For a while, there was only darkness and silence. I couldn't feel anything, no pain, no sensation, nothing.
I was truly… dead.
Then, as if a switch had been flipped, my eyes snapped open, like I'd been jerked awake from a deep sleep.
'Huh?' Confused, I blinked a few times.
The first thing I noticed was that it was currently night. A large moon hung high above in the empty night sky.
My gaze drifted from the moon down, and that was when I realized that I was lying on the bare ground.
But then something else caught my attention that made my heart begin to race: the white, coarse tunic I was wearing was covered in blood, presumably my own. I could even see tiny bits of bone and brain matter staining the fabric.
My confusion and fear deepened...
I could remember everything vividly: my final moments, the axe descending, and my dying almost instantly from the blow.
So what's this now? Am I not dead?
Also, why am I not feeling any pain?
I raised the arm that had been chopped off, then saw that it was perfectly attached. If it weren't for the dried blood that stained my pale arm in fractured lines, I would almost have thought that nothing had happened to it in the first place.
'How?'
Before I could question the impossibility further, a female voice spoke right beside me:
"Oh, you're finally awake. Took you long enough."
I immediately tensed up and whipped my head toward the sound.
Sitting right there on the ground beside me and leaning against the wall, was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
She had long, wavy black hair with streaks of teal running through it. Her porcelain white skin, contrasted sharply with the dark colors she wore. She was dressed in a black, off-the-shoulder gown that laced up the front, revealing a ruffled, pale neckline. A bold teal pendant necklace hung around her throat, matching the large rings on her fingers and her dangling blue earrings.
Looking at such beauty, I couldn't help but feel the heat of a blush creep up my face.
'Goddaaamn. What's a beauty like this doing with me in hell?'
I had barely finished that thought when the woman responded:
"Well, it's not like I have a choice."
My eyes widened. "What?"
I immediately sprang upright, then asked in sheer disbelief. "You can hear my thoughts?"
She turned slowly to face me, fixing her blue eyes on mine. Then after a moment, she replied wryly, "Yeah."
The fu—
My brows instantly furrowed, and I could feel my heart begin to pound against my chest.
How was that possible? Was she a witch or something like that? Oh… Seeing that I'm in hell, maybe a demoness?
I leaned back slightly, then asked, "Who the hell are you? And how is it possible that you can hear my thoughts?"
The woman didn't respond immediately. Instead, she looked away and exhaled tiredly. After a moment, she finally answered, "I already told you my name, didn't I?"
I frowned at that answer, arched a brow, and began, "When did you—"
But then I paused mid-sentence as I suddenly remembered something.
Right before I was killed by the man in the arena, I remembered hearing a female voice say something along the lines of, — My name is Aika Soryu.
Tilting my head, I asked, "That… voice in the arena then. That was you, wasn't it?"
The woman nodded after a short while.
'Oh…'
That was one mystery solved.
However, all of a sudden, many more questions began to pile up in my head:
So her name is Aika Soryu…
But who or what is she? More importantly, where am I? And how am I still alive after being butchered in that gruesome manner?
I took a deep breath, and my lips parted to begin offloading all my numerous questions. But before a word could come out, the woman tilted her head toward me and said tiredly, "I'm sure you have a lot of questions in that big head of yours. So listen here... Just like you, I don't really know a lot about what's currently happening, so I may not be able to answer every single question you have, as I, too, am still trying to figure out most things. The little I know right now about our current situation is from what I was able to piece together while you were still… dead, as I have access to all your memories."
"Huh? …What?"
It felt like my brain buffered when I heard that.
"…What do you mean you have access to all of my memories?"
Aika sighed and rubbed the back of her neck with a pale hand, while still looking at me. "It means exactly what it sounds like. I have access to all your memories. As for how I do have them? You'll know why when I'm done telling you what I know about our situation."
Mmm… Was it just me, or did it sound like she put emphasis on the all? I began to grow nervous and embarrassed at the thought of the things in my memories she had access to.
Aika continued speaking in her world-weary tone. "First, I can't exactly say why or how, but it looks like you died and transmigrated into the body of a character in the game you were playing back in Seoul. Unfortunately, that character was a slave doomed to be killed in the royal arena of the Lumierian Empire. Which, in case you haven't already guessed, is the empire we're in right now."
What?!
At first, there was a long silence… then I broke into a sarcastic laugh, dragging my hand across my hair. "Ha! Haha, I'm going insane… I'm really losing it."
I looked back up at her, but her deadpan expression had not changed.
"Wait... are you really serious right now?"
I died and transmigrated into the body of a character in the game I was playing? What sort of bullshit was that?
"Have you heard how absurd that sounds?"
Aika sighed, then said, "That's the only plausible explanation I was able to come up with for this situation. How else do we explain the arena you woke up in? It looked exactly like the one in the game, didn't it? Also, while you were dead, I took a look around. This really is Lumieria."
Well… to be honest I didn't really notice how the arena looked, cause I was too focused on ugly man with the axe who killed me.
However, thinking about it, I couldn't help but feel like she was saying the truth, that I had indeed transmigrated.
I thought on it for a short moment. Aika seemed to pause in order to give me time to process what she had just said. After a moment longer, I reluctantly decided to go with her explanation.
After all, believing that I had transmigrated was at least better than believing I'm in hell.
But…
Why did I have to transmigrate into the body of a slave doomed to die in an arena?
I rubbed the unfamiliar contours of my face and slowly lifted my gaze back to her eyes.
More importantly…
"Let's say I really transmigrated into the game. Didn't I get killed shortly after by that man in the arena?"
"Of course, you were killed. I mean… look at you." She nodded toward my blood-stained tunic.
I took a quick glance at myself. The sight of my blood was truly grotesque and made me feel like heaving my guts out.
Aika continued, her voice jaded. "You've been dead for some hours now. It took a lot of effort just to sneak your body away from the corpse handlers. After that, I dragged your mangled corpse all the way to this alley."
She looked away, then plopped her head back tiredly on the wall she was leaning on. "As for how you are alive right now? I think that has something to do with our bonded ability."
Upon hearing the words "bonded ability," my heart skipped a beat, and my eyes widened because I recognized what it meant.
"That means…"
She nodded, then completed the thought: "Yes. I am your bond."