Hell Difficulty, Selected Half-Asleep
Sometimes, it happens.
You wake up in the morning, still half-asleep, and your brain simply refuses to process the situation properly.
[You have been invited to the Tower of Ascension. The time to choose — and to make your decision — has arrived.]
'Tower of Ascension…?'
What kind of phrasing was that? It sounded like something ripped straight out of a turn-based game made entirely of pixel art.
Lost in that thought, I simply lay there spacing out — and a new message window appeared.
[You are to become an adventurer of the Tower of Ascension, pressing onward to obtain the qualification for ascension. Regarding this, you may make a choice.]
1. Proceed
2. Refuse
I mean, come on… was this supposed to be one of those mass-produced Chinese knockoff pixel games?
'Well, maybe this is some kind of lucid dream? Since when does a dream look this vivid…?'
I tilted my head mid-thought, yawned, and gave the window a vague, halfhearted wave of my hand.
'Ugh. Whatever. 'M sleepy…. More sleep first.'
Lucid dream or otherwise, I'd spent all of yesterday gaming nonstop, and I was flat-out wrecked.
[You have accepted the journey to become an adventurer of the Tower of Ascension and obtain the qualification for ascension. Accordingly, you may now determine the difficulty of the Trial Gate………]
I felt myself poke at something — tip, tip-tap— — but eh… it probably couldn't matter that much.
[You have chosen to begin the journey to become an adventurer of the Tower of Ascension and obtain the qualification for ascension.]
['Hell Difficulty' has been selected.]
"Yaaawn—."
Without another thought, I wound myself up in the comforter like a caterpillar and toppled backward into bed.
Fwump—.
There was no way the options handed down by some pixel-game message window carried any actual weight.
Really—.
As if a crummy little dream like this could mean anything?
No way in hell I'd get whisked off to some tower or labyrinth like a cliché straight out of a novel───
[▶] Time remaining until start: approx. 47 hours 21 minutes 11 seconds
Plop. Drip—.
There I was, in a gray stone chamber where droplets of water fell from the ceiling with a soft drip—, the kind of place you'd expect to find described in some martial-arts novel. Dazed, I stared at my own reflection in the spring water pooled at the center of the room.
"Huh?"
The youthful voice rang out and echoed, and there, on the surface of the spring, I saw myself.
White hands. A frame just a touch taller than a child's. Fluffy black hair hanging over one eye.
And then…… rising above a body so scrawny it passed for slim, a face came into view.
My face, of all things.
'This is… me?'
For a certified gaming addict, the bleary, sleep-crusted eyes were dead-on — but no matter how I looked at it, this face…… was not mine.
It was the kind of beauty that made me think, if I had a little sister who looked exactly like me, this is what she'd look like grown up.
A sudden thought — wait, could it…? — made me jolt and shudder.
'N-no way, right?'
The idea had been gnawing at me for a while now, but for some reason…… my changed body felt strangely hollow.
I'd never exercised a day in my life, and yet I could plainly see that the modest scraps of muscle I'd managed to build up here and there had vanished without a trace.
I'd never explored my own body by touch before, so it felt a little awkward — but after checking a few times, the truth made itself clear.
Face faintly flushed, mouth clamped firmly shut, I let out a long, low groan.
Call it softness, or… no, it wasn't as though I'd suddenly sprouted a curvy figure, but how should I put it — it definitely felt different from a man's body? Something like that was unmistakably there.
My body was different.
Which meant—.
'This is… a girl's body…?'
Completely out of nowhere, I'd gone to sleep one person and woken up as a beautiful girl who looked like she'd gamed herself into a coma.
"Uh… uuuunnh……."
Even the voice that slipped out of me in sheer bewilderment belonged to that beautiful girl — the kind of sweet, clear voice that flowed out effortlessly, the sort you could listen to all day.
Ah.
'Is this for real…?'
Um, so…
Would somebody mind telling me it isn't?
Please.
