, even if their wounds seemed impossible to survive from?