Perfect Darkness
Nothing existed in that perfect darkness.
As if both sight and hearing had gone numb. As if she had been submerged, dead, in a sea filled with shadow. From a place steeped in silence, consciousness bloomed.
Am I… dead?
The first scrap of thought rose simply. People know they are alive because they feel something. Fail to feel, and of course they conclude they are not.
The last memory was light.
An ordinary day—leaving the house, stopping by a convenience store for a bag of snacks and an energy drink from a year-round buy-one-get-one deal, heading home. Then a light so vast it crashed over him, so indescribable it felt as if his eyes were burning out and his whole body were being flayed away.
After that, nothing. Subjectively, after seeing that light he seemed to have drifted into sleep, and though the details would not come, it felt as if he had dreamed something.
What had that light been? Headlights of an oncoming car? The opening salvo of a nuclear war? There was no way to know. But she was thinking now.
Is the afterlife a hell where nothing exists—no body, only lingering thoughts, forced to think for all eternity…?
As that notion crossed her mind, a sudden clank! rang out, followed by the sound of water.
And at the same moment she realized she was underwater. The water that had wrapped her entire body drained away little by little; her nose began to draw breath, and life functions resumed—that was how she could tell.
Once enough water had gone, gravity returned and her feet found solid ground. Strength would not properly enter her legs. She listed forward, about to collapse, but something stopped her with a jolt. Then another clank, and whatever had barred her way vanished. She tumbled forward and sprawled out hard.
"Gah! Koff! Hahk!!!"
Face-down on the ground, she spat water in agony. In a space where nothing could be seen, the body's signals amplified, and the pain seemed all the greater for it.
"Koff! Ugh… uurrgh…… Hah… ha… haah…"
There had not been that much water inside her. Once she had forced it all out, she kept dragging in deep breaths. The voice moaning did not sound like her usual one, but her senses were scrambled and the situation was anything but normal, so she did not dwell on it.
I have to get out… I have to move…
Groping along a floor that felt somehow grainy and smooth, she tried to push herself upright. Her sense of balance was wrong and she fell, but carefully planting her hands and trying again, she managed to stand.
Living things seek light by nature. Who knows how many moths throw themselves into flame for love of it.
She, too, sought light like those moths. The pressure of a space where nothing could be seen was considerable. Even breathing, it felt as if she were not breathing at all—a sensation that made her head throb and swim.
So she walked. Forcing strength into legs that would not properly hold her, planting one foot after another, she walked forward somehow.
Slap… slap…
The sound of bare soles striking the ground echoed. Was this a sealed room? The inside of some chamber? She did not know. There was no room to think. She simply wanted to see light. Darkness was terrifying, and she wanted out of it. She did not even want to know where this place was. She only had to head toward light—wherever light was.
Then a faint sensation brushed her skin.
Senses maximized by the darkness caught a faint breeze on her flesh. Wind? That meant a connection to the outside. An exit existed.
She quickened her pace. Limping, falling over and over, she still walked toward the source of the wind.
Her body's sensations were still wrong. Her balance was nothing like usual; hearing, touch—everything was strange. Her body kept tipping forward, and her skin prickled as if she were not wearing proper clothes. Or as if she were naked…
How many minutes had she walked? The floor's texture turned uneven. Until now it had been smooth enough to walk barefoot without issue, but suddenly it grew prickly underfoot, like stepping on an acupressure mat.
The path narrowed enough that she could touch the walls. Same as the ground—uneven, rough surfaces.
And at last, far ahead, a light no bigger than a speck came into view. The wind grew stronger.
An exit… It's an exit!
Her legs moved faster. Forcing every scrap of strength into them, she hurried each step. The pea-sized light grew larger, casting its glow around her. Rough stone surfaces enclosed the surroundings. It was a cave.
But that did not matter. All she could focus on was getting out through the exit right in front of her and receiving the light.
And when she finally reached the mouth, brilliant light slammed into her eyes. The light she had so desperately wanted—but when it flooded her all at once, she had no choice but to shield her eyes with her arm.
Little by little, opening and closing her eyes in tiny increments, she waited for them to adjust. Like a bird spending nights inside a dark egg before cracking the shell to be born, once her eyes were ready to meet a new world, she lowered her arm and accepted the light.
Whoa… wh…at…?
Right on the heels of awe came bewilderment.
A vast forest and a strange landscape of mountain ranges.
Even if Korea was a country of mountains, there was no way this much undeveloped land would remain. And the last place he had been was not some remote mountain wilderness—it had been the middle of a Seoul thoroughfare.
Not Korea, then?
She considered the possibility of being drugged with sleeping pills and kidnapped to another country. China? Southeast Asia? The Amazon? She ran through places that came to mind, but it was meaningless.
Because a far greater question immediately entered her field of vision.
"What the fuck?"
Looking down, what entered her eyes was a large pair of soft, pale breasts gleaming in the sunlight—far too large and perfectly formed to be a man with gynecomastia.
And she had just spoken aloud.
"Why does my voice sound like this?????"
She had not noticed while coughing up water, but now she could tell clearly. A voice far too thin, clear, delicate, and refined to be a man's.
"Wait… no way!!"
She was naked, so there was nothing to pull down. Tilting her head further… no, that still did not work well, so she pushed the obstructing large breasts aside and directed her eyes toward her crotch.
"It's… gone..?"
The holy sword she had spent over twenty years with had vanished without a trace. Of course she had never had much use for it, but that was not the point.
"Why did I… become a woman…?"
Kidnapped, dragged to a foreign country, and forcibly sex-changed? Sold off to some shady establishment? She kept spinning the most realistic theories she could, but cold reason also pressed in—that it was all too movie-like, too absurd.
"No, that doesn't make any sense!… If anything, an isekai reincarnation would be more believable!… Huh?"
Actually, that seemed the most plausible. In a world where countless people got hit by trucks and became protagonists of fiction, he had always playfully wondered if it might happen to him too. But she had never dreamed it would actually occur.
"Uh… this is too ridiculous… it has to be a dre—"
Skritch.
Her muttering cut off at a strange sound and an itchy sensation on her right leg.
"H-hiiik..!"
It was a bug. A very large, very disgusting one. A super-ultra-mega cockroach the size of a human torso, looking like something that would appear in a certain post-nuclear-war game.
"KYAAAAAAAH!!!"
She swung her leg with all her strength. Fortunately, the bug stuck to her leg went flying far back into the cave. It bounced and rolled once or twice, then flailed, flipped itself over, and stood. Then it slowly approached her again.
"F-fuck, stay back! You disgusting piece of shit!!!!"
It kept coming, but running was difficult. Behind her, outside the cave, the slope was so steep it was practically a cliff—without extreme care descending, she would risk breaking an arm or a leg.
And it kept coming closer.
A flyswatter? A mosquito racket? Tissue paper? No, nothing like that could handle something this big. And of course she did not have any of those anyway.
"No weapons? A stick or a rock, even..!"
Weapons… Had that word triggered something? A strange… blue… interface-like thing appeared before her eyes.
System Activated
User Authentication Complete: Entity — Astella
Points Held: 300 P
Currently Unlocked Category: Small Arms
"……Huh?"
Her eyes went wide. The sudden game-like text and a status window she could not tell was real or virtual floating before her eyes made reality feel suddenly distant. Then the window displayed the next screen.
A purchase list? 9mm? Semi-automatic pistol? With the bug closing in right in front of her, her racing brain instantly reached the conclusion that she could buy a gun.
Then there was no time to think. The thing was already within three meters.
"I… I don't know! Buy it! I've got 300 points! The pistol and ammo, now!!!"
Gesturing at the status window—really at empty air—she strangely felt a tactile sensation of tapping something, and the purchase button clicked.
Then blue particles gathered in an instant. The particles collected and collected in her hand, taking on a cold, heavy form, until at last a pistol was placed in her grip. In her other hand was a small pistol magazine.
Skreeeech!!
The bug that would haunt her dreams for sure had finally come right up to her face. Her hands sped up to shoot. She had fired rifles in the military, but never handled a pistol. But was that a problem? Wasn't a guy someone who had seen it somewhere in countless videos and games?
With trembling hands she inserted the magazine into the pistol and found the slide stop to release the locked-back slide forward.
And just as that disgusting, disgusting creature approached, spread its wings, and flew at her face—
"Uwaaaaah!!!"
Click.
Bang! Bang! Ba-bang! Bang! Bang!!! Bang! Bang! Ba-bang! Bang!
Several bursts of flame from the gripped pistol. Bullets left the muzzle, flying faster than sound, piercing the wings, body, and head of the oncoming bug.
In reality it was her first time firing a pistol, and she had just sprayed wildly in panic, so of only fifteen rounds in the magazine she had hit maybe three—but it was more than enough to kill one bug.
"Ha… haah… ha… That was seriously fucking disgusting…"
Shaking off the revulsion and catching her breath, she felt her ringing ears gradually return. Only then did composure come back, and her vision and thoughts began to open up.
A sudden female body. An unknown forest. An impossibly large cockroach. And a status window that summoned guns.
No matter how you looked at it, the situation was not normal—but the realism of the sensations she had just felt was incomparable to anything.
"What the hell is going on…"
And so, deep in the mountains, standing at a cave entrance looking out over the forest, a naked… elf woman holding a pistol still had not even realized her own identity as she stared fixedly into empty air.