"Wife?!"
The moment his consciousness came back online, Pendragon was still a little dazed. His head was suddenly stuffed with a whole bunch of new information.
Detailed information… about his own wife.
He…
Somehow seemed to have become his own 2D waifu.
"Mm…"
Pendragon vaguely remembered that just before this, he had been grinding the limited gacha banner during an event, pulling nonstop until he got Mysterious Heroine X Alter seven times in a row, max copies, full stones, top rank.
That string of numbers, 777, felt like it carried some kind of mysterious significance. After fighting the rates for several days and nights to achieve that miracle, his liver screamed in protest, his vision went black, and his memories cut off completely.
By the time he came to again, he had already realized he had turned into his own wife, Mysterious Heroine X Alter.
You could say he finally ascended and achieved true enlightenment.
Staying up late really does kill. Treasure your life while you can.
"My stomach is so empty!"
Collapsed on the cold ground, a cute little salted fish let out a tragic wail.
"So where exactly is this supposed to be?"
Up above, a jade-disc moon spilled cold light over the world, dampening those few strands of silver hair in front of his eyes. A lonely ahoge on top of his head wobbled like a struggling salted fish, wriggling in and out of Pendragon's field of view.
His mind was full of questions, but under the influence of some mysterious external force, Pendragon lay there like a dried salted fish, with absolutely no desire to move, let alone get up and investigate his situation.
A true salted fish cannot even be bothered to flip over.
Probably the body's influence…
"Right. Food!"
While trying to shift the blame from his own laziness, Pendragon suddenly remembered that he should have something edible on him.
Black Bean Paste.
In the mobile game, it was technically an HP recovery item, but it also seemed to come with a pretty ridiculous setting.
He forced his eyeballs to roll to the side and finally spotted the mysterious item, half-congealed and pitch black, sitting nearby.
It was made from six primal forces: desire, the Soul, sweetness, the Power, sales outlet, the Space, cost, the Reality, craft, the Time, and demand, the Mind. Insert lawyer warning here.jpg
A tiny purple sweet potato silently draws a protesting divider line.
The item was said to grant its holder infinite power.
"'Infinite power,' seriously…"
Pendragon had received that chunk of information, but he was not entirely clear on what exactly this mysterious thing could do.
In any case, it was definitely edible, right?
He opened his mouth as wide as he could. Two neat rows of jade-white teeth sank into the paste. A rich sweetness instantly flooded across his tongue.
As he puffed out his cheeks and chewed on the Black Bean Paste, Pendragon was sincerely grateful that he was not yet lazy enough to need someone else to feed him.
The texture of the paste was excellent, the sweetness just right. It definitely qualified as a delicacy. More importantly, the hunger gnawing at his flat little stomach finally started to fade.
"Okay. Now we are talking."
Just like some over-the-top ad for a viral snack, Pendragon felt as if he had swapped into a brand new body. Even the ahoge on his head, overflowing with energy, stood perfectly straight like a flagpole.
He reached up to touch it and realized he could not even bend it down.
He set the ahoge issue aside for now. What really mattered was the power he could feel flowing through this body. Dark red arcs of lightning, the color of a classic villain, danced between his long, slender fingers and flashed in and out of existence.
"Feel the power of the dark side."
His pale hand swung forward. Pendragon casually pushed a bit of that power down his arm.
"Boom!"
A deafening roar exploded outward. A thick, dragon-like bolt of dark red lightning tore through the air in an instant and slammed forward with twisted force.
The impact was so intense it felt like the earth itself shivered. Pendragon's jaw dropped. His eyes went so wide they almost popped out of the frame of his glasses.
"Holy crap!"
The lightning that slammed into the ground blasted out a charred crater. Web-like cracks spread several dozen meters in all directions, the whole thing looking exactly like the aftermath of a meteor strike.
Getting that level of crater with artillery was not that hard, but doing it with pure lightning…
Even if Pendragon emptied out every last bit of physics knowledge in his brain, he still would not be able to calculate how much energy that required. At the very least, he now had a much clearer understanding of what "grants the user infinite power" actually meant.
"Whoa!"
A pleasantly clear voice let out a shriek. Pendragon kicked off the ground, and his body shot upward like a rocket. He only started to drop again once he had reached a ridiculous height.
At first he really was scared. His hands clenched so tightly that sweat seeped from his palms. When he finally flailed his way back to the ground, his body's instinctive sense of balance kicked in. He only staggered a little, then absorbed the impact perfectly.
"This is awesome."
After playing around with the "Evil Holy Sword, NecroCalibur," which crackled with red magical power, Pendragon suddenly remembered a philosophical question.
"Where am I?"
The classic transmigrator's three questions, who am I, where am I from, where am I going, had two answers solved already. This was the last one.
The place he was currently in looked like a desert grassland. Everywhere he looked, aside from the drought hardy scrub and weeds, there was only endless yellow sand and dirt.
The scenery was magnificent in a bleak way, the kind of view that screamed loneliness. The only problem was that it was also completely cut off from civilization. If this were the old Pendragon, the only option would have been to lie down and wait for a game over.
"If I remember right, this sword can be used as a jet engine."
Pendragon fiddled with the Evil Holy Sword, twisting a ring on the hilt.
Buzz.
With the sound of mechanisms shifting and extending, NecroCalibur's shape changed into a double bladed lightsaber. Dark red blades, built from fear, rage, hatred and malice, vibrated as they sliced through the air, producing a pleasant humming sound.
He poured magic into it, then released it in a single explosive burst.
"Hiss!"
Dark red light sprayed from both ends of the sword like raging flames. Even though Pendragon had braced himself, the sudden surge of power caught him completely off guard.
His body left the ground almost instantly, spinning forward as he launched.
A dark red arc streaked across the sky, bobbing up and down uncontrollably as it shot through the air, then suddenly plunged toward the ground.
Thud.
Unfortunately, desert sand was not a calm lake surface. His spectacular dive failed to "slip into" anything. All it did was punch a small pit into the dirt.
Pendragon sucked in a cold breath through his teeth and clambered out of the hole, covered in dust. He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.
Other than getting dirty and a few seconds of bone deep pain, he was fine. After a bit of trial and error, Pendragon quickly learned how to fly and even unlocked multiple flying poses.