So what exactly had he come into Immersive Mode to experience?

Watching the Destiny Heroines brawling enthusiastically outside his cage, Vinny felt like he’d come into Immersive Mode to experience being a prize.

He was like a prize fixed in place on a tabletop, and below were the contestants fighting over him. As for Shicodale, he didn’t even seem able to get on the track as a contestant—just kept picking up keys over and over.

Seriously, how did it end up like this??

Vinny pursed his lips.

At this rate, didn’t that mean he was guaranteed to lose?

No way. He had to figure out how to get out. He absolutely did not want to play Truth or Dare. If Aesphyra won, who knew what bizarre, impossible-to-answer questions she would come up with?

Was there really no way at all?

No, impossible. He was the great idea man of Camella—how could he not think of something? How could he just sit here and wait for the axe to fall? No way.

Skills, skills. Skills, help me out a little here!

Vinny thought of his abilities. Since his role was [Dawn Saintess], there was no way it would be that simple, right? The role skills should all be built off the original figure. So could he maybe burn through this stupid cage with [All-Gods Consecration Flame]?

With that thought, Vinny opened up his skills tab—only to find one was HP recovery, another was a blessing, and the offensive holy flame skills could only target other players, not the cage.

Aaghh!

Seeing that, Vinny’s last bit of hope died. He accepted his fate and just crouched in the cage, watching the Destiny Heroines duke it out outside.

Still, with each of them playing as their ancient ancestors and using skills modeled on their progenitors, it really did feel like the heroines themselves were going all out in an actual fight.

Come to think of it, did this count as them fighting each other over him?

A ridiculous thought rose up in Vinny’s heart.

Then he suddenly noticed the way he was sitting: legs together, arms wrapped around his knees.

Weird. Why had he instinctively gotten into that pose?

Was he the problem here? He really felt like this posture was far too feminine—at the very least, normal him would never sit like this.

Could it be that the shift in perspective had made him automatically slip into Vanessa mode?

Time slipped by bit by bit. Vinny, still caged, was about to fall asleep. He had no idea how many turns of dice rolls he’d been skipped over. He only remembered that when he raised his head, it was Milian’s turn to roll.

Milian rolled the die and landed a six. After she moved six spaces, she drew a random question-mark box. When she opened it, a mysterious item appeared.

At first, Vinny didn’t think anything of it. This game had all kinds of mysterious items; you could write an academic paper just on the rulebook.

But the thing that popped out of this box had such an oddly different flavor that it caught the attention of Vinny, who had been dozing off in the back.

When he shifted his gaze to Milian, he saw a twilight-like dim glow spreading out, covering all of their vision.

What was that?

Vinny’s eyes flew wide open. Focusing, he saw that the mysterious item emerging from Milian’s random box was something like a magic cube, its whole body a dark, wine-black color, spinning continuously in midair. Small cube-faces surfaced and rotated along with it, each revealing different patterns as if they were struggling to piece together a complete image.

Holy crap.

Vinny was genuinely impressed. No wonder this newest version of Divine Authority Mission sold for such a ridiculous price—there really was a reason. If nothing else, the rendering on this Immersive Mode alone was insane. Effects this flashy would have cost a fortune to implement back in his previous life.

Come to think of it, wasn’t the firm that made the Divine Authority Mission board game a subsidiary of the Galathus Family’s business group?

If he remembered the setting right, that was how it went.

So Vinny glanced at Aesphyra—and was surprised to find her expression extremely strange, full of gravity and hesitation.

The instant he saw that look on her face, Vinny knew something was wrong.

Logically speaking, this was a product under a Galathus Family sub-company. She should be fairly familiar with it. Even if she didn’t know every last detail, she would at least have read through the Divine Authority Mission item manual in private from start to finish—the internal edition, including the hidden items.

And yet she was making that face. Way too abnormal.

Don’t tell him Milian had accidentally triggered an item even Aesphyra had never seen before?

Vinny blinked and opened his mouth, but under everyone’s gaze, the wine-black light pouring from the cube grew ever more intense, surging like a tidal wave and rushing toward them, swallowing them whole.

Watching the scene outside the cage, Vinny’s pupils shrank.

The dim-toned light fell like a collapsing sky, blotting out everything as it came down on them, a world-ending spectacle that gave him the desperate sense that there was nowhere to run and the sky itself was about to crush him flat.

What the hell was this??

He saw a sea of black substance, formed from inky radiance turning solid, heaving and raging. Beneath a deep, curtain-like darkness, the outline of a massive, many-eyed monster started to take shape.

Did they just draw a “World’s End” card or something??

No one could answer that for Vinny. All he could feel was his throat being seized by an invisible claw, squeezing so tight he couldn’t make a sound. The suffocating sensation blurred the very outlines of everything in front of him.

What was this? The realism was too much. Vinny felt like his eyeballs were about to rot from staring at it, like they were being torn out of their sockets. At the same time, his brain felt fuzzy and slow, unable to think properly at all.

Ah—right.

Only then did Vinny remember that this was supposed to be just a game. He reached up to touch his eye mask, intending to pull it off and force-quit—but when he grabbed at where the eye mask should be, his fingers met nothing.

What the hell? What was going on?! Which bastard had removed his exit button?!

A jolt of panic shot through Vinny. He instinctively tried to shout, but realized the spreading blackness had already swallowed everything. His vision went dark, and no sound came out of his throat.

He felt his consciousness being thrown into a pitch-black, chaotic space and stirred around. Very quickly, he couldn’t even tell where “he” was anymore.

Just before he completely blacked out, Vinny’s last coherent thought was: I go to 8 a.m. classes and my bad luck still isn’t over. I can’t even play a game in peace without something happening.

When his consciousness finally floated back up again, he heard a faint pattering sound—then the cold sensation hitting his face and skin, fine and light.

Soon, Vinny moved a fingertip. His senses and body started to come back. He slowly opened his eyelids, and as the murky view cleared, he realized he was on a dark street, the only light coming from scattered streetlamps around him.

The wan light fell across his body. The chill soaking into him felt so real that he couldn’t help but shiver.

So… where the hell had he gotten dumped this time?

The steady cold rain called Vinny’s half-dead awareness all the way back. He staggered to his feet from the ground, looking around, then patted his forehead and wiped the rain off his face.

Visibility was incredibly low. Vinny could only make out one streetlamp after another, forming a chain of light, with no idea where this road actually led.

“Ooouu—”

Just then, a piercing, heavy sound slammed into Vinny’s ears, snapping his not-quite-awake mind fully alert.

“What is that?”

He had no idea how to describe that creepy, hair-raising sound. It was similar to the horn of a train back in his previous life just before it started moving.

Except the Tyrelis Continent obviously didn’t have anything like trains.

So what was making that sound??

Every hair on Vinny’s body stood on end. The puddles on the ground shattered his last shred of wishful thinking.

He very likely was not inside the game anymore. This was not just some system glitch.

What showed in the water wasn’t the projection of Selena, but a young man whose hair and clothes had been drenched by rain, looking utterly bedraggled.

He was wearing the same school uniform he’d had on before, now completely soaked through.

Vinny stared blankly in the rain for a moment, then fished in his pocket. A crumpled scrap of paper appeared in his palm.

It was the note he’d been using to jot things down earlier, the one he’d stuffed into his pocket and then forgotten about.

Now it was completely soaked.

“I go to 8 a.m. classes and this is where I end up? Where the hell am I now?!”

After a long silence and emotional storm, Vinny finally burst out cursing.

Was this a joke? Anybody else would have turned their luck around by now after this much misery.

Why was there still no end to his suffering? What new accident was this? Where had the chain of events even gone wrong??

Right now, Vinny had no idea which dimension he’d been smacked into again. Sure enough, anyone whose fate wasn’t ironclad really shouldn’t stand too close to the protagonist. Otherwise, you were just asking for bad luck.

“Where is this, anyway?” Vinny let out a deep sigh. He still didn’t know whether he was the only one who’d been dragged in, or whether everyone had, or whether people outside even knew something had happened to them.

Judging from what he remembered, though, that black cube had been triggered by Milian, and Aesphyra’s expression after that had been very odd. That meant it was highly likely that Aesphyra hadn’t seen this coming either.

If that was the case, then he probably wasn’t the only one in trouble. Conservatively speaking, everyone who had been playing the game just now had been dragged into this.

But there wasn’t much to worry about. Vinny did worry about the others, but the ones who got pulled in were all Destiny Heroines with top-tier fate and luck. If {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} nothing else, Aesphyra and Isatia would definitely be fine. They were the absolute ceiling when it came to heroine combat power, intelligence, and fortune.

The only one Vinny was truly worried about was Shicodale. He was scared to imagine what kind of state that kid would be in after waking up to a scene like this.

He had to find them as soon as possible. If he could find even one heroine, things would already be a lot better—even if the one he found was Milian.

Vinny walked along the barely visible road, unable to see the way ahead. He didn’t know how long the rain would last. From time to time, muffled thunder rolled across the sky overhead, shattering the air’s dead stillness.

Maybe because Vinny specialized in ice-element magic, the air around him was colder than for most people, and the raindrops hitting him didn’t feel all that uncomfortable.

That was one benefit of having [Excellent] ice-element affinity: a bit of natural resistance to that element.

Still, walking down this stretch of road in cold rain, unable to see what lay ahead, unable even to see the sky above, gave a crushing sense of oppression. Vinny felt like his head and gaze stayed lowered the whole time, as if something were weighing on him and he couldn’t lift his eyes.

Maybe it was the raindrops. Maybe it was the atmosphere.

He didn’t know how long he walked before he realized he’d entered a wider space. The streetlamps ended here, as if their job had only been to guide him to this point.

With the slightly improved visibility, Vinny realized something felt off.

The buildings around him seemed very familiar, but with visibility this low, he couldn’t quite remember where he’d seen them before.

He kept walking forward—and suddenly went on alert. Ahead, he saw a dark silhouette, clearly the outline of a person.

Vinny hesitated for a moment, then walked toward the shadow.

The dark figure stood there without moving, as if it hadn’t noticed him at all.

Vinny didn’t know who the person was, or what they were.

In this gloomy scene, the only sounds were the pattering rain and the distant rumble of thunder.

When Vinny got closer, by the faint light he made out a man in a black top hat and a bird-beak mask, leaning on a cane.

Average height, eerily motionless as he stood in the rain, letting it strike his shoulders and hat without reacting at all.

Vinny’s first thought was that this could not be a normal person. He’d been dragged into this strange world by that bizarre cube—anyone who showed up here and wasn’t someone he knew had to be suspicious.

The bird-masked man still acted like he couldn’t see Vinny.

Vinny instinctively took off his Frostfang earring, holding it in his hand as he continued forward.

“Nice weather today,” the bird-masked man said just as Vinny was three steps away. His voice was heavy and muddy, mixed with countless impurities, carrying a kind of indescribable wrongness.

Nice weather?

Vinny looked up at the thunder and cold rain overhead.

This was nice weather?

He found it very strange, but didn’t respond.

“So,” the bird-masked man spoke again when he got no reply, “are you very lost about your future and the road ahead?”

“Or is it that you want to know where the others who came in with you are?”

“Who are you?” Vinny asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“You’re here.”

What he got was not an answer. The face fused to the mask curled into a twisted arc the instant it heard Vinny’s question.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep