"And finished!" I celebrated by responding to the last e-mail for the day, which was part of my work, and then reminded myself how working from home wasn't so bad after all. Rather than wasting my time on changing locations I could easily put that time into doing my daily chores or jump right into a daily dose of internet.
I pushed away my chair from the desk while stretching my body my gaze fascinated by the autumn scenery outside, watching how the sun was settling down.
"Life like this sure has its perks," I muttered to myself as my hand reached for the mouse already working on auto-pilot opening up another tab per my usual habit.
"I guess it won't hurt to listen to some songs or watch a few videos, it will surely bring up the spirits in this house." I tried to reason with myself but then a peculiar advertisement caught my eye.
"Wait... isn't this?" The name of the new game release they tried to sell to me sounded familiar.
"Gunz, Rosez and Magic? Wouldn't it mean the game is based on that one novel I read in the past?" To make sure my eyes weren't fooling me I tried to study the looks of the characters on the small window I was given, and sure the female character shared a lot of similarities with the book version.
"It has to be... but this is odd... how are they planning to make this into an actual game? Because the premise of the book was wild, a Romance Thriller set in a fantasy Wild West setting. Do the gaming devs plan on making this into a mystery-solving and shooting simulator or an outright otome game?" Intrigued to find out the truth I clicked on the ad to check their game page, but none of my questions were answered, I only was greeted by a quiz that was made in celebration of the release of their first trailer, which was nowhere in sight.
"That's some strange advertisement strategy... let's see... which character from the novel Gunz, Rosez, and Magic are you?" I read, now pondering whether to do it before or after I had some decent food in my stomach.
"Well, it shouldn't take too long, right?" So I proceeded and unlike my expectations, the quiz was pretty decent. Meaning no questions in sight asking you which your favorite color or food was. Instead, every single question was more structured like a morality-based inquiry.
"That was different." And odd at the same time, it felt like whoever wrote this quiz put a lot of effort into it.
"And done, let's see the results." I took the proceed button which was supposed to calculate my score, the whole process took about two minutes, which made me wonder if there was something wrong with my internet connection.
"Finally... what did we get?" I saw a picture of a woman, that didn't really spark my memory, hence she couldn't be the main cast that we were familiar with.
"A support character... interesting." I adored her simple looks, ginger long wavy hair, blue eyes like the color of the sea, and a couple of freckles adoring her gentle-looking face.
"At least I didn't get the villainess." I joked reminding myself of all the isekai novels I read. If you weren't lucky to become the heroine you sure were going to end up being the villainess of the story at least in most cases.
"And her name is... Camilla Millington." I tried to recall the details.
"Wait... Millington? Like the duke's last name? But doesn't it mean she's the girl that died during the end of the first book... amid the train terrorist attack?" I quickly wrote it in the browser and my search confirmed this to be the fact and that's when further details from the novel flooded my mind.
"Right... I remember she was the knight's first love, the one that was the sole survivor, throughout the story he was getting over his gruesome experience... poor guy since in the end, he was only the second male lead." Then again it came as no one's surprise because in such tales only the dukes or princes were worthy of being the main cast, and truly our main lead was indeed a black-haired second prince.
"Sorry, Cade you never stood a chance with your luminous long blue hair." However, something hit me.
"Wait... why would I be Camilla? We barely got to know about her personality, besides the few scenes where Cade was reminiscing about her, so we readers only got to know that she was a little bit quirky and wild yet kind, but had no affinity for magic, therefore the duke got over her death pretty quickly despite his performance on her funeral." So how come the quiz makers put us two in the same box when the questions became so deep?
"Ugh whatever, not like I will get any answers by pondering about it." I was about to step away from the computer but suddenly felt dizzy.
"What's going on?" My body slid from the chair, everything happened so fast, my heart was pumping like crazy, my body was getting heavy and hot, palms and feet started to purposely sweat.
"Shit." I tried to reach my phone to call an ambulance for the first time in my life but my vision quickly turned black.
Once I opened my eyes, there were a lot of black spots present in my vision, I gasped for air.
"This never happened before," I muttered to myself, but suddenly felt an odd sensation as if I was in a moving vehicle. I abruptly shook my head and tried to focus my vision while wondering what actually could have occurred. Carbon monoxide poisoning perhaps? Yet if it was the case wouldn't I be already dead? Despite I could move my body, so no dead gal here.
I quickly turned around and when my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw my reflection in the window, an unfamiliar gaze staring back at me. My body jerked away and when I looked in the direction in front of me I saw a guy sitting there.
"Come on, let's stay calm." I tried to do some breathing exercises, to maintain my stress levels under control, but it didn't help at all, I was freaking out in my mind, proceeding to now biting my nails. Thankfully the man seemed to be sleeping, could this be a kidnapping case? No, I shook my head, it couldn't be feasible, his clothes were strange, and no modern attire was in sight.
"Wait." I looked at my reflection once again taking note of the fact that I looked like Camilla, then my gaze returned to the man, who by description looked just like the knight named Cade from the story. His hair was light blue in shade, tied up in a ponytail. Following I took notice of his slightly open shirt, and his ripped body, his skin was on the more tan side.
I decided to be more attentive to my surroundings, it seemed like I was inside a luxurious first-class private cabin did it mean I was on the road to my death? I screamed out loud terrified of my thoughts, causing a brown-haired maid to appear from nowhere, it felt like she stepped out from the shadows.
"My lady, what happened... oh no you been biting onto your nails again? How many times do I need to advise you against such actions?" It seemed like I woke up the knight, he seemed quite distressed, worried for my safety.
"A nightmare..." Was the only excuse I could come up with that would explain my sudden outburst, but the constant surprises didn't leave me just yet. Abruptly I noticed small fireworks going off in front of my face, however, no one else seemed to be reacting to their presence.
And then it happened a system window was presented before me.
"We welcome our lucky winner to the world of Ateria, you got the chance to enter our new upgraded system of the game 'Would You Rather?!" And then a strange-looking rabbit or rat appeared in the sight of my vision.
"I was assigned to be your guide of this world, and to your information, I'm definitely not a rat." I pointed my finger at the rat creature.
"You guys don't see it?" The two people in the room were completely lost, they just assumed I was playing some sort of prank on them both. The maid was quick to lecture me on my language choice, on how strange and out of touch it was. Did it mean I had to talk in some kind of rich posh character way? What about my divine right to talk in slang? How could they possibly strip this away from me?
"Worry not to ease your experience in this world, you can put on the translation feature so whatever you speak will be translated into the most sophisticated pearly language fit for a lady of the duke household." Well, that was one less thing to worry about, but did it work the other way around?
"Naturally, but only if you can't grasp the meaning behind the words yourself." No, pause why was I even going along with what the rat was saying? It was more urgent to ask about the terrorist attack, would it take place, just like in the novel I read?
"Of course, therefore we will start with your first mission." The odd creature let out.
"Can't you describe me by words such adorable in the empty head of yours?" It seemed pissed for sure.
"An important mission begins now, you won't be able to refuse it nor skip it." I thought the weird rat said it was a would-you-rather system.
"Important missions will only be granted once in a while, to guide you to a certain destination appointed by the system, which is crucial to the story, but in between, you will receive additional missions, which upon completion will give you rewards, such as items and stats, occasionally even rare trinkets or spells you won't be able to learn on your own, any more questions?" I couldn't come up with any because of how stunned I was.
"Then look thru your first task, requested by the system." And so I did and the system notification told me.
"Escape the terrorist train attack after rescuing the three main targets of their operation."