The World Within
An unfamiliar ceiling.
To think she would ever be the one to have that thought. She hadn't said it out loud—only turned it over in her head—and still a strange, prickling embarrassment stirred in her chest.
She swallowed her confusion and tried to pull the memory back into order. A room drowned in thick curtains, dark as night even at noon, where the only light came from a computer and its monitor. She had finished the ideal setup for total immersion, then carved her character customization with the patience of an artisan laying every stitch by hand. After agonizing over a name, she had finally pressed START—
Mmm—
—and remembered nothing after that.
It was, without question, the textbook opening of an isekai reincarnation. No—of a game-possession story.
And how could she be so sure this was another world? The rattle and jolt shaking her whole body. The faint whinny of a horse. Voices murmuring in a language she had never heard and yet, somehow, already understood. A ride so rough it might as well have had no suspension at all, and overhead a wooden ceiling that had no business existing in the modern age.
Well. Anyone would have realized in a heartbeat that this was not her comfortable reinforced-concrete bedroom back home. And the proof that it was neither a dream, nor a delusion, nor some elaborately staged hidden-camera prank was sitting right in front of her.
"Are you all right?"
A woman, asking carefully.
The carriage might as well have been a cell. A thin wash of moonlight slipped through a small wooden window set into one wall—iron bars included—and even in that faint light, golden hair shone as if the sun itself had risen. Golden eyes full of concern looked tired, but clear. Skin whiter and cleaner than the moonlight, the sort no modern science could ever reproduce. A face of absurd harmony, features so brilliant they seemed ready to dazzle anyone who looked. Beauty that lifted the mood just by being seen. The kind that made you want to smile.
And above all, the two long, pointed ears rising from either side of her face proved that the woman before her was something out of imagination. Out of stories. A presence on an entirely different level from the elves of modern film, those pretty actors in costume. The living twitch of those long ears made it plain they were no prosthetic.
"Um...?"
When she only stared in silence, the elf's brow creased, just slightly. A frown that hurt to look at. The destructive power of a transcendent beauty's face was no joke.
"No—I'm just a little confused—"
"..."
She managed some kind of answer, and the sunlike beauty stared straight through her.
"..."
She looked away, as naturally as she could.
Don't you dare say a word. Even an alpha male drowning in women—a real man's man, a golden sun of a guy—would have trouble holding this elf's gaze!
Fortunately, the elf had clearly watched countless men react this way in front of her. She soon dropped her eyes, leaned back against the carriage wall, and sighed.
"I suppose that's fair. Waking up to find yourself inside an elf slave trader's carriage."
"Huh?"
What did you just say?
The words that came out of the elf woman—out of Sunshine—were textbook. They were also complete bullshit. Sure, fantasy and elves, and the slave trader was never far behind. Kimchi beside a bowl of soup. Pickled radish beside fried chicken. That kind of pairing. But why did she have to start here?
She felt a little wronged.
"Artia? ...Miss? Is that what I should call you?"
"Yeah."
Sunshine, the blonde elf, had waited a while—perhaps out of consideration for me, plunged into chaos by the revelation that I'd opened my eyes inside a slave trader's carriage. Thanks to that pause, I'd managed to calm down quite a bit. Dropped into an unfamiliar world, and with my sex swapped on top of it: for now, I decided to roughly accept both.
And so, after a short while, came the introductions.
When Sunshine heard my name, her brows drew together in a faint inverted V, as if something were off.
Why?
Artia. I didn't think it was that strange a name. I'd settled on it after character customization, and not without some thought. Was it a swear in this world? Some weird meaning? That would be bad...
I looked at Sunshine with that anxiety written all over my face. She seemed to think for a moment, then nodded.
"Yes. Miss Artia. Understood. My name is Elgaia."
"Oh! Elgaia! That's a good name."
"It means child of the dawn."
"Oh! The meaning's pretty, too!"
"I don't particularly like it, though."
"Oh!—wait, huh?"
"My damned father gave it to me, so every time someone says it, I end up thinking of that bastard..."
What?! The introductions were a land mine?!
Wasn't complimenting someone's name the time-honored, traditional skill for building rapport? Artia rolled her eyes. She clearly hadn't done anything wrong, and yet she felt as if she ought to apologize. Drawing a curse out of a beauty like that—she might as well have become a sinner of the age. Ah. So this is why the honey trap has been a thing since ancient times. A small enlightenment.
Whatever she looked like in that moment, Elgaia soon burst out laughing. The chill that had settled over her face thawed into a smile, and a brilliance like the rising sun—fitting, given her name—flashed across it.
"I'm joking. Still, the full name is a bit long, so call me Ella. It's easier."
Four syllables is that long? The question occurred to her, but if the woman herself wanted the short version, there was no reason to insist on all of it. Artia gave a light nod.
"All right. I'll call you Ella, then."
"I'd like that."
Ella answered with a smile like a flower. The radiance—bright enough to make a slave trader's carriage look like a palace chamber—stole Artia's words again, but she recovered quickly. Introductions were done. Time to ask about the situation at hand.
There was far too much she wanted to know.
First: was this the world of Eldas Legendary, or some entirely different otherworld? By cliché logic it had to be Eldas Legendary... but these days, plenty of stories dumped you into a completely different world while you were stuck in a game character's body. Confirming that mattered. A lot.
If this was Eldas Legendary, then Artia had knowledge—limited to what the game had shown, but knowledge all the same. She'd played through a second run. Far better than being completely ignorant of the place.
But if it was a wholly different world? Then, well... things got exhausting. She might have to tiptoe through every stitch of it, like that famous lich demon king from a certain light novel. And if her luck was bad—what if this world looked down on raw physical strength? Some hunter-world rule where you were nothing without mana. If it turned out this body's power was trash-mob tier, she was sure she'd break down and cry. Her. Of all people.
Because, come on. She'd entered the body of a beautiful elf only to be a powerless Village Elf, level one, and the opening scene was a slave trader's carriage. From any angle, you could already see the finish line: a corruption bad ending, the kind where the captured woman is broken and ruined. Artia had no desire to reach an ending like that, not even as a joke.
"The name of the continent?"
At that desperate question, Ella looked at her as if she were genuinely strange this time—but answered without further comment.
"It's called Elda."
A continent whose name Artia knew. Yes! The worst case was behind her! At last, some of the gloom in her chest lifted. The stone sitting on her heart vanished as if she'd just chewed an antacid.
"Then... where is this?"
Maybe she'd hear a place she knew. Artia looked at Ella with a flicker of hope. Those bewitching lips parted.
"This is the Shiland Hills. We were captured about three days ago, so there's still a long way to go before we reach Hatel."
Hmm.
The names Ella had given: the Shiland Hills, and Hatel, which sounded like a village or a city. Astonishingly, Artia didn't know either of them.
Hearing Ella only made Artia more curious.
Enlighten me, Ellaemon!
First things first: where in the world was this lump of land called the Shiland Hills attached?
"South of Orteia. You could call it the borderland with the Republic of Macaia."
Orteia. That was a name she'd heard before. In Eldas Legendary, it was the kingdom of the Sun Elves, one of the four great elf lineages. It had barely come up on the first playthrough, but on the second she'd heard the name quite often. Wasn't it the elf kingdom west of the orcs' Great Steppe?
Relations with the orcs were, of course, a constant scuffle. More precisely, the orcs were the ones being awful. Among the orcs of this world, raiding an elf village was considered a bold feat of valor—something you ought to try at least once in your life. Early in her second playthrough, Artia had heard an orc NPC say as much. Whether a game NPC's chatter matched the world now made real, she couldn't say. She'd set that aside for now.
"Huh?"
Raking back through that second run, something suddenly surfaced. Elf slaves.
Hunting elves for slaves was something even the orcs didn't do—and those were the same orcs who treated sacking an elf village as a lifetime achievement. Orcs were warriors from birth, a race of pure martial brutes, and their average strength left humans in the dust. There was a reason even they didn't take elf slaves.
In the game, elves were a race of magic. Even children playing in the street could cast a spell or two. Capturing elves like that was hard enough. Transporting them was another problem. Buying them and keeping them was a third. It was like living with a slave who hated you and was holding a gun you could never take away—always, right beside you. No matter how beautiful an elf was, if you valued your life and weren't insane, you simply wouldn't buy one.
And yet here Artia and Ella were, in the hands of a slave trader.
How in the world had someone enslaved elves? And why were the elves this docile, without so much as a single act of resistance? The only possibility she could think of was that they couldn't use magic... but in two full playthroughs of Eldas Legendary, Artia had never once heard of a tool that could seal an elf's magic.