The first thing that caught my eye was the brilliant blonde, reminiscent of the summer sun.
Her pumpkin-colored eyes blinked continuously, and her soft pink lips looked like they were holding raspberries.
It was Adella, transformed into my exact self from ten seconds ago.
And I was…
– “The room leader has become Adella!!!”
– “Wow, what?!”
– “OwO”
– “Is that even possible?”
– “The ultimate level of fandom—myself becoming the subject of my own fandom, LOL!”
– “This is ridiculous, LOL!”
Swish.
Her silver tail moved up, down, left, and right.
‘So this really works?’
I recalled that the manager with a cat avatar also moved their tail, but I didn’t expect it to be this fluid.
Respecting the advancement of neuroscience in this world, I closely examined my transformed body.
First off, my field of view was a bit lower.
I could see objects clearly without an aura around my eyes, and no matter how much I waved my hands, there were no afterimages. It felt like being equipped with a high-performance camera.
I twirled the dagger Adella had on my finger.
I still couldn’t shake off the awkwardness.
That’s why I didn’t create my avatar in someone else’s body.
To effectively make use of all the habits accumulated through experience, it was impossible without my own body.
“KYAAAA! What’s going on? Did my body change? Did you swap bodies with me?!”
“Can you not act so silly in my body?”
“Huh? Is it… no way! Are you my sister?”
“Yep. We temporarily switched bodies.”
“How could something like this happen…”
“Listen closely, Adella.”
I slapped her cheeks with my palms. It felt strange since it was like I was doing it to myself, but anyway.
I explained our plans to her, her cheeks folding in as her lips pouted out.
“To calm this situation down, we need to summon Mephistopheles and take care of him ourselves. Got it?”
“Umm… Got it.”
“But the physical vessel Mephistopheles can manifest in is limited.”
If you asked me why, I had no answer. I asked Wearsoft the same question. They mixed in complex ASI jargon while explaining, so I just memorized the phrases but couldn’t fully understand.
If summoning Mephisto involved Adella’s body, I suggested it would be simple to save just her consciousness and revert to normal post-clearance. However, that was met with a response that it was impossible.
First off, uploading model data into the ongoing open world wasn’t feasible, and even layering it onto existing NPCs was complex. They claimed there wasn’t enough capacity to contain all of Adella’s complicated code.
So, I thought we just needed to find a model with a large data capacity that didn’t have dummy data, and it turned out there was only one person who met all those criteria.
The player—me.
From here, all operations would commence.
“From now on, I’m going to hand over the initiative to the Laurel of Death. Then Mephistopheles will soon descend, just like the Pope transformed into Baal Zebub.”
“Are you saying you’re sacrificing yourself? That’s absolutely not okay! Please… don’t do that… Why do you keep insisting on this?!”
“Adella, listen to me! It’s not a sacrifice.”
“Then what is it? Changing bodies without giving me any explanation means you’ve already made up your mind in your heart, right? Isn’t that true?”
Hearing Adella’s sobs that seemed about to crumble, I shook my head.
I wiped her tears, which were falling helplessly, and pressed our foreheads together.
“We’re just crossing over to another world for a moment.”
“Crossing over…?”
Adella looked at me with a confused expression.
“Yup, with the Laurel of Rebirth and the Curse of Immortality, I won’t die. I’ll just get bounced into another world.”
Explaining it from that point onwards was tricky.
The Laurel of Rebirth contained commands that returned the player to a save point upon game over, while the Curse of Immortality was a trait that granted invincibility for five seconds.
I pondered how to simplify the explanation, and then Adella nodded her head.
“So, I just need to wait and trust that you’ll come back, right?”
She strengthened her voice, and a determined smile appeared on her face.
Though she might not understand, her expression showed that she trusted me completely.
As an adult, it wouldn’t be right to betray that trust.
I held her hand tightly.
“I’ll be back quickly.”
[RECOVER]
[system: trig/0xf29a31 executing recovery wizard.]
[Confirming object ‘Dawn’s Cat – Adella’.]
[Force-summoning ‘Mephistopheles’.]
*
[HP: 18391/43750 (40500+3250)]
[HP: 8391/43750 (40500+3250)]
[HP: 1/43750 (40500+3250)]
[Traits – Curse of Immortality (1/5)]
[YOU DIED]
[Traits – Curse of Immortality (2/5)]
[Traits – Curse of Immortality (3/5)]
[Traits – Curse of Immortality (4/5)]
[Traits – Curse of Immortality (5/5)]
[system: Command already processed.]
*
The world is being reconstructed.
First, the buildings began to disappear.
The sight of bricks vanishing one by one from the top down felt majestic, like watching a civilization trailer in reverse.
Next, the lush green forests and rivers gradually lost their color.
Finally, as the land supporting the bridge crumbled, I floated through the space between universes.
And the universe of this world was truly radiant.
An expanse of void filled entirely with blinding white.
“This is the open world. Still, the universe seems more beautiful in the dark.”
Thank goodness there was a chat window at times like this.
– “Something… something’s happening…”
– “I don’t understand anything now.”
– “Is this also part of the plan, teacher?”
– “Everything’s disappearing?”
– “Is it a failure?”
“It’s kind of a trick. The Laurel of Rebirth pertains to the player, but the Curse of Immortality treats characters as objects.”
– “????”
– “Huh?”
– “?”
– “This is going too fast, professor!”
– “Are you playing a different game?”
“Simply put, the Curse of Immortality activates just before your health drops to 0. Normally, you’d die after the curse ends, but since the object consumed by the Laurel is the player itself, the curse is supposed to apply to Adella’s ‘body,’ resulting in a world where two entities are created, while I’m still alive and existing, meaning the original world doesn’t disappear.”
Wearsoft adopted a multi-stack method in the open world overlay system.
So, when retrying, instead of dismantling the existing world from the start, we save the seed value at the checkpoint, preemptively prepare a sub-world, and freely replace it.
“Let’s say there are five poker cards. If the world where Mephistopheles has been summoned is the spade ace, that card has been flipped to the back. To draw that card again, what needs to be done?”
– “You have to keep drawing until it comes up!”
“Correct. I like smart people. This means we can just retrace our steps from Part 1. Since it’s an overlapping world, the enemies will all be in the spade ace, so there won’t be any fighting.”
Isn’t it amazing how quickly we grasp things?
No matter how solid a system humans create, there are always flaws.
Like how I discovered that Asteria’s ultimate ability dealt damage at fortresses when equipped with the Tiamat item while playing LoL.
Not to mention the principle of uncertainty exists in science, and the incompleteness theorem is proven in mathematics, so there’s no way a technology merely crafted by humans combining magic could be ‘perfect’ in itself.
If impossibility can’t be strictly proven, it suggests that it’s actually possible.
After all, by pressuring the engineers, such a fresh idea didn’t emerge in just one day.
Finally, thinking about finishing this damn game made my tail reflexively twitch.
– “Huh, the tail…!”
– “LOL!”
– “Looks like you’re in a good mood.”
– “If what the room leader says is true, we might clear this!”
– “This implementation is shockingly impressive, LOL!”
[‘Cat Love is the Best’ donated 1,000 won!]
– “NoName, sorry to interrupt out of nowhere, but when you broadcasted yesterday, I noticed some slurring. Did you get braces?”
While waiting for the next open world to load, I found a moment to focus on the broadcast.
As if they couldn’t stand a moment of delay, they quickly pulled me into another conversation.
“No, when did I slur?”
[‘Cat Love is the Best’ donated 10,000 won!]
– “Then could you try saying ‘Hanyangyangjangjeom next to Hanyoungyangjangjeom, Hanyoungyangjangjeom next to Anyangyangjangjeom’?”
This was a piece of cake. It’s not even a rune language, just Korean.
In contrast, runes used in high-tier magic beyond the 6th circle are incredibly complicated, so I often find myself confused if I don’t recite them mentally.
After all, they’re not created through social contract so they don’t consider human oral structures.
Practicing a phrase before an interview isn’t much at all.
“Han-yang-yang-jang-jeom next to Han-yang-yang-jang-jeom, Han-yang-yang-jang-jeom next to An-yang-yang-jang-jeom.”
– “LOL!”
– “OMG!”
– “Are you a genius?”
– “LOL!”
“Wow, this is what a cat looks like, and this is what a catsy is!”
– “Why on earth are you going to a musical!”
– “I guess Adella isn’t just acting cute all the time, LOL!”
└ “I couldn’t help it, LOL!”
– “That’s seriously adorable, LOL!”
“Uh?”
– “Everyone, shush!”
– “Shhh!”
– “Hide, hide, hide!”
– “Doomhangcha~~~~”
“Wait, this is more than I expected…”
Her swaying tail grew still, and her ears drooped backward stiffly.
Time was taking too long.
It was going way too far back into the past.
That being said, it wasn’t like the open world stacks were piling up, but the world being generated right now felt familiar yet different.
The white background had morphed into a pitch-black night sky.
A cold breeze brushed against my arms, so I tightened Adella’s dark cloak around me.
As I casually turned to look behind me, something bumped into my shoulder.
It was someone’s neatly built stone wall.
In an alleyway of the capital, devoid of any human presence, even the faintest light was not spilling from homes as everyone had likely drifted into sleep.
This was neither the Forest of Arseria from the prologue nor the Abyss Branch 15 from Part 1.
It was a world where boss monsters had all vanished. Therefore, my plan to quickly mark the boss spawn points and move on to the next open world was instantly dashed.
I couldn’t even figure out where I was walking. With each step, my legs felt heavier, almost as if I were sinking into a swamp.
As I wandered down the endless uneven stone path, I heard a baby’s cry blending incongruously with the hoot of an owl.
“Is that… a baby crying… right?”
– “Super scary…”
– “Where is this place?”
– “Isn’t that a cat’s cry?”
– “No, no, it really sounds like a baby crying to me.”
– “I’ve never seen such a story before.”
Both the viewers and I felt the sense of unease at the same time.
Up until now, there hadn’t been ‘babies’ or ‘children’ in the World of Arseria.
When Adella and I slipped out of the system, all we could find in the tangled marketplace were adults and old folks.
As I was trying to brush it off, thinking it was just a gaming allowance, the baby’s cry sounded too realistic to ignore, so I turned on every interface I could.
[▶ Quest Notification – ON]
[▶ NPC Subtitles – ON]
[▶ Navigation Assistant – ON]
[▶ Mini-map – ON]
[▶ Hit Effect – ON]
[▶ Critical Effect – ON]
[▶ Kill Count Notification – ON]
Nothing popped up, just as I feared.
Finally, when I activated the notification for the current chapter,
[▶ Chapter Notification – ON]
[Unused Data / A-2 level manager and external access prohibited]
I realized I’d entered a world that couldn’t be accessed by normal means.
A totally forgotten and abandoned world in the story (dummy data).
That’s when it happened.
– “Behind, behind, behind!”
– “Room leader, something is coming!”
– “KYAAAAAA!”
Closing the distance out of the dark, there was no time to react.
I felt a heavy impact in my side, and my body began to tilt. Without a doubt, I was going to fall.
But before I could hear the impact with the hard ground, all interfaces faded, and my vision went black as if the film had been cut.
