Chapter 1 - ‘Marianne’ Tuvol Apollyon
Pallid skies and foreign winds. On one cold and silent winter morning I found myself in someone else’s body. A fictional character, a false life, and an unfamiliar world; everything I’d previously known felt like one long and disconnected dream. I was sober -- these weren’t the mad delusions of an inebriated soul rousing up from a terrible hangover. Even as I stood in this peculiar room and stared out into the foreign landscape with a blank expression, the reality of the situation couldn’t penetrate my muffled thoughts. The borders of real and fake blurred -- the fabrics of reality and story wove violently into each other to create one inseparable tapestry. My memories… it was difficult to distinguish between the life I used to live and the stranger I now became. The thoughts, personalities, goals, and ambitions of both lives surged through my head like a tempestuous maelstrom. Disorder and Chaos. Frustration and unease.
It was on this weary frigid winter morning I understood: I had become a character from a novel.
A room too large for a single person, yet there was only one bed. Pure, silken white curtains, lavish and expensive wooden furniture, ornate decorations of gold, silver, and precious gems. They adorned this place like stars in the night sky, each masterfully planted as though the god of interior decoration had handcrafted this room -- a worthy tribute to greed and opulence. Nowadays such sights could only be found on the set of a historical drama or movie to depict the wanton excesses of some rich and snobbish nobleman, but these weren’t mere set pieces or backdrops. They were all real. I could almost feel the debauchery under my skin; the hours of wasted money and effort gone into making one shallow human being feel as though they’ve somehow achieved anything. I saw her phantoms around the room; the figure of a woman waltzing around with that rapacious smirk while gawking at all the expensive little trinkets and meaningless artworks. Yet, that woman never had the courage or desire to invite anyone here -- merely maids and assistants stole glimpses of it in passing. The things in this room existed only to fuel her own ego, but there was nothing she’d ever earned herself. In a way this vapid emptiness was art; if the purpose of art was to evoke emotions then this room was a masterful depiction into the infinite void of the human heart. Vanity manifest.
Unfortunately, as my emotions calmed and the reality of the situation settled, I realised how wrong this all was. I could mock and lambast the shallowness of the woman’s taste, but the unshakeable truth was that I now had to live her life. I woke up that morning to find myself as this depraved character. To affirm my suspicions I picked up the small hand-mirror hanging off the side of the vanity table. A pale, almost porcelain complexion with soft black hair like gentle silk. Her keen, villainous eyes were like that of a predator. Long eyelashes accentuated her hawkish visage; a face which was small but carried a distinctive presence and elegant female features. A stare so sharp I reeled back at the glance of my own reflection. Even on the best of days my former fiance wouldn’t have looked half as good as this woman who had just roused from her slumber. I tilted and angled the mirror around to get a better view of the rest of my newfound body. Thin arms, enviably slender waists, tout and shapely bosoms, and an overall very womanly physique -- a superhuman of style and allure. “It’s always the hot ones,” I lamented. Despite having just woken up she had the features and looks any major Hollywood actress would’ve killed for. That said, she had quite the harsh look to her which made even a neutral expression tend towards seeming annoyed. Her thin eyebrows always furrowed into a stiff posture and her slanted eyes gave off the expression of displeasure. Both stylish and mean were the best words to describe this woman -- a cross between an high-end fashion model and a powerful career woman. Despite how glamorous she was, the moniker of petty villainess fit her perfectly.
“This is definitely her, right?” I pondered aloud, but the strange softness of my voice gave it away. A corporate-slave-cum-villainess; Marianne Tuvol Apollyon, a middling and overall insignificant antagonist of a popular fantasy novel series aimed primarily at a young female demographic. The protagonist of the series was her step-daughter. In the grand scheme of things Marianne didn’t accomplish much aside from being a general nuisance throughout the first two novels and meets her pitiful demise by the end of the second. Corrupt, haughty, arrogant, conniving, a criminal -- the label of evil step-mother was almost too generous for such a vain monster. She dies an unceremonious death after being manipulated by the more important villains, never knowing how utterly small she was till the bitter end.
Thus, the problems of my current predicament were two: the first being the final destination-esque nature of my existence in this place, and the second -- frankly more pressing issue -- being my body. Prior to a few minutes ago I lived my entire thirty-some-odd years as a man. Adaptation may have been humanity’s greatest strength but there were limits to what the human mind could withstand. The transition wasn’t a case of carefully considered years of decision-making, but quite literally magic. Though if there was one silver lining… “She’s exactly the type I’d be into.” You could say I was enamoured with my current looks.
Live more than thirty years and you can go along with almost anything.
“Oh well,” I considered myself a man of action. Roll with the punches and return a quick jab. “First thing’s first…” Perhaps adaptation really was humanity’s greatest strength because I wasn’t as distressed as I imagined I’d be in this situation. Now then. A man suddenly finds himself in the body of a woman -- there could only be one logical next step.
Yet, before any real exploration could begin, my ambitions were thwarted by the appearance of something strange and unexpected: a pop up. Like the HUD elements of a video game or window’s error message. A dark grey and transparent square screen hovered in front of my eyes with the header title [Status].
“What’s this supposed to be?”
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Name: Marianne Tuvol Apollyon
Title: The Jealous Sword Lover
Race: Human (Female)
Age: 27
Class: Sword Master
Level: 130 (MAX)
Health: 25800/25800
Mana: 200/200
Strength: 406 (+550)
Dexterity: 142 (+235)
Agility: 142 (+190)
Magic: 10 (+70)
Expertise: 10 (+45)
Insight: 10 (+35)
Physical Attack: 3868
Magic Attack: 30
Physical Defence: 2243
Magic Defence: 2539
Attack Speed: 5.00
Casting Speed: 1.00
Critical Hit Chance: 37.7%
Critical Hit Multiplier: 2.2x
Movement Speed: 332
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The Epic of the Sword Queen was the name of the novel series, however even though it was a series of the fantasy genre it had no mentions of any video game elements. Nothing about a status menu was ever written in any of the thirteen original books. “This looks familiar though.” There was something about the particular layout of the screen. The specific numbers and the font of the words felt recognisable. “Wait a second, could this be?” I went over it two and three more times to be absolutely sure, but there was no room for doubt. “These are my stats.” To be more specific, these statistics belonged to the character I played on a very old massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-game -- MMORPG. I ran my hand over the screen to make sure it wasn’t a visual hallucination, and though my hand did go through, the screen was unmistakably there.
What did this mean? At face value it would mean Marianne and me were not one-to-one parallels. The Marianne of the novels was never written to be a credible physical threat and the extent of the role she served was as a minor villain. Inept political manoeuvres, idiotic assassination attempts, clumsy schemes which always blew up in her face; she wasn’t the type of character to directly confront her opponents, yet according to these statistics -- if true -- she could only be interpreted as one amongst the strongest characters in the story. Although, “that’s assuming these stats were relative to the game’s internal logic.” The uncertainty came from the fact that the game and novels ran on two entirely different sets of rules.
The two mediums weren’t entirely unrelated. Shared setting. The game and the novels were based on the same source material. The original Epic of the Sword Queen was a moderately popular story written by an unknown author some forty years ago which entered the public domain over two decades ago. “Right, they were related.” My memories brought me back to when I first started playing the game. It was released roughly around the same time I was in high school and my group of friends wanted to try it out as a way to pass the time one holiday. I was instantly captivated; days and nights, weeks and months, eventually years were spent on the game. Curiosity got the better of me and I also started reading through the novels.
That said, confirmation over theory. I had to ascertain whether these stats were real. Looking around there was a small fruit knife on the table beside my bed. I reached over to grab it but hesitated as my hand hovered above. It was a strange hesitancy. Somehow this felt even bigger than waking up in someone else’s body. When I stared back at the figure in the hand-mirror there was no trace of who I used to be -- only Marianne’s evil mug glared back. These statistics were the only real evidence left to suggest I even had another, different life. If I made a mistake about this whole thing, how was I going to continue living in this body? “Marianne… dies,” I mumbled to myself. My body was frozen as though it had been encased in a block of ice. “It should work,” I tried to reassure myself but there was a quiet thumping in my heart which doubted. “Yes, yes… it’ll definitely work. It has too…” With an uneasy sigh I clutched the cold, wooden handle of the knife. It was heavier than I thought, or perhaps it was my hand which was. “Now, how do I do this?” I asked myself, but I had a vague idea.
My mind paced through all the fantasy fiction I indulged in my previous life. Such stories with protagonists finding themselves in an unfamiliar new world were a dime-a-dozen, and I found it more helpful to emulate them rather than going through a scientific approach to analyse my current situation. There were the types to shout out the names of their attacks, ones that required deep focus and concentration, or perhaps vivid imagination was the key. There were no set rules about how each story setting functioned and it was all up to their individual creators.
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I started with the most direct and easiest method. “Sword Aura!” I uttered the name of the skill and waited for any indication of change on my small fruit knife. However, even after a full minute had passed nothing happened. I carefully touched the edge of the knife but it wasn’t any sharper than before. Of course it wouldn’t have been that easy; I felt a little embarrassed shouting out the names of fantastical attacks at my age.
Next was the imagination method. To use the mind’s eye to visualise the skill; I closed my eyes and focused my thoughts on the skill. From its appearance, effects, intensity, and to its sensation. Unfortunately, no matter how long and hard I concentrated it looked futile. The uneasy doubts clouded the depths of my mind, but I didn’t want to give up so quickly. I made a slight adjustment to my approach; instead of visualising the skill I shifted my thoughts on how the skill would function in real life. I questioned the nature of the skill. Was it magic? Or maybe it was another kind of energy source like qi. Likely, not even the developers of the game put too much thought on this aspect either, but now the results would determine the entire rest of my life in this world. There were no guides or manuals, not even written lore about how the skills operated.
The skill I wanted to use was called Sword Aura. A common skill used in a lot of different fictional settings -- especially oriental ones -- but in the game its main functions were to strengthen the user’s attacks as well as granting the special property of Defence Piercing. As the game itself offered no clues I took examples from those other fictional universes. A special kind of energy which wraps around the user’s weapon like a coat of paint? No, maybe it was more about replacing the physical blade with an imaginary one that’s stronger and sharper. Once my mind began to calculate and envision how such a mystical force would operate, I felt something move around the tip of the knife. A strange and inexplicable energy force swirled around my body as though I were in the centre of a gentle whirlpool. Enlightenment. It came to me as naturally as moving a limb. The sensation was closer to clay, like moulding something in my mind. Even with my eyes closed I could see the mystical force cling to the blade and take form.
When I opened my eyes after feeling I had adequately coated the blade with that energy the knife was indeed glimmering with a powerful but ominous reddish hue. It cracked silently like a powerful electrical current. As if to curb my worries, another pop up appeared over the knife.
[Sword Aura has been activated.]
I wondered if the functions of this user interface worked the same way it did in the game; curious, I tapped over the word Sword Aura in the same manner I would the screen of a smartphone. As I did an additional pop up appeared with further context.
[Sword Aura (level 10): The user imbues all blade-type weapons with a powerful aura increasing damage by 50% and ignoring 40% of the opponent’s physical defence. (Cost: 1 Mana)]
The explanation was one-for-one to the game.
The method of usage was cumbersome, but with further experimentation and study it should be possible to cut down on the concentration necessary -- like how you wouldn’t need to focus so hard after you’ve learnt how to ride a bike. With this I was able to prove it was possible to use the same skills as the game, which in all likelihood meant those statistics weren’t falsehood. However, I wasn’t done. “In that case, the next test would be on passive skills.” There were two broad types of skills: active and passive. As the name implied, active skills were the kind you had to consciously think about using -- in the game it really only meant you had to click buttons -- and passive skills were ones which would always be in effect or automatically took effect after certain conditions were met.
Sweaty hands, slightly trembling, and an uneasy grimace. I hovered the ominously shining fruit knife over the palm of my left hand. I wasn’t suddenly being suicidal, this was the test. Since the one passive ability which could very easily be tested was also the one which took effect when I received any portion of damage, this was the most direct method to see if it functioned correctly. Admittedly I felt a little squeamish, but if I was going to live in this body from now on it was a bridge I had to cross. I let out a long sigh to ease my tension and after stalling for a few more minutes I decided to act. The cold edge of the blade pressed against the surface of my skin like a thin strip of ice. It cut. It sliced into the skin quite a bit more deeply than I had planned; it felt as natural and easy as if I were cutting into the side of a freshly baked bread. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt. In fact, though I could see the trickling of blood it did more mental damage than cause physical discomfort. If I had to compare, it was about as painful as being stabbed with a needle. The warmth of my own blood -- of Marianne’s foreign blood -- spread over my hand. For a second it didn’t even feel real; this wasn’t my hand, and it wasn’t my blood. Where did Marianne end and I begin?
I waited a few more seconds before several pop ups appeared over my injured hand.
[All or Nothing I has been activated.]
[All or Nothing II has been activated.]
[All or Nothing III has been activated.]
As was before, the moment I tapped over the keywords several more screens popped up.
[All or Nothing I (level 10): The user inversely gains additional attributes and bonuses as health decreases:]
* 3% bonus physical defence for every 1% missing health.
* 2% bonus magic defence for every 1% missing health.
* 5% missing health regeneration per second.
[All or Nothing II (level 10): The user inversely gains additional attributes and bonuses as health decreases:]
* 2% bonus physical damage for every 1% missing health.
* 1% bonus life steal for every 1% missing health.
* 0.5% bonus attack speed for every 1% missing health.
* 2% chance to shed damage-over-time effects and negative status per second for every 1% missing health.
[All or Nothing III (level 10): The user inversely gains additional attributes and bonuses as health decreases:]
* 1% bonus movement speed for every 1% missing health.
* 1% bonus critical hit chance for every 1% missing health.
* 0.5% bonus critical damage multiplier for every 1% missing health.
* 0.25% bonus physical defence piercing for every 1% missing health.
Those were a lot of words, but in essence the passive skill series All or Nothing made me exponentially stronger the less health I had. Especially if I was down to my final 10% I’d be able to take down anyone with just a few basic attacks. Even though it was a passive skill it was the ability I loved the most; it formulated the entire play-style of my character -- a deadly dance between keeping my health low, avoiding death, and defeating my opponents. Thinking back on it, these passives were why I was able to win a lot of my PvP battles. There were even furious complaints on the game’s forum and chat rooms about how unfair it was to fight against skilled Swordmasters. Well, in reality it wasn’t so one-sided; other classes had plenty of over-tuned skills equally disruptive to the competitive nature of the PvP scene. For example, mages had a passive ability known as Mana Skin which prevented them from losing health until their mana was depleted, however they also had another skill which passively regenerated mana during combat. In the end, it wasn’t about the skills, but how well the players understood and controlled their characters which made any class seem strong or weak. As evidence, Swordmasters were actually near the bottom of the tiering charts in terms of performance due to its difficulty; if driven well it was almost unfair, if played poorly they were fodder to most other top-tier classes.
With this, both active and passive skills have been verified. The next thing to make sure would be my actual raw statistics. A strength stat of 956 was absurdly high in the context of the game, but exactly how powerful it would be in this world was yet to be confirmed. Since they were numeric values there was no way to translate the effects into the real world without direct experimentation. The level of destructive capabilities in this world’s setting was fairly high, though it wasn’t anything world-shattering. People couldn’t fly through the air or shoot massive beams of energy which could destroy moons, or anything of the sort. As reference, the single greatest feat performed in the novels was by someone known as the Grand Magnus, which was something akin to the strongest magician in the empire. In one scene he was able to cast a spell called Fire Storm which summoned gargantuan fiery tornadoes the size of sky-scrapers. The spell ran rampant across the battlefield, unleashing hell and scorching alive at least several hundred soldiers over the course of an hour; flesh burned, armour turned to molten steel, the floor was literally lava, and the air itself became a microwave… according to the novel. The Grand Magnus was able to unleash at most three of those before he succumbed to mana exhaustion and was incapacitated for a few months. How much of that was because of using the spell or because of the guilt, the story never specified. That was to say, it wasn’t a feat he could replicate wantonly. The novels also reinforced the idea it was a last resort attack from a failing empire.
I wasn’t a mage -- I never tried playing one -- so comparing my strength stat to the Grand Magnus’ magical abilities was apples to oranges. Though I was a little curious as to whether my new, sturdier body would be able to survive a Fire Storm. The Swordmaster class wasn’t the most durable in the game, but it wasn’t frail either. With All or Nothing there was a high probability I could endure his attack. Though if we’re talking about a straight up one-on-one against the old man I wouldn’t stupidly jump into the enemy’s strongest spell for no reason.
All in all, the most direct approach to testing out my numerical statistics was simply to use it. On pure impulse I wrapped my fingers around the hand-mirror and began to squeeze at it. It offered about as much resistance as a slice of chiffon cake and instantly cracked under the pressure. The mirror splintered into a thousand tiny fragments and sprinkled shards all over the nice velvet carpet. My expectations -- much like this mirror -- were shattered. I put as much strength into that as anyone might when stapling a bundle of papers, yet it was enough to eviscerate a rather durable mirror beyond recognition. It was a success, yet those quiet destructive impulses within me hadn’t been quelled; I needed to do more. It wasn’t enough. Following my wanton urges I tightly clenched my fists and punched the nearest wall. It was pure animalistic impulse. There was no thought put into my actions and I had complete disregard for the consequences either, but I realised one thing in that very moment: it felt good. You could’ve said a truck rammed through this wall at top speeds; followed by a bone-quivering quake, the entirety of the wall crumbled to pieces like a fragile biscuit. Large and dangerous chunks of the wall collapsed over to the other side and fell about three floors down onto what could only be assumed was the garden. Some of the debris fell much further and ruined the neatly trimmed lawn and hedges. The bedroom of that proud Marianne now had a huge unbecoming hole in it, and as proof, the fresh breeze of another world brushed against my skin through the thin fabric of the silken nightgown.
Despite all this destruction, I felt no pain or discomfort in my hand. The only thing rushing through my mind was the excitement and the sense of freedom. I could finally understand it; humanity’s penchant for destruction and violence -- it was an almost irresistible fruit. The adrenaline and dopamine surged through my system like a torrent, overloading my senses like I was on drugs. I could smell colours, taste the sound, and see this world for what it was. It was an almost artificially beautiful plane of existence, truly it was as though they were crafted through words on a page. Was this how Marianne saw the world? Or perhaps this was the influence of my own experiences and thoughts melding into this body. Something within me broke, or maybe it was begging to be let out. Marianne’s residual consciousness? My urge for destruction? Humanity’s deep desire for power and death? Whatever it was, I felt the need to listen.
Screams and astonished gasps came from all around the estate. I could feel the collective footsteps of the residents rushing towards the centre of the disturbance like moths to a flame. In less than half a minute my room was already beset by a loud banging from the other side of the door.
I could already tell who they were. “The other NPCs…”