After logging out of the game, Ophelia got out of her one-of-a-kind gaming capsule and quickly sat herself down in her wheelchair nearby. Unlike what most people thought, Ophelia was actually a young woman who was in her early 20s, but she had a rather unfortunate fate as she was diagnosed with a rather... unique terminal illness.
The illness was hereditary and unique to her family’s bloodline, though she was the only unfortunate soul in her generation that contracted the illness while the rest of her family didn’t. The family’s previous generation that contracted the illness was her father and the one before that was her grand uncle. It was usually the males that contracted the disease, but she was the unfortunate one of her generation.
If that wasn’t bad enough, she developed schizophrenia due to her rather grim childhood that was caused by her terminal illness. The schizophrenia she developed split her mind into two personas. She had her main persona, Ophelia, and her secondary person, Hecate. In the real world, Ophelia was the one in control most of the time and she had an extremely meek and submissive personality.
Due to her illness, she lived in isolation from the rest of her family members, who treated her like the plague, but after her father passed away due to the same illness she had, everyone stopped caring about her, including her own mother, and some of her relatives even began treating her like an animal. It was because of this horrible treatment that she developed her mental illness though in her case, it was safe to say that it was more of a defense mechanism than an illness. She hid behind her second persona, Hecate, who had an extremely violent and overbearing personality that would come out whenever she felt threatened.
When Hecate was in control, she completely disregarded her body’s condition and did whatever she pleased, which would sometimes put Ophelia in a pickle whenever she got back control of her body.
Since they both lived in the same body, they needed to keep watch of their health or else they could actually die if they strained themselves too much. Dying was not something Hecate was really fond of, so she started paying more attention to their condition as they grew older, since their sickness worsened with time. It was inevitable that she would die some time in the future, but thankfully, her family was in the medicine business in the first place, so they had developed a medicine that could at least prolong her life…as well as her suffering.
Thanks to her sickness, living itself was really painful, but neither Hecate nor Ophelia were willing to just die, so they continued to struggle on with life.
‘Hey, idiot, hurry up! Take your meds and go rest. After that, we head back into the game. I have to get rid of those fools who have been making a fool of us!’
“...Y-Yes…” Ophelia said after hearing a voice in her head.
Unlike other schizophrenic patients, Ophelia was actually able to communicate with her ‘other’ self though it sounded more like a voice in her head that spoke to her and told her to do things she did or didn’t want to do.
‘Hurry up!’
“O-Okay!”
She pushed the knob on her wheelchair and moved herself in front of a dresser that had her medicine and some food on it. Her caretakers would always bring her food every day at around the current time, so it became a routine for her to log out of the game a few times every day so that she could eat and rest. She slowly ate her food, which was mostly liquid based, and quickly took her meds right after. She then moved to her bed and laid down to rest for a bit.
Ophelia was curious about the war inside of the game so she quickly ‘asked’ her other self, “A-A-About the w-war…w-w-why not ask for h-help from M-Ma…Maria? W-Wouldn’t she be a b-b-better ally than–”
Before Ophelia could finish her question, Hecate interrupted her with a roar, ‘You idiot! Why would I ask for help from somebody I’m targeting? That makes no sense at all!”
“Ah! I-I–”
‘Shut your mouth and let me do the thinking! I’ve never steered us on the wrong path, so keep your stupid ideas to yourself. Thanks.’
“...I-I was j-just…”
‘Just what? Huh?”
The meek Ophelia could never hope to win against the overbearing Hecate in an argument. She couldn’t even get her point across before she was forced to keep her mouth shut and her opinions to herself. Her family had bullied her a lot, but ironically, Ophelia’s other self had bullied her a lot more than her family did after she had manifested. She still listened to Hecate’s words despite silently complaining to herself.
“N-N-Never mind…”
‘Stop complaining. I can hear your thoughts, you idiot…’
“....”
‘Tch.’
Even though Hecate treated her like crap, Ophelia never got truly mad at her. In fact, she was sometimes even appreciative of her other self who constantly berated her. At least Hecate treated her like a normal human being, unlike her family, who once treated her like some kind of animal. Those were truly dark days for her, especially since she was still pretty young back then.
The first time Ophelia found out that she had another personality inside of her was when she blacked out in the middle of the day when one of her cousins had been bullying her. She woke up a few hours later with a bloodied knife in her hand as her cousin was lying on the floor in his own pool of blood. Thankfully, her cousin didn’t die, but everyone began treating her fearfully after that event.
Everyone stopped treating her badly and started avoiding her out of genuine fear, unlike before where they avoided her because they viewed her as trash. Apparently, the cousin that was bullying her wasn’t the only one who had been injured that day. A lot of people had been cut by the knife in Ophelia’s hand and they were all of the grownups and kids her age who treated her like dirt.
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Despite being sick, no one at the time could stop her. She moved around like a ghoul and had some really insane strength packed behind her scrawny and sickly little body. It was as if a murderous demon had possessed her and this caused her entire family along with everyone else in the house, including the servants, to become extremely afraid of her.
A few days after that event, she began hearing Hecate’s voice in her head. Hecate recounted to her what she had done when she was in control of their body that day and it really traumatized Ophelia.
Her family was too afraid to make any decisions for her, fearing that she might actually kill them if they acted against her, so they didn’t put her in a psychiatric ward. Instead, they bought her a large house in the countryside and sent her there to 'recuperate', but it was just another way of saying that she had been banished from her family.
It was fine though, because she was used to living alone. That loneliness, however, was somewhat filled thanks to Hecate, who constantly spoke to her. Hearing voices in one’s head would usually be torture for most people, but Ophelia found comfort in it.
When Unitale finally came out, she naturally had to play it since it was advertised that the game could let anyone live a ‘second life’. She wanted that really badly because her current life was crap. She was sick and could abruptly die at any given time and she had no friends or family. A second life where she didn’t have to worry about her sickness and just live her life to the fullest. Now that was what she wanted and it was the greatest motivation she had for playing the game.
Unfortunately, however, while Ophelia was the dominant persona in the real world, Hecate somehow became the dominant persona in the virtual world, so Ophelia could only live her ‘second life’ through the eyes of Hecate, who was in control of their virtual body.
Since it was the violent and overbearing Hecate who had the wheel, they unfortunately became notoriously known as Unitale’s ‘Main Villain’ character among the players. She didn’t really like the moniker of being the game’s ‘Main Villain’, but what could she do? Hecate was the one in control and she did all sorts of crazy things while inside of the game.
However, it has to be emphasized that she only did ‘crazy’ things and not heinous things. The ones in her alliance that weren’t her ‘true’ followers had done a lot of heinous things, which was why she was getting rid of them.
Hecate was an insane lunatic, but she wasn’t an evil person. She’s never done anything inside of the game that would bring any damage to a person’s life in the real world–whether the damage be physical, mental, or even economical, she’s never done any of that. All of the things she’s done have been strictly confined to the game such as PK, looting, kill-stealing, spawn-camping and other such things that was normal in any MMO game, but there were people in her alliance that were bringing actual harm to other players which greatly impacted those players’ lives in the real world.
Ophelia had read about it one time while she was surfing the web that the PK Alliance’s people were causing harm to some people’s livelihoods in the real world. When she confronted Hecate about it, her other self was clueless and completely denied what the internet claimed her alliance was doing.
Hecate never knew when her alliance had grown so big. She only remembered it being a medium-sized group that was filled with crazy players like her who only loved to do battle in order to hone their martial skills and to fulfill the sense of excitement that came with fighting other players. She only managed to obtain such a group because the players she fought against followed after her out of admiration for her skill or because they wanted to stay close to her so that they could fight her and take revenge for their loss.
The true members of her alliance were all just a bunch of crazy battle fanatics and she's remembered every single one of them since she fought them before. None of her alliance's true members would have had the time to do any of the heinous things that the internet claimed her alliance was doing because they would be too busy PKing, training, or challenging her to a fight.
So, when she dug a little deeper, she soon found out that her PK Alliance was being used by a few dark organizations as a cover to do their underhanded businesses in the game. This really pissed off Hecate and, with Ophelia’s support, they both decided to completely unroot those organizations that were using her, which was why the PK Alliance was currently at war with the players on Vanargand.
She had gathered a lot of evidence and presented it to Eos and the others that had joined the war on the players’ side. Some of the players blamed Hecate for all of it, since she couldn’t properly reel in her underlings, though it was a stretch to say that they were her underlings. They only used her alliance’s name and weren’t really part of it, but she didn’t care where the blame was put.
As long as those people were destroyed, it didn’t matter to Hecate if she took the blame or not. In fact, she thought that it would be pretty nice to take all the blame so that she could completely cement herself as the game’s one true villain since everyone's been calling her as such.