Chapter 29: Better Safe Than Sorry

  The day before had just been too much.

  Lily awoke in her four-poster bed. It was the second morning in her new life, and it already felt more like the second month. She yawned softly and let her eyes wander across the room, still half-asleep, until the weight of reality hit her again.

  Yesterday she had gone straight to bed after arriving at the mansion. The day had been exhausting. Sure, it was interesting to finally see something of this world—the city of Tiara—a place she hadn’t even visited in Xantia. But still… what was wrong with these cultists? Were they doing all this on purpose? Did they have zero points in intelligence or what?

  She groaned and pushed herself upright, rubbing her temples.

  A moment later she hopped out of bed and opened her inventory with a flick of her hand. A few faint motes of light swirled in front of her, and a new black dress appeared in her grasp. The one she had worn yesterday she tossed carelessly into the corner.

  While dressing, she stopped in front of the tall mirror beside the bed and looked at her reflection.

  It was strange seeing that face.

  “I mean, I know it’s mine,” she mumbled, tilting her head a little, “but in real life... it’s even more beautiful.” She pulled a few grimaces at her reflection, then sighed. “Oh man. If Lissy could see me now...”

  Her expression darkened. Of course, that was impossible.

  Even though it had frightened her yesterday when her in-game self, Lilithia Nocturne, started to bleed through, she couldn’t deny that a part of her wished it would happen again. Maybe it would help her make a clean cut with her old life. After all, she was dead on Earth. She knew that much, and if she really had died there, she would never see her friends or her family again. Maybe it was better to forget them. Better to stop thinking about them, because every thought still hurt like a fresh wound.

  When she finished dressing, she took one last look in the mirror, slapped her cheeks lightly, and forced a small smile. Then she tied her long black hair back into a ponytail and straightened her posture.

  “Alright,” she said quietly to herself. “New world, new day.”

  She stepped out of her room and walked down the corridor. The marble floors reflected the pale morning light that came through the tall windows. Her footsteps echoed softly as she descended the stairs and crossed another hallway, until she reached the great hall of the mansion.

  The throne stood there, waiting, and without anything better to do, she sat down on it. The mansion felt far too big and far too quiet without anyone else around. Even her gargoyles were outside, perched over the main gate, keeping watch like statues.

  Lily reached into her inventory and pulled out some of the leftover meat from yesterday. She began to chew slowly, thinking.

  “So, what now?” she muttered. “Should I check on the cultists... or maybe try to summon a few familiars from my demon class? This place feels way too lonely.”

  Her voice echoed faintly through the empty hall, and for a moment, it almost sounded like someone was about to answer her back. But only silence followed.

  After a short moment of thought, she opened her inventory to check if she had any NPC creation items left for housing, but no, everything she had brought with her was already placed somewhere in the mansion. She knew for a fact that she still had some stored in her personal vault at the Asara Bank, but she had enough of dealing with them for now. If the guild vault had already caused so much trouble, she didn’t even want to imagine what kind of problem a personal vault belonging to a five-hundred-year-absent demoness would bring.

  The thought made her chuckle softly. Besides, her vault was located in Xerathene, and the director had mentioned that the bank had lost access to all vaults there anyway.

  “No reason to bother with that now,” she muttered and scrolled through the rest of her inventory. While she was going through the list, something else caught her eye.

  The book, the one she had taken from Sevrin.

  On a whim, she selected it and materialized it into her hands. The cover still felt strange, almost out of place here. It showed the desktop symbol from Xantia—a magic circle with an X in the middle, and around it, written in English letters: Explore Xantia, the New World!

  She hadn’t really looked at it when she had taken it from Sevrin, only skimmed over the ritual that had been used to summon her. Even the warning written in English before the ritual had felt strangely out of place.

  Lily opened the book and turned to the first page. How had Sevrin called the English words again? The writing of the gods, right? And he had said no one could read it. So why was this book here in the first place?

  The first page was written in runes.

  “Poor mortal… why do you keep searching when the answer already rests in your hands? Open me. Read me. Speak, and the world shall bow. For power is not a gift, it is a choice.”

  “Well, that’s ominous,” Lily muttered. Who in their right mind would think it was a good idea to follow teachings from such a creepy book? Then again, who was she kidding—her cultists, of course.

  The next pages turned out to be a guide of sorts, explaining different cultist-based skills and spells. Some of them were ones even Lily hadn’t seen before. From what she could tell, they all seemed focused on gaining strength quickly, but at a heavy cost; draining life essence, overusing mana, or other dangerous trade-offs. Nothing of real substance, just shortcuts with consequences.

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  When she reached the section on rituals, things started to feel even stranger.

  As she had noticed before, her own summoning circle had been made entirely of Tier 1 runes. But in the book, every summoning circle was the same, Tier 1 runes only, yet multiplied in number, three or four times what was normally needed. And all of them demanded life force to function.

  It was like an instruction manual for idiots, written so that even they couldn’t fail at what they were doing. Then she reached the warning written in English:

  Warning! Only proceed in a time of need. The following pages describe the summoning of a cataclysm-level being! This being will restore the balance of the world. Proceed only in extremity.

  After that came a runic description of the ritual—the summoning of the Princess of the Abyss, a being said to have been trapped for millennia within the void, who would be grateful and grant the summoner their deepest three wishes.

  “For real… what is with this book?” Lily muttered. If her idiots hadn’t messed up, they would have actually summoned the real Princess of the Abyss, and then what? She groaned and let her head fall back against the throne.

  Seriously, she didn’t even understand how magic worked here. Sure, she was now in her game avatar, and she could use spells just like in Xantia, but what even was magic in this world?

  Did the ritual somehow guide the events on Earth to the point that she died, just so she could be summoned? Or was it all just coincidence? But if it was, then why had she heard Sevrin’s voice in her head, and why had she blacked out right before her death? Was that really random?

  She rubbed her temples, frustrated. She really needed to ask Sevrin where he had gotten this book and why he had it in the first place.

  Lily turned a few more pages. After her own ritual came another one, then a blank page. Another followed, and after that… more English text;

  “Welcome, traveler, to Xantia.

  We are honored that you’ve chosen to walk among us once more.

  Long ago, a devastating war shattered the balance that once held Xantia together.

  From its ashes, a single power rose and ruled for centuries, casting shadows across every land and heart. Now, after ages of silence, destiny calls again.

  The world trembles, waiting for you.

  But you will not face this journey alone.

  Gather allies, both new and familiar—warriors, mages, and wanderers who share your cause.

  Unite with other travelers to decide the fate of this fractured world.

  Will you restore balance… or shape it in your own image?

  Prepare for war, for in Xantia, peace is but a fleeting dream.

  Every path holds danger, every choice carries weight, and behind every victory lies a greater challenge yet to come.

  So, rise, traveler.

  The world remembers your name… and the adventure begins anew.”

  Lily froze for a moment. She knew those words.

  It was the introduction that played when you created a new character in Xantia, or at least, it sounded like it. But something was off. The lines weren’t exactly the same. Walk among us once more… That wasn’t in the original. And the story about restoring balance? That didn’t exist in Xantia at all. The game had no fixed plot; it was an open-world sandbox where players could build their own stories, not follow some prophecy about saving the world.

  She read it again, slower this time, feeling her pulse quicken.

  “What is this…?” she whispered. “Why is this even in here?”

  Her eyes lingered on the final line. The world remembers your name.

  She felt a chill crawl up her neck. Could it be that she wasn’t an accident after all? Was she… the intended target of the summoning?

  But no. That couldn’t be. The runes had been wrong. The entire ritual was sloppy from the start. The cultists didn’t even know what they were doing.

  She exhaled slowly and shut the book, staring at the embossed X on its cover.

  Then Lily placed the book back into her inventory. Again, it was pure chance that she had even read it, so how much of all this was coincidence and how much was actually planned?

  Still, one line wouldn’t leave her mind. Gather allies, both new and familiar.

  Was there really a chance she could meet familiar faces here? And was that message even meant for her?

  “Great, now my mood is back in the basement,” Lily murmured to herself.

  She tossed the bone from her earlier meal carelessly onto the ground, only to sigh when it stayed there. “Oh, come on, it’s not like in Xantia where waste just vanished. I really need to get a reality check here.”

  Grumbling quietly, she stood up, picked the bone back up, and stored it in her inventory. Then she walked across the great hall toward one of the side corridors that led to her teleportation chamber.

  Since she had already set up a circle in her suite in Tiara, she only needed to create the counterpart here. So, she took her glittery chalk, knelt down, and began drawing the familiar pattern on the stone floor. Once it was finished, she placed a mana stone in the center and watched as the runes lit up, forming a stable connection.

  When the glow faded, she stayed where she was, thinking for a moment. Maybe she should visit Tiara and check how things were going with the auctioneer, but she didn’t really feel like it. The strange message in the book and the quiet emptiness of the mansion still weighed on her mind.

  And she also knew she would never really connect with the cultists. She didn’t want to anyway.

  Lily felt a little lost. Setting up the teleportation circle had been somehow her only goal for the day, and now that it was done, she was once again left with nothing to do. The silence of the hall felt heavier than before, and she couldn’t help but wonder if this was how her new life was going to be from now on.

  Then Lily gave herself a little push. It brought nothing to get depressed or something like that, and it wasn’t her character to fall into a hole. So, what would she do on Earth when she had no obligations? Right… she would play Xantia.

  And what was Xantia? A sandbox game. So, she needed to find her own goal here.

  And who was she right now? Someone living in a knock-off reality of Xantia. Case closed.

  She would just do what she had always dreamed of, be the person, or better, the demoness she had always wanted to be.

  And for that, she needed a base. Because she loved base building, and base building was always one of the first things you did in Xantia after settling down in a new region. First you built a home, then a base around it with retainers who would secure the area and provide useful things—your own little economy.

  A base was basically a small village managed by players and filled with NPCs that belonged entirely to the one who built them. So why not do the same here? If she established her first base here, she could later go out to explore and maybe even find some dungeons or raids. She could live the adventurous life she had always dreamed of.

  The only drawback was that she didn’t have any NPC creation items, which meant getting essentials like a good smith or a garrison wouldn’t be easy. But she had six cultists already, so why shouldn’t she just hire more people?

  The plan in Lily’s head started to take shape, and the more she thought about it, the better it sounded. Maybe it was just because she wanted to distract herself from how staged everything felt, or maybe because reading that strange book had left her with a sense of foreboding—a feeling that she should start preparing, just in case.

  Prepare for war, for in Xantia, peace is but a fleeting dream.

  It was the second line that echoed in her mind, and even if it was an exaggeration to think that anything written in the book would actually happen, it still lingered with her. Maybe it was only a dramatic introduction for the game, the world, or whatever this book had referred to. But Lily preferred to be safe rather than sorry.

  At least now, her plans for the near future had a direction.