"I loved my life."
Those were words I thought I would never say, and yet, I truly meant them at this moment.
"Aaaaaah nooooooo!"
The scream of a man echoed in the dark forest where I found myself, and upon hearing it, I began to run even faster than I thought I could.
"Fuck, fuck, and damn it, why me?" I thought as my breathing grew heavier in my lungs and my strength started to fade.
I had no time to waste. I had to get out of this damned forest or else I was going to be devoured. But unlike in the game, I didn't have any map.
No direction arrows, no zone barriers, nothing. All I had was this attribute, and with my body lack of mana, it didn't even work properly.
Of course, you might be wondering what exactly was going on, or what kind of mess this guy had gotten himself into.
Well, just know that I was in one hell of a mess.
"Ouch."
My foot hit a rock on the ground and I ended up falling face-first.
I quickly got back up, and luckily, nothing was broken, but my breathing was still short.
I hadn't stopped running for several minutes, and even if I wanted to believe it, I was certain it wasn't enough to escape that thing.
Looking around, I noticed the darkness had grown deeper. Because the trees covered the sky, it was impossible for me to know if it was day or night.
I took a few seconds before sitting down against a tree, my breathing still uncontrollable. This situation was anything but pleasant.
After all, who would enjoy being chased by a hungry mana beast in one of the most dangerous forests in the world, without even the possibility of defending themselves?
A suicidal person, maybe. But not me—I wasn't suicidal. At least, not anymore. And all of that was thanks to this game.
But I never would have thought that this same game would make me regret playing it, especially if it was only to make me die such a cruel death.
In the end, I really hoped that if I did die, I would wake up back home. Who knows, maybe all of this was just a bad dream, and if I let myself get killed, maybe I would wake up in my bed.
Slap.
"What do you think?" I murmured to myself while slapping my own face.
There was no chance this was a dream, because if it had been, all this pain would have woken me up.
Looking at my body, I could see my frail frame trembling and my hands shaking but I didnt know if it was because of the cold of the forest or the fear maybe even both.
The thought of ending up in someone else's body was something truly unimaginable. And even if it sounded ridiculous, I felt extremely uncomfortable.
I bet a lot of people would laugh if they heard this, but even so, I had the feeling that I had done something wrong.Like i stole the life of someone else.
I hadn't paid attention at first, but seeing my body trembling made me wonder if this was what the original owner of the body had felt, and that I was just reenacting some kind of "canon event."
To put it simply: I had ended up in the body of a character from my favorite game The Ascension.
The Ascension was a romance-fantasy open-world game where our choices truly impacted the story. And no, it wasn't one of those games where attacking a character just gave you a penalty.
No, every decision, every quest, every lost fight had a real impact on the story. At one point, I even wondered how many lines of code this thing had, and more importantly, how it was even running on my PC.
Because if you had a game with graphics like Genshin Impact and not only that but around maybe a thousand scenarios that could lead to several different endings, you would have your doubts.
And yet, it wasn't even the graphics that made the game beautiful—it was the sheer diversity of scenarios that made it so popular.
In The Ascension, you played as the protagonist who sought to avenge his family, who had been massacred. Along the way, he would meet several heroines, antagonists, other male characters, and of course, the villainess.
Very cliché, you might say.
And yet, the path of vengeance required several choices, and the game made sure you understood that well.
Every choice had consequences not only for yourself but sometimes for those around you.
You bump into someone and ignore them? You'll see the consequences later.
You kill a character for no reason because you think they're just an NPC?
Congratulations—you've become a criminal. You could either be arrested and thrown into prison, or spend the rest of the game as a criminal, join an organization, and accomplish your revenge that way.
You talk badly to a heroine thinking she's just a character who'll eventually fall for you despite your bad choices?
In many cases, those heroines could reject you, and sometimes even cause your death.
For every action, there was a reaction. Some players thought it was bad, others thought it was excellent—but one thing was certain: among the millions of players who played The Ascension, no one had ever managed to finish it 100%.
There were simply too many possibilities. That's why, in the community, the challenge wasn't to complete the game, but rather to find the best possible ending.
That's why the Ascension community was so massive.
Even if the game used tons of clichés, that didn't stop it from offering countless things to explore—the maps, the lore, the characters.
Crack.
I suddenly heard a branch snap, making me immediately turn my head.
Groooaaar.
A chill ran down my spine as I heard the growl. It seemed the beast had caught up with me.
I quickly got to my feet, and though my legs were shaking from the pain but I completely ignored it.
I didn't have time to complain about the pain in my leg because it would be nothing compared to being eaten alive.
Honestly, I had almost no chance of getting out of this. I had nearly no energy left, my mana was almost empty, and I had no idea where I was heading.
And yet, one of the most repeated phrases in the Ascension community was:
'There is no destiny belonging to the world or the character.'
It was a phrase that meant that, because of the multiple possibilities, there was always a way to change things in The Ascension.
But that phrase didn't apply to everyone. Or rather, there was one character who already had a predetermined fate.
This character was nothing but an extra, one who didn't appear much. If you, the protagonist, didn't go look for him, he would just disappear afterward, never to return.
And every time, it was always by the same method: death.
No matter what you did, he would die. And that character was the very one whose body I had taken possession of.
That character's name was Elias delight Veyra, and his only fate… was death.