Chapter 3: Inevitable Changes

"Okay... three... two... one... and... here we go!" Nio tries to fly with a short running start, beating her wings. Her body lifts off easily, as if it’s done this thousands of times before — but the body knowing doesn’t change the experience.

Nio flies straight into a pillar, smacking her face and driving her horns through the white stone. She hangs there confused, her tail whipping from side to side in discomfort.

"H-Hun?" She pulls her head out of the stone, sliding downward. Nio’s outfit, based on a mythological clothing style, is quite short. It exposes her belly, while the top covers her breasts but leaves the surrounding areas very exposed.

At the same time, the outfit connects as a dress with the lower part, so despite being clothing that reveals these things, the open midriff area ends up looking rather cute.

Especially with the tall socks reaching mid-thigh and the white gloves up to the elbows — a common look among her many outfits, though now stained with white dust.

"D-Dust!!... I almost forgot... in the game, hitting the walls of a base, even your own base, was just like colliding with something unbreakable..." She looks down timidly, a little embarrassed by the accident.

She takes off again, this time trying to go slower. Controlling flight is harder than she expected because of the speed, but taking a deep breath, she heads toward the stained-glass window.

’My base had an auto-reconstruction system... in the game, the base had structure bars — nothing ever really broke. But now that this is real, I figure that means the walls of my base regenerate... so...’ Breathing deeply, she speeds toward the glass and bursts through the window.

"..." She feels calmer seeing that the glass didn’t cut her as she exits her base in a very unusual fashion.

"Ah..." As soon as she’s out, she notices something she didn’t expect. Her base isn’t flying — it’s sunk into the ground. But not merely sunk. It’s leveled, as if the palace is part of the long grass scenery. It looks like a giant plain.

"That means about 70% of my base is underground... that’s good for hiding it, but it leaves my palace way too exposed... hmmm..." She spins in the air, looking at the immense white palace.

It’s a monumental, colossal structure in size, clearly visible from very far away. Even though looking around she doesn’t see any civilization, it’s still dangerous leaving her base this exposed.

’Now I regret making it so ridiculously huge... in realistic size, it’s like taking a castle considered large and multiplying it by four... and that’s just the palace. The island itself is much bigger than the palace...’

"This smell... it’s pure air." She takes a deep breath, distracting herself for a moment. She’s never smelled pure air before, only read descriptions of it. She’s immediately happy she chose to see the outside, ignoring the NPCs for now.

"Hmmm... okay, enough sniffing the air. This fucked-up world is not the game world!!!" Immediately all the tension comes rushing back — because the game [AIN SOPH] didn’t have very pure air.

It was a world that was very dark in many places while lighter in others, but something common was the event [Tainted Sky], a basic monster-spawn raid for low-level creatures, which made NPCs describe the smell of the air as "impure" 100% of the time. It was less than real-world pollution, but still not the smell of pure air.

And that applied to nearly the entire game map. This makes Nio know immediately — this is a different world from the game world.

"This is the worst-case scenario... if it were the game world, I’d know all the general threats..." She begins descending slowly to the ground, nervous but wanting to experience the grass.

She lands softly on the ground. Her relatively large wings beat, making the grass sway gently. Nio kneels down, smelling the grass with her face nearly pressed to the ground.

"It’s... different from what I expected... I’ve never seen grass in my life, but they said it smelled nice..." She sits on the ground, unconcerned about the dress, which has enchantments for auto-cleaning.

"Haaa..." She lets out an exaggerated sigh, thinking about the future — not just about her natural enemy who might be in this world, but about what she’ll do.

"I was someone who did a lot of PK in the game, so much that my alignment was evil... obviously in real life I would never kill anyone... but what about now?" Nio looks at her hands, dirty with bits of earth and grass.

She doesn’t feel like a human. She feels several constraints — as if her mind was forcibly trapped in a mold, like forcing something giant inside a glass jar. Or in this case, trapping a specific mentality inside a script too strong to overcome.

"I have memories, feelings, and similar desires... so I guess I’m still me... but my emotions seem volatile in a strange direction, and I feel lethargic just like Nio’s description — she wasn’t a very active being..." Her biological clock has changed.

A "neurological" shift — the urge to sleep that Nio carried. Something that doesn’t belong to her, but that she now feels.

"Nio... my avatar wasn’t a being with an absurdly strong personality. She preferred simpler things like sleeping and had a fishing hobby to the point where my fishing class is level 100. Maybe that’s what saved me from disappearing?" She wonders, speaking to herself.

In the past, she picked up this habit because she talked a lot with her NPCs, even though they never answered.

"I’m still me... but how much of me is me?... ugh... I hate philosophical questions... let’s just say I’ll always be me because I still feel like I’m me. It’s easier than trying to think I’m some other being with strange memories..." She stands up, looking at her base.

"If my natural enemy is here, I need to prepare... and for that... I’ll need my NPCs and to get this base back into the skies... I also need to explore the world to see if there’s any dangerous threat to me." Decided on going back and dealing with the biggest threats, she starts forming plans.

She doesn’t bother looking for possible other players. It’s not impossible for there to be another player, but Nio doesn’t care much if there is. She had no friends in the game before and was a solo player who preferred doing everything alone.

So she keeps that same indifferent attitude toward others, preferring to follow the path of protecting herself before deciding what to do. After all, dead people can’t decide whether to enjoy life, dominate the world, or just live in hiding.