The moment I made my selection, intense static flashed across my vision.
It spread through the pure white world in an instant, and deep red geometric patterns raced across it in every direction, as if someone were drawing something in blood across a white canvas.
I instinctively took a few steps back, but from the book floating before me—and from the ground beneath my feet—countless black bands of shadow wrapped themselves around my limbs. Before I had a chance to resist, I was suspended in midair in the blink of an eye.

“W-what is this? Rage, Sol, what’s happening?! What should I do?!”
*“What’s wrong? What happened?!”*
*“Onii-chan, calm down! What happened?!”*
“L-let me g…gah?!”

As I tried to break free from my restraints, dark bands thrust themselves into my chest, stomach, and all over my body with a heavy thud.
The pain and impact—which, for some reason, shouldn’t exist in the game—squeezed the air out of lungs that shouldn’t even have been there, making it impossible for me to breathe.

*“What’s going… Hey, answer m…!!”*
*“Onii-cha… What’s…?!”*

Static began to interfere with the party chat, and gradually, I could no longer hear anything.
And then came a sense of loss, as if something fundamental inside me were fading away. A sense of fulfillment followed, as something else filled the void—and then came pain that seemed to wash it all away.

It was like the dreadful chill of imagining an insect inside its chrysalis, dissolving its entire body into a gooey mess before emerging as something entirely different—a chill that told me everything was about to change irrevocably.

“I’m disappearing… I’m going to disappear… Help me…”

As my consciousness faded, I mustered my last ounce of strength and somehow squeezed out a voice, but the connection between us had already crumbled, and my cry reached no one, fading away in vain.

.

.

.

“…What is this?”

When I woke up, I was looking at an unfamiliar ceiling.

…No, wait, I did know it.

I wasn’t entirely sure—I hadn’t had the mental clarity to look at it closely—but this was the dilapidated ruin on the outskirts of the Northern Kingdom, the very place I’d passed through moments ago. It was the entrance to the reincarnation room, the White World, where I had been until just now.

……In other words, I must have safely reincarnated, suddenly fallen asleep, and just woken up.

Come to think of it, I’d been cutting my sleep down to the absolute minimum lately, spending every moment allowed by the maximum consecutive playtime limit on that cutthroat leveling run. I must have been incredibly exhausted. And once the reincarnation was complete, the tension must have snapped, and I just… I just?

That’s strange—I can’t be.

If you fall asleep in this game, the system forcibly logs you out after a certain amount of time, treating it as a health emergency.
And since this is the world’s first VRMMORPG, they must have been extremely careful about addressing bugs related to real-life safety.

In other words, “falling asleep and waking up inside the game” should be virtually impossible, and yet…

A bad feeling gradually crept up my spine. As a semi-shut-in, I’d often read those kinds of hobby novels, and I knew they had once formed a major genre.

And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even bring up the menu screen.

Thinking it might be a control error, I tried again.

I switched from my right hand to my left and tried once more.

I even tried the voice command to call a Game Master… but there was absolutely no response.

No matter how I looked at it, I was done for. Thank you very much indeed.

No, no—surely, that’s something that only happens in novels…

Something was off. I couldn’t shake the chill running down my spine.
Come to think of it, the floor I was lying on felt unusually cold.
That must be why. After all, this was the northern region, and I was lying on a hard marble floor…

“…?!”

I bolted upright… but my legs wouldn’t hold me up, and I plopped right back down.

…Cold? Why?

This game doesn’t simulate that level of detail. Otherwise, you’d freeze solid and be unable to move in this bitter cold.
In-game, the worst that would happen is that if you stayed in the cold for too long while wearing light clothing, you’d get a “Low Body Temperature” status effect that made it slightly harder to move—but you wouldn’t actually feel the heat or the cold.

Fortunately, for some reason, this room was a little warm, so it didn’t seem like I was in immediate danger. Even so, I felt a bit uneasy in my current light clothing.

And although I was currently sitting in a W-position, the cold seeping up from my legs and buttocks was, after all, indistinguishable from the real thing.

As I sat there in a daze, a rainbow-colored glow flitted across the corner of my vision.
It looked like a thin thread… I instinctively picked it up, and it felt as smooth as the finest silk.
I gave it a gentle tug to see where it was coming from… Ouch. I see—it seems to be hanging from my own scalp.

Without really thinking, I looked at my hand holding the thread. It was a hand I was very familiar with. Specifically, it was the hand I *always see in the game.*

However, beneath the translucent white skin, a faint reddish tint—evidence of blood flow—was visible, and I could even see veins showing through. When I tentatively touched the area around my wrist, beneath the soft, supple, smooth texture, I could feel the firmness of tendons and other structures.
Wait a minute—did the avatars in this game really reproduce the human body in such detail?

……That shouldn’t be possible.

I created this character’s textures myself.
It’s true that my sister and I spent several months pursuing the highest possible quality, but I don’t remember going to that extent at all. Besides, I’ve been living with this body for years since I started playing the game. There’s absolutely no way I wouldn’t have noticed this before.
Just to test it, I gave it a light pinch…

“…Ouch?!”

Startled by the stinging pain, I quickly let go, and the spot I’d pinched began to turn red. Come to think of it, it hurt when I pulled the hair earlier, too.

With trembling hands, I fumbled for the pouch on my waist. Fortunately, it still functioned as the magic bag that it was, and its capacity seemed unchanged. I pulled out the hand mirror I always carried with me (I use it to check blind spots, not because I’m a narcissist) and looked at my face.

—To put it simply, a breathtakingly beautiful girl was reflected there.

She was probably in her early teens, still retaining a fair amount of childishness.

Her skin was as translucently white as her arms, while her cheeks were tinged with a faint cherry blossom pink, asserting that this girl with her doll-like, perfectly symmetrical features was, in fact, a living, breathing person.

Her bangs, trimmed just below her eyebrows, were styled to fall at a gentle diagonal. Her right eye was fully visible, while her left was slightly concealed up to about the middle.
The hair on the sides was neatly styled to just touch her shoulders, and the back was left loose—flowing simply and smoothly, softly cascading down below her waist.

In the center of her small face, framed by a curtain of silver hair, her wide-open eyes were lined with long lashes. When she relaxed her facial muscles, her eyelids drooped slightly, giving her the look of someone with a gentle, downcast smile.
At the center of those eyes, pale amethyst irises shimmered as if moist.

Her nose was neither too high nor too low, tracing a modest yet beautiful line, and her slightly small lips were plump and adorable; though she didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, they glowed with a pale pink sheen.

Overall, she had the air of a “fragile and delicate young beauty who might instinctively evoke a desire to protect her—or perhaps a sadistic urge instead.”

Shifting my gaze downward, beneath the thin, flimsy, and precarious clothing—intended solely to prevent her from exposing her naked body during her job search—lay a petite, still childlike figure, standing less than 150 cm tall, with a precarious physique poised on the cusp of transitioning from girlhood to womanhood.

Hidden beneath her clothes were two palm-sized mounds that harmonized perfectly with her frame—slightly small yet distinctly present. Perhaps because she was still developing, they were a bit firm, but their surface still offered a pleasantly soft, squishy feel.

I was a bit concerned about the lack of sensation down below, between the legs, but I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to investigate it right now, so I’d put that off for later.
Even though every sensation so far was screaming with all its might that this was reality, if I were to fully acknowledge that fact, I’d probably end up wanting to die.

What’s more, this face looked very familiar.

Pressured by my younger sister, who was determined to “aim for the top in the game,” I had spent a long time fine-tuning it, debating every detail. In the very first avatar contest, it had beaten out entries from major companies to win the Grand Prize. After winning several more times, I was eventually banned from the contest. It was the face of the beautiful girl I’d known as 『Iris』 all along—someone I’d spent seven years with since starting the game, to the point where I could be counted among its hardcore players.

No, now that even the finest details had been rendered with such realism, her perfectly symmetrical features stood out all the more as otherworldly… a face that was far too flawless, almost unnaturally so.

But…

“Is my hair a different color?”

I picked up a strand of my hair and examined it closely from various angles. Originally, it had been unremarkable silver hair, close to white (though I had paid close attention to the texture), but now, my long hair, reaching all the way down to my waist, seemed to shimmer with a faint iridescent glow depending on the light.

“Is this because I was reincarnated and my race changed…? And also—”

There was a strange sense of emptiness on my back. The large wings characteristic of the Celestial Race were nowhere to be found.

“What could this mean…? Did they just disappear? But the race’s name was Lightwing, so… Mm?”

Just to test it, I recalled the times I’d moved my wings in the game. I gently tensed the muscles in my back—around my shoulder blades, where my wings used to be—and experimented for a while, trying this and that…

Suddenly, my field of vision was enveloped in light.

In an instant, the room was filled with sparkling, ethereal particles of light.
It was just like when I saw countless fireflies at my grandparents’ house in the mountains of Tohoku—no, more like that scene multiplied dozens of times over.
Countless feather-like shapes formed from light were also floating down, giving the faintly desolate ruins the air of a solemn religious painting. If that was the case, was I the one being depicted…? I’d really rather not.

Just to test it, I picked up one of the fluttering feathers, but the moment I touched it, it turned into particles and scattered.
With a slow, deliberate movement—as if a rusty metallic hinge were about to creak—I turned around. In my field of vision, three pairs of wings—six in total—were fluttering, emitting a dazzling light. Come to think of it, I feel like the wings depicted on the mural I saw at that event looked something like this.

“Ha… ha ha… Oh no, what is this…”

I felt like the cold sweat was flowing even more uncontrollably now.
If I looked in a mirror right now, there’s no doubt the face of that innocent girl from a moment ago would be contorted in a massive grimace.

The 『Lightwing』 in this game is a race said to have existed long ago, one that occasionally comes up in conversations within the game. They are said to have held an important role and were the most revered race in this world at the time…

—But they’ve long since gone extinct.

In this world, it’s said that 『Wounds of the World』 occasionally open up.
Certain dungeons and powerful monsters, such as raid bosses, emerge from them, or so the lore goes.
The Lightwing race was supposed to be a race that…possessed the ability to heal and erase those…Wounds of the World.

*Maybe there’s something to be found in the Reincarnated Unique Jobs?*
*Could there be something hidden within the usually neglected Support class line?*

Driven by such doubts, I’d gritted my teeth and endured it all—regardless of how disadvantageous the Job was. Since I’d never even imagined that it might actually become a selectable option, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the Lightwing name among the reincarnation choices. Still, knowing the risks, I chose it.
However, all of that had been nothing more than a way to feed my superiority complex within the context of a game. But if this was no longer a game, and this was reality…

“Oh no, what am I going to do… This isn’t just ‘standing out’—it’s way beyond that…”

All sorts of unsettling words flashed through my mind and vanished. It felt like everything was going dark before my eyes. Is this my punishment for cheating, God? Isn’t this a bit too harsh?

.

Kuga Yanagi—known as Iris in the game.

If the lore of the game were real, she would be Iris Nordglacier, the Jewel Princess of the Northern Magic Kingdom.

Currently, she was Level 1, fresh off her reincarnation.
Powerless to even defend herself, she had now become a girl from an ancient race that was supposed to be extinct—……