[Interlinker Seyfe]
[Successfully sync with Avatar Regina]
[May your spark bring light to this world]
What… what is that?
A crushing dizziness spun through me, twisting my stomach into knots. My chest burned as if someone had hollowed it out and filled it with fire. When the haze finally broke, I found myself face-down against cold stone.
The pavement bit into my cheek, rough and damp, while a chill breeze swept across me. I forced my arms to push me upright—
—but froze.
My hands… slender, pale, delicate. Not mine.My voice, when it escaped in a ragged gasp, was softer, higher.My skin gleamed smooth under the faint light, almost porcelain.And my chest—heavier, unbalanced, unmistakably different.
I staggered to my feet, heart pounding, as the truth slammed into me.
I was inside a female body.
A female avatar.
My throat went dry."W-wait… no. No, no, no. Fuck…"
The word echoed in the empty air, swallowed by the vast unknown around me.
[Condition: Desyncing]
My limbs felt heavy, uncoordinated, as though I were trying to swim through air. Every motion was just slightly off, delayed, like my body wasn't quite mine to command.
So this is desyncing…?
I knew I was in a female body now, but the strangeness wasn't only about the shape. It was the way the body moved. Every step felt alien, every breath just a fraction out of rhythm.
I forced myself to stop focusing on it. There was something more important.
Where… was I?
I lifted my head. The world stretched out in ruins—shattered walls, blackened stone, broken towers jutting into the sky like jagged teeth. Above, the heavens burned in a golden hue, the clouds smeared like molten fire. The air itself reeked of ash, thick enough to sting my throat with every breath.
Carefully, I began to walk, testing each step, trying to coax this new body into obedience. My balance wavered, but I pushed forward.
The system had chosen this avatar for me. Regina. I hadn't even been given a chance to design one myself.
The wind swept through the broken streets, tugging at my clothes. Thin leather—top and pants, little more than scraps stitched into an outfit. It was light, flexible, and yet far too revealing for comfort.
I grimaced, clutching at the hem of the top."At least it's not a loincloth," I muttered under my breath. "If it was… I'd have already lost my mind."
I needed clothes.
Professor Marrow's lessons echoed in my head: Realms impose debuffs. Conditions that eat at your avatar the longer you remain exposed. Freezing was one of the more common ones. If I didn't find something to shield me from the wind, this body would deteriorate faster than I could manage.
I searched the nearby ruins, slipping into crumbling homes one by one. Ash coated the floors, old furniture rotting into dust. Nothing useful. Just scraps. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to keep moving.
"Status window," I muttered.
[Status window] [opened]
[Avatar: Regina]
[Class: Not yet designated]
[Affinity: Not yet designated]
[Strength: 4]
[Speed: 3]
[Agility: 5]
[Sense: 4]
[Intelligence: 3]
[Physical Resistance: -1]
[Magical Resistance: -2]
[Immunity: 0]
So it really was the same as the simulations. Only this time, there was no "reset" button.
My eyes flicked over the numbers. The agility stood out—five. A rare advantage, considering most started with balanced fours across the board. But the negatives burned holes into me. -1 Physical Resistance. -2 Magical Resistance. Fragile. One hit and I'd shatter like glass.
No class, no affinity, no safety net. Everything would depend on how I handled myself here.
[Status window] [Closed]
I exhaled slowly, grounding myself. One more test. "Inventory."
Another translucent panel blinked into view. My lips curved into the faintest smile. So the theories were right.
Back in senior high, while others obsessed over practical dueling drills, I buried myself in the dense, overlooked research papers. Forgotten hypotheses about Nexus Protocol functions. Theories that most dismissed as impractical. But here it was—inventory, real and usable.
I remembered the story: in the early years, Interlinkers had to drag bags and belts for everything they carried. Then came the breakthrough—the discovery of the hidden inventory system. But it wasn't unlocked freely. The cost was a nightmare: the defeat of the Hands of Seekers, a Cataclysmic-tier Aberrant. Hundreds had died before its fall, and the survivors bled the function out of the system for everyone else.
I stared at the empty grid of my own inventory, the faint hum of its presence in my mind."Lives lost… so people like me could open this with a word."
My fingers tightened at my side. If this world demanded a price, I wasn't sure yet what mine would be.
I continued my small journey through the ruined homes, one creaking door at a time. Dust fell with every step, ash crunching beneath my boots. Most of the rooms were gutted—furniture overturned, cupboards split open like carcasses.
Then, finally, something usable. A bundle of dried roots tucked into a cracked clay jar. A half-burned loaf of bread, stale but still intact. Even a flask that, miraculously, still carried water.
"They'll do." My stomach wasn't complaining yet, but I wasn't about to gamble on how long that would last.
I willed them into my inventory. The air shimmered faintly, and the items dissolved into motes of light before disappearing from sight. I checked the grid—there they were, neatly slotted into their own spaces, waiting.
"…So it works in real time. No delay." I exhaled, relieved. The function wasn't just a theory anymore—it was survival.
Still, the unease never left. The homes felt too quiet, as if I were intruding on the remains of lives abruptly cut short. The cold wind kept threading through the shattered walls, carrying with it the faint smell of scorched earth.
Food in my inventory. Shelter nowhere in sight. And the strange weight of a body that wasn't mine.
I clenched my hand and forced myself onward.
I have to use the inventory wisely.
Consumables can stack—ten of the same item at most. But anything bigger, like tools or weapons, eats up precious slots. Some take two, three, even more depending on size. Non-consumables? At least one slot minimum. Space wasn't infinite.
Which meant I couldn't afford to hoard junk.
The long black robe I found draped over a broken chair went on immediately. It was frayed at the edges, moth-eaten in spots, but warmth was warmth. At the very least, it would help me stave off the freeze debuff when night fell.
Food. Clothing. That covered the bare minimum.
But what else?
Weapons—that was obvious. Even if I wasn't planning to fight, sooner or later the realm would force me to. And miscellaneous supplies—rope, flint, anything that could double as survival gear. The avatar may not bleed the same way my real body would, but it was still a body with needs and functions. Hunger, exhaustion, pain—they all bled through the consciousness link.
And if I died here…
My throat went dry. The robe suddenly felt heavier on my shoulders.
If I died here, I died outside.
A cruel design, really. Not even avatars escaped the burdens of their interlinker's condition. Weaknesses carried over. Sickness carried over. There was no such thing as a "clean slate."
I pulled the robe tighter around me and kept searching, every creak of the ruins reminding me that survival wasn't about comfort. It was about staying one step ahead of collapse.
I finally reached the center of the ruins.
The silence pressed in like a weight. No insects, no birds, not even the faint shimmer of drifting motes of light I'd seen in other interlinker recordings. Nothing lived here. Not even weeds pushing through cracks.
It wasn't just ruins.It was a grave.
That thought chilled me deeper than the mountain winds.
My eyes caught on a huge wooden sign, its planks half-rotten and leaning against what looked like a collapsed horse stable. A scrap of parchment flapped weakly against it.
I pulled it free. The ink was faded, but legible enough:
"Refugees are to be relocated on the eastern part of Soragon."
I read it twice. Slowly.
Soragon…? So this is a land with a name. Not just a random backdrop, but a place with a history.
Refugees. Relocated.
War? Or something worse?
The absence of bodies was almost more unnerving than if skeletons had littered the streets. Where had everyone gone? Did they escape to this "eastern part"? Or had they been erased, along with the life of this land?
I tucked the note into my robe pocket. My mind kept turning it over.
If this was a test, then the realm wanted me to see this clue. Wanted me to start asking questions.
The problem was… I didn't know if the answers lay east—or if going east was exactly what the realm expected me to do.
My choices here mattered. Every decision would shape not just my survival, but the future growth of this avatar—and me.
The system never threw things in at random. Aunt Jeyda's words echoed: "Play a role. The Lobby of Faith will lead you."
But what role could I play, when the body I was forced into wasn't even mine?
I glanced down at my slender hands, the robe brushing over curves that didn't belong to me. A body that moved differently, breathed differently, reacted differently.
"Well, Aunt Jeyda," I muttered under my breath, "being me is a little harder than you think… especially when 'me' is trapped in someone else's skin."
The words tasted bitter. I wasn't sure if the realm would punish me for thinking that—or if admitting it was exactly the kind of honesty it demanded.
Still… I had to play a role while remaining myself. That was the balance Aunt Jeyda warned me about.
The system had spawned me here, in the middle of ruins that whispered of tragedy. A sign told me refugees were led east, but nothing more. No dates. No causes. No answers. Just silence.
"I need a timeline," I muttered, scanning the empty stables, the ash-stained earth. "Without knowing what happened, I'm walking blind."
If the system wanted me to piece this story together, then maybe the answer lay in following the refugees' trail. East, toward Soragon's borders.
Do I play the role of a lost survivor?Or am I just Seyfe, stumbling into their path, forcing the realm to respond?
Either way, it was a starting point. And in the Lobby of Faith, a starting point was everything.
"Compass," I whispered, almost hesitant.
[Compass: Activated]
A faint circle shimmered into view in the upper-left corner of my vision, its needle pointing steadily east.
I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. "Good. At least one thing is working with me."
The ruined homes stretched silent around me, ash still drifting through the golden sky. No people. No voices. Just me, a borrowed body, and the faint hum of the Nexus protocol guiding me forward.
If that note was true, then the refugees had gone east… and if I wanted to understand this realm, maybe I had to walk their path.
But… it's been an hour now.
Why is the road this difficult?
Outside the ruins, I've been passing strange… camps. If you could even call them that. Around fire pits lie corpses—except they're still breathing. Their chests rise and fall in ragged gasps, but their eyes are empty, glassy, staring into nothing.
At one point, I passed a man split clean in half, dragging himself forward with his arms. No blood, no screams. Just the sickening scrape of his nails on the dirt as if he was still going somewhere important.
I tried to talk to them—to anyone—but they never answer. Sometimes they wail, a hollow, broken sound that echoes in the air, before scrambling away as though terrified of me.
…Is it because of how I look? Is my avatar that ugly?
Or maybe… maybe I'm not the refugee here.
I finally reached a village, walled off with heavy stone. From afar it looked sturdy, but up close I could see the cracks spiderwebbing across it. Any moment now, one good push and the whole thing might crumble.
That's when I felt a tug on my robe.
I turned—and nearly jumped. A small boy was standing there, wide-eyed, his clothes worn and covered in dust.
"Hello, ma'am? Why are you here?" he asked softly, his tiny hand still clutching at the fabric.
"I'm here looking for refuge," I answered, though my own voice—light, feminine—still threw me off every time I heard it.
The boy's expression shifted, almost relieved, almost fearful."Then… you should talk to the Commando."
"Commando?" I echoed, frowning.
He nodded, but his lips trembled. His voice shook as though he was afraid even saying the word."He… he is…" The boy stuttered, glancing toward the heart of the village like something was watching him.
"Where is the Commando?" I pressed, trying to keep my tone calm even though my nerves were tightening.
"The… the big house in the center," the boy whispered finally, pointing with a dirt-stained finger. His hand was trembling.
As I stepped past the threshold of the village, I could feel it—the weight of dozens of eyes dragging over me.
Men and women, wrapped in rags and patched leather, froze in place. Their conversations died mid-sentence. The air turned sharp with suspicion.
"...Tch. What the hell?" I muttered under my breath.Was my avatar that strange? Or… was there something about me that didn't belong here?
I couldn't see my own face, no reflection to give me an answer. It gnawed at me, the uncertainty. Finally, I decided to test something I'd only ever read about.
"Interlinker Mask," I whispered.
A soft hum vibrated in my skull.
[Interlinker mask would be enabled, are you sure you would go incognito?]
"Yes."
[System Notice: Interlinker Mask enabled. Duration: 3hours.]
A ripple of shadow crawled across my vision, shaping into a half-moon of black that curved over the front of my face. Light bent strangely against it, like the mask itself rejected being seen clearly.
Murmurs rippled through the villagers. Some looked away immediately, as if the mask was too unsettling to stare at. Others bowed their heads, muttering something I couldn't catch.
At least the stares lessened. Somewhat.
But that also made one thing clear:These people recognized the mask.
And recognition in the Lobby of Faith… was rarely a good thing.
The tower loomed above me, its cracked stone walls swallowing the dying sunlight. Before I could even take a step further, a man in rusted armor barred my way, spear haft pressed against my chest.
His eyes dragged across me like a blade, scanning from my mask down to the hem of my robe. The weight of his inspection boiled under my skin.
"What is your purpose of visit here?" he demanded. His voice carried the fatigue of someone who'd asked this question one too many times… and expected the wrong answer.
My fists clenched at my sides. Something about the way he lingered on me, as if I were a blemish instead of a person, grated at my nerves. But anger wouldn't help me here. Not with stats like mine. One hit from him, and with my pitiful resistances… I'd be done.
I forced my voice steady."A visit to the commando."
Silence stretched between us. His stare lingered too long, like he was peeling away the mask, trying to see what lay beneath.
I swallowed hard.One of the worst parts about this system—they don't give you bars, no neat numbers hovering over your head. No comfort in knowing exactly how close you are to death. Just the weight of your body… and the creeping thought that a single mistake could be the end.
The guard finally grunted, lowering his spear just slightly."...Follow me. But keep your hands where I can see them."
The guard's boots echoed against the cracked stone as he led me deeper inside.
On the left, an iron-barred room came into view—women inside, their vague clothing leaving little to the imagination, chains biting at their ankles. Their hollow eyes tracked me as I passed.
My chest tightened.
Further down, I looked through another window slit—empty soil, no crops. Not a single cow, goat, or chicken anywhere. Only the stench of ash and rot clung to this place. A village stripped of everything that could sustain it.
A sickening thought clawed at the back of my mind.Why does it feel like I already know where this conversation with the Commando is going?
I hate this.
The worst part isn't the hunger, or the ash, or even the chains on those women.It's the silence of the system.
No pop-up. No quest. No guidance.
Just me—dropped in the middle of a story I didn't ask for, forced to find my own part in it.