The first thing I saw wasn't a white light. It was a "Game Over" screen.
I didn't wake up in a hospital. I woke up with a mouthful of freezing mud.
I pushed myself off the ground. My hands were small, filthy, and covered in calluses. I stared at my reflection in a dirty rainwater puddle.
Brown hair. Sunken cheeks. A ratty burlap tunic.
There was no name tag hovering over my head. No health bar in the corner of my vision.
I looked up.
Past the soot-stained roofs of the city, the obsidian peaks of the
Dragon-Back Mountains pierced the sky like broken teeth. I knew those mountains. I'd spent three years staring at them through a monitor.
This was DOOM of the Eternal Rose.
The most brutal open-world RPG ever made. The "render distance" wasn't a setting anymore. It was real.
The air smelled like wet cobblestone and cheap ale.
I was a nameless villager. An extra meant to die off-screen.
But I didn't care about my stats. I only cared about the clock ticking in my head.
In exactly ten minutes, the "Third Calamity" was going to be born. Alisa von Blood-Rose.
To the rest of the fanbase, she was just a mid-game boss you beheaded in Chapter 2. To the Church in this world, she was a demon.
But to me? She was the only reason I played the game.
I ran.
My bare feet scraped against the stone. I shoved past armored mercenaries and screaming merchants, ignoring the chaos of the
Capital. I knew exactly where her tragedy started. I'd watched the cutscene a hundred times.
I found the alleyway just as the sun began to set.
There she was.
She was tiny, maybe ten years old, backed into a corner and wrapped in an oversized black cloak. Six noble-born boys circled her like stray dogs.
"Show us the eyes, monster," the blonde leader sneered.
He grabbed the edge of her cloak and yanked it away.
Silver-pink hair spilled over her shoulders. And her eyes—deep, haunting crimson.
In this empire, red eyes were the mark of a curse. A literal death sentence. It was the reason her father, the terrifying Duke of the
North, locked her away. It was the reason the whole world hated her.
Alisa didn't cry. She bit her lip so hard it bled. Dark sparks of magic began to flicker around her knuckles.
This was the trigger.
If that magic went off, she'd kill them all. She would be labeled a monster, and her path to the guillotine would be set in stone.
"Let's see if demons really bleed black," the blonde boy laughed. He drew a silver-hilted training sword and pointed it at her throat.
I looked at my empty hands. I had no weapon. No magic system to save me. I was just a guy who knew how the story ended.
But I wasn't going to let the axe fall on her again.
"Hey!" I yelled, stepping into the alley. "Drop the toothpick, you blonde piece of trash."
The blonde kid didn't just look at me—he looked disgusted. Like he'd just stepped in something and realized it was a person.
"A rat?" he spat, his voice dropping an octave. "A literal peasant is talking to me?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My heart was thumping so hard against my ribs I thought it might actually break one. My hands were shaking, and I had to clench them into fists just to hide it.
Leo?
That's what she'd called me. But that wasn't my name. I was just a guy who'd died in front of a monitor.
The leader didn't wait. "Kill him."
Two of the lackeys lunged. In the game, these guys always used the same standard AI attack—a lunging right hook. I knew the animation frames by heart, but my new body was sluggish.
I barely ducked. The punch grazed my hair, and I felt the wind of it. I didn't counter-punch—I wasn't a fighter. I just threw my weight into the first kid's knee, a weak spot in the game's physics engine.
Crack.
He tripped over his own momentum and slammed into a pile of trash.
"You little—!"
The second one tried to grab me. I didn't think; I just grabbed a loose cobblestone from the damp ground and shoved it into his stomach. It was desperate. He wheezed, doubling over.
"Enough!" the leader roared.
He lunged with the silver training sword. It wasn't sharp, but at that speed, it would cave my chest in. In the game, this was the "Scripted
Death" for any NPC that interfered.
I didn't dodge. I couldn't. Instead, I jammed my palm against the hilt of his sword as it came down. It was a 'Guard-Break' glitch I'd seen in speedruns.
The sword clattered to the ground.
The alley went silent. The noble brat stared at his empty hand, shaking with pure, unadulterated rage.
"You... you touched me," he whispered. "A peasant... touched me!"
He pulled back his fist to finish me, but then—the air died.
The temperature plummeted. A heavy, suffocating pressure settled over the alley. It felt like a mountain was sitting on my head.
I turned around.
Alisa was standing up. Her pink hair was whipping around her face, and her eyes were glowing a deep, terrifying red.
"Touch him again," she said. Her voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "And don't ever touch my friend again, you heard that?"
They didn't even grab their sword. They scrambled out of the alley, screaming about demons and curses.
The pressure vanished. Alisa swayed, her face turning as white as bone. I moved forward, catching her before she hit the mud. She was shivering, her skin like ice.
"You're an idiot," she whispered, her red eyes looking at me with a mix of relief and pain. "Why did you stay, Leo?"
I stared at her, my head spinning. "Look... who is Leo? And who are you? Do I actually know you?"
She blinked, her expression shifting to pure hurt. "What are you talking about? We've lived in the same village for five years. You... you're the one who gave me the wooden bird when I was crying in the woods."
Village? Wooden bird? I was an 'Extra' with a backstory. This body had a life I knew nothing about.
"I... I don't remember any bird," I muttered.
She looked at me like I'd just slapped her. "Leo, stop it. This isn't funny. Did you hit your head?"
I didn't get to answer.
A heavy boot stepped into the light at the entrance of the alley.
I looked up, and my heart didn't just stop—it froze.
Standing there, draped in a coat of black fur and smelling of expensive tobacco and old blood, was a man who looked like he'd been carved out of granite.
The Duke of the North. Alisa's father.
In the game, this man was the "Final
Boss of the Prologue." He was a monster who executed players for the crime of standing in his way. He didn't have a heart; he had a list of enemies.
My legs turned to jelly. I wanted to run, but I couldn't move. I was paralyzed.
The Duke looked at the discarded sword, then at his daughter, and finally, his cold, grey eyes landed on me.
"A villager," the Duke rumbled. His voice was like grinding stones.
He stepped closer, and the sheer 'Aura' of the man made me want to throw up.
This was the guy who beheads the Villainess later in the game. This was the man who destroys empires.
"Explain why you are holding my daughter, boy," the Duke said, his hand resting on the pommel of a very real, very sharp sword. "Before I decide to remove your arms."
I couldn't even breathe. I was just a fan who'd played the game too much. And now, I was about to die in the first chapter.