Consciousness rises as if pushed up by waves.
The first thing I felt was gravity. The weight of the blanket pressing down on my body.
The second was smell. A stale, moldy odor soaked with dampness stabbed into my nose.
The third was hunger. I was starving. My stomach burned so badly that I couldn’t keep my eyes closed any longer.
“Where is this…?”
When I came to my senses, I wasn’t in a hospital bed but lying alone in a strange place. The ceiling was covered in antique wallpaper, but it was so infested with mold that it was hard to tell where the pattern ended and the mold began.
Looking at my wrist, there was no IV. Instead, a perfectly uninjured wrist came into view. Strange.
‘My skin was originally dark…?’
As a child, I swam like crazy without sunscreen, so my skin had been completely ruined. A horrifying combination of chlorine and UV rays.
I used to pride myself on having skin that looked ten years older than others…
“W-why is it pale? And there are no wounds.”
― Creating skill.
[Knowledge: Basic]
At that moment, something familiar appeared before my eyes and blocked my vision. No matter how I looked at it, it was a quest window you’d only see in games. And yet, it appeared in reality.
‘I’m not hallucinating, right?’
The moment that thought crossed my mind, an intense pain surged through my head.
“AAAAAAAH—!”
She groaned and clutched her head. It felt as if someone was forcibly installing information into her brain.
No matter how much she screamed, no one came into the empty castle.
Like a cicada pupa clinging to a tree, she clutched the bed and writhed for a long time.
Eventually, the headache subsided. Information began to flood in all at once.
Surprisingly, what came out of her mouth was not Korean, but an unfamiliar language.
“H-ha… hahaha… this makes no sense.”
Knowledge poured in. It wasn’t anything extraordinary. Just the basic common sense that people in this world possessed.
Language. Writing.
And finally, information about the owner of this body.
In the worn-out mirror sat a woman with cherry blossom-colored hair. A color that could never be achieved with dye.
“So I really did die.”
As the knowledge skill was implanted, countless images flashed by. Among them was one of her own body, snapped in half. A human body, split into upper and lower halves, rolling across two lanes of the road. Organs and spine scattered in a grotesque scene straight out of a low-budget horror film. Passersby were vomiting.
What on earth had happened?
Her body had been flung across the center line. Then, it seemed, an oncoming dump truck struck her again. After that, she didn’t know. She couldn’t even imagine.
It had all happened just moments ago, to her body in Korea.
‘I died. I really died.’
Like an idiot, even as she was being hit, she had worried about her mobile game. Was it adrenaline? At the time of the accident, she hadn’t even felt much pain.
‘Yeah… I died.’
There had been no need for an ambulance. It was instant death.
‘If I had known this would happen, I would have treated Mom better.’
She must be crying a lot. She could only hope she would recover quickly. A single tear slid down her cheek.
‘I lived my whole life so irresponsibly.’
She was a useless daughter. Preparing for the civil service exam, she had only added financial burden to her family with academy fees and textbooks. Why had she believed those days would continue forever?
If she had known she would die so soon, she would have cherished them more…
‘No… it’s too late now. I can’t go back anymore.’
She curled up and cried for a long time.
How much time had passed?
Once her emotions settled, pain returned to her body.
Growl.
Her empty stomach didn’t just ache, it hurt. That pain dragged her back to reality.
Life is strange. No matter how miserable things are, the body still demands food.
“So that wasn’t a dream either.”
The dream where a rabbit appeared and claimed to be the god of beauty. It was so absurd that she had assumed it was just a delirious dream in the hospital.
She thought she was being taken into surgery, and it was just a dream during that process.
She had even been relieved that she didn’t see a flower field or her ancestors.
But it wasn’t.
According to the knowledge forcibly inserted into her mind, the rabbit was real. A god. And that god had pulled her, who was destined to die, into this world and stuffed her into someone else’s body.
“So this is another world.”
There are dragons. There are elves. Mages use magic.
Her head felt like it would explode. She had lived 26 years on Earth, and even recalling that life alone would take time. But now, along with it, all the memories of this body’s original owner were flooding in at once.
She felt nauseous. The dizziness was overwhelming.
“Ugh…”
Grabbing the bedpost, she let out a small groan.
But only for a moment. Soon, things began to make sense.
The owner of this body was a countess. A female lord. And the sole survivor after her family met a violent death.
Even her territory had been torn apart by relatives. The only land left to her was this castle and two villages. Though she had inherited the title of count, almost nothing remained.
“The owner of this body… is mute.”
After witnessing her family’s brutal deaths, she developed severe trauma and autistic symptoms. Everyone ignored her. Everyone abandoned her.
The knights all switched loyalties. The servants followed suit. Not a single person remained in her castle.
Though she possessed the title of count and two villages, her downfall was already certain.
The only reason no one poisoned or persecuted her to seize the title was one thing.
‘Bloodline.’
Her lineage was that of priests who served the God of Beauty. Now, she was the last one left, but divine blood still flowed through her veins.
‘People might not be scary, but gods are.’
In other words, it was bad luck. In this world, gods could actually strike people down with lightning. So they left her alone. After all, she would die on her own.
A mute, autistic girl.
Thanks to that, she slowly withered away without even drinking water. Because of depression and her condition, she herself made no effort to live. Living in filth, eating nothing properly, illness eventually took hold.
A terrible fever burned through her body. Even the last servant who attended her left.
In the end, she died.
And into that body, she entered.
Countess Chitra Serechino.
A name given in hopes that luck would always follow her, yet her life had been nothing but misfortune until death.
‘If you were going to put a soul in here, at least do it properly.’
Now that things had come to this,
There was only one thing she could do.
Live as Countess Chitra Serechino. And to survive, complete the mission given by the god.
She, who had been casually playing mobile games without spending money while preparing for the civil service exam, had now become a countess in another world.
As she was organizing her thoughts,
Something changed.
― Quest updated.
The god had given her a game-like ability.
‘This quest window is visible only to me. The messages are only heard by me too.’
Recalling the information in her mind, she took a deep breath and pressed the quest window.
[Tutorial Complete]
You who have been called by the god!
There is a gift created with the god’s final strength.
Select an assistant to help you!
At that moment, a blue paper appeared in her hand with a flash of light.
And before her, a massive golden rabbit statue appeared.
