Alex opened his eyes and found himself in a strange place. A red moon hung in the sky above him.
Black fog surrounded the area in every direction. He stood in the middle of a grassland.
The fog gave him a deep feeling of dread. His instincts told him that if he touched it, he would die.
He frowned and questioned his situation.
'Wait, is this a new VR game? Can they now even create things that give a feeling of dread?'
He had played many VR games before. They were very realistic, but he had never felt something like this.
VR could copy touch, sight, and smell, but it had never triggered his instincts this strongly.
He looked down.
The grass was green, but red veins ran through each blade.
When he looked around the field, his eyes widened.
A woman lay in the grass not far from him.
He could not see her face from this angle, but he was sure she was beautiful.
Her white robe looked like something from a cultivation novel. Parts of it were shredded, revealing smooth, pale skin.
From how the cloth was torn, Alex was sure that if he flipped her over, he would see her most private parts.
"Is this an H-game?" he mumbled.
He walked closer. As he approached, her appearance became clearer.
Her skin was pale white without any blemish.
Her figure was a perfect hourglass shape and gave off a strong allure he could not deny.
"Yes, I am sure this is a VR world. No way a situation like this happens in real life," he said to himself.
He had felt the dread from the fog and had first considered that he might be inside some kind of dungeon.
But the idea felt wrong. There were no monsters here, only an unconscious beauty in the middle of a strange field.
No dungeon he knew looked like this.
His tension slowly faded. His steps became lighter as he relaxed.
Before he could get closer, the woman's body moved.
Mingyue's eyes opened.
Her head hurt.
As the memory of what had happened to her returned, she forced herself to stay calm and looked around to figure out where she was.
She pressed her palm against the ground and pushed her upper body up.
She sensed a presence behind her and looked over her shoulder.
As a cultivator, her mind cleared quickly.
She knew her clothes were not decent. She wanted to confirm what kind of person stood behind her.
What she saw made her frown.
A man stood there, frozen in place.
Alex was mesmerized.
The woman was very beautiful, and not only because of her face or figure.
An otherworldly aura surrounded her and made her beauty stand out even more.
Convinced this was just a VR world, Alex moved closer again, planning to enjoy the "game."
Her amber eyes, tinted with a bit of red, shone brightly. In his eyes, they were stunning.
He had never felt this attracted to a woman before. Part of him already regretted that she was not real.
'Is this what they call love at first sight?' Alex thought.
Mingyue felt the lust in Alex's black eyes. She quickly shouted, "Stop where you are!
What do you want to do with me?"
Her qi was still recovering, and she felt that something inside her body had changed.
She was not sure if she could fight back if the man tried to attack her.
Her shout, which sounded like an angelic voice to Alex, made him frown.
"Is this that kind of H-game?" he muttered.
He had played that type of game before to satisfy his desires. However, he always chose simple, consensual ones.
The idea of rape or forcing himself on someone disgusted him.
It was not that he could not hire a real woman. He simply did not want to.
The romantic stories his mother had loved and told him had influenced him a lot.
As he thought about what to do next, red smoke suddenly appeared in the space between them.
The smoke twisted and thickened, then solidified into a small, round, chubby creature with soft pink fur.
It had two short legs ending in sharp claws. Instead of arms, it had a pair of dragon-like wings.
Its face was strange. The creature had two pairs of ruby-red eyes stacked on its head and a big mouth.
From its proportions, Alex guessed that if it opened that mouth fully, it would be half the size of its whole body.
Two long ears, like bunny ears, stuck up from the top of its body.
The creature looked at Alex, then turned to look at Mingyue. Its lips curled into a grin.
"I am Vesa, the personality of the Vampire System," a childish, cute voice said.
Vesa continued, "Welcome, new king and queen, to Edonia. Well, what is left of it?
I know both of you feel confused, especially King Alex, since you were unconscious when the system was activated.
I can assure you this is not a game."
It turned its ruby eyes to Mingyue.
"Queen Mingyue, you are here and not here at the same time. You should understand what this means."
Mingyue was still confused about her situation, but she quickly grasped the meaning behind Vesa's words.
She realized she existed here only as a soul.
As a cultivator, the concept was not strange to her.
Soul separation and similar techniques existed in her world, even if she had not used them herself.
With a single thought, her white robe returned to its pristine condition, covering her properly.
She stood up and looked at Alex and Vesa with caution.
Realizing she was only a soul made her uneasy. She had never cultivated her soul directly.
She had focused on her qi and her secret techniques instead.
When Mingyue stood up, Alex noticed she only reached his shoulder in height.
He was still caught by her beauty, but Vesa's earlier words pulled him back to reality.
He remembered that every country in the world had agreed on strict rules for VR.
All VR games and apps had to state clearly that they were VR.
This rule existed to avoid confusion and prevent players from developing delusions.
In the early days of VR, some games had failed to do this.
Some players had started to believe that the VR world was the real one and that their actual world was the fake one, like in the matrix stories.
This had led to many problems, including suicides and crimes, because those players no longer took real-world laws seriously.
Alex focused on Vesa and narrowed his eyes.
"What do you mean this is not a game? Is this a dungeon?" he asked.