Mythos Of Narcissus: Reborn As An NPC In A Horror VRMMO

The silence did not last.

The moment the Pallid Mermaid vanished, I knew.

The hunt was not over.

Something stirred in the air. Not a ripple—something deeper, something vast. The feeling of something coiling, stretching beyond this place, preparing to breach through the fabric of existence once more.

And then—

They came.

Seven in total.

"I guess this is how I met their relatives."

They did not blink into existence all at once. They seeped in—one after another, slithering through unseen cracks in reality, as their grotesque, veined forms unraveled like twisted ribbons of flesh and translucent membranes.

Their faces—those unnatural, eerily human masks—turned toward me in unison.

Seven frozen expressions. Seven empty, watching stares.

The air shuddered.

The first wail came—not one, but a layered chorus of soul-rending screams.

A violent wave of sound, not carried by air, but by concept itself.

I felt it claw at my existence—pulling at something deeper than flesh, deeper than thought.

The first wail from a single Pallid Mermaid had been nothing more than an irritation.

But seven?

For a moment, the world itself seemed to tilt under the pressure.

Harpoons erupted from the ground, tearing through the realm like ancient scars being reopened. The very fabric of space trembled as the spectral weapons rained down once more, impaling the land like jagged teeth thirsting for blood.

I exhaled, my mind snapping into clarity.

They wanted me pierced so bad, but they had made one critical mistake.

So did I.

I wanted them pierced more.

"Whoever gave me these harpoons, you're one heck of sicko."

In the state of Floating Through Life, a single thought sent me shifting through existence, like a wisp of detached motion. The world blurred as I hastened from the usual—not from speed, but from my refusal to obey the logic of space itself.

The Pallid Mermaids lunged—all at once.

Seven grotesque forms snapped forward, their bloated, membranous bodies folding through reality as they lunged for my form.

Their empty faces did not open their mouths.

They simply sought to collide with me.

"Urgh."

Their faces, as eerie as they might be, there was actually some semblance of symmetry that I sought in many.

But it didn't help much that I greatly abhor those who threatened the path that I tread.

I twisted through existence, tilting my trajectory out of their reach before they could make contact.

Their movements were relentless, but they were not chaotic.

No.

They surprisingly hunted with terrifying precision, now that they were in pack.

Each time they blinked forward, they were not simply chasing—they were corralling me, attempting to force my movements into a path that would end in my demise.

Clever.

But I was smarter, unfortunately.

My fingers brushed against a harpoon mid-flight.

A pulse of hatred surged through me—the whispers of wrath, the ancient echoes of a hunt that had never ended. It craved to pierce the ever living hell out of these fishes.

And I let it rip.

With a flick of my wrist, the harpoon twisted midair, aligning itself perfectly.

The weapon moved as if guided by a force beyond mere motion. It cut through the air, curving in a way that should have been impossible—and then it struck. Read latest stories on My Virtual Library Empire

"NHAAAAGAGH!!"

The first Pallid Mermaid convulsed as the harpoon impaled its form, burying itself deep into the grotesque, veined flesh.

The reaction was immediate and disorienting.

A fractured wail tore from its unmoving face, a distorted shriek of something more than pain—something deeper.

Recognition.

The other six lurched in response.

I didn't stop moving.

I floated through the battlefield, dipping and shifting between the skewed axes of this realm. My position was never fixed.

A Pallid Mermaid blinked into existence directly in front of me—

Its grotesque body folding through space, its gaping maw unfurling in an unnatural spiral, lined with writhing, translucent teeth that flexed outward like the bloom of a corpse flower.

No motion. No delay.

Just an instantaneous lunge.

I reached downward, fingers grazing the surface of a spectral harpoon as I twisted my axis, severing my connection to conventional space for a split second. The harpoon leapt into my grip the moment my fingers closed around it.

It thrummed.

And a single fluid thrust met the beast's charge.

"NHHGAAAAAHHH!"

"Yeesh, you all so loud…"

The Pallid Mermaid's momentum halted mid-air as the harpoon drove into its throat, embedding deep.

A single, wretched gurgle escaped from its unmoving face, but no blood spilled—only a rippling distortion that spread outward like fractures in glass.

At one point, I wondered if there was any meaning to hunt these mermaids aside from removing them from this realm, and also sating the deep hatred and wrath that these harpoons contained in the mere presence of these horrid creatures.

Regardless, the hunt had bound it in place.

Two down.

Five remained.

I barely had time to exhale before the other five moved.

This time, they did not simply charge.

They coordinated.

"Getting smarter? Or are they getting afraid~?"

One Pallid Mermaid blinked into existence directly behind me, its slick, veined membrane already compressing inward, about to snap forward like a launched harpoon.

Another rippled into form above me, its grotesque face angled downward as if calculating the perfect trajectory of my next movement.

Two more phased in from the flanks, boxing me in from either side.

The last one did not attack.

It simply watched.

Learning.

Adapting.

The Pallid Mermaids were no longer merely reacting to me.

They were anticipating it.

Smart, for a horrifying existence made out of absolute enigma.

But not smart enough.

I didn't move in the direction they wanted.

Instead, I moved in every direction at once.

Floating Through Life was not flight. It was a refusal to acknowledge spatial limitations.

So I detached.

"Thankfully, this is not Carcosa it seems."

There wasn't any reaction of me abusing the hell out of it, nor was there any feeling of suffocation inside my psyche whenever I want to perform something that would be against the limitation of Carcosa.

"Gotta be quicker, bucko.'

Time stretched.

Their lunges collided with empty space.

I was already elsewhere.

A harpoon rose from the ground the moment I extended my will toward it, grabbing it by extending my spiritual projection to apply a state of Floating Through Life to it that I could interfere with.

After placing it at my arm, I immediately threw it, but not in a normal way.

I threw it in a different point in space, at the time where one of the Pallid Mermaid currently positioned. And as such, they reacted to it, and saw the chance that they were able to safely lunge at me without any obstruction.

Then, the harpoon's trajectory bent backward toward me. Or to be precise, toward my arm—as if space itself had reversed its own momentum.

"NHAAAAAGHHH!"

The harpoon did not merely pierce the closest Pallid Mermaid—

It dragged it mid-lunge, pulling it violently in the wrong direction before impaling it into the ground.

Three down.

"Adapt to that." I sneered. "Doubt that you can even comprehend what's happening with that tiny brain of yours."

But the remaining four did not retreat.

Instead—

They adapted.

One blinked behind me again.

This time, it did not lunge.

It collapsed inward, its entire body folding like a crumpled veil—shrinking into an incomprehensible spiral of writhing flesh before expanding outward instantaneously, attempting to swallow me whole.

Another Pallid Mermaid detached its own head, letting its body charge forward while its face floated freely, the flesh of its neck twisting into a harpoon-like appendage, aiming to impale me.

A third phased out of my line of sight entirely—

Not blinking away, not vanishing—

It ceased to exist for a moment before snapping back into reality at point-blank range, closer than any of the others had dared before.

"They had learned something from their failures, huh."

They were no longer trying to catch me off-guard.

They were mimicking my ability to break positioning.

"Now we're getting somewhere."

I did not dodge this time.

I let them reach me.

I let them believe I had made a mistake.

As the first lunged, I did the very same trick and have one of the harpoon land its strik. But this time, I did it in reverse.

Instead of throwing it at a different point of time in the future, I have the lying harpoon of the future to be transported into my arm.

Before retaliating like a frenzied beast.

Their lunge immediately redirected.

Not away.

But into another Pallid Mermaid in confusion, leaving itself vulnerable as I jammed my harpoon to its core.

"NGHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

Four down.

The fifth—the one that had detached itself from existence for a moment—moved again.

It reappeared inside of me.

"What-"

No movement. No impact. It simply phased into my body, as if our forms were never separate to begin with.

For a moment, its grotesque face overlapped with mine. Its empty, frozen expression lined up with my own features.

An attempt at erasure.

An attempt at becoming me.

"A good idea, but too noticeable."

I tilted my axis again, but this time—I did not move.

Instead, I shifted my own existence to reject its presence.

I made my form unreal for a fraction of a second—a space that did not exist could not be invaded.

The Pallid Mermaid faltered mid-assimilation, as if struggling to comprehend what had happened.

And in that moment.

I solidified again.

A harpoon was already in my grasp.

It didn't simply stab the Pallid Mermaid. I buried it to the hilt.

"NHGHAAAAAAA!!"

The creature convulsed, its grotesque form trembling—and then, like the others before it.

It ceased.

Five down.

"Two left." I gazed at them with the bounded hatred given by these harpoons. "I'm waiting."

They did not charge.

They did not lunge.

They simply hovered, watching me in silence.

Calculating.

They had seen all their methods fail.

And they knew—they could not win.

So they did the only thing they could.

They wailed.

Not to kill me.

But to call for something else.

"Oh my."

The air ruptured.

A low, trembling reverberation spread through the realm, sinking into my bones like a whisper too large to be spoken.

A pressure that had always been there.