Mythos Of Narcissus: Reborn As An NPC In A Horror VRMMO

I woke up to the sensation of stillness.

A stillness so absolute it felt wrong.

For what felt like an eternity, my world had been nothing but motion—the constant rolling of waves, the creaking of wood, the never-ending pull of a voyage without a destination. But now, there was nothing. No water. No wind. No hum of the tides beneath me.

Just sand.

A vast, endless stretch of it, burning under the strange sky, shifting like a restless beast beneath my fingers.

I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know why I was awake. Had I fallen asleep? Had I drowned? Had I simply… stopped existing for a moment?

I sat up, brushing the dry grains from my skin, and stared across the horizon.

A desert.

A land of nothingness.

That was funny, in a way. I had spent so long drifting across an infinite sea, only to end up in a place that was the complete opposite. It was almost poetic.

But there was no poetry in the way my body ached. No grand meaning in the way my mind remained clouded, as if pieces of myself had been lost somewhere along the journey.

I exhaled, pressing a hand against my forehead.

"What am I even doing here?"

The words left my lips, but they held no weight. I had no answer.

I barely even knew who I was anymore.

There was a name—one that clung to my thoughts like a whisper on the tide.

Ishmael.

That was who I was, right?

That was who I had always been.

And yet, the more I thought about it, the more uncertain I became.

The sun burned high above, yet the heat never truly touched me. The air was dry, but my lungs didn't struggle. The world around me felt distant, like a mirage painted across an endless canvas.

"... I should be moving."

Where should I move? There is nothing of interest in sight.

So I walked, and dragged my feet.

Even if my muscles ache from the sudden stress of movements after a long time nothing happens.

Even if my mind was so bogged down from the unstable inertia that was my sudden arrival in this place.

Or maybe the lack of indication of who I am, what is the meaning of my existence…

"Did I just smell something? Wait, I can smell something from far away??"

And then—something changed.

A scent.

Something foreign. Something unnatural. Something that didn't belong to this wasteland of sand and silence.

It was like a paradox—rustic, yet advanced. Ancient, yet full of new life.

I'm sure that I'm not part of the beastfolk, but somehow I possess this innate ability.

I turned my head, and there, far in the distance, I saw it.

A structure. A great, moving construct of steel and unknown technology, carrying the weight of civilization inside it.

There were also some sort of defensive weaponry, like some sort of automated rotating ballista, but with a barrel of steel or something along the line.

"Huh, my eyesight is much better than I thought."

Hope surged through me like a spark in a deadened lantern.

A bastion.

A city on the move.

A place where people lived, where voices carried meaning, where the world wasn't just an empty stretch of nothing.

I pushed myself to my feet, barely aware of the grin that stretched across my face.

My legs moved before my mind could catch up. I ran.

I ran as fast as I could, the sand shifting beneath me, my breath coming in short gasps that weren't from exhaustion but from something far greater—relief.

A place to belong.

A place to exist.

People should exist there, and if there are people, it means that I can interact with them.

Interacting with them should give me a bigger clarity on what I should do and what I should not do.

"My proverbial compass…"

But then—

The air shifted.

The world cracked.

I stumbled, nearly falling as an invisible pressure surged through the landscape, forcing the very fabric of reality to twist and fracture.

Thin, jagged lines splintered across the sky like shattered glass, expanding in every direction, branching outward with unnatural precision.

A dimensional distortion.

A sight I had seen before—or somewhat remembered in my current rugged state.

The same ruptures had appeared on my voyage, breaking apart the sky, the water, the very concept of direction itself. They were wounds in reality—windows into something else.

And when I looked into them

I saw.

Countless reflections.

Countless realities.

Some were distorted, vague images of places I could not recognize, shifting and flickering like half-formed dreams. Others were clearer, more defined—windows into events that had already passed or had yet to happen.

And among them—

A face.

My face.

A woman stood within the fractured glass, her reflection staring back at me with those pale, otherworldly eyes.

White pupils, circular in shape, surrounded by a sea of black sclera. Skin paler than most, though not sickly—more like something untouched by the sun, because of the constant storm that covered the sea like a constant plague

Hair of a jaded blonde, messy, uneven, the bangs falling carelessly over her forehead as if she had never bothered to fix them. This individual, wearing a ragtag coat and pants made out of the hideous skins of the abyssal depths, was watching me with an expression of anger and pain.

A familiar stranger.

The cracks expanded, branching further apart.

And within one of them—

A battle.

A radiant figure, golden and untouchable, moved with impossible grace, weaving through an onslaught of grotesque, veined creatures.

Pallid Mermaids.

I knew what they were.

To think that someone other than our crew were fighting them outside the 'Unloving Sea'.

I took a step closer, but the moment my foot touched the ground—

The distortion pulsed.

The pressure surged outward, an unseen force slamming into me with the weight of an ocean storm.

I barely had time to react before I was thrown backward, tumbling through the sand like a stray piece of driftwood caught in a violent current. My vision blurred, the world spinning out of control, the scent of steel and rust growing stronger with each passing moment.

"Urgh…"

Not the stillness of peace, nor the gentle quiet that comes before dawn.

This was the heavy, disorienting kind—the eerie kind of absence left behind in the wake of something immense. The air, which had moments ago been thick with pressure, now felt unnervingly vacant, as if something had been ripped away too quickly, leaving behind a space that had yet to correct itself.

I sucked in a sharp breath, my chest tightening as my senses struggled to reorient themselves. My limbs ached, but not from exertion—from something far deeper, as though my entire being had been compressed and stretched all at once before being carelessly discarded.

I pressed my palms against the ground beneath me, expecting to feel the familiar instability of shifting sand. But what I felt was not sand at all.

It was solid. Smooth. Cool. Unfamiliar.

Man-made.

That realization sent a cold jolt through my spine. My fingers curled against the surface, tracing the faint ridges of metal beneath my touch. It wasn't just solid—it was structured. Engineered. Built.

Slowly, I lifted my gaze, and my breath hitched.

The desert was gone. The vast wasteland that had stretched endlessly before me only moments ago had been replaced with something entirely different. Geometrical structures. Massive cables and veins of unknown energy. Machines humming with unseen power.

Enjoy new chapters from My Virtual Library Empire

And then, as my mind caught up with what my eyes were seeing, the truth struck me all at once.

I was on the Landship that I saw before.

The very place I had been running toward. The distant silhouette of civilization that had given me hope. The moving bastion of steel and technology, resting far beyond the dunes.

Somehow, I made it here.

"Oh dear."

But not by my own doing, nor any kind of permissions of who owned this piece of behemoth..

The distortion—that unnatural rupture in reality—had thrown me forward, not into oblivion, not into another fracture of time, but straight into the heart of a place I did not belong.

I swallowed, but my throat was dry.

This wasn't an arrival.

This was a violation.

A bloody trespass.

"Is someone there!?"

Panic started to creep in, curling its fingers around my ribs, tightening with every passing second. My breaths came quicker, shallower, as the weight of the situation pressed down on me.

I wasn't supposed to be here.

I hadn't been granted entry. I hadn't been invited. I hadn't even been seen approaching from the outside like any normal traveler.

I had just… appeared.

Unexplained. Unaccounted for.

And soon, someone would notice.

What if they struck me down immediately? What if they mistook me as some sort of an assassin or an ill-mannered vagabond??

"I'm not ready for this…!"

I heard voices—faint, distant, but unmistakably human.

Footsteps, the low murmur of conversation, the shifting of machinery and metal. The quiet bustle of an active site, alive with people who lived and worked here, people who would have every right to question why a stranger had suddenly materialized aboard their bastion.

I had no answers to their questions.

No plan.

I clenched my fists, forcing myself to breathe, forcing my staggered body to move.

If I stayed frozen like this, the moment someone found me, I'd already be at a disadvantage. I needed to act, now, before I lost control of this situation.

But how?

Cold sweat shimmering. My mind raced through possibilities, searching for something—anything—that would give me an edge, an excuse, a means of survival, or a reason to feel and actually act upon something

"I could run…"

But where? This was a Landship, not some open desert where I could disappear into the dunes. There were walls, corridors, paths that I knew nothing about. I could escape into the structure, but without knowledge of where to go, I'd only corner myself further.

I could try to blend in.

Act like I belonged, walk with purpose, keep my head down. If this was a true bastion, there would be travelers, refugees, workers—people moving in and out all the time. Maybe, just maybe, I could slip into the crowd.

Or—

I could surrender.

Raise my hands, kneels on the ground.

Reveal myself, let them take me in, explain—

Explain what, exactly?

That I had been running toward them and a random fracture in space teleported me onto their deck? That I had no idea where I had come from or why I was even here?

That I was nobody, with nothing, in a place I didn't belong?

A lump formed in my throat.

Whatever happened next… I wasn't ready.@@novelbin@@

But there was no turning back now.