Chương 1: Vivisari

Vivi opened her eyes to the Burial Room of the Ashen Hierophant. Having run the final boss fight of Seven Cataclysms at least a thousand times, she instantly recognized the scenery surrounding her. She groggily pushed herself up against the armrest of the massive obsidian throne, blinking around at the yawning spires enclosing the arena. Lava bubbled a dozen feet away, heat licking at her face, the sensation strangely vivid.

"What?" she mumbled, head foggy.

"Where… how…?" Hazily, she looked down at herself. She was dressed in a hooded black robe covering her from neck to ankles, a thick, luxurious garment gilded with swirling purple designs. It was a familiar piece of gear. As the best-in-slot robes for mages, she wore them around constantly. But they'd never felt so real. Uncomprehending, she tugged at the fabric, and it shifted across her skin. The natural conclusion was that she'd fallen asleep still logged into the massively popular VRMMO The Seven Cataclysms.

But there was one problem with that. Technology was improving fast, but even the most advanced games couldn't imitate real life. Not to this degree. The sound of bubbling lava, the sweltering heat, the feel of this robe brushing against her skin—those subtleties couldn't be imitated.

"What in the world?" Unsteadily rising to her feet, Vivi swept her gaze around the Ashen Hierophant's arena, her brain working into overdrive.

"[Status]," she said. A screen appeared in front of her.

Vivisari Vexaria <Usurper of the Ashen Throne> (Vanguard) Level 2109 Demon [Archmage] STR: 162, 196 AGI: 102, 342 CON: 1, 188, 232 MAG: 24, 923, 239 WIS: 7, 693, 326 For a long while, she stared at the status screen, numbly trying to comprehend what had happened.

"Might have gone crazy, I suppose," she said. Her voice sounded weird to her own ears—like it wasn't her own. Because it wasn't her own. She looked down at her pale white hands. The creases were in the wrong spots. That might seem like something a person wouldn't notice easily, but she did so instantly. She traced one of the lines, then closed that hand into a fist. She shivered. Her hand quested up to touch her cheeks next, and she marveled at how realistic the sensation was. She was definitely here, in the flesh.

There was no denying that. And it was no dream; she would have woken from shock alone. On top of that, she wasn't even in her own body, but that of her character, Vivisari Vexaria. As for the name… look. She'd made the character when she was fifteen. Sure, she could have changed it, but she'd grown attached to the slightly edgy imaginations of her younger self. And honestly, she'd only sort of outgrown that love for flair. Enough so that she recognized, fine, it was dramatic, but she secretly kept liking it anyway.

"But how?" Vivi asked, head spinning. Yesterday had been a repeat of her not-very-admirable lifestyle: grind all day, go to bed with bags under her eyes. Nothing explained her transmigration. Certainly she hadn't thrown herself in front of a bus to save a clueless child, then after being splattered across the road, been granted an audience with a sympathetic goddess with an offer to reincarnate into a world of her choice.

She giggled at the idea, the noise tinted with panic more than amusement, and she cut herself off and took a calming breath. Well, anyway. She needed to focus on reality. No amount of pinching herself was helping. It was only reminding her how real the tactile feedback was. It made no sense whatsoever, but she was here, in the Burial Room of the Ashen Hierophant. Almost because of how strange it was, she focused on the practical. On what she could actually do, as a way to distract herself.

"[Inventory]," she commanded. She scanned the grid-like display, flipping through pages to confirm. The scant few items—a set of potions and some miscellaneous consumables—jogged her memory as to what she'd been doing when she had last logged off. Seven Cataclysms was a skill-based game, with almost all attacks being dodgeable or counterable, so technically, it was possible to clear even late-game raids solo. Even the final raid.

And she'd done just that: cleared The Burial Room of the Ashen Hierophant on mythical difficulty. She had earned the unique title Usurper of the Ashen Throne for it. Point being: in Seven Cataclysms, unsecured items and gold were dropped on death, so she'd been doing those challenge runs with a set of minimal supplies. She had barely anything. Her best gear was equipped at least, since that wasn't dropped on death.

"[Guild]," she voiced next. Unlike when she'd tried to open her inventory, the voice command didn't yield a status screen. Brow furrowing, she tried again.

"[Guild]. [Guild Status]. [Guild Management]." None worked. Hm. So, the game functions weren't one-to-one. Whatever had happened, she couldn't rely on this world to act identically to the game she knew.

"[Skills]?" A screen cram-packed with abilities appeared. Nothing looked out of place, but it would take a while to confirm.

"[Quests]." No response. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"[Map]." Nothing.

"[Crafting]." That was interesting. But she would deal with that later.

"[Friends]." Once more, no result.

"[Settings]." To be fair, she hadn't expected that one to work.

"[Log Out]. [Quit]. [Force Quit]. [Request Moderator]. [Report]?" Nor any of those. She rattled off a few more commands to little avail. It seemed there were a few screens she could use, but most of the meta-functionality of the game had been removed. She mulled over what to do. There was one immediate factor that would determine her next steps. Could she die? Rather, could she respawn? There were no resurrection spells in Seven Cataclysms.

When a player died, they were reborn in the nearest temple, all unsecured items and gold dropping on their death point. Did real life work that way?

"Not that this is real life," she muttered. Though it was. Her head hurt thinking about it. If she could die, she needed to be cautious. A visit to a temple would give an answer, so that was her first goal. To the nearest city then? Scanning her ability list, she found the skill she was looking for: [Greater Warp]. Before she teleported out, she hesitated. There was one more thing she needed to check. Looking around, her eyes landed on the obsidian throne.

Walking behind to gain access to a large, smooth section of glassy black material, she rubbed her sleeve around to polish herself a mirror. Her in-game avatar stared back.

"Oh, no," Vivi said with dawning horror. Her flair for the dramatic extended beyond how she named her characters.

"Why?" she groaned. She had long curling demon horns, which she tugged on with amazement. A pale face with a neutral expression and bored red eyes. Long white hair that cascaded down to her mid-back. All of that was fine. It was in the realm of normalcy for a fantasy-world character. But one particular aesthetic choice made her wince. She traced a finger down her cheek, mortification growing at the two blood-red tattoos starting at her eyes and descending, imitating tear stains. She sighed.

Maybe she had enjoyed the aesthetic when it was an avatar in a game—and secretly did even now—but now that she was living in this body, she looked at her reflection and decided, no, definitely not. She would not be walking around in public with red tear trails going down her cheeks. There wasn't much evidence supporting the claim, but she did have some sense of shame. Unfortunately, scrubbing furiously at the marks didn't help.

"At least I have magic? [Illusion] should be able to fix it?" As a band-aid solution, anyway. Getting rid of the distinguishing trait was probably smart from a tactical perspective, regardless. She wanted to gather information about the world and remain incognito. As the game's highest-ranked player, and someone who had been—what, reincarnated? —straight into the game's world, she suspected the name 'Vivisari Vexaria' would draw attention.

And there probably weren't many demons walking around with blood-trail eye tattoos. So, some quick magic to clean up the mistakes of her former self, then off to civilization.

"Magic," she said, musing over the word. Magic was cool. She had always thought that. She picked some variant of a mage class in every game she played. If a game didn't have a mage class, that usually meant she wasn't playing it. One of the reasons she'd fallen in love with Seven Cataclysms was the excellent design behind abilities and especially spells. There were a seemingly endless number, and each had been so fun to use.

The visual design of the game was unparalleled for its time, and the tactile and other sensory feedback, while primitive, was good enough that certain spells and fights could get her heart racing even after tens of thousands of hours of gameplay. Magic in real life—for a twisted meaning of that phrase, 'real life'—was even cooler. And it didn't work at all like how it did in Seven Cataclysms.

She would only realize she should be disturbed after the fact, but her brain knew what to do despite having definitely never cast a spell before. Mentally reaching inward to a glowing ball of energy sitting somewhere high in her stomach, she funneled mana through the many channels running through her body and extruded that white-hot resource into the air. And then things really got weird.

Through instincts she shouldn't have, she molded the mana with her mind, shaped it, twisted it into proper form, folding long strands of molten energy into swirling shapes and patterns that began to take on their own meaning. Until eventually, somehow, she had finished.

"[Illusion]," she incanted. The air in front of her shimmered, and she was done. She peeked into the glassy mirror of the obsidian throne and confirmed she no longer had red trails running down her eyes—and also, the recognizable design of the Vestments of the Voidwalker had lost its purple designs to appear instead as plain black robes. Those too, after all, might draw attention, and it wasn't like she had a change of clothing on hand. But more importantly.

"What was that?" Nothing had felt unusual about the process of channeling and shaping mana. It had felt as natural as breathing, something she'd done a million times before. And it had definitely been her first time casting magic. Where had that familiarity come from? It wasn't like a VRMMO like Seven Cataclysms could hook so thoroughly into a person's brain.

While she loved how diverse the spells were, actual spellcasting was as simple as invoking the appropriate vocal commands or using an assigned series of gestures. So she hadn't just been given a new body. But also a new mind? Or rather extra stuff had been packed in. Stuff appropriate to the character, Vivisari Vexaria. That was… weird? But kinda cool? She had extremely mixed feelings. A person's mind was what made them them. That said, she felt like the same person.

She was certain nothing else about her had changed. She'd just picked up a few tricks. Still, it was bizarre enough to unnerve her. As weird and slightly terrifying as it was suddenly having the instincts of an experienced spellcaster lurking in her brain, though, she had just used magic. In a far realer way than any game ever could imitate. That made up for almost anything.

Forcing herself to move past the experience—in the same way she was ignoring the whole, somehow-in-a-different-world thing—she began to layer protective spells into herself.

"[Adamantine Aegis]."

"[Shell of the Fallen]."

"[Mind Fortress]."

"[Vortex of Negation]." And so on and so on. That process she went through whenever preparing for a serious fight. Each spell was fascinating to cast, requiring a different shaping of mana to create the desired effect. She added two more effects to the list, just in case.

"[Invisibility]."

"[Conceal Presence]." By the time she was done, she'd gotten a good taste for what casting real magic was like, and there was a satisfied buzzing in her skull. Yes, she was very much going to enjoy messing around with what she could do. But later. She had more important goals. Ready for whatever she might find in the capital, she began casting her final spell. [Greater Warp]. But halfway through shaping the mana, she crashed into a brick wall with a sudden realization.

She couldn't complete the spell, because she had no target. There were no [Warp Anchors]. Her items and levels had carried over, but her warp points had been wiped clean. She pulled the mana back into herself, grimacing. It wasn't a pleasant experience. But releasing that much half-shaped mana into the air would result in something catastrophic, with the mana taking a life of its own and choosing what it wanted to be. Which never ended well. Magic, given a choice, preferred chaos.

Another aspect of spellcasting she just knew somehow.

"Huh." So [Greater Warp] was out. The next best option was Fast Traveling, but she wasn't able to access the map.

"Am I going to have to walk?" she asked incredulously. Well, no. She had spells to speed up travel, flight and acceleration to name the obviously useful ones, but the world of Seven Cataclysms was huge. Even with those, it would take a while to move any great distance.

"There's still [Gate To Nearest City]," she mumbled.

"That'll get me to Prismarche, but Meridian is thousands of miles south." Not that she had any idea how space would translate. Clearly, she couldn't trust everything in this world being one-to-one. But the final Cataclysm had been as far north on the continent as possible, and Meridian, the capital city of the human kingdoms, was roughly two-thirds down.

"Can I really not warp?" Getting to Meridian was important for a few reasons: that was where both the Guildhall and her personal house were located, and thus a majority of her items… assuming those hadn't been wiped clean too, which she hoped wasn't the case. When she looked at her status, she was still in the Vanguard guild, so that at a minimum hadn't disappeared. Even if she couldn't access the Guild tab.

Unfortunately, she couldn't think of a way to instantly transport herself there if [Greater Warp] had no [Warp Anchors] to link to. Just like in the game, she'd have to get there manually and set one. That meant tons of hours on a Greateagle, probably, or flying herself. That didn't actually sound so bad. Flying through the sky and watching the world of Seven Cataclysms pass underneath her? She was marveling at simply existing right now.

The arena of the Burial Chamber was breathtaking, the huge black stone spires engulfing her like the open maw of a giant beast, lava surrounding her on all sides. There was a whole world like this to explore. What would the Sky-Pillar Range look like? The Ossuary Isles? The Gloamwoods? And a thousand other places that had been stunning even in the digital world, much less this higher fidelity one. What would the people be like? So, while inconvenienced, she didn't find herself too upset.

Logically speaking, it was better to visit a smaller city first, anyway.

"Off to Prismarche, then." She dropped a [Warp Anchor], took a breath, then activated a skill.

"[Gate To Nearest City]."