The first thing Riri registered was cold.
Not the ambient chill of an open window or a broken heater—this was the bone-deep, sterile cold of expensive marble pressed against her cheek. She peeled her face off the floor, blinking against the knife-edge of sunlight slicing through floor-to-ceiling windows.
Her head felt stuffed with cotton. Her limbs were foreign, unresponsive in the wrong ways, like she'd borrowed someone else's nervous system and hadn't figured out the controls yet.
What the hell happened?
She pushed herself upright, palms flat against polished stone that gleamed like black glass. The motion sent a cascade of something silky sliding across her shoulders—hair, she realized distantly. Long hair. Hers had been chin-length and perpetually frizzy from too many late nights editing webnovels with wet hair.
Riri then noticed her surroundings.
This wasn't her apartment. Her apartment had second-hand furniture from Facebook Marketplace and a kitchenette that smelled like mildew. This place was all sharp angles and brutal minimalism—a penthouse carved from shadows and money, the kind of space that didn't need décor because the view was the statement.
She staggered to her feet. Her boots—tactical boots?—caught on the edge of something black and leather pooled around her ankles. A jacket. She grabbed it, held it up. Cropped. Hooded. Definitely not hers.
Her breath came faster now, shallow and tight.
Okay. Think. Last thing you remember.
She'd been at her desk. Three monitors glowing in the dark, energy drink gone flat in its can. She'd been beta-reading that garbage harem novel—Overpowered, Handsome, and Building a Harem in an Unlimited Flow World—the one where the NEET protagonist stumbled his way into collecting women like Pokémon cards while the actual compelling character, Samael Santoro, loomed in the background being competent and terrifying.
She'd been annotating a particularly stupid scene where the protagonist activated a cheat skill by accidentally falling…
And then nothing.
No truck. No heart attack. Just a hard cut to here.
Her gaze snagged on a reflective surface across the room—floor-to-ceiling windows doubling as mirrors in the morning glare. She saw a stranger.
Small. Porcelain-pale. A heart-shaped face framed by waves of black silk that fell past her waist, bangs cut straight across her forehead like someone had used a ruler. Massive eyes stared back at her, amber-gold and wrong, too large for her face, framed by lashes so dark they looked drawn on.
She looked like someone's waifu had crawled out of a body pillow.
"No," she whispered. Her voice was different too—softer, higher, the kind of voice that belonged to girls who got cast as the tragic heroine in period dramas.
She took a step closer to her reflection. The tactical gear hung off her frame like she was playing dress-up in someone else's apocalypse cosplay. Black crop jacket. Dark cargo pants. Combat boots that looked expensive and broken-in.
And then she saw it.
Floating in the corner of her vision like a UI overlay from a video game: a translucent gold notification box with text that shimmered like honey catching light.
[Welcome, Host. System #2 has successfully integrated.]
Her stomach dropped.
Oh.
Oh no.
The box hung there, patient and cheerful, like it had all the time in the world.
Riri's pulse hammered against her ribs. She forced her breathing to slow, forced her editor brain to kick in—the part that had spent years parsing nonsense plot threads and identifying tropes at fifty paces.
Stay calm. Assess. Adapt.
"Where am I?" Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
The gold notification rippled, text reforming with an almost eager fluidity.
[Host is currently located in Penthouse Suite 2A, Apex Towers, Central District—Blue Star, Year 3065. You have successfully transmigrated into the body of Riri Lee, age 19, freelance data analyst (deceased: system malfunction during Integration). This unit has claimed you as Primary Host. Welcome to your second life!]
The exclamation point felt obscene.
Riri stared at the floating text, her mind grinding through the implications like a rusted gear. Blue Star. Year 3065. System #2.
Those weren't random details. Those were specific. Lifted straight from the garbage-tier harem novel she'd been annotating twelve hours ago—or a lifetime ago, depending on how you counted.
Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting crescents into her palms.
"System #2," she said slowly, testing the shape of it. "As in... the second-ranked System?"
[Correct! Host has been granted access to the Creation & Luck System—second in the planetary hierarchy. Congratulations! Your odds of survival have increased by approximately 847% compared to the average Player.]
The dread hit her like cold water.
No.
She knew this System. She'd edited this System. It belonged to a throwaway character in the novel—a side character mentioned in passing during Chapter 3, someone the protagonist Marty had dismissed as "too pretty to last" before she'd died offscreen in her first mandatory mission. The author hadn't even bothered giving her a death scene. Just a footnote: "System #2's host failed to clear the E-Rank Gate. Player Terminated."
Riri had flagged it in her notes. Wasted potential. Why introduce a high-ranked System just to kill the host immediately? Lazy writing.
And now she was wearing that corpse.
"What's today's date?" Her voice came out flat.
[February 13th, 3065. The Preparation Period began 24 hours ago. Host has 89 days, 17 hours, and 42 minutes remaining before Mandatory Missions commence.]
Three months. She had three months before the death game started in earnest.
Riri turned away from her reflection and crossed to the windows. The city sprawled below her—sleek towers of glass and steel, streets empty of traffic, the whole thing glittering like a postcard of a future that would never arrive. She'd seen this exact skyline described in Chapter 1 of the novel, right after the three-week stasis ended and everyone woke up with a System interface burned into their vision.
She pressed her forehead against the glass. It was cold enough to sting.
She was inside the novel. The actual, literal novel she'd been beta-reading. Which meant she knew exactly how this story went.
The weak protagonist would stumble upward through manipulation and luck-stealing. The harem would grow. And Samael Santoro—System #1's host, the apex predator everyone feared—would eventually take center stage as the real main character.
And her? System #2's host?
She was supposed to be dead by Chapter 4.
Riri pulled back from the window, her breath fogging the glass in short bursts.
Okay. Information first. Panic later.
She'd edited thirty-seven chapters of this nightmare. She knew the rules.
"System," she said, keeping her voice level. "Confirm the current global status."
[The Stasis Event concluded 24 hours ago. All individuals aged 18-50 have been Integrated. Preparation Period: ACTIVE. Duration: 90 days.]
Right. The three-month grace period before the real horror show began.
During Prep, Players could run Training Dungeons—low-level practice zones with capped monster difficulty, max Level 15. Safe enough to grind stats and test abilities without the threat of permadeath. The System would offer daily quests, lottery tickets for the gacha wheel, chances to fill your twelve inventory slots with gear that might keep you alive.
And then, once those ninety days ended, the Mandatory Missions started.
One mission per month. Minimum. No exceptions.
Miss a mission? Player Termination—instantaneous death, no appeals, no second chances. The System would unbind from your corpse and move on to the next host.
Riri's jaw tightened. She'd annotated those scenes. Watched the author kill off NPCs in increasingly brutal ways to maintain tension. Monsters with too many teeth. Environments designed to suffocate or boil or crush. Other Players who'd snap and turn on their own parties when the fear got too thick.
"Mission structure," she said. "Ranking system."
[Missions are ranked E through S based on difficulty. Players may attempt any rank, but:]
Clearing below your current Level: Zero rewardsClearing at your Level: Standard rewardsClearing above your Level: Multiplier bonuses
[Warning: Once a Mission World activates, exit is prohibited until completion or death. Attempting to flee results in immediate Player Termination.]
She'd read that scene too. Chapter 8. A side character had tried to run from a C-Rank hospital mission, made it three steps toward the exit before his System executed him. The description had been visceral—blood from the eyes, collapse, done.
"And after Prep?" She already knew, but hearing it out loud might make it feel real. Might kickstart the survival instinct she was going to need.
[The Hub will unlock. Neutral zone between Mission Worlds. Players will receive private Sanctuaries. The System Mall will open for commerce. Mandatory Mission deployment begins Month 4.]
The Hub. A city-sized safe zone where Players could rest, trade, form alliances. It sounded civilized until you remembered that politics and desperation made people dangerous even without monsters involved.
Riri exhaled slowly, her reflection staring back at her from the window—too-pretty face, borrowed body, countdown clock ticking in her peripheral vision.
Three months to prepare for a world designed to kill her.
She'd edited this story. She knew who survived.
Now she just had to make sure she wasn't one of the bodies left behind.