Chapter Text
The glowing red ravine that led to the Endless Abyss roiled with demonic qi and echoed with the anguished wailing of tens of thousands of spirits, as Shen Qingqiu held Binghe at swordpoint.
“Will you go down yourself, or must I force you?” Shen Qingqiu asked.
He selfishly hoped that Binghe might jump down of his own accord, because he really couldn’t bear to force him. And as Binghe looked back at him with uncomprehending trust, unflinching even with Xiu Ya pointed right at his chest, Shen Qingqiu – no, Shen Yuan – knew that he couldn’t go through with his appointed destiny, even with the System’s threats blaring an ominous warning.
He sighed and sheathed his sword, then held his open arms out wide instead. “Binghe, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean a word of that. I just… was doing what I had to.”
[Warning! The critical quest “The Endless Abyss and Endless Hatred, a Sky Filled with Crystal Frost and Tears of Blood” has officially begun! If it is not successfully completed, twenty thousand protagonist satisfaction points will be deducted! You have one minute until quest failure!]
“Shizun!” Binghe sobbed in relief, launching himself like a human missile into Shen Qingqiu’s arms. He buried his face in Shen Qingqiu’s shoulder, crying ugly tears into his robe. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you! I can be good, I promise!”
“Shh, I don’t have long,” he hushed, stroking his hair gently. “Binghe, I know you can be good, you already are. I… I knew already.”
“Shizun knew…?”
“Mn. Listen, Binghe,” he said gently, pulling his head up, cradling it with his palms on Binghe’s teary cheeks. “Live a good life, please? Hide your zuiyin – your demon mark on your forehead – as quickly as you can. Maybe tear off some of a robe to make a bandage. Be choosy with your partners. Conquer the demon realm – or don’t if you don’t want to – you can be emperor if you want to be, as a heavenly demon. I… I wish I could be there to see your adventures.”
Hey! System! Give me the jade Guanyin!
[Host, you will soon fail your quest and be deported from this world!]
I know! It’s already in my inventory, just hand it over! Take some points or something for express delivery and give me the amulet! Let me do this one last thing to make Binghe happy…
His System seemed to find that argument convincing, and as he held his right hand out for it Binghe’s jade Guanyin materialised in his palm in a flicker of blue light.
Binghe stared at him with wide, teary eyes, as he hung the lost amulet around Binghe’s neck.
“Live well. She… both of us will be so proud of you.”
“Shizun… why are you talking like… like this is the end?” Binghe asked, worriedly biting at his own lip. “Are you saying I have to leave?”
“No,” Shen Qingqiu said, staggering on his feet as a wave of dizziness hit him. In the background the System’s blaring red alarm was loudly counting down from ten now. “I’m the one who has to go. I… always liked you the best of all my students, Binghe. You will be… so amazing.”
It was nice to get to meet him, he thought wistfully, as he felt Binghe’s arms wrap around him, supporting him as he wobbled. I want to stay longer, but I can’t bear to hurt him, System. I… I’m ready. Do what you have to do, because I’m not going to push him into the Endless Abyss.
As he slumped to the ground he heard Binghe screaming, and then there was nothing but blackness as his eyes closed one final time.
-0-
He woke. He hadn’t truly expected to… not with his memories intact, anyway. If anything, he’d expected that maybe he might reincarnate as a baby after a brief stint in limbo to be told off by his System for failing to fix Proud Immortal Demon Way.
His head ached with pain; it pounded and throbbed like the worst migraine in the world. His right hand was in excruciating pain too, a searing agony like he’d just pulled it straight out of a fire. He woozily touched his forehead with his left hand and it came away covered in blood. The stone-walled room he was in was dark, lit only by dim torches and lined with shadowy shelves filled with odd objects, and it spun. No, it wasn’t the room that was his head, as vertigo left him reeling.
He slumped over with a long, high-pitched moan, and was caught in someone’s arms. A light blared in his eyes, stabbing like needles, and he closed his eyes with a whimper, instinctively reaching for his qi. For some reason it didn’t respond properly to help him heal; perhaps it was Without a Cure? No… something else… his body felt all wrong, and his meridians were barely present.
Am I home? This sure doesn’t look anything like my apartment. I sure hope I’m not a zombie in a mausoleum! I feel alive… Perhaps I’m in a different world?
He heard panicked screams from all around him, and someone grabbed him as he wavered and fell.
“Katarina!”
“No!!”
“Get Maria! Hurry!”
“Hold on!”
This is going to be the shortest isekai ever, he thought, as the world spun and went black again as anguished cries called out desperately for someone – anyone – with healing magic.
-0-
He woke all tucked up in a comfortable, soft bed with real pillows, feeling blissfully free from pain. His body and its barely-present cultivation system still felt weird, but at least his blinding headache was gone. He gently flexed his right hand and discovered it felt fine too, which was a little surprising as even Mu Qingfang might have struggled to heal an injury that severe without the help of once-in-a-millennium plants. He carefully cracked open his eyes just enough to peek out at the world.
With a sense of déjà vu he found a young Caucasian man sitting slumped over in a chair next to his bedside, as if worn out waiting for him to wake. He didn’t look anything like Yue Qingyuan but the feeling of it all was similar; there were dark shadows under the man’s eyes and he guessed the exhausted man had been hovering at his sick bed long enough to fall asleep. He wore a long white coat open over a dark purple suit and tie, and had dark blond flaxen hair that fell softly to chin length.
Is he a doctor? he wondered. He and everything here looks kind of modern, and European. He peeked cautiously around the room without moving his head and was pretty sure he was in a luxuriously appointed bedroom or hotel room, rather than a hospital. There was not a single piece of hospital equipment to be seen, and the bed was a four poster with curtains.
System? I don’t suppose you’re here again? If you are, who’s that? And who am I?
He took a deep, slow breath to calm himself. His chest felt… heavy. Oddly weighted. He wiggled about experimentally and his chest jiggled.
Oh no! I’m a woman?! System, I want a refund!
There was a yipping noise as a black puppy suddenly materialised out of a black portal on his bedspread, rising up from the round spot of darkness with a faint glooping sound.
There was a little red zuiyin on its forehead, glowing like a banked fire; Binghe’s heavenly demon mark. It was a cute little fluffball of a puppy, like a tiny round Pomeranian that was all fur with a little fluffy plume of a tail, and he instantly dubbed it Bingpup in his mind.
“Binghe?” he whispered, with optimistic confusion. He reached out to pat it; its fur was just as soft as it looked. “Is that you?”
It barked excitedly, and as it yipped away at him, he heard it communicating telepathically in his mind.
[System is here to help! The System was manually activated! Bound Role: Lady Katarina Claes, daughter of Duke Luigi Claes and Duchess Millidiana Claes, employee of the Ministry of Magic, Maria Campbell’s rival. Weapons: fencing sabre, earth magic. Starting B-Points: 100.]
System – can I call you Bingpup? – why has your form changed? And where am I? I thought you were sending me back to my old dead body, or maybe reincarnation or the afterlife?
[This System would be happy to be given a new name! Host is very lucky; you have been reassigned to a new world due to your being judged to have a high compatibility rating with the current role.]
And who’s this next to me? Tell me quick, I think he’s waking up!
[Keith Claes, adopted younger brother of Katarina Claes. Weapons: earth magic.]
Bingpup’s yips had indeed caused the tired young man to stir. Keith’s eyes widened, his big baby blue eyes fixed on his own joyously at seeing him – her – awake.
“Sister! You’re awake!” he gasped, clutching at his hand gently. “How do you feel?”
“…A bit confused, Keith,” he hedged, and then cleared his throat as his voice came out in a lilting soprano, speaking unaccented English like Keith had, which was a relief for his cover. “How long was I asleep? What happened?”
“Three days,” Keith replied sombrely. “We were all so worried. We’ve been taking turns watching over you, while those best suited to the task have been researching the artifact you touched. Sister, why did you do that?”
I have no idea.
He forced a fake laugh. “Well, you know me!” Perhaps he can explain it for me?
Keith sighed, and raised a pained hand to his forehead. “I do wish you wouldn’t be so impulsive.”
“Perhaps now I’m awake I can help with the research, brother?”
“Absolutely not, sister!” Keith said sternly. “You can stay in bed and recover! I thought… I thought I’d lost you. What you can do to help is tell me what symptoms you felt before you fell unconscious.”
His anguished look as he squeezed Shen Yuan’s hand a little too tightly was understandable, if uncomfortable in more than one way. If only he knew he really has lost his sister, he thought sadly.
“I felt… a terrible pain in my right hand, like it was burnt. And dizziness, vertigo – the room was spinning around me. And a very bad headache like a migraine; when there was a bright light it was like needles stabbing me. But I feel fine now,” he hastened to add, as the man teared up. “Who helped in my recovery?”
“Maria, of course. We’re just glad she wasn’t far away!”
He nodded and smiled like he recognised the name. “Of course. Well, you should go and tell people I’m awake! And bring me something to read? Something fun that I’ll enjoy, since I might be stuck here a while.”
Keith smiled tremulously at him. “Of course, sister.” He leant in to kiss Shen Yuan on the check – a quick peck – and pulled away with a guilty expression and a blush.
“You guard her while I’m gone, Pochi!” Keith said, addressing Bingpup, who yipped and wagged his tail.
Shen Yuan’s eyes widened. System, can he see you?! I thought that was against the rules? Are you ‘Pochi’?
[Yes! Systems take on forms familiar to users or suitable for the world setting they are inhabiting! Mysterious magical animal companions are suitable for this setting. You may talk out aloud to this System in this world, but others will only hear me bark in reply and cannot see my zuiyin.]
“Okay, quick then while Keith is gone, tell me about this Maria, and anyone else I need to know about as a priority that I might be about to meet. Oh, and do I have an OOC lock on again? I could use a quick rundown on who I am too.”
[You have been reset to the beginner level; the OOC feature is frozen and other features purchased in the previous world are null and void here.]
“Marvellous,” he sighed.
[Katarina is a 17-year-old recent graduate of the Magic Academy. While not talented at her studies, through nepotism she gained a job at the Ministry of Magic. She is engaged to Geordo Stuart, third prince of the Kingdom of Sorcier.]
Geordo Stuart… that name sounds familiar from somewhere. Hmm… so does Sorcier. His heart sunk at the idea of a fiancé! What was he going to do?!
He took a deep breath. “Okay, so what can I do? Earth magic and fencing, right? Any other special skills?”
[Katarina’s established skills include Earth Bump, fencing with a sabre, manipulating people, tree climbing, and agriculture.]
Tree climbing? That’s random! Maybe it has to do with her earth magic? That’s probably why she enjoys agriculture, correct?
Bingpup agreed vaguely with him, then as he interrupted with a prompt to hurry up, it gave a very quick overview of his closest associates: his – her – fiancé Geordo Stuart, her fiance’s younger twin brother Alan, her own brother Keith, book club friends Mary Hunt and Sophia Ascart, Sophia’s brother Nicol, her maid Anne, and two work friends from the Ministry of Magic: Raphael Walt and the protagonist Maria Campbell.
“Wait a second! I know that name! Tang-mei played an otome game with her… Bingpup, am I in Fortune Lover?! Katarina’s the villainess who bullies the protagonist, right?!”
[Host is correct! Host must act as scum villainess Katarina Claes or face more punishments!]
She was still reeling at being fucking typecast as another villain and was desperately trying to remember any bits of lore from his sister’s mostly-ignored rambling about her game when Keith returned with a small pile of books in his arms, and their parents trailing behind him.
She bluffed his way through that encounter with vague assurances of feeling better and leading questions about when she’d be able to get back to gardening, fencing practice, or maybe her job.
They quickly assured reassured her that her ‘little farm’ was doing fine and their gardener was looking after it. Practising with his fencing sabre – her sabre, as Shen Yuan tried to remind himself again so he wouldn’t slip up even in his thoughts – was an activity that she’d been neglecting the past couple of years, but her renewed interest was taken as a sign of her feeling restless due to being bedbound. Her job was dismissed rapidly as a concern; Shen Yuan was getting the impression that Katarina wasn’t the most scholarly lady, which was a shame.
“Are you sure I can’t help research the artifact that affected me?” she double-checked.
“Absolutely sure. Just rest and recover, dear,” her mother said, patting her hand.
Her mother Duchess Millidiana took a turn sitting at her bedside while the others filed out – Keith was off to reassure her friends about her recovery, while her father had work to catch up on.
To avoid talking with her mother more than was necessary, she turned to the pile of hardcover cloth-bound books that her brother had brought her.
Anything useful in this pile, Bingpup? You know, it’s tough to stay in character when you don’t know much about the character, she wheedled mentally.
[These are books that Katarina’s book club has been enjoying recently! +5 B-Points for in-character actions! Katarina enjoys reading romance novels.]
She flipped through them quickly before selecting one to read.
A quick skim of the Prisoner of Love showed it was a romance about a woman being stolen away from her fiancé by a dashing pirate.
The blurb on the back of The Sheik’s Stolen Concubine suggested was a lurid novel about a woman who ran away from her abusive boyfriend only to end up as a concubine in the land of Mutrac. Flipping halfway through the book she spotted a raunchy sex scene that illustrated that the woman wasn’t too unhappy about her abduction!
She picked Dragon’s Treasure to read in detail, optimistic about learning about the land’s monsters as well as an interesting plot. She discovered it was about a princess rescued from her engagement to the wicked prince of another country by a good-hearted dragon who fell in love with her. It had interesting twists on old tropes, and the dragon turned out to be a cursed duke transformed by dark magic!
She had just gotten to the good part with a battle between the magic-wielding prince and the cursed dragon when her overloaded dinner tray was brought in.
Shen Yuan picked absent-mindedly at the food while reading; it wasn’t a patch on Binghe’s cooking. She was rather hungry – not so surprising after a couple of days in a coma – so she finished most of the tray despite the generous portions, leaving only the green beans, a pork chop, and an enormous, dry slice of sponge cake.
Her maid Anne took the tray and glanced down at it. “Did you want me to leave the cake? Or fetch anything else for you? Some more macarons, perhaps?”
“No thank you, Anne,” she replied politely, without looking up from her book. The wicked prince had earth magic, just like Katarina! His Earth Spike spell sounded incredibly useful, and she hoped to pick up a few tips on using magic in this world.
She didn’t notice Anne exchanging a worried glance over her head with her mother but did pay attention when her mother left shortly afterwards, leaving her alone for the evening.
“Ring the bell for the servants if you need anything,” her mother said, pushing a hand bell closer to the edge of her bedside table. “Or if you feel the slightest bit unwell.”
“I promise,” she said. “I’ll just rest and read.”
As soon as everyone was gone, she promptly climbed out of bed and went to look at her reflection in a mirror. She sighed. Well, at least I’m pretty, I guess. Long brown hair, blue eyes that matched her lace-trimmed sky-blue pyjamas, and a faintly villainous expression.
“Hello, I’m Lady Katarina Claes,” she said to her reflection, fluttering a lacy fan she’d found on a dresser. It felt like a small bit of normality in a strange new world; she’d gotten so used to them in her last life it was odd to be without one now.
It’s not the only thing I’m missing, she thought. She looked down her obviously feminine body in her girly pyjamas and sighed. I suppose I’ll have to adapt to being a woman as fast as possible. It’s better than being dead! I hope Binghe’s doing alright back home. He’s the protagonist so he should be fine!
Pushing aside all her uncomfortable thoughts, she rummaged around in her bedside tables and cupboard, looking for a diary or some more clues about who Katarina was. Eventually she emerged triumphantly with a couple of notebooks labelled ‘Secret Diary! Do Not Read! This means you too, Keith and Anne!’ that had been buried between some old schoolbooks.
The novel she’d recently been reading had been written in English, which Shen Yuan was even more fluent in than before, as it was presumably the local language. On transmigrating into Proud Immortal Demon Way he’d been similarly skilled at a more ancient form of Chinese, so it hadn’t been much of a shock to have his language skills tweaked.
Katarina Claes’ secret diaries, however, were a shock; they were written in Japanese. The hiragana and katakana remained a mystery to her; pretty much all she knew about those writing systems were the names, as she wasn’t fluent in the language except for a scattering of phrases from anime. The kanji at least were something she could partially puzzle out, as the Japanese had adopted a lot of Chinese characters into their language fifteen hundred years ago. However, over such a span of centuries many of the meanings had changed, as had the strokes of some of the characters. Nouns were the easiest parts of the sentences to pick out, and some occasional verbs, but a lot of the diary was sadly incomprehensible to her.
This… this was written by another transmigrator, wasn’t it? she asked Bingpup. She felt a little shaky the more he thought about the precarious position she’d been dumped into. It was a lot like transmigrating into Proud Immortal Demon Way, but without the benefit of being fully acquainted with the source material. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of notes here about how to escape some horrible doom. And I think my own fiancé is destined to kill me!
She was answered with a yip.
[Host is correct! That is one of many possible Bad Endings. However, the previous transmigrator has already made changes to the setting for the better.]
It refused to go into detail, however, which was immensely frustrating. All she had was a scattering of poorly translated sentences about light magic, love, snakes, leaving the country, and multiple mentions of death. It wasn’t enough to piece together the plot of the game.
With a wistful sigh, she set aside the diaries and Dragon’s Treasure for now (even though it was at another exciting part) and got stuck into her school textbooks. Unlike upon transmigrating into Proud Immortal Demon Way, here she didn’t seem to have a good grasp of Katarina’s knowledge and skills, except for the native language and a vague feeling that she could use willpower to make a small bump in the earth appear. Her knowledge of Ancient Scripts, for instance, was non-existent, even though judging by Katarina’s textbooks she’d studied it for at least two years. Shen Yuan also didn’t seem to know anything about earth magic, much as she wracked her brains in hopes some information would pop up, perhaps with instructions about how to cast Earth Spike like in the novel.
It seems like I’ll have to swot up fast if I want to pass as Katarina! If I’m lucky some of it will come to me more naturally with a little practice, like sword glares did. She dug out a mostly blank workbook and started making notes as she read through the first-year textbook on elemental magic.
[Host doesn’t need to worry so much! Host is doing great!] Bingpup reassured her, wagging his tiny fluff of a tail.
For now. But I might need to prepare for a horrible doom I don’t know the details of, and better magical skills will only help with that, she insisted firmly. Tomorrow I’ll try and sneak away to test my swordfighting skills in private.