Chapter 1

The new world

It happened one morning. I had just arrived back from a coffee run. My wife was leaving for work and I was off for the weekend. I decided to spend my time playing True Empire Online.

The game was like an RPG. Containing magic, tech, races and an abundance of different classes. There were two sides to it. Those that wanted to create and those that wanted to play.

I was technically a creator. Though, I didn’t design things and I wasn’t good at running nations, but my friends made up for that.

For the players that enjoyed creating, our task was to form our own country and build it up into an empire. In the process creating new game content for the masses.

Unfortunately there was a limited amount of land in-game, so creators had no choice but to team up.

Forming what were known as guilds. The other type of players explored our lands and completed quests given by NPCs.

My avatar in-game was a young human girl named Aku. Originally she was supposed to be a vampire lolita with insane magic, but through experimentation I came to the realization.

That the vampire race had its drawbacks. While the race gave a 10% boost to magic damage during the night. During the day you lost 10% magic damage.

That wouldn’t be so bad considering day and night cycles were only two and a half minutes away from each other.

You also took holy damage during the day basically negating your natural health regeneration….

Yeah… so I had to do a race change to human, along with a quick class change from war mage to berserker. Thus turning the powerful lolita vampire into the ripper.

While berserker was my main class, I’d spent so much time on the character that I’d unlocked, and maxed out almost every class in the game.

My account was over ten years old. Some might call that a waste of time but when going into public is incredibly stressful you kind of turn to online games for social activity.

Thanks to all the time I spent on Aku, I could basically cover anything my guild was lacking.

Of course that was only if I had the correct gear, proper information, and time to prepare for the next battle.

These days I didn’t really need to switch from berserker. My guild basically had everything covered.

Sometimes I’d borrow some gear from our mage if we needed any extra elemental magic damage but that was rare.

There was also those times when one of my guild mates was to busy and couldn’t make it to a raid or event, so I usually ended up borrowing there main gear in order to fill their roll.

Berserkers were useful but not having a healer is a hard time for everyone. The damage I could deal out as a berserker was just to good to give up.

All I had to do was attack doing heavy damage with my life draining abilities. Every ability I used drained points from my health bar.

Thanks to the stat training I did my health bar was one of the biggest in-game. So big I could be considered a raid boss.

In return for sacrificing HP I was able to do massive physical damage and ignore hits. The hits still did damage but my attacks couldn’t be canceled whenever I got hit. Even knockback based attacks couldn’t force me to take a step back.

New gear was always being added into the game, so it was hard to keep all my classes relevant, although, maxing out so many classes gave me all sorts of passive skills and an abundant amount of stat points.

My avatars stats — excluding vitality — were very well rounded. Due to that it could be considered a jack of all trades.

Of course some skills were only unlocked while you had the relevant class as your main.

You could only switch between classes when out of battle so planning ahead was crucial.

Lifting my cup I took a sip of my hot coffee. I lost myself, basking in the aroma of the fresh beans, and dark rich flavor.

It’s warmth seeped deep into my bones like a hot shower on a freezing cold night. It wasn’t much of a breakfast, but it filled a hole in me that had lingered longer than I could remember.

Soon it will hunger again asking for another sacrifice, but I don’t need to worry about that for another hour.

With a few clicks here and there, the title screen came into view and the games theme started playing.

Normally I wouldn’t pay much attention to it since I’d heard it so many times, but today I decided to feel the music.

TEO — True Empire Online — had one of my favorite title screen songs. It was a mix of EDM and classical music.

A combination of piano and electric distortions serenaded my ears. I was a minute in, when I felt a rush of energy move through me.

“The hype is real!” thank God my wife wasn’t here. She’d probably call me an idiot for getting excited over a silly game.

My hands became a blur as I typed in my username and password. I'd like to say things went well after that.

That I was able to login and see my friends arguing about the latest gear, but that would be far from the truth.

Something went wrong. The moment I hit enter, the screen went black. I looked at the monitor for a second in confusion only to catch my reflection.

Just an old man with dark rings around his eyes. Dark shaggy gray hair hanging from his head. Years of late night gaming showing there toll on my pale skin.

I could use a shower. Why Alice stays with me I have no idea. Though I wouldn’t call myself ugly…. Just… unhealthy.

I could also use a shave and a hair cut… is that a nose hair?! How did it get so long?! Why is that one so long in particular?!

I never got the chance to finish cringing at my nutrient deprived over caffeinated appearance, before the screen came to life, blinding me.

The monitor was ten times as bright, so bright that it filled the room with every color in existence, including one’s that I’d never seen before.

It was as if the creation of the universe was being reenacted by the pixels of my computer screen.

I fell out of my chair letting out a startled “Fuck!” Then felt the floor pull away beneath me. Almost as if I’d fallen through a trap door.

For a total of thirty seconds there was no solid ground. I’m no mathematician, but thirty seconds of free fall is a very, very long distance.

The really weird part was There was no rush of wind just the feeling of freefall. Like I was in a vacuum but not quite that. I could still breathe. I think?

My surroundings were hard to make out. It was as if I was being hit with stadium lights from all sides.

Closing my eyes didn’t help. It was like my eyelids were transparent. The light seemed to burn its way into my brain giving me the worst headache you could imagine.

Think giant hot railroad spikes being driven through your eyes at light speed. Right when I thought my head would evaporate it all came to a stop.

The pain gone. Headache vanished. Freefall no more. Burning railroad spikes poof. Just quiet calmness.

The feeling of landing was interesting. Like falling onto a bed. I didn’t feel a thud or should I say splat?

It was like waking up. No, not quite… it was literally like waking up. I found myself on a comfy mattress.

Over me was one of those bed canapés. It looked strange somehow but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

That wasn’t just fabric it was weird looking. Kind of… leathery? The bed had a strange color scheme to it.

White, black, rust and Jagged were the words that came to mind. Those last two weren’t necessarily colors but that's how I’d describe it.

Is it… leaking? One thing was for sure this was not my bed, but it also wasn’t unfamiliar.

Familiar, but simultaneously foreign. The room looked way different. It was Like… I'd seen it before, but only in a movie.

It looked like… but… that’s crazy. It looked like the room I designed in-game. It was full of mismatching furniture.

The furniture in TEO gives buffs and stat boosts, so I hadn't planned on making it look nice. It was made very evident when I saw a tall dresser facing the wall, and a random cat shaped chair in the middle of the room.

Along with two different chandeliers hanging from strange places. One made of gold and the other of silver. Those would make anyone’s OCD go haywire.

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There was only one window. It was fairly big and let in a lot of natural sunlight. The window was decorated with a cheep blue curtain.

It had a cartoonish duck print on it. Now that I was a bit more in tuned with my surroundings I started to notice the details of the bed and why it weirded me out so much.

The bed while impossibly comfortable… was made of human bones! There were multiple skulls embedded in the headboard with burning blue flames in their eyes.

Black blood slowly oozing from their teeth. Almost like they were clenching their jaws to hard.

Other than that It felt like a cloud. The mattress was made of solidified human souls so entangled that not even God could sort them out.

The covers were a quilt made of thousands of foreskin each one perfectly stitched together, as if done by an insane seamstress.

I would have freaked out, but this all still felt like a dream. At least I hoped it was a dream. Hell, I’d settle for a nightmare really.

I finally noticed what I was wearing. It looked like I was dressed as my game avatar.

Black dragon leather dress with black steel armor draped on top. There was also an enormous great sword on my back.

It gave off a very edge lord vibe. I’d of jumped out the window if it wasn’t for the fact that I couldn't get up.

“The hell!” My voice was strange. I tried to clear my throat. Then did the old doe-ray-me bit, only to be met with the same high pitch. It was that of a child.

This was starting to feel like one of those isekai anime I used to watch. The kind of Japanese cartoon where the main character gets sent to another world.

In all honesty the whole genera had been blown out of proportion and was more of a parody of itself these days.

What I’m trying to say is this stuff doesn’t happen in real life, so how could any of this be real?

I knew of it happening in books and other media so… was this all in my mind?

Maybe I fell out of my chair, hit my head, and I’m now hallucinating? It made sense since everything in here is something I’ve seen before.

Maybe there was something in the coffee I drank this morning? It wouldn’t be the first time Jeremy mixed my order up.

Regardless, I needed to get off the bed. I made all kinds of strange sounds as I desperately tried to roll off the skin covered soul matrass.

Couldn’t help but realize I sounded like a frightened little kid. Now tired I laid there and was forced to think.

I rubbed my two brain cells together creating a spark of an idea. The spark quickly grew into an inferno burning away all other thoughts.

If there had been a light bulb it would have exploded!

I undid the strap for the sword and tried sitting up, but found that the armor was also heavy.

At this point I really wanted to get off the bed. The skulls were rattling and whispering in a strange language. Almost like they were trying to summon some kind of rape demon to skull fuck me. I just about started crying. Where’s Doom Slayer when you need him?

I let out a frightened whimper that only dogs would be able to hear. Then undid the straps of the armor and wiggled my way out the bottom of it. I managed to land on the hard stone floor. “Ow."

Getting up I dusted myself off. Silky dark brown hair hanging over my shoulders. I tried pulling on it only to find it was my actual hair.

It’s so… soft. The silky strands reminded me of my nephews baby hair, except this stuff was a little thicker. Now that I looked at myself I was a lot smaller and slimmer.

My bones no longer ached, I felt as light as a feather and best of all my kidneys didn't feel like they were on fire! The room looked huge to my eyes.

I could see so much detail in the stone walls. every bump and crack. It was like my eyes were bionic. I felt like a kid. Eyes full of wonder and the need to explore. Everything looked so shiny and new. Well, new might not have been the right word. I needed to see myself. Just what the hell happened to me?

I made my way to the dresser. Using my alarming small hands, I managed to pry it from the wall enough to look in the mirror.

You ever see something that made no sense. Like it’s so confusing that your brain can’t process it. This was one of those times. My two brain cells couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation.

What looked back at me was an adorably cute young girl with bright pink eyes. The strange part was the translucent pink hearts set over my irises acting like my pupils. I was actually in my avatar body. My blood ran cold and I felt goosebumps running up and down my body. My legs were trembling. I swallowed bitter saliva. It was the first time in my life that I had ever needed to gulp.

“Well… there’s only one thing left to check.” My voice still felt weird but it was all I could do to keep myself from freaking out. Speaking out loud tended to calm my nerves but when I heard my voice again it only made my blood pressure drop. I felt like falling over but managed to keep myself together.

I couldn’t help myself, I had to know, so I pulled my dress up, and felt… around… only to have my suspicion confirmed.

“It’s gone! My little buddy! My best friend is gone!” The blood drained from my face. My legs gave out and I fell to my knees in disbelief. My vision blurred and I felt really tired all of a sudden. There was a darkness claiming the corners of the room. Slowly but surely coming to swallow me whole. Before I knew it everything went dark and my body was taken by the feeling of falling. I didn’t even feel it when I hit the floor. I had already fainted before I even touched the hard stone.

Awakening once again, unsure of how much time had passed. I tried to get up only to feel the same sensation take over. My vision darkened and I fell passing out once more. This happened two more times before I managed to stop myself.

I laid on the floor for a bit. I remember now. My blood pressure was low so the blood wasn’t making it to my brain. Once I'm on the floor the blood can easily reach my head. That’s why I wake up but the moment I stand the blood can no longer bring oxygen to my brain so I faint. I needed to wait for my blood pressure to normalize before I try standing again. It took a few minutes to pull myself together.

Really wish I had my coffee with me. The caffeine would have brought my blood pressure back up. Though with a body like this I might end up bouncing off the walls. Am I going to have to build up tolerance to coffee again? I have new taste buds. What if I no longer like coffee? New teeth to! How peculiar.

I ran my tongue along my teeth and didn’t recognize my own mouth. It was such a strange feeling. I couldn’t get over all the new sensations. It was almost overwhelming.

You never notice the feel of your body because your so used to it and now that I’m in a new one. It’s like I can feel every inch of it. Everything felt off. Like it was an off-brand version of reality.

The question was, Is it because of my new senses, or is it because this is another world? My organs felt out of place. My heart beat wasn’t right. It beat normally but it was… off beat. Like trying to play a song you've heard so many times on headphones, through speakers. It didn't sound worse or better just different. I felt so out of place like a clown at a funeral.

It took a bit but I finally managed to stand. My legs were a bit wobbly but I was okay for the most part. I just needed to relax a bit and let my situation sink in. I wasn’t quite there yet but this was enough for now. I probably needed a bit more blood flow for this next part so I jumped in place trying to hype myself up. A minute of movement and I was feeling much better. Nothing like a little exercise to get the blood pumping.

“Just how high am I! This has to be some crazy DMT shit….! Right?” I felt a flood of warmth like I’d just seen a cat video. My voice was kind of cute. “Fuck! Shit! Pussy! Bitch! Fuck you dick breath! Eat shit you fucking cunt waffle!” I let out a laugh. I just about fell over, hysteria taking over my mind. There was something hilarious about swearing in a child-like voice.

I thought about the emptiness between my legs. It was so strange. My new body told me there was nothing down there but I could still feel it dangling between my thighs. I wouldn’t say it was touching the floor. It wasn’t small. I’d say it was above average at best.

“Farewell friend, you will be missed. No more date night. RIP.” I would have shed a tear, but there were other things I needed to deal with first. If this was really my avatar then why couldn't I carry my armor and weapon?

I made my way over to the giant obsidian grate sword — doing my best to ignore the hell spawn bed — and tried lifting it. It didn't feel too heavy, but it was heavier than me, so there was no way to balance it with my new body.

Hell, I doubt there's anyone that could use my sword with its massive size. Put simply the weight ratio was terrible. By spreading my feet I managed to hold the weapon like normal, but knew there was just no way I could swing it.

The inertia of the blade would over power me dragging me along for the ride. How could I ever hope to swing something that's way heavier than me. I’d just tip over the moment I was off balance. The sword would be swinging me instead and I’m not as unbreakable as an obsidian grate sword. Then another thought came to bare.

Magic….

“Magic!” I just about jumped for joy. The excitement of being able to shoot lightning from my finger tips made me get excited. “Magic would be so cool! I could be like a badass wizard!” I bounced up and down in excitement. The energy running through me was enough to power a city block or a really big AC unit. The only reason I say AC unit is because the day I bought my own was the day the light bill just about doubled. Who knew terraforming your apartment would be so expensive.

Turning around I gave my attention to the window. Making my way over I started to feel just how real everything was. From the weight of my body, to the feel of the air. Everything was just starting to render for me. It was almost as if the game had just finished loading the area.

I’d still been wondering if this was a dream. Maybe it wasn't a dream, if it was then this would be the most vivid dream I’d ever experienced. Most likely the feeling of rendering was brought on because I was becoming accustomed to my new body and could finally focus on my surroundings.

Like the smell of rotten flesh coming off the bed. Or the nice flowery smell coming from my body. I couldn’t tell where exactly the pleasant smell was coming from. Some kind of lotion or maybe some kind of shampoo. This couldn’t be a natural scent.

The windows opened like doors pushing outward. A strong breeze came rushing into the mismatching room. The air was a bit chilly making me shiver. I recoiled back into the room.

Where’s my coffee? Did it get reincarnated to. Perhaps into some kind of animal or creature. What would coffee turn into? Something warm hyper and bouncy. Like a dog. I didn’t see a dog anywhere. I hope it’s okay. “Poor pupper.” I was getting distracted again. Snapping myself out of my delusion I braced myself for the cold and tried to look out the window. I was probably the size of a nine year old, maybe a little older. That was annoying and would take some getting used to.

It looked like the court yard. There was Clara’s garden. Lots of flowers, vegetables and fruits. There were a few trees. I could only just reach out the window. Pointing my finger I picked a tree at random. “eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a dragon by its claw, If he bites you bite him back. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. You.” My finger landed on a small tree with yellow leaves. Its bark was an ashy grey.

I tried to cast a low level spell. The kind of spell learned at mage level one. I didn't know how to do it, so I winged it.

“Mana bolt?” nothing happened.

That’s lovely, I cant use magic either. If only I had a menu or something. With that thought a translucent blue screen popped up in front of me.

“Neat!” It was a menu. Looking through it, I noticed how similar it was to the game menu, only more complex.

I tilted my head. “There’s no logout button….? bummer.” There wasn’t even a way to contact the developers.

I managed to activate the hot bar and could now see a bunch of skills at the bottom of my vision. This was called a HUD. Normally I had it set to off when at the guild but right now I needed it.

The abilities on my hot bar were for the berserker class. It felt like I was playing VR only with insane graphics and realistic physics.

It was easy to slot in the abilities I wanted. Since I couldn't use my sword I decided to put spells and movement abilities into my hot bar, along with a few potions of focus and healing.

You could usually put a full stack in a single slot. A stack was the max amount of items you could tally together as a single icon. In other words. Five potions fit in one slot. With a few swipes I managed to change my class to war mage. I tried casting a mana bolt using the hot bar.

“Mana bolt.” It worked!

There was a magic circle with a flash of eight runes. A ball of blue energy formed in my hand and rocketed forward. It blasted out the window and tore through the ash colored tree. With my stats the spell had lots of power behind it even though it was a level one spell, and I wasn't using any mage gear.

Thanks to all the upgrades I’d put into the spell it hit hard and fast. Mana bolt was the first spell I’d ever had so I’d maxed it out pretty early on. I could cast it once every five seconds. Which was way better than the original twelve seconds. The cost was also down by half. It was a pretty useful spell consider it did neutral damage as a none elemental spell.

My focus bar appeared in the corner of my vision, along with my health bar. They usually only popped up when you were missing health or focus. My focus bar had gone down a tiny bit and was slowly refilling. A little to slowly.

I stood there in disbelief. The power I felt was incredible. It was almost toxic, addicting even. My hand trembled, I wanted to do more. I wanted to destroy. Just as quickly as the rush of power came it went. A feeling of fear taking its place.

That was a scary thought. Almost became a bad guy there.

Strange how come my regeneration is so slow? My focus bar held way more units of energy than before. Sitting at over ten thousand. How?! That’s like five times as much as I used to have! My health bar was really low. One hit might be enough to finish me off.

That wasn’t right! I looked my stats over. My vitality, wisdom and intelligence weren’t any different. Vitality affected health. Every point was about ten HP. Intelligence affected the amount of focus you had and the power behind your magic. Wisdom affected your focus regeneration and made it so debuffs effected you less. It also made spells cost less but you needed a lot of points to make a real difference.

For example, with my wisdom mana bolt should have only cost like three units of focus but it cost five for some reason, meaning it wasn’t doing anything. Something strange was going on. The rules of TEO were different.

This could wait. Right now I needed to focus, if this was my room then outside should be my castle. I wanted to leave but then thought about my clothes. While the black dragon dress was good with its bonus to strength and decent defense it was a little over the top and uncomfortable.

The dragon scales were poky and the whole thing felt tight even on my small frame. Of course it was, this thing was designed for sexy avatars to wear. Ones with actual curves. Not flat chested washboards like Aku.

I probably looked ridiculous right now. Like a stripper’s take your daughter to work day. Gross.

I tried to open my inventory and was pleasantly surprised when it popped up. I selected some slightly less strange looking clothes.

I’d gotten them from the haunted school event a while back. It was basically a school uniform. Not quite traditional wear but at least it covered more and wouldn’t be constantly stabbing me. Not to mention it matched my eyes.

In a flash of light I equipped the lower level gear. I couldn't help but notice how I was naked for a second. Even though my body was covered in light it still felt strange. Mostly just cold. This must be what magical girls feel like when they do those transformation sequences.

The stats on the uniform weren’t as good, but they weren’t bad either. The weird part was that it gave me a charm boost of 20%. I’d never heard of such a thing. It must be a new feature I didn't know about. I took a look in the mirror and saw a cute school girl staring back at me. It spooked me a little. I wasn’t used to my reflection yet.

Too bad I didn’t have any guy clothes in my inventory. Pretty sure I could only equip girl clothes though. I bet I could get around it, if I’d just try to put clothes on the normal way.

While still a little embarrassing I felt more comfortable. I wore a white short puffy sleeve buttoned up collared shirt with a bright pink tie around the collar.

The collar was the same bright shade of pink. It came with a matching bright pink skirt with a white star pattern and white frills along the end.

On my legs were long black socks. One sock reached above my right knee and the other just under my left knee. The long sock had pink stripes while the other had pink hearts.

On my feet were multi colored shoes adorned with hearts and stars bringing the whole ensemble together, If I had time I’d try on different outfits, but I didn’t want to waste the day looking through my vast library of gear. I felt happy looking at myself in the mirror. Definitely not a traditional school uniform. Can anyone say zettai ryouiki.

“Aku looks so adorable! Wish I could have a daughter this cute in real life. I’d spoil her rotten! No man would be good enough to take her from me! Not until they can beat me in a one on one PVP match. Only then will they be deemed worthy of dating my little girl!” crossing my arms I nodded my head in self satisfaction. My delusion ended there and I came back to the current situation.

The thought of doing a cosplay montage sounded really fun, well as long as no one saw me. What was the point of being a cute loli, if you weren’t going to cosplay. No, that thought was wrong. While I did look like a loli this wasn't a 2D body. It was flesh and blood.

I was instantly filled with a feeling of disgust and regret. Technically I am 39, so I'm legal, but still I wasn’t looking to commit such awful crimes just because I'm in another world. Only bad people need laws to be a decent person.

On the other hand there are people that look very young despite being adults. I wonder how their relationships work? Do people look down on their partners for being with someone that looks young? Surely not. Though I have my doubts.

In my years of marriage I've never just stayed with Alice because of her appearance. The way she screams and clings to me during horror movies, or like how she insists on stabbing me with her cold feet in the middle of the night.

That reminds me of how she steals the blanket away from me every night. And that reminds me of that time when I bought an extra blanket for myself and she took that one two! Why would anyone need two blankets! The worst part was she would get mad at me whenever I tried to take some of it back!

“What kind of stupid crap is that!” I was getting off track… again. What was the point again? Oh, right! There's just a bunch of little things that make me love… and hate her. In conclusion, children are young, innocent, and have underdeveloped minds. I on the other hand have none of those qualities. There for I've concluded that I'm legal within reason.

Though am not really looking for potential partners. Also I’ll probably only attract minors or creepy weirdos. Now that I think of it. Since I've been nerfed doesn’t that make me a target for potential predators? A feeling of dread came over me.

“I need to swell up, quickly.”

With the hard questions answered I made my way out of my bedroom and into the scary new world.