Cold. Everything was cold. Why was it so cold? I woke up suddenly, feeling like someone had decked me straight in the temples, stomach and balls. The freezing temperature really didn’t help. This really wasn’t how I was expecting to wake up. 

 

Groaning from the influx of memories that invaded my thoughts, I started to regain my bearings a little. I remembered who I was, what I did and how I died but what happened after kept slipping out of my hold no matter how hard I tried to grasp it. I just can’t seem to put my finger on it. Slippery, darn fish.

 

Giving up after a while, the next thing I did was to check on my surroundings. Oh, no wonder it was so fucking cold. 

 

The grass under my feet felt soft but weirdly hard at the same time, an uncomfortable sensation tickling my pale feet whenever I so much as moved. The dense lushness seemed to stretch on forever, from the northern high, cold mountains to the southern, dark forests. But the main reason for the drop in temperature was the expanse of water; a chilly lake hosting a dewy mist above it and some extremely abhorrent creatures that definitely didn’t belong on earth. 

 

I rubbed my eyes. “I must be dreaming,” I whispered, eyes wide with disbelief. “What the fuck is that?” Before my eyes stood a creature that looked like a horrible mix between a deer and an alligator, another one that was a moving mass of gelatin, a sludge of black that was feeding on prior gelatin’s dead corpse and finally, giggling faery-like wisps of light that were feasting on the bloody corpse of a bear-owl. 

 

More bad news came. I clutched my throat. Wait a minute, was my voice always this high? No way, no freaking way. I could accept the changes; I could accept the fantastical monsters, I could accept the flying whales above my head, I could accept the fact that I was most possibly transmigrated into a new world, but I would not, could not accept what I think had changed.

 

One eye closed, the other open, I slowly glanced down with a wince. “Fuck.” I had been right. The one time I hoped I was wrong, I was right. Another reason why I felt extremely cold. My legs were noodles. My butt plopped down on the cool grass. Disbelief. Confusion. Rage, then acceptance.

 

I had turned into a girl. And, I was completely naked. I felt my entire body, feeling every curve of my hips, the swell of my breasts and the long, silky white hair that gleamed somewhat golden under the morning sun. 

 

“This can’t be,” I muttered, dejectedly. Glancing at the nearby lake, I rolled over the grass and forced myself up, ignoring the moaning and growling of the monsters before tentatively taking a look at my reflection. 

 

Woah. At least, I wasn’t ugly. With hair like golden snow and a lithe, tanned body that was the perfect mix between seductive and adorable, I could go so far as to say that I was a 10/10. An extra two points could be, objectively, given if you liked the colorless pupils I possessed. Like, there’s literally no black in my eyes, only whites.

 

I would have been shocked if it weren’t for the sudden pulsed whistle of the flying herd of sky whales, a name that I had given them myself. 

 

“Yeah, I look like an Eve,” I muttered suddenly, taking a couple poses to see every nook and cranny of my new body. Damn, I was hot. Then, a hologram appeared before me. 

 

Without hesitation, I clicked on the core abilities that I had, which allowed for three text messages to appear again. For some reason, this felt really, really familiar. 

 

 

If it wasn’t for how realistic everything felt, I would have thought I was in a dream or something. But just to be extra sure, I pinched my cheeks and knew definitely then, that this wasn’t a dream. 

 

That means that everything in here was real. The slimes were real, the foreboding pair of mountains up north were real, my currently female body was real and the chance that I possessed things that sounded extremely strong and broken, were all real. 

 

Excitement, the type of giddy excitement that you got when your parents bought you a new game console, or station – spread throughout my chest, then my neck, then my head and suddenly, I didn’t feel so cold anymore. 

 

But just to be sure that I didn’t get a cold, I tapped on the classic [Inventory] and a holographic window appeared before my eyes and I wondered if it was something only I could see. Nevertheless, I quickly clicked on the [Beginner’s Set] and hoped that it contained at least some decent, warm wear. 

 

If it was this cold during the morning, how cold would it be during the night?

 

Oh, thank god. I quickly clicked on the new icons in my [Inventory] tab, as the previously mentioned materials appeared out of thin air, dropping before my feet. I now could 100% confirm that I wasn’t in a dream. 

 

“Happy birthday to me.”

 

I quickly wore the leather armor and boots which surprisingly felt extremely comfortable to wear, as if they had been tailored to my size — well, flying whales do exist in this world so it wasn’t a reach at all even if that was true. Then, wearing the scarf, the previous cold had been completely erased from my body. It felt like a heater had been installed around my neck, warming up my entire body. With this, I didn’t have to worry so much about the cold unless the scarf had a durability meter. 

 

After checking a couple of times, I was glad to say, at the very least, that annoying part of the game-world hadn’t been carried over. I mean, imagine if my scarf suddenly broke in the middle of the night. I didn’t want to die in such a stupid way.

 

Next, I pondered over retrieving the jerky, meat and water but decided against it, except the water. There were monsters around me who, if they were carnivorous, would pounce on me the moment they smelled the meat. Besides, I wasn’t that hungry anyway.

 

“Now this tastes like spring water,” I swooned at how natural and refreshing the water tasted. If only the water back in my world tasted as they were advertised. Damn mega corporations. I kept it back in my [Inventory], marveling at the hopefully infinite space.

 

With a hand on my waist, I pondered. “What do I do now?” It was natural to want to battle with the nearby monsters when you possessed the ‘Core Abilities’ that I had, and I honestly wanted to test them out but there was one problem with that. 

 

I was a coward. No way in hell would I intentionally aggro any of the nearby monsters unless I was absolutely one hundred percent sure I could beat them. Yes, that includes the weak-looking slimes. In any games that I played, I always utilized the age-old tactic of ‘playing pussy’ and ‘camping’, tactics that always got me the win but also granted me the endless ire of my teammates, and enemies. 

 

Now that this was a very real world, where the stakes are my new body and life, you could say I had evolved from a ‘pussy’ to a mega pussy. I clicked on my core abilty again. 

 

Yup, this was the one. Yeah, the first thing that one was to do in an entirely new, possibly extremely dangerous world was to invest in oneself before branching onto anything else. By this point, I had already walked far away from the monsters to the point they were only a dot in my eyes but I still didn’t want to risk it. Also, I was now, instead, dangerously close to the dark forest of mysteries.

 

I read the 1st skill of my constitution and was visibly pleased by the big word, called the [Question]. I don’t know what it was but I saw that it was able to be upgraded. 

 

Then, I got an idea. God, I loved myself. “Come to daddy. . .err, I meant mommy.” Yeah, that would still take a while to get used to. A click of a button and 10 dimly-lit crystals of white appeared before my thighs. Energy, pure energy that just felt right to me, whispered to my soul.

 

Yup, I stand corrected in my theory. It was just a thought, an enlightenment that popped out of nowhere when I read the name of my constitution and 1st skill that sounded extremely similar to what was otherwise known as, [Cultivation]. Like, the cultivation in Chinese immortal novels, not the cultivation used in farming. And something those cultivators always sought for, were absorbable materials that could increase their cultivation realm - in this case, the lesser cores.

 

I held the ten, very small and dimly-lit crystals in my hands and already felt the process of absorption happen instinctively. Everything felt woozy and warm, almost nirvanic when the energy entered my body as I felt my strength strangely increase. There wasn’t much energy in them —the type of colossal energy that my constitution demanded but I compromised. For now, this constant stream of miniscule energy was enough. 

 

But of course, I’ll need more in the future. The title for these crystals were [Lesser Core] and I made the comparison to those Chinese novels again. And, where did those cultivators obtain these cores from?

 

My colorless eyes opened, zooming in on the distant howling monsters.

 

“. . .A fight’s inevitable, isn’t it?” I sighed, but still focused on absorbing the lesser core’s energies. [Root] was extremely fast, devouring the energy like a madman to the point three of the lesser cores had already shattered.

 

I could feel myself getting close to something. I could see an imposing wall that was getting closer but the more I absorbed energy from the lesser cores, the more the wall looked brittle and fragile. Something told me I would reach a new level of strength after I breached through that wall, like I would officially step into this world as a champion, a warrior and inheritor. 

 

Again, I was a coward. I wouldn’t fight battles that were even one inch out of my reach but if they were within my palm? A smile came up on my face when I breached through the wall after the fourth [Lesser Core] shattered. 

 

 

 

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