The darkness was broken by the glow of a status screen.

 

“Ugh.” My vision flooded with status updates, which did not help the throbbing headache I had. I instinctively pushed the windows to a corner of my vision, shrinking them till they were sufficiently out of the way for me to inspect my surroundings. I was lying on the floor of the cave we found. It must have been early because the cave was well lit despite our makeshift blockade. As I looked around, I noticed a few strange things. First, I was the only one I could see who looked awake. Next, there were a few people missing, replaced by a host of new races, as well as humans I didn’t recognize. I was able to recognize the races due to my experience from VoV. There were a few orcs, two beast-kin, a harpy, a lamia, a humanoid kitsune, a couple of dryads, dragonborn, a Valkyrie, and a handful of dwarves. There were 25 non-humans that I could immediately spot, although there were another 37 people, I couldn’t recognize who looked human. Third thing was that Sam was missing.

Suddenly, something ran into my back. I panicked until I heard the most beautiful words in the world.

“Good morning, husband.” I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard Sam’s voice. It was doubled as a sigh of contentment because I really liked that last word.

“You scared me even before you jumped at my back, wife.” Sam giggled. She put one hand over my shoulder to hug me from behind. I was wondering what her other hand was doing when I suddenly became aware of something on my head.

“What are these about? The tail too.” As she spoke, I realized I could feel some of the ground behind me, and there was another thing on my head. Did I have ears and a tail?! Well, new ears anyway.

I figured the messages I ignored would have some information on whatever was going on. My eyes popped out of my head as I mentally scrolled through the messages. Race change?! A god and goddess?! Those classes and levels were the ones I had in VoV! Ember and Odin were my first pets in VoV too! How did the system know about them?

‘Wait, a lot of this seems similar to my VoV character’

I looked at the people I didn’t recognize and found that I actually could recognize them. They were the VoV characters of my guild mates and the other guests who played VoV. The children whose parents played were also recognizable among them, though their features changed to match whatever changes their parents had gone through, if the child themselves hadn’t played. The valkyrie, Sam’s sister, had her back towards me, and so, despite the fact that she looked almost the same in game and out, her character’s hair and wings had fooled me. Upon closer inspection, it seemed the changes were generationally retroactive as well, as parents of VoV players who didn't play themselves, like my own parents, changed to match their kids as well.

“These are our VoV characters, aren’t they?” I asked.

“Mhm. You’re the only outlier, Mr. Beast-kin.” Sam seemed to find my new features amusing as she played with my ears. I felt a bit weird, as they were a bit sensitive.

“Keytar~. My race was changed because of a [Title] I got from my [Classes], [Champion of the Thirteenth].” Sam apparently realized what I meant when I said keytar, because she started to play with my tail too and rubbed her face against my ears to tease me. Only by turning around did I get her to stop. Otherwise, her chest would have been right in front of my face, which would only be a little more uncomfortable for her than for me. She gave me a pout before I told her about my windows.

“I got similar compensation. My classes are [Magus Riflewoman] and [Enchanting Markswoman]. Both Legendary Foundations, and they gave me the [Arcane Gunslinger] [Title] due to both being legendary foundations related to guns and magic. My class gave me Dexterity, Vitality, Wisdom, Clarity, Intelligence, and Constitution, focusing on Dexterity, Wisdom and Intelligence, with a secondary focus on Clarity. My subclass gave Constitution, Clarity, Dexterity, and Wisdom, focusing on Constitution and Clarity.”

“Possible issue, your classes rely on guns, but we don’t have any.”

“Actually…” A floating, black circle appeared, and Sam put her hand inside. A moment later, she pulled it out, but it was now holding a familiar musket. It was Sam’s favored weapon in VoV, Smoke Shot.

“We can access our inventories?!” This was huge. Even if we could only access Sam’s, we would still be able to equip everyone with endgame equipment.

“Sort of, you can’t put anything back in, and you can only access equipment that’s your level. Any consumable boosters are either gone or have had their effects nullified. I could only access Smoke shot because it’s a growth weapon, and it’s been reset to rank one. The command word is [Transfer]”

As I was about to try to open my inventory the rubble at the end of the cave started to shift.

Transfer. I stuck my hand into the hole that appeared and took out a pair of knuckle dusters. They were a growth weapon called Four Seasons in reference to their ability. The dusters gave off an aura that felt like an autumn wind before I put them on and put my hands together like I was holding a sword.

The dusters turned to liquid as they morphed and expanded. A moment later, I was holding a sword to match my stance. The sword had an aura of its own, an aura of winter. Its name feels kind of obvious when you think about the auras.

Not long after the sword had finished forming, some rocks fell off the pile to reveal two great beasts who immediately charged towards me.

"Ember! Odin!" I immediately recognized my first and favorite pets. It seems the system reset them, for they were fully grown in VoV, but now they're tiny puppies again. This was fine by me because they were adorable little puppies. I set Four Seasons down just before they jumped into my arms.

Sam walked up to me and started petting Ember. "I was wondering where these two were. They're so small now. Look at Odin's little tail wagging! It's going so fast it looks like it could just fly off!"

It was lucky that the elemental variants instinctively knew how to control their elements, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to focus on Odin, and Ember would be causing all of us third-degree burns instead of being the same temperature as a normal dog. Dropping their elemental effects didn't change how they looked like turning up the effects would. Ember was still a fluffy, slightly glowing, husky puppy with crimson fur dotted by yellow and ashen grey spots here and there to make the fur look like a dying fire, and Odin was still an adorable little German shepherd, who's fur was a shifting pattern of black and dark shades of grey. One of his cute, little, triangular ears folded over itself at the tip, and it was just...yes.

"Is that Odin?" a sleepy demon asked. Since Dean just had to interrupt my bliss, people must be waking up.