Silence.
The hiss of oxygen through tubes. The subtle hum of machinery. The blinking lights of a monitor.
That had been her lullaby for sixteen years.
A white ceiling. Fluorescent lights. Machines that kept her alive. Wires. Tubes. IV drips. Catheters. Diapers.
The sterile, scentless world of her hospital room.
She couldn't remember her mother's face. Couldn't recall her father's voice.
They came to visit—sometimes. But those visits became less frequent over time, fading into silence like everything else.
Eventually, the machines were all that remained.
And the screen.
It had saved her.
Fantasy Life.
A VRMMORPG so vast, so meticulously built, that it felt more real than reality. For her, it was reality.
With nothing else to do—nothing else she could do—she played it every waking hour. Ate through tubes, slept with the visor on, and lived in that world.
Where she could walk. Run. Fly. Fight.
Laugh.
She didn't just play it. She conquered it.
While others struggled to hit level 300, she had clawed her way past the game's designed limit. Past level 1000. All the way to 1050, a number the devs never thought would even be possible.
Each level past 1000 was agony. Experience multipliers broke. Scaling reversed. Bosses stopped giving EXP.
She had farmed every hidden quest, triggered every obscure mechanic, slain things not even listed in the bestiaries.
The second-highest-ranked player in the world was level 586.
They weren't even close.
She was Crystal Helix. The avatar of perfection.
But her real body was dying.
And when she finally closed her eyes again—
—she never expected to open them.
But she did.
———
Grass.
It brushed gently against her cheeks. Her bare arms. It smelled... alive. Fresh. Fragrant.
There was no pain.
There were no wires. No stiffness. No weight dragging her body down like a corpse made of wet sand.
Her body felt weightless. Agile. Alive.
The air...
It didn't smell like antiseptic and recycled HVAC.
It smelled like freedom.
She opened her eyes.
Blue sky stretched endlessly above her, with wispy clouds drifting lazily in a sea of sunlight. The light didn't burn—it warmed her skin. Her skin.
Soft and unblemished.
She sat up. Slowly. Her arms obeyed. Her fingers twitched with precision. Her legs bent without pain.
Her lungs filled with sweet air. Her heart beat with strength she'd never known.
No monitors. No nurses. No beeping.
Just wind. Grass. Sky.
She brought a hand to her face.
Long, delicate fingers. Slightly crystalline in tone. Skin like pale moonlight. Fingernails shimmering with prismatic light.
Her hair, too—long, flowing, silver-white with translucent streaks that refracted sunlight into rainbows. It drifted behind her like a silken veil.
This body…
Her thoughts accelerated, parsing variables in microseconds. Air pressure. Mana density. Gravity constants. Local etheric field interference. Sensory clarity at 100%. Mental lag: zero.
Her soul synced perfectly to this form.
...This is my game character's body.
But this wasn't the world of Fantasy Life.
No minimap. No menu. No UI.
And yet, her instincts told her exactly where she was.
Nowhere familiar.
This wasn't Earth. And it wasn't the game's digital world.
This... was something new.
I've been isekai'd.
She stood. No hesitation. No trembling.
Just control.
Her movements were silent, fluid, impossibly smooth. Her balance perfect. Her perception sharpened. She could hear the buzzing of insects from kilometers away. See heat signatures from birds hidden in trees she hadn't even turned toward.
Her body moved as though it had always been hers.
Level 1050... in a real world.
Her mind processed the implications faster than most computers.
Magic obeyed her will. Her mana was bottomless, cycling infinitely through her core—a radiant crystal embedded near her heart, thrumming with power.
She closed her eyes.
Divine Crystal Domain: Active.
Invisible threads of mana bloomed from her body, tracing the outline of every object in a hundred-meter radius. She could sense the curvature of the terrain, the moisture in the soil, the presence of tiny subterranean insects.
She was alive.
She was free.
And Now....She was absolute.
But… she wasn't alone.
There was one thing she'd had in the game. Something that had been locked behind an achievement no one else had ever reached.
A companion. A secret one.
Unlocked only by ascending past level 1000.
She whispered into the wind, her voice like glass wrapped in silk.
"By oath of light, by bond of soul, awaken from the eternal lattice—Elyssia."
The wind stilled.
Light twisted around her, forming geometric patterns in the air. A summoning circle bloomed beneath her feet, etched with runes only she could understand.
A shadow stepped from the center of the spiral.
Not born. Not conjured.
Called.
She emerged.
Tall. Regal. Wreathed in a flowing robe of obsidian and star-thread silk, her silver-blonde hair shimmered like dusk on glass. Her eyes—multifaceted and deep—reflected galaxies.
She dropped to one knee, one hand pressed to her chest in reverence.
"You called, my Sovereign."
Her voice was smooth, noble, unwavering.
Crystal stared.
She recognized her.
Elyssia. The secret support construct unlocked upon reaching level 1000. A logistics manager. A glorified AI.
But this Elyssia…
She wasn't a program.
She felt real.
Warm. Conscious.
Alive.
There was no hint of artificiality in her eyes. No trace of memory that this had ever been a simulation.
To Elyssia, this was reality.
It always had been.
Crystal tilted her head slightly.
"You remember me."
Elyssia raised her gaze slowly. "There has never been a time I did not. You are the axis of my being."
That wasn't script. That wasn't voice-acted code.
That was belief.
Elyssia's aura radiated calm power—structured, perfect. Her mana signature was dense, layered with precise symmetry. Crystal could feel it: Level 957.
She exhaled slowly.
Her gaze shifted to the horizon.
This world was foreign. Its mana different. Its balance unfamiliar.
And yet… she felt no threat.
She was not a pawn reborn in a strange world.
She was the queen on the board, descending into a game no one else knew had started.
A slow breath escaped her lips.
"I suppose it's time to explore."
She could already feel the leyline pulse in the distance—cities, perhaps. Ruins. Shrines. Monsters. Magic. Civilizations.
No menus. No tutorials.
Just reality.
But she had long since mastered the art of surviving alone.
Now, she would explore. Learn. Discover.
Not for survival. Not for victory.
Because, for the first time in her life…
She could.
And the world would learn soon enough—
The Crystal Sovereign had awoken.