I Am the Heavenly Demon, Dandanso

I stared at the status window for a long time. So I really had awakened. I could stream again. I could actually stream again. I sank into that feeling and let it hold me, and it was a good while before I finally climbed back out. Only then did the class and the skill register.

A class called VTuber, and a skill called Realize. What even was a VTuber? Had a class like that ever existed? It didn't look particularly strong. I opened the skill without expecting much of anything.

Huh?!

The RP I'd set would become reality? Did that mean I turned into the RP I'd made, or that I could summon it into the real world? And Sync Rate — what was that supposed to be? The description alone didn't give me any real sense of what the skill did. Whatever. I'd just try it once.

"Realize."

The moment I called the skill's name and triggered it, a holographic window rose in front of my eyes.

No way. This was seriously just building a VTuber character sheet. Wait — hold on. If I set the RP to something completely busted, some absurd cheat-tier nonsense, wouldn't that make me the strongest thing alive?

I tried entering God in the race field.

A sharp chime answered.

So the truly broken settings were off the table. I started the RP setup over. I could have made something new, but there was only one RP in my heart — the precious one that had shared all those happy days of the past.

Dandanso.

I filled the holographic window out with Dandanso's RP. I hadn't touched those settings in years, and yet every detail surfaced as clearly as if I'd written them yesterday.

The notice came with it, and the settings I'd written for Dandanso spread across the holographic window. So... was that it?

"Realize."

I used the skill again.

Light began to pour from my body along with the system message. For a moment it was exactly like a magical-girl transformation out of some old anime, the whole sequence flaring past — and then it was over.

What? My eyeline had jumped. I could feel it. I'd gotten taller. I went to the mirror to see for myself.

"Whoa!"

Long crimson hair, and crimson eyes. A tall frame, a full 170 centimeters, and a chest every bit as generous. A blood-red robe embroidered in black silk with the insignia of the Demonic Cult, the Heavenly Demon Sword fastened at the hip. And a face nothing like my cute one — sharp, cold, an ice beauty through and through. The woman in the mirror looked as if Dandanso's character art had been pulled off the screen and made into flesh.

"This is exactly the RP I set!"

Then... the abilities, too?

"Status."

The moment I called for it, a holographic window appeared before my eyes.

The status window had changed. Class, affiliation, unique skill — all of it had shifted to match the RP I'd configured. There hadn't even been fields for skill or class when I was setting the RP, and yet they'd been assigned on their own, fitted automatically to what I'd made.

"This is completely insane!"

I tapped the unique-skill field with a finger, and the description ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠opened.

I was still reading the skill when a voice suddenly spoke inside my head.

"Why is This Venerable One here? And who are you?"

"Wh— what?"

"This Venerable One is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Dandanso, Cult Leader of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. Who are you?"

Dandanso? Dandanso was an RP I'd made!

So realizing it meant realizing the personality, too! I understood at once. There were two minds inside this single body. The original me, Lee Jimin — and Dandanso, the RP I had created. Answer first. I could figure the rest out after.

"Um... I'm Lee Jimin."

I'd answered. I still had no idea how to explain any of the rest. You're an RP I made, and a skill turned you real. The moment I said that, I couldn't begin to guess how Dandanso would take it — whether she'd simply accept it, or throw a fit and try to claim this body for herself alone.

VTuber lore is usually like that, and the Dandanso RP was no different. It had never been written out in any real detail. Just the absurdly strong female Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult, born with a Heavenly Martial Physique. That was the whole of it. Even I knew nothing beyond the fact that she led the cult. What kind of personality she had, what kind of past — I didn't know a single thing. I was still turning over how to explain any of this to her when—

KWAANG!

A thunderclap detonated inside my skull.

"Aaaaagh!"

"Aaaaagh!"

Dandanso's memories came surging in, a flood I couldn't hold back.

A daughter, born to the Cult Leader's third wife. A warm-hearted child, brought into a Demonic Cult that worshipped strength and nothing else. But the people around her would not leave her in peace.

Brothers and sisters, fearing her martial gift, tried to kill her. They used her younger sibling to do it — and somewhere in that plot, she lost the sibling.

A mother, gone too early to illness. A cold father whose interest stopped at her talent. Half-siblings who could see her only as a rival. And in all the chill of that cult, the one person she had been able to lean on, the one who had let her keep any warmth at all — that same younger sibling.

And so she cut her half-siblings down with her own hands. And so she became Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult.

"You must have suffered so."

"You must have suffered so."

The sharing ended, and the words left us both at once, neither of us waiting to be first. Just as I had looked into her memories, she seemed to have looked into mine. It felt as if someone had pulled me into a tight embrace. I held that someone just as tightly. And so we stayed folded in each other's arms for a long time.

I became Cult Leader of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult at nineteen. Young, for a seat like that.

My father — the previous Cult Leader, a man who had known nothing but the martial way — died of his own excess. His hunger for martial power had been too great. Qi deviation took him in the midst of closed-door training. After his death, I became Cult Leader as a matter of course. No one opposed me. At eighteen I had already surpassed him, and by nineteen I sat in the seat of the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Greatest Under Heaven.

The year after I ascended, I fell to a cowardly scheme of the Orthodox Faction and the Unorthodox Alliance, and I lost my life... No. I thought I had. I was restored to life inside someone else's body.

"Aaaaagh!"

And now someone else's memories were forcing their way into my mind. The someone inside them called up the younger sibling I had never stopped longing for. A small, cute frame, a small, cute face, the foolish little things they did from time to time — all of it resembled my sibling.

"Ah..."

The hard years of the girl who so resembled that sibling unfolded through my mind. I knew she was not my sibling. And yet, strangely, my heart ached.

"You must have suffered so."

"You must have suffered so."

When the sharing ended, we said it to each other, neither of us first. In that moment I drew her into my arms, and she held me in return. And so we stayed in each other's embrace for a long time.

"You mean to say you put this body's face up on a screen and performed such shameless, syrupy aegyo!"

"Oh, come on. It's not like a little aegyo wears anything out. People do that."

"This Venerable One has seen your likeness, if only through memory, and truly — you are quite the flirt~."

"What! Flirt~?! Hey, you! Where did you even learn to talk like that!"

"Do not get so pissed. Every word of it, This Venerable One learned from within your memories."

Maybe it was the shared memory, but in no time at all I'd grown close to Dandanso. Like suddenly gaining a sister I'd never had. And thanks to that sharing, she understood the situation we were in. Contrary to everything I'd worried, she wasn't particularly shocked to learn she was an RP I had made, brought into reality. If I had invented all of it, her past included, then yes, she would have been. What I'd actually made was nothing more than a face and a handful of simple settings, so the blow never really landed. She seemed to take it as chance. An overlap, nothing more.

And I felt it too. She didn't seem artificially made. She felt like a person who had always existed.

"Right back at you. Truly, you are such an ehehehe~."

"You will refrain from such vulgar speech toward This Venerable One!"

Fortunately, we never came to blows over whose body it was. She had lost her life to the cowardly schemes of the Unorthodox Alliance and the Orthodox Faction, and the moment she opened her eyes again, she was this body. She already understood that its original owner was me, and she never once grew greedy to take it.

More than that, she and I had both lived a long time with no one to lean on. We had missed the warmth of another person. Sharing a body with her didn't feel bad to me, and she seemed to feel the same. Anyway — we'd even settled the rules for living together in one body. Time to do what needed doing.

"All right. Let's head for the Tower, then."

"Good. This Venerable One shall sweep them all away, so you need only trust in me."