Player Chapter 5. Are You a Transmigrator Too?
Victoria did not rush.
That was what unsettled him.
No scream.
No "you dare challenge me?" speech.
The air shifted.
The torches dimmed like they were intimidated.
The blood pooling on the marble floor began to vibrate.
Riven rolled his shoulders lightly.
His coat hung open, dark fabric streaked with blackened vampire blood. His breathing steady. Controlled.
He grinned.
This was the real boss phase.
Victoria extended her fingers.
The blood across the chamber rose like gravity had reversed. It didn't splash, it lifted in thin threads, weaving together into floating crimson ribbons that circled her body like orbiting moons.
She flicked her wrist.
The ribbons snapped toward him.
Riven moved.
Not backward.
Sideways.
The first ribbon sliced through the air where his throat had been. He ducked, pivoted, mana flaring along his forearm.
[Summoned: Long Blade]
The blade formed mid-motion, silver edge catching torchlight. He sliced upward, cutting through two blood ribbons. They shattered like glass, but instead of falling, the fragments curved midair and reassembled.
Adaptive.
He smiled wider. "Oh, I like you."
Victoria's expression didn't change.
The ribbons split into dozens of needle-thin spikes and fired at once.
He exhaled sharply.
[Summoned: Round Shield]
The shield manifested just as the spikes impacted. The force shoved him back three steps. His boots slid across marble, sparks biting from friction.
The impact wasn't heavy.
It was precise.
Each spike hit with surgical timing, testing gaps, adjusting angle.
He tossed the shield aside before the next wave hit.
[Summoned: Dual Short Blades]
He lunged forward.
Closing distance was priority.
Spellcasters hated that.
The floor beneath him liquefied.
Blood.
It swallowed his boots mid-step.
Shadow tendrils erupted around his calves, tightening like shackles.
[Status: Movement Restricted]
He swore.
She didn't blink.
Victoria rotated her wrist slowly.
The blood around his legs hardened like steel.
He swung his blades onto the thinnest part of the tendrils.
The bindings cracked and evaporated.
He dashed.
Three steps.
Two…
She vanished.
His pupils contracted.
Behind.
He twisted…
Too slow.
Her heel almost struck his spine mid-turn.
He jumped backwards, rolled, came up on one knee.
He laughed.
Low.
Breathless.
It had been so long since someone forced him to react instead of predict.
She reappeared five meters away, palm glowing faint red.
Riven grinned and reshaped his weapon.
[Summoned: Heavy Lance]
He hurled it.
Not at her.
At the ceiling.
The lance embedded into a torch bracket. The chain attached to it snapped tight.
He used the tension to yank himself sideways just as a scythe of condensed blood carved the space he'd occupied.
The marble behind him exploded in a red shockwave.
The shockwave caught him midair.
He twisted and landed hard but upright.
He was grinning openly now.
Not polite.
Not controlled.
Wild.
His eyes were sharp and fever-bright. "You're not holding back."
Her lips curved faintly. "Why would I?"
The blood beneath her feet spiraled upward.
Not in a wave.
Not in chaos.
In design.
It twisted into shapes, blades, spears, chains, curved daggers, floating like a crown of execution tools around her. Each weapon sharpened itself midair, edges gleaming wet and red under torchlight.
Riven's grin widened.
The weapons launched.
Not all at once.
In sequence.
Testing him.
The first blood blade sliced toward his ribs. He twisted his torso sharply and let it skim past his coat.
The second came low.
He jumped.
The third curved mid-flight, angling for his spine.
He dropped flat, rolled, came up on one knee.
His heart thumped in his chest.
Hard.
Fast.
Alive.
He snapped his fingers.
[Summoned: Twin Scimitars]
The curved blades formed in his hands as he lunged forward, cutting through two incoming blood spears. The impact splashed hot droplets across his cheek.
The droplets tried to crawl back toward her.
He noticed.
The next wave came faster.
Three blades from the left.
Two from above.
One delayed from behind.
He moved without thinking.
A side-step.
A back arch.
A sharp pivot.
He let one blade skim his sleeve intentionally just to gauge impact force.
It burned.
Not physical heat.
Mana burn.
High-tier magic.
His grin sharpened.
The weapons began to move less like projectiles and more like predators. They adjusted speed mid-flight. They faked trajectories.
She wasn't just throwing magic.
She was piloting it.
Riven dashed forward, ducking under a spinning blood halberd that carved a deep groove into the marble behind him. He leapt onto a cracked pillar fragment and used it as a launch point.
[Summoned: Chain Whip Blade]
The segmented weapon snapped outward, hooking one blood spear and yanking it off course into another, disrupting their orbit for half a second.
Half a second was all he ever needed.
He lunged.
Closed distance.
Five meters.
Three.
Two…
The blood beneath her heels surged again.
Not upward this time.
Outward.
It erupted into a radial storm of crimson knives.
Riven barely reacted in time.
He threw himself sideways and felt three blades graze his side and thigh. Pain flared sharply, not fatal but deep enough to remind him this wasn't a respawn lobby.
His boots skidded across blood-slick marble as he recovered balance.
His breathing had changed now.
Faster.
Heavier.
He inhaled sharply.
He exhaled slowly.
His heart was racing now.
This wasn't tournament adrenaline.
That adrenaline was clean.
Structured.
Competitive.
This?
This was raw.
Primitive.
Honest.
The kind of thrill you felt when the thing across from you could actually end you.
He stepped back into range, blade ready.
Victoria moved at the same time.
They met halfway.
For a split second, they were inches apart.
Close enough that he could see the faint pulse of blood magic beneath her skin.
Close enough that he could smell iron and night air.
He saw it then.
The sharp intelligence behind her gaze.
Not rage.
Awareness.
Calculation.
Interest.
She wasn't flustered anymore.
She wasn't embarrassed.
She was engaged.
She lifted her palm again.
He leaned to counter.
And that's when she said it.
"This NPC is more annoying," she muttered to herself, almost absently, "than unstable WiFi during a ranked match."
It sounded like an irritated thought that slipped out.
Riven's brain derailed.
Ranked match.
WiFi.
That wasn't fantasy.
That wasn't medieval.
That was modern.
That was real world vocabulary.
His eyes widened before he could stop them.
For half a heartbeat… He stopped calculating.
Real world.
Transmigrator.
His focus fractured.
A single second.
A fatal one.
Victoria's palm drove forward.
Not dramatic.
Not flashy.
Just precise.
Her hand almost pressed flat against his chest.
Almost.
He reacted at the last second.
He shifted his weight, twisting his torso away at the last second, blade angling to intercept…
Her palm never touched him.
It didn't need to.
The magic didn't explode outward.
It didn't even visibly release.
It imploded inward.
A compression of pressure radiated from her body… dense, suffocating, invisible.
Like gravity had suddenly doubled.
The air between them collapsed.
Riven felt it before he understood it.
His ribs tightened violently as if something had wrapped around his lungs and squeezed.
His breath stopped.
His vision flickered.
No physical strike.
Just overwhelming presence.
Her aura.
It hit him like a tidal wave.
His feet left the ground anyway.
He didn't even scream.
The pressure was too deep for sound.
His body was thrown backward as if reality itself rejected him.
He slammed into the pillar behind him.
Stone cracked from the force.
Dust burst outward in a muted explosion.
He dropped to one knee, hand clutching his chest.
He hadn't even been touched.
[Warning! Your HP is below 20%!]
Blood trickled from his mouth.
His blood.
Warm.
Real.
He coughed once.
It hurt.
Not cosmetic pain.
Structural pain.
He forced his head up.
She stood there calmly.
Breathing steady.
Not even slightly winded.
That had been one hit.
It wasn't even a clean hit.
And it nearly erased him.
Level one body.
No scaling.
Of course.
But still.
His eyes locked on hers.
"You…" he rasped.
He was going to ask it.
'Are you a transmigrator too?'
But armored hands grabbed him from behind.
The paladin.
"We have to leave!"
The healer's teleport circle flared beneath them.
Riven tried to push forward.
"No-"
He wasn't done.
He needed confirmation.
Victoria didn't chase.
She didn't block.
She just watched him.
And in her eyes…
There it was again.
Recognition.
Amusement.
The teleportation circle detonated into light.
His body was ripped backward through space.
The last thing he saw before the throne room dissolved… Was the faintest annoyance on the Vampire Empress's face.
And somehow…
He couldn't stop smiling.
'I see… So, you are also a transmigrator like me…'