On the cold rock floor lies a girl, confused, disoriented, and with her body numb, carelessly taking a breath of air that, instead of being pleasant, was followed by a sharp pain in her chest while memories invaded her mind.
Gradually, the rhythm of her breathing slowed down, and the pain in her chest seemed to lessen enough to allow her to clear her mind and start sorting through the endless tangle in her mind.
— I'm Victoria. —
She said with relief, remembering the name she had been called all her life.
— I am a 19-year-old woman, and I am a researcher. —
Little by little, everything began to take shape as she remembered how and why she ended up there.
She remembered rejecting her professor's recommendation after graduating from the Magical Research and Studies Academy when she rejected her professor's recommendation.
She also remembered her mother's sad face and her father's disappointed look when they told them, followed by the cold words he spoke.
— Victoria, having the opportunity to do something meaningful with your life, you chose to waste it chasing empty dreams. You cannot imagine how disappointed I am with you. —
The disappointed face of her father was something common to see, but for some reason, the memory of that moment remained engraved in her memory.
She belonged to a noble family of seven generations of magicians characterized by having great magical abilities since birth.
Her siblings were incredibly talented, but unfortunately, the world is unfair and fate is cruel, and she only had slightly above-average abilities at best.
She remembered the hard training and how she really tried and tried not to disappoint her parents, but despite her efforts, after years of practice and study, when she was twelve years old, she barely reached the skills that her brothers had at five years old.
That was a blow to her, and she knew that no matter how high she tried to jump, it would never be the same as flying.
Finally, she gave up and decided to pursue the field of magical studies. She became obsessed with the journals of explorers and researchers and how they made a name for themselves by discovering wonders that ancient civilizations left behind, how they delved into dangerous and remote unexplored ruins, facing all odds and emerging victorious.
Feeling cold, dry air face down on a preternaturally clean rock floor, as if the dirt and dust of the rest of the ruins she had chosen to ignore, Victoria slowly opened her eyes but took in her surroundings a perfectly square room with walls of what appeared to be cut blocks of gray volcanic rock extending about thirty-two feet.
On the ground, there is a circular hole through which the light of the sun filters.
Panic seized her, and her entire body ached in an impulse seeking to cling to a glimmer of hope, as she had done thousands of times throughout her life. Victoria opened her "state".
Following his will, a fine white mist appeared in front of her eyes, after a few seconds, it took the form of letters, and the information was visible.
Name: Victoria Nightsun
Level: 5
Age: 19 years
Race: Human
Class: Artificer Mage
Profession: Explorer
Condition
Health 5/30
Mana 12/17
Stamina: 1/9
Stats
Might: 2(-1)
Dexterity: 2(-3)
Resilience: 1
Mind: 5(-3)
Spirit: 4(-2)
Presence: 3(+2)(-3)
Fate: 1(-99)
Affinity
Fire: 33%
Water: 5%
Wind: 7%
The little hope she harbored in her heart disappears, confirming her fears.
— I'm screwed. —
She sighed, resting her face against the cold rock of the floor.
They say that when you are about to die, you see your life flash before your eyes, but for some reason, Victoria's life doesn't feel like it was really hers.
Despite apparently remembering who she is, the feeling of confusion does not leave her mind and even worsens.
In an attempt to escape the pain and her terribly precarious situation, she recalls the sound of the waves hitting the hull of her small boat as she talked to two women and a man, explaining and giving them final instructions before beginning the descent.
— I remember my name was Victor, but it is impossible to be two people at the same time... —
— I am a 46-year-old man, and I worked as a diver. How absurd... the blow affected my brain. —
She reflects as she tries to clear her thoughts.
Memories as vivid as if they had happened just a few hours earlier of a sky that was overcast and the salty wind hitting her face was colder than usual as the ship rocked back and forth.
Everything was ready, and they had to do it right away before the weather got even worse. Normally, he would never have agreed to do a dive in such weather, but after the persistent pleading of the beautiful red-haired woman beside him, he eventually gave in.
Everyone donned their scuba gear and jumped into the water with the intention of exploring a sunken ship.
They were the wreckage of a ship sunk during world war II that was supposedly transporting treasure from the Persian Gulf, which was intercepted and struck by a torpedo while attempting to enter Italian waters.
At least that's what his companions told him when they hired him.
The payment was quite generous, even though it ended up being a waste of time; however, if they found anything, he would receive 25% of the proceeds from the treasures once they were retrieved. Additionally, Anne, the red-haired girl, continued to flirt with him throughout the journey.
Victor is not made of stone, and the loneliness after his divorce made him even more vulnerable to Anne's flirtation and suggestions, not to mention that his financial situation was far from ideal. In spite of his subconscious warning him that this was all a very bad idea, he continued his descent.
There was nothing unusual about it other than the slightly stronger current than advised, even so, it didn't appear to be a problem.
They continued and saw the shipwreck that appeared to be severely deteriorated, In his years of diving, Victor had seen at least a dozen shipwrecks, but this one seemed to have been underwater for centuries.
The group separated to maximize their time, with Danique and Simon exploring and mapping the deck while he and Anne did so in the hold.
Everything was going smoothly until Anne discovered a hole in the hull, presumably where one of the torpedoes struck. She cautiously entered the opening as Victor shook his head in frustration.
— How dare you go in there! We were only here today to explore and map the vessel. —
He swore as he hurriedly followed her.
When he reached where she was, he saw her struggling to adjust her scuba. It would be impossible for her to exit the hull before drowning, and without thinking, Victor swiftly approached her and entered the opening.
When he finally arrived at her side, he attempted to calm her down so she could fit his scuba inside her mouth, and upon sensing his presence, Anne, who was already optimistic, took a deep breath. She gazed into his eyes with relief and gratitude.
Well, it was worth the risk, Victor thought as he envisioned the lavish thanks the impulsive woman would bestow upon him later that night.
As a gentleman helped her remove her scuba while holding his breath, it was nearly his turn to breathe again, but just before putting his scuba mask back on, an octopus leapt onto his face, wrapping its eight tentacles around his head.
Victor couldn't comprehend how something so absurd could occur to him, as he isn't a marine biologist, but he was almost certain that these creatures aren't that quick.
With all his strength, he tried to shake the octopus off his face while Anne did her best to help him.
Two excruciating minutes elapsed, and despite all their joint efforts, the predicament remained unchanged. While still clutching the tentacles, he succeeded in ripping the octopus from his grasp. The lack of oxygen ultimately defeated him.
The overpowering misery gave way to a remote sense of Anne pushing him, trying to extract him from the hole in the helmet, but at this stage, he no longer cares and simply wishes to rest.
— I'm so tired. —
Was the final thought Victor had.
After what seemed like a dream, Victoria opened her eyes again. The enormous effort put into organizing her thoughts had caused her to pass out.
The pain spread across her entire body serves as a somber reminder of the circumstances she finds herself in.
— Then there will be time to find out what happened to me, first we have to get out of here alive. —
She reflected as she made a grimace as she tasted the blood in her mouth and spit it away.
While attempting to crawl along the rocky ground, a stabbing pain from the lower portion of her abdomen momentarily immobilizes her.
Performing something as mundane as turning her body took considerable effort, but she eventually accomplished it and promptly sought the origin of that pain, finding a tiny egg-shaped object approximately two inches in diameter with rippling metal patterns, one of which was lodged several inches into her belly.
Without hesitation, she removed it to eliminate it, which she instantly regretted when she felt the hot wetness of her blood-soaked clothes.
Recalling her military training, with one hand she applied pressure to the injury, while with the other she endeavored to rip a fragment of fabric from her attire.
— This body is so fucking weak. —
She lamented, surrendering to defeat while berating herself for purchasing high-quality clothes and completing merely a single year of physical training.
— At present, I have two hypotheses; the first is that I am Victoria who acquired memories of someone from another realm called Victor when I landed on this artifact, and the second is that I am Victor who reincarnated into Victoria's body after her fall of thirty-two feet and hitting her head. —
She mused while making every attempt to stay composed and maintain pressure on the injury.
Her contemplations were interrupted by the noise of something that could be characterized as broken glass. She rotated her head and focused her attention on the egg-shaped artifact. A slight smile formed on her countenance. Amusingly, she obtained what she was searching for.
Even better, if we discount the means and concentrate solely on the outcome, she achieved locating an artifact during her initial exploration endeavor.
— It's beautiful. —
She uttered in a scarcely perceptible manner while glancing sorrowfully at the intricate engravings on the metal that seemed to liquefy as it encased the darkened glass currently smeared with her blood and a fracture running through it from end to end, presumably from having fallen on it.
She heard the noise once more, but now her face became paler, cold perspiration accumulated on her back, and her hands shook. It is typical for glass to shatter when dropped on you, but for a fresh fissure to develop minutes later independently is a very poor indication, indeed a dreadful one.
Scouring her memory, the only thing that could resemble this is the type of artifact known as a sealing matrix.
There are numerous conjectures regarding what the sealing matrix were utilized for, and amongst them, the one that has the greatest number of supporters is the one that posits they were employed for war purposes.
The sealing matrix consists of a crystal enclosed within a metal framework of molten mithril infused with divine, infernal, or both kinds of power. Usually, there is one or more extremely potent and devastating creatures or demons confined inside a minuscule area of existence and reality.
This is why it is believed that they were utilized as analogs of explosives to indiscriminately annihilate vast regions, including cities, or as tactical weapons against armies.
Presently, the expertise to create them is absent, and it is so exceptionally uncommon to locate one undamaged that it has only happened twice so far.
Victoria went entirely blank as she observed, frozen with terror, as gradually the crystal kept deteriorating.
From pure survival impulse, she equipped herself, and abandoning the bleeding from her injury, she seized the artifact and hurled it as distant as feasible toward a wall as remote as conceivable, then turned face down and scurried in the opposite direction.
— Why do you have to be broken? —
Victoria cried out as she sensed her limb bend at an unusual angle, transmitting waves of agony throughout her body.
Ultimately, she arrived at the opposing wall; her hand made contact with the chilly and coarse stone of rock, and employing both arms, she thrust her body to rest against the wall, and subsequently, with her only functional leg, she sat on the floor.
Thoughts of her impending death filled Victoria's mind. Significantly, much has been speculated concerning sealing matrix, and they are so precious that nobody in their right mind would break one to observe how they work.
— Now I possess the once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness how one of them is triggered directly and from several feet away. —
— I would be captivated if not for the truth that whenever anything emerges, the primary action it will perform is murder me. —
Her respiration faltered spontaneously, and she attained the finest of her capacity in the nearest approximation to a combat posture, prepared to confront the unknown.
— Whatever comes out, I'll fight. —
She shouted in a vain hope that luck might grin upon her for once in her lifetime.
Moments later, smoke as black as if it were made of darkness itself began to emanate from the glass. The view around them distorted, bending the light like a mirage, and progressively arose a pitch-black serpent three inches wide and ten feet lengthy.
Victoria's body quaked intensely, her teeth clamping together with the hot feeling of her pee escaping her command.
Up until this final instant, she retained the belief that following millennia, whatever had been contained in the artifact would be dead, but presently seeing him move, all hope vanished
To her horror, what initially appeared to be a massive snake now are two, then three, and then four massive snakes...
She counted a total of thirty-five jet black tentacles, never in her life had she seen a black so dark that it seemed to absorb the light completely, looking more like a shadow than something tangible.
Finally, the creature finished coming out, and in the center of that mass of tentacles, an evil eye of ten inches in diameter could be seen.
They say that if you look into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you, but fortunately for those who experience that, the abyss does not have thirty-five tentacles, nor does it look like an incredibly strong and evil monster that is about to eat you.
Victoria felt how the monster's gaze searched the depths of her soul as if it knew everything about her while one of its tentacles slowly approached her.
Following her training, she conjured a fireball. An intense wave of heat hit her face, and using all her determination, she threw herself toward the tentacle.
An explosion followed by an intense wave of heat should have filled the room, but instead, when making contact with the creature's tentacle, it simply disappeared. This happened three times now, with the skin on the palms of her hands burned and almost without mana. She could only watch in horror as the tentacle didn't even flinch at her desperate attacks, even coming to believe that the creature barely realized what was happening.
As a last resort, and with the tentacle a few centimeters from her body, she took the dagger that she kept in her belt with both hands and, ignoring the pain of her broken ribs, thrust it with all her force on the attacker.
This time, the reaction was very different. The tentacle quickly backed away, returning to the monster, and she could feel the creature's gaze with what she instinctively knew was anger.
Before she could react, the air around the creature distorted, accompanied by a loud roar caused by the sonic boom of four tentacles hurtling toward her faster than the sound, which now enveloped her arms and legs before she was able to notice.
After the initial shock, a wave of pain converged on her brain from four simultaneous points.
In all her years of living as Victoria and as Victor, she had never experienced such pain, not even the time he was wounded in the leg during his service in Iraq, compared to the terrible pain of her bones being crushed and how the splintered bones of her extremities were pressed against her flesh and nerves. Luckily for her, the horrible experience only lasted a few seconds, and then everything was dyed black.