The Red Rose and The Black Rose

Chapter 8: Interlude 4.5



The unmatched, beautiful, sexy, incredible, cool, modern, huge breasted, gothic, sexy, beautiful, did I mention beautiful? The Queen of Titania, Dont-Say-My-Name, looked at herself in the mirror.

She had postponed it until now... But she had nothing to do in Titania... So it was time to deal with it.

"... Who are you?" She asked the mirror. Her eyes almost seemed to reflect with deep tired dark circles, although in reality, her appearance was impeccable as always.

The mirror seemed to ask her the same.

"Who are you?" Her reflection replied.

Did someone really answer her? No. It was a poetic theatricality of 'not recognizing oneself in the mirror.'

But there lay the problem.

Dont didn't feel different.

She knew that her self as a human player of Yggdrasil and a history and other subjects teacher was not so perfectly beautiful. She was sick, and it was difficult to have healthy and nourished skin with the scarcity of food, water, and the smog covering any ray of sunlight without resorting to surgeries or complex synthetic drugs that destroyed health in exchange for looking a little more attractive for a while.

Her immense ego was the only thing that kept her stable in her transition to this body initially. At least to the point of postponing it for a while without falling into madness or who knows what.

Not to mention the huge balloons under her beautiful suit. A little larger than on Earth, and firmer, of course, not subjected to synthetic food but designed pixel by pixel by an immersive virtual reality character creator.

Should she be panicking at the idea of losing her human body? Or even thinking about it at all? Was it wrong to really think about it?

She was sure she didn't miss that body... It was weak and sick, it would die too young... In a horrible and putrid world...

In comparison, she always related more to her Yggdrasil-self, or at least the fantasy mental image she had of such a 'self'. She spent so much time in the game... Was that why she felt so... Natural? Or was it a psychological joke related to this transition to being 'Dont'?

"... I am you." She said to the mirror with a sigh.

She let her mind wander... And quickly found herself thinking about how to extract the sweetest screams from the captured men of the Theocracy. She sighed at the thought.

Her race now was that of a Demon, not a human. She followed the path that made her a Demon Queen, and a Daemon, the 'Primordial Demon.' Additionally, she had a negative karma of -500, the maximum one could earn in Yggdrasil.

That is, she was the worst of the worst in terms of evil, only surpassed, in terms of 'lore' at least, by some other races, like a branch of the Brain Eaters, some Undead, Fallen Angels, and Abyssal Creatures.

Hypothetically, karma shouldn't affect a Player's personality. It was simply a value that reflected the Player's actions based on completed actions or missions, being useful regarding efficiency and differences between some skills, spells, and classes.

One couldn't be an Unholy Knight and have a karma of 300, or summon a Demon with that same karma value.

Hypothetically, one could be an Angelologist and have a karma of -500 and so, but it would be a poorly constructed build wasted to the maximum, with Angels having a deficiency of benefits or even ending up Fallen or turning against the summoner when finding him 'evil' in certain cases.

And an Angel with the Fallen debuff was very bad. There was a strange difference between a 'Fallen Angel' and an 'Angel with the Fallen debuff,' but Dont stopped wandering into that area.

She had accepted it before. She hated humanity for how they destroyed the Earth out of greed... But this was no longer hatred... It was pure cruelty that she felt... And she felt somewhat uneasy that it felt completely natural. Really part of her.

The parts of her personality were divided into pieces.

She, as the human in 22nd-century Earth. Dont-Say-My-Name, the demonic shooter who could severely damage World Bosses like the World Devourer with her immense firepower. And most worrisome, the four pieces that diversified from Dont-Say-My-Name.

A monstrous Demon with endless fury and chaos to unleash. A calculating, cruel, and cold Devil. A thinner and smaller Demon than the first, silent but violent and volatile if someone bothered him. And the one who sat on a throne, looking at her with absolute superiority, the Demon Queen.

All those pieces that varied from Dont, were Dont, and were, at the same time, that weak human with throat cancer in a hospital, crying for the disappearance of her favorite game.

The Demon Queen controlled them all as the most perfect... The absolute... And she was evaluating her, seeing if she was worthy to be among hers...

She shook the mental image slightly and sighed again as she walked out of her wardrobe.

She would go to the Coliseum to try out some things...

The level 1 Demon maid followed her with barely contained joy, unable to see Dont's mood through the neutral mask she had used so much on Earth.

How should he feel...? In essence, he didn't really feel like himself; it was as if he were borrowing a body…

He used to play as female characters in all the games he played, somehow enjoying using them.

If he was going to play a game for many hours, he preferred to see a woman's ass than a man's, but... Now he had become that woman...

Black Abyss•White Flower had gained a certain reputation, even once becoming the 'Crush' of the Guild Leader of G.O.D.S and became a frequent joke when she told Jamon that she was actually a man; after all, she practically never used voice chat, preferring to type. Although she ended up doing it at the request of her teammates so that such confusions didn't happen so often.

But... Even if he tried to change the subject in his own mind to remember other things, she couldn't stop thinking about herself… H-Himself... As if he were in constant change every day…

As if two personalities were colliding at every moment... It was frustrating; had Black Abyss been someone else before he took over her body...? Or was this the effect that this body was having on his mind...? Several times, he even referred to herself in the feminine without realizing it, as if undergoing a forced change... Even his attitude was more... Emotional... More feminine at times...

It was sometimes annoying but he couldn't really do anything; it was practically natural.

At all times, he felt like he was in a cage, watching his entire life pass in a blink, walking in circles as if it were the end of a very long period in his life...

All he wished for were better things, but... How should he feel about this? He was in an unknown world, in... Titania, which he knew quite well. But for him, it was nothing more than pixels, in a body that didn't belong to him...

It was as if it were a mental landscape, where there was him, as a simple human from Earth, and Black Abyss, the powerful Angelic Paladin who defeated the World Devourer alongside her friends, just looking at each other with indestructible steel bars between them.

… He could see his character from the other side, looking at him somewhat... As if feeling sorry for him... No, as if she were looking at herself, an empathetic look full of understanding for what she was going through...

'He' lowered his head; he didn't want to look at Black Abyss, and without an option, he let a few drops fall from his eyes, giving a light tap to the 'floor'...

He didn't know what it was, didn't know where he was, didn't know anything... Everything he worked for on Earth was in vain... 'He' just wanted better things...

But... The hand covered in shiny metal reached out to his shoulder, giving him an affectionate touch... He wasn't going to look...

"Listen to me." Black Abyss's voice called him. "Nothing can break you. Stop hitting the ground... I promise you, this won't last long." Her warm voice sounded with affection and understanding in her entire expression. "You feel overwhelmed, trapped in confusion and fear... But the sun will rise again in a new dawn; don't let this world take your soul." ... He looked at Black Abyss, seeing her warm and beautiful smile, almost calming all his fears and questions.

She was... An Angel... He wanted to laugh at how literal it really was.

"I know it's hard... that you feel bad about this, but... This darkness is not your home, and you are not alone~" Black Abyss told him with a wonderful smile... 'He'... wanted to believe her. No... He believed her.

He extended a trembling hand towards Black Abyss, who only offered her other hand gently... And suddenly everything seemed to light up again.

He… And she felt... At peace...

The barriers disappeared, and her eyes opened.

"A... Dream...? No..." She said, getting up from the bed, sitting on its side and looking around... She wiped the tears on her cheeks and looked into one of the large mirrors in his room. She couldn't help but let out a smile; she couldn't feel more comfortable for some reason, getting up to continue with the day.

"[Aspect of the Demon: Balrog Muscles]" Dont's voice echoed through the arena as the knights watched excitedly from the stands, attentively following each of her movements, while the maid who had accompanied Dont, Botis, an elegant and glamorous woman with black hair and red eyes in a maid dress and with a kind of black silk scarf, smiled from the side, at a distance enough to avoid being hit by any splash damage from Dont's trials...

After all, she was level 1, and anything that Dont did absentmindedly could instantly kill her...

Dont's arms swelled supernaturally, breaking her sexy aesthetic as her muscles swelled into a mass of charred rock with veins of lava and fire. Her hands turned into claws.

Only the change felt strange because of how normal it felt... She could rationalize spells and abilities like summonings... But this... Was a shape shift. The true body horror she loved to read about.

But it didn't horrify her to be in a different body; what scared her was that this different body felt like hers.

Her large arms, with enhanced physical statistics, swiped forward, destroying the training dummies at a distance of 2 meters due to the skill's effect of causing a cut that extends 1 meter in front of a fire-damage attack.

The round of applause was immediate, but she silenced the outside sound for herself.

Her arms returned to normal when she canceled the ability.

She looked at the broken dummies, and she looked at her hands.

"... [Demon Queen's Body: Claws]" ... And she felt some resistance when long black claws, with red cracks forming elegant patterns, shredded her fingers without damage to herself.

The claws were 1 meter long... And were... Uncomfortable?

She frowned.

She had tried other shape-shifts with [Aspect of the Demon], and it had felt... Natural... But... It was the first time she was using [Demon Queen's Body].

... She felt as if the 'Demon Queen' was staring at her, through her entourage of Demons that were her other forms, including Dont-Say-My-Name, as if challenging her to keep using 'her' body... Or rather, part of the body of the 'Demon Queen'...

Her gaze was like powerful lasers penetrating her body until they burned her soul...

Her hands trembled a bit.

She resisted the urge to cry, as she had an audience.

But it was as if... Those 'other' versions of 'her' were mocking her for her weakness.

Seeking to diminish her weak existence and emerge into the light as a true Demon Queen, the Daemon, burying 'Elizabeth' deep within her soul to rot into oblivion...

The violent Demon laughed. The Devil ignored her. The calm Demon said nothing. The Demon Queen looked at her from her high throne. Dont stood in front of her.

The Shooter raised a hand, silencing the rest of 'pieces,' or at least the violent Demon, who stopped laughing.

The Demon Queen raised an eyebrow... Looking curious.

Dont extended a hand towards Elizabeth.

It looked red-hot, as if it were as fiery as magma.

Elizabeth retracted her weak hand.

... I don't like pain.

It wasn't words; it was more of a thought, an idea, that resonated in her mind.

Come, it doesn't hurt.

Elizabeth looked silently at Dont.

She felt as if her body were made of sticks. As if it would break with the slightest breeze.

The gaze of the Demon Queen scorned her, silently laughing at her.

And Elizabeth didn't like it at all.

She returned the gaze to the Demon Queen.

The Demon Queen's eyes were like black holes leading to the depths of Hell, surrounded by furious and fiery flames like magma storms in a vague eye shape... They didn't scare her...

She blinked, and she found herself again in front of the mirror.

Who are you?

Her reflection offered her a hand.

"I am you." She murmured in a barely audible voice.

She blinked, returning to the reality of her deep reverie.

She looked towards the coliseum stands. The knights were watching her in silence, murmuring among themselves with concern.

"My Queen?" Botis asked, frightened.

Dont returned her gaze.

"... It's nothing. I was just thinking." She smiled.

She looked at her claws. They felt light.

She didn't notice when they placed new training dummies.

Her speed stat was brutal and efficient, making her, in less than a blink, behind the dummies.

And these shattered into thousands of pieces, cut cleanly and perfectly.

Cheers erupted.

And the Demon Queen of Titania, Dont-Say-My-Name in its entirety, liked cheers.

She smiled.

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Name: Dont-Say-My-Name (Look at thy Authors Comment~)

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Name: Black Abyss•White Flower (Look at thy Authors Comment~)

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