Areth, waiting behind the colossal double doors that could be described as humble despite their sheer enormity, exhaled tensely. The soulless guards, beings without will of their own, were eager to throw the doors open for their lord. Meanwhile, Areth was occupied with his inner thoughts.
He still wondered whether this extraordinary experience he was living was some kind of dream. But now, he had a desire. He wanted this world to be real. He wanted this body to belong to him forever. He wanted this new world to become his world.
"Unknown power who sent me here… please let this world be real. Because even if this is a dream, I do not want to wake from it," he said silently to himself.
And thus, with his new name, beginning with the first of it, Areth Dom Othalnmalkor questioned the reality of this world for the last time. From this moment on, he decided to savor this world wherever fate might carry him.
When the doors creaked open with a heavy groan, even the air spilling from the hall felt as though it belonged to another world. A mixture of ancient stone, incense, and metal filled the space, the scent of power, order, and obedience. Areth drew his shoulders back and stepped forward.
His footsteps echoed unnaturally loudly. This was not because of his rigid, heavy tail, nor because of his height approaching three meters due to the dragon and divine blood flowing through him, nor even because of his nearly three hundred kilograms (660, pound) body mass. It was a side effect of his overwhelming strength.
Despite his immense weight, Areth was in fact one of the most agile and fastest beings in the room. He was fully aware of this. This contradiction, being both devastatingly heavy and disturbingly fast, was the clearest proof that this body did not belong to an ordinary being. Suppressed power lay within every fiber of his muscles, like a restrained catastrophe waiting to be unleashed.
As he advanced deeper into the hall, gazes converged upon him. Alongside human figures, the chamber held monsters, half-monsters, demons, dwarves, orcs, elves, and countless other races he could not even name. There were, of course, hybrid forms that defied classification. Areth knew every single one of them. Each was one of his favorites.
There was no character in this game he had not seen after hundreds of hours of play. He was the one who had gathered all of them. Now, seeing them standing before him in flesh and blood sent a wave of excitement and pleasure through him unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life. Although the hierarchy within the hall was sharply defined, a single emotion dominated the eyes of everyone present: admiration.
Areth advanced with heavy yet flawless balance and finally stopped before the throne. Then, as if repeating a motion he had performed thousands of times before, he sat upon it.
And at that moment, the throne room groaned.
The sound did not come from a single source. The walls, pillars, domes, even the unseen foundations beneath the floor responded as if they recognized his presence. A deep, ancient hum rose, heavy and inevitable, like the sigh of a mountain. The star maps engraved into the vast dome above glimmered with a faint light, as though the sky itself were bending down to look upon its new master.
The throne room stretching before Areth was far from an ordinary seat of rulership. The hall was as vast as a city's central square. The ceiling rose so high that, as one looked upward, it became impossible to tell where the architecture ended and darkness began. Pillars as thick as fortress towers divided the hall, their reliefs depicting the fall of gods, the rise of dragons, and the burning of kingdoms.
The floor was a mosaic of black obsidian intertwined with silver veins. With every step, these veins lit up faintly, turning into ripples that spread outward from the center of the throne. It was a floor that seemed to weigh those who stood upon it, measuring not only strength but will.
The throne itself was the heart of the hall.
Forged from dragon bone and star metal together, sealed with divine blood, its back was shaped like a dragon with half-spread wings. Its head rose behind Areth, yellow eyes trembling within hollow sockets like an undying flame. The armrests were engraved with the seals of conquered kingdoms, each seal carrying a silenced story.
When Areth sat upon the throne, the massive structure adjusted itself to him. It neither swallowed him nor diminished him. On the contrary, it felt as though it had existed for him from the very beginning. It did not strain his power, it guided it. What it offered was not a suppressed catastrophe, but a restrained dominion.
Almost simultaneously, everyone in the hall knelt.
Armor struck the ground, knees met stone, wings folded, horns bowed. Even the proudest lowered their heads, not out of obligation, but out of inevitability. It was a scene he had seen countless times in the game.
But not on a screen.
This time, it was real.
"Raise your heads," he said, his voice deep and resonant.
He did not shout. It was not even loud. Yet it echoed for everyone in the hall. The sound sank into bone before it reached the ears, less a command and more as if nature itself had spoken.
"As most of you are aware, we have experienced a strange incident. Does anyone have information regarding this matter?"
Areth's question settled over the hall like a heavy shroud.
No one spoke immediately.
This silence was not hesitation born of fear. Rather, it was a moment in which it was being judged which being was worthy to speak. Gazes instinctively shifted toward the left wing of the hall. There stood a figure, half a step ahead of the others.
Lysandra.
The first thing that drew attention was her long, straight white hair and her emerald-green eyes that shone in harmony with the elegant green dress she wore. She was tall, with a curvaceous figure. Her chest was not exaggeratedly large, but combined with her exceptionally slender waist and wide hips, her body was strikingly alluring. The black gloves she wore concealed half her arms, while a delicate necklace adorned her neck. Beneath her small nose, her full pink lips carried the smile of a woman supremely confident in herself.
She had not knelt. Yet there was not a trace of arrogance in her posture. On the contrary, she stood calmly and confidently, as if she had been waiting for this moment for years. When her gaze met Areth's, there was nothing in her eyes but deep affection.
Lysandra was one of the main romantic routes in the game Blood Banner, and characters like her were rare. In Blood Banner, alongside straight female characters, there were characters of various sexual orientations. As a result, the developers were only able to create five main romantic routes for heterosexual male players, since writing dozens of scenarios and cutscenes for each character was both costly and time-consuming.
Lysandra was not an ordinary romantic option within the Blood Banner universe. She was one of the characters tied directly to the backbone of the story. Regardless of the player's decisions, she always remained close to the center of events, whether in political intrigues, the unveiling of ancient secrets, or even certain "bad ending" scenarios.
"I sense that you wish to speak," Areth said.
Lysandra inclined her head slightly. As her hair slipped over her shoulder, her emerald eyes never left Areth.
"Yes, Lord Areth. A strange power, a strange form of magic unlike anything I have encountered before, teleported our flying island to an unknown location. I do not know how our defensive barriers were breached, but whoever did this must be at least as powerful as I am."
Primary supporting characters like Lysandra were beings capable of standing on equal footing with the player. In short, Lysandra was asserting that the entity responsible for this spell was powerful enough to challenge even a player like Areth.
"The defensive barriers," Areth said slowly. "How many layers were there?"
Lysandra answered without hesitation.
"Seven primary layers. Three of divine origin. Two reinforced with dragon seals. The final two were… living barriers that responded only to your presence."
Living barriers were not ordinary spells. They were bound to the will of a ruler. To overcome them required either absolute power or absolute permission.
"And yet they were breached," Areth said.
"Yes," Lysandra confirmed. "And not by force. The barriers were not broken. They remain perfectly intact, as if nothing had happened at all."
Areth straightened slightly on the throne. At that moment, a specific theory regarding the cause of this teleportation formed in his mind. He was not completely certain, but it was undoubtedly connected to his reincarnation.
All eyes in the hall locked onto a single point. No one spoke. Because in Areth's eyes, there was something that had not been there moments ago: comprehension.
An irrepressible smile appeared at the corner of Areth's lips.
"A new world?"