People often ask me, “Lucy, how do you still look so good at your age?” I always tell them that I have a special skin care routine, or that I found a miracle drug in the other world, or that I have a powerful illusion artifact or something similar. Those are lies, of course. The real reason is that I don’t age because I’m a vampire.

  I wasn’t always a vampire. In 2002, I was born a human like any other to a despicable, arrogant bitch of a woman that I refuse to call my mother, and a wonderful father with whom I share no DNA. That last part wasn’t discovered until I was ten, and I spent the next five years of my life in shared custody hell that I had to graduate high school early to escape.

  That woman’s name was Valerie Montague when I was born, but you all probably know her best as Valerie Schmidt, the White Witch, the Ice Bitch, and the Vice President of the International Association of Mages. Her recent death (which I had nothing to do with), was one of the happiest days of my life, and is the reason that I am only releasing this book now, instead of twenty years ago. She spent her whole life believing me to be a failure. Who am I to disillusion her?

  When I was young, before her infidelity and general lack of a heart was made known, I still didn’t like her all that much. She was cold, calculating, and demanding, and refused to let me be anything less than the best. It wasn’t that hard for me, but my two younger brother suffered greatly under her iron rule.

  My father, while a lovely person, was also timid, and he was unable to stand up to his wife no matter how harsh she was. He let her control every little detail of our lives, from our diet to our schooling, and even down to our friends, and who we were allowed to associate ourselves with. Before we had any friends over, or attended any birthday parties, she would run full background checks on the other kids and their families, and if she didn’t approve of them, we weren’t allowed to see them.

  At this point, you’re probably wondering why my father ever married such a terrible person. Well, she wasn’t always that way. When they met, she was just an ambitious businesswoman (and a gold digging whore) who he thought loved him very much. She approached him, seemingly organically, talked to him, pretended to like his music, and eventually managed to secure a wedding band.

  The reason she chose my father specifically, despite not liking him at all, was that he was rich. He was a grandson of a billionaire, and a descendant of a French noble family who had moved to America to escape Robespierre and the revolutionaries. With him came connections to some of the most important people in the country, (which she used expertly), and a potential inheritance worth more than most would make in their lifetime.

  It was the perfect situation for vain, venomous Valerie, except for one thing; my father is also thin, weak, a bit slow, and a musician. She didn’t want children who were thin, weak, slow, or musicians. She thought that she was better than that. That she deserved better than that. She wanted strong, smart, successful children. So she did the natural thing (for a demon) and slept with other men who would give her the children she wanted while pretending to love my father and using his family ties to further her own career.

  Eventually, my father’s friends managed to convince him to grow a spine and confront her about how none of his three children looked like him, and how she limited his interaction with them and how she treated him like a wallet, and how she rarely talked to him anymore and all the other awful things she did to him, but by then most of the damage had already been done. Her career had advanced to the point where she didn’t need him anymore, and she happily filed the divorce papers when he asked her to.

  In the end, my siblings and I were split up. The bitch wanted to take full custody of all three children, but when the paternity tests revealed her infidelity, she was forced to settle for shared custody. The judge, whom she had most definitely bribed or threatened in some way, tried to give most of our time to her, and only let us see our father every other weekend, but I was smart enough to realize what was going on, and threw a tantrum until they let me stay with my father instead of her. From then until I graduated high school, I would spend every weekend with Valerie (I never called her “Mom” again), and every weekday with Dad.

  I turned into a bit of a troubled child at that point (who wouldn’t?), and I did a lot of things that I came to regret later, purely out of spite. At different times, I was a vandal, a runaway, a pickpocket, a burglar, or once, even an arsonist. That ended after about a year though, when she accused my father of being an unfit parent, and I had to mellow out or risk losing my ability to see him ever again.

  I resorted to a different kind of rebellion, where I dove into my schoolwork, blowing through years of courses in months, just to keep the vile villain Valerie off my back. The only time she would leave me alone was when I was working, so in the interest of never needing to hear her voice, I did my best to meet and exceed all her expectations.

  I graduated high school in 2017 at the age of fifteen as the valedictorian, and was offered a full ride to attend Stanford University for Aerospace Engineering. Valerie wanted me to accept the equally tempting offer to MIT, so that I would be closer to home, but I ignored her, obviously.

  While in California, aside from the times that Valerie “happened to be in the area for a business trip”, I was finally free. I let my foot off the gas when it came to school, and started exploring myself and my own personal interests. I cut my hair short, picked up mixed martial arts, played piano, made friends, joined clubs and did everything that I wasn’t able to do before.

  In the meantime, Valerie remarried, this time to some rich CEO ten years older than her. I never met him and don’t remember his name. He died sometime while I was away.

  At 19, when it came time for me to graduate, she reached out to me, saying she had a good job available for me that paid well and had excellent advancement opportunities. I blocked her on everything, changed my number, and moved to Philadelphia to attend the Curtis Institute of Music.

  I wish I could have seen her face when she realized what happened. From her point of view, I had been willingly complying with her wishes for the past six years, and then suddenly I cut contact with her and disappeared. Obviously, I couldn’t hide from her for long, but by the time she figured out where I had gone, it was already too late. I was enrolled at Curtis, and there was no amount of meddling or bribery on her end that could change that.

  She kept trying to contact me after that, at one point even showing up at my apartment, so I called the police on her and later filed a restraining order. It never went through, but she got the message and decided to cut her losses and gave up on me, which was a wise move, because things would have gotten ugly otherwise. She was an awful person, but I never accused her of being stupid. She was undoubtedly very intelligent and capable, or else she wouldn’t have been able to accomplish everything she did. It’s a shame she was born with a rotting pit where her heart was supposed to be, or else she might have been more bearable.

  The next three years were the best of my life. I had no contact with any family members except my father (Valerie had successfully brainwashed my brothers), and I no longer had to worry about keeping up a façade for my birth-giver. Unfortunately, that all came to an end in the July after completing my junior year at Curtis, which, if you’ve been keeping track of dates, will note is the same month that the System appeared.

  On July 14, the day before System Day, I got home around 9pm after attending a classical concert (Sibelius 1 and 2), and upon walking in the door, was greeted by the sound and scent of cooking bacon on the stove. This was quite alarming since I lived alone, and only my father, who I knew was on the opposite side of the country at the time, had another key. I pulled a handgun from my purse and called out to whoever thought it was a good idea to break in and cook bacon.

  “I have a gun! Come out where I can see you with your hands up!”

  The only response was the continued sizzling of the bacon, so I crept around the corner with my pistol held out in front of me until I could see into the kitchen. Standing in front of the stove with her back to me was a woman I had never seen before. She was tall enough to be a professional basketball player, and had long, curly blond hair that cascaded all the way down to her waist. She wore a white apron over a simple green blouse and worn blue jeans.

  “Hands in the air!” I shouted “Step away from the stove! Now!”

  “Oh, hello, Lucy,” she said, as if she hadn’t noticed me before. “Sorry, just let me take the bacon off. It’s about done.”

  “I don’t care! If you don’t step back with your hands up in three seconds, I’m going to fire!”

  She ignored me, and started using a set of tongs to take the bacon off the pan and set them on a paper towel.

  “3! 2! 1!”

  She still had not made any motion to surrender, but death seemed like too much of a punishment for breaking and entering and making bacon, so I took aim at her left calf and pulled the trigger. The gun fired with a deafening bang, and the spent bullet clattered to the floor next to her bare feet, her leg unharmed.

  “What the-?”

  Before I could finish expressing my confusion, my vision blurred, and when it cleared up, my gun was gone.

  “Why don’t you take a seat, dear,” said the woman, pointing the gun at the kitchen table with her right hand while she continued taking the bacon off the heat with her left. “The bacon is ready, and I’d like to have a talk with you.”

  Not being an idiot, I complied. I didn’t believe in the supernatural before that point, but it was impossible to deny its existence when it was clearly right in front of me and impervious to bullets. A moment later, she joined me, bacon in hand, and I was finally able to see her smiling face. She was easily among the most beautiful women I had ever seen with high cheekbones, a perfect nose and teeth, and crystal clear sapphire eyes.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  “Have a piece,” she said, gesturing down at the plate.

  I eyed the bacon warily.

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “If I wanted to kill you, I have much better ways of doing it than poisoned bacon.”

  I relented and grabbed a piece and took a bite, but I was so nervous that I didn’t really taste it.

  “So, let’s get down to business,” said the woman. “My name is Pride, and I am a god. Lowercase g.”

  I nodded and took another flavorless bite.

  “I’ve come here to offer you a job.”

  “...What?”

  “It’s nothing too difficult, and it will be great for you in the long run,” she continued. “And if you do well, you’ll be granted a wish. You can wish for literally anything, and we will most likely be able to grant it to you.”

  “Can I-?”

  “No, you can’t wish for more wishes.”

  At this time, my nerves were beginning to calm a bit. I didn’t totally believe her when she said she was a god, but whatever she was, she was powerful, and not something I could go against. And although she said she was there to “offer” a job, I probably didn’t actually have a choice. Or if I did, the consequences for rejecting the offer would be great. But if I did comply, or at least appear to, it could be very beneficial

  “What’s the job?” I asked.

  “You’re going to represent me in a game,” she said.

  “What kind of game?”

  “It’s just a little competition between me and some of the other gods,” she said. “You just need to beat their representatives.”

  “Like, in a fight?”

  “Maybe,” she shrugged. “Or not. However you want, as long as you defeat them, it’s fine.”

  “Even killing?”

  “That’s how most of them do it.”

  “So you want me to represent you in a death game?”

  “That’s a bit of a gruesome way to put it,” said the woman. “I prefer the term ‘Divine Competition.’”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “Because you’re perfect!” she said. “You’re one of the most prideful people I’ve ever seen, and even better, you have the ability to back it up.”

  “I am not prideful.”

  “On the contrary, you might be more prideful than I am, and I am the god of Pride,” she said.

  Upon hearing this, I’m ashamed to admit that I lost my composure a bit. At that time, it hadn’t been long enough since cutting Valerie out of my life, and I was still sensitive to being compared to her. This wasn’t a direct comparison to her, but arrogant and prideful were words that I had grown to associate with her, so hearing someone attribute them to me did not sit well. I still maintain that I am not prideful, but unfortunately, I did not express that opinion, nor my reasoning very eloquently here, so please keep that in mind as you read the following argument.

  “What do you know?” I snapped.

  “I know quite a bit. I know you think you are above everyone else.”

  “I do not!”

  “I know that you consider yourself to be better than them, and no one has been able to convince you otherwise. I know that-”

  “Shut up!” I shouted. “I don’t wanna hear it! Go take your ‘job offer’ somewhere else! Ask Valerie! She’d make for a perfect arrogant bitch to represent you! I’m not interested!”

  Pride smiled sweetly and reached a hand out toward my shoulder where it gripped me like a vice.

  “I should have made it clearer earlier, but only the ‘job’ part is an offer. You will represent me. If you try to reject it, you will only be forfeiting your right to the wish, not forgoing your participation. Now, you’re a smart girl. Calm down and think for a bit.”

  I will be omitting the next part of the conversation because at this point, my critical thinking skills failed me entirely. Not only had she compared me to Valerie, but she then followed it by acting just like her, smiling while stealing my freedom. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I raised my voice even more, said some stupid things, and generally made a fool of myself.

  For reasons that were unknown to me until much later, I did not actually suffer any consequences for this outburst. She didn’t even take away my opportunity for a wish like she threatened to do. She just sat there, smiling, calmly refuting everything I said until I finally calmed down and my brain started working again.

  “Ready to talk?” she asked.

  Her patronizing tone almost made me go off again, but I took a deep breath and forced the anger back down instead.

  “Fine,” I said. “Fine, I give up. I’ll do it. I don’t want to play the stupid game, and I’m nothing like you, but you’ve made it clear that I don’t really have a choice. Just tell me what I need to do.”

  “Excellent!” she said. “As I mentioned, you’ll be competing against six others chosen by the other gods playing this game. Those gods are Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth, and Wrath, or, as you have already noticed, the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins. We’re often called the ‘demon gods’ but our relationship with the demons isn’t that much greater than the rest. We’re practically the same. But that’s beside the point.

  “In addition to the other contestants, our counterparts, the Seven Heavenly Virtues will also be choosing representatives to try and kill you. They’ll be a little tricky to deal with, because unlike our champions, they aren’t competing against each other, so they could team up together and combine their power. Also, the Virtues are cheaters, so they’ll be giving their chosen people powers designed specifically to counter the ones that we, the Sins, will be giving ours.”

  “You’re going to give me a special ability?”

  “Of course!” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I wouldn’t send you in with nothing! Here, I’ll give it to you now.”

Pride lvl MAX

You are immune to all harmful mental skills and negative status effects

  I nearly jumped out of my seat as I heard the loud ding and the blue window appeared in front of my face. I instinctively tried to punch it, but my fist went right through it.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “Oh, that’s the System,” she said. “You used to read those stories. You know, the litRPGs? You should recognize this.”

  “But-? Do I get a System?”

  “Everyone gets a System!”

  “No they don’t.”

  She put a hand to her face in what was clearly fake exasperation. “Oh no, I almost forgot to mention. Silly me. This game doesn’t take place on Earth. You’ll be going to another world. And there, everyone is under the System.”

  “Will I be able to come back?” I asked.

  “If you win, yes.”

  “So you’re kidnapping me, sending me to another world, and the only way for me to get back to is kill six other people.”

  “Well, you don’t have to kill them. It’s definitely an option, and probably the best one, but if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. As long as you can get them to admit defeat to you, it’s your victory. You can also choose to just hide and wait until someone else kills them.”

  “...Ok,” I said.

  “Oh, and you can’t just forfeit. You have to directly lose to the others if you want it to count. And I doubt many of them would let you live if you tried that.”

  I silently cursed, because I had been planning to do just that to spite her.

  “Don’t be so down,” she said. “Think of this as an opportunity. The gods have decided to implement the System on Earth too, but obviously, since it will be new, it will take people a while to figure it out. You’ll have the advantage of learning about the System in a world that’s already had it for a while.”

  “The System will be on Earth?”

  “Yes, in about two hours and forty-eight minutes.”

  “Can I call my dad before I go?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ve actually already gone,” she explained. “We’re not on Earth right now. Do you really think no one would have heard the gunshot?”

  “I’m already in the other world?” I asked, looking around, trying to catch a glimpse of the outside through the pitch black windows.

  “No, right now we’re in my house,” she said. “I remodeled this section to make you feel more comfortable while we talked. I’ll send you over to the other world in a bit, but I will warn you, the process is a bit… unrefined. And by that I mean that interdimensional travel is difficult for me to do without the help of the System, and the System won’t help me because technically, what I’m doing right now is illegal.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I’m supposed to be picking someone from Astraeus, but I decided to pick you instead, because you’re the perfect candidate. So I’ll be sending you to Astraeus, but since I’ll be forcing you through the fabric of reality, unfortunately you will die in the process.”

  “What?!”

  “Oh don’t worry. I’ll revive you. In fact, you’ll be even stronger after I revive you.”

  “You’re going to kill me?!”

  “Only temporarily.” She shrugged. “Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Now, let’s see…” she said, ignoring me. “Am I forgetting anything else? Hmmmm…”

  “Hey! What did you mean about reviving me? Why are you doing this? Why me?”

  “Oh yes! I almost forgot. Don’t antagonize Sloth’s incarnation. They’ll be easy enough to deal with as long as you don’t make them angry, but if you do manage to anger them, you’ll probably die. So try not to do that. And I already told you why I chose you, you just refused to listen.”

  “I’m not-!”

  “Well, that should be everything. Off you go.” She flicked her hand, and I felt a suction from behind, like I was being pulled through a giant vacuum. “Try not to die.”

  “Wait!” I shouted, clinging to the table. “No! You bitch!”

  And then I was gone. My vision went blank, and then my mind, and the next thing I knew, I was somewhere else.

  As you can see, I’m just as much a victim in all this as anyone else. I was suddenly kidnapped from my home by an insane goddess and forced to participate in a fight to the death for absolutely no reason. I’m not the epitome of pride, as she seemed to believe, and I never had any desire to become a Demon King. All I did was try my best to survive in a shitty situation.