The Lovely Ruler

His world was in his own game creation. He often fantasized about a world that never existed, where various unreal things could be found. For that reason, he became an independent game developer, just to fulfill his dream. He had several games that had been released. Those games were made by himself. Of all those games, there was one game that had not been released yet, still in development. According to him, the unreleased game would definitely sell well. Even for him, he couldn’t wait to try the game until he was satisfied, so he chose to play it as soon as everything was finished without thinking to rest first.

“Phew, nailed it! Can’t wait to dive into the fun that’s waiting.”

At that time, the clock showed five in the afternoon, the game development had finished, and he continued to test it afterwards. In that trial, he was amazed by his own game.

While playing the game, he often intended to finish testing after one hour. However, after one hour passed, he continued to test the game for another hour. So on and so forth, until two in the afternoon passed unnoticed, and he had not slept or fulfilled other needs as a living creature for about three days in total.

When he stretched his body full of pleasure, he saw the needle on the wall clock was right at midnight. He didn’t know at all that he had played the game for two full days. Because he felt tired, he decided to stop testing. He yawned for a long time. His eyelids felt so heavy. He didn’t know that his eyes, especially in the sclera, had turned completely red because his blood vessels had burst due to high blood pressure.

The little finger on his foot hit the bottom of the door when he was about to go to his room, but he didn’t feel any pain at all.

His steps looked so shaky. Maybe if there was a strong wind blowing from the front, he would fall backwards helplessly. One of his hands was leaning on the wall along the corridor.

“Uh, where did I leave that door key…?”

The room where he usually worked was not closed, while his own room was tightly closed. Actually, the room door was not locked, he just needed to turn the door handle so that the temporary lock would open. However, he didn’t have the energy to turn the door handle.

Just walking to the room felt so exhausting for him. He decided to sit in front of the room door, thinking that he would sleep for a while because his eyelids were hard to stay open.

‘Why is it so noisy as hell…’

He heard the voices of people chatting around. The crowd was very disturbing, so he, who was very sleepy, forced himself to open his eyes. His vision was still blurry for a few seconds, but then, he could see so many people seemed to be having fun in front of him.

After his life was gathered, he realized that he was sitting at a table in the corner of the room alone. One of his hands lying on the table was still holding a cup containing a drink.

“What the hel is this?”

It couldn’t be a dream. Even if he had a lucid dream, everything wouldn’t feel so real.

“What … is actually happening right now?”

He didn’t remember being there. The last time when he was still conscious, he was testing a game that had just been developed. Besides that, the scenery around looked unusual. In addition to his place which looked so outdated, the clothes worn by people were also the same, made of still rough cloth and some even wore equipment that was usually in MMORPG games.

His temples felt throbbing. Looking at the cup held in his hand, he guessed that he had previously been drunk, so his head felt sore when he woke up.

“Huh? When did my hand get this muscles…?”

He didn’t remember his hand having enough muscle like the hand he saw now. Both hands were clearly moved by him, and of course the hand was his own. Besides that, he heard a voice he didn’t recognize coming out of his mouth. All of that made his feelings uncomfortable. He looked down, before finding his body covered in clothes that had a simple design like what people in front of him wore.

“Glass … That’s right, I need a mirror,” he nodded a few times, before getting up from his seat.

A waiter approached him when he was about to walk away. He was confused, but then remembered that the cup of drink on the table might be his order.

“Sire …”

“Oh, right. So, what’s the damage on the total bill?”

He was stunned with himself. The words that came out of his mouth were very foreign, but he understood what he had just said and what he heard from the waiter.

A series of things he found made him suspicious of the situation he was experiencing. To convince him, he needed a mirror to see the reflection of his figure that he thought was different from what it should be. There was one thing he had guessed about this situation.

“Huh?”

“Ah, I mean, about the total bill … how much is it?”

“Indeed, thou hast but requested a single cup of the classic rosso, sire.”

“How much?”

“One silver and five copper.”

He immediately rummaged through his pocket in panic. His heart was quite pounding, because everything was so foreign and sudden without giving him time to think while preparing mentally. Fortunately, there were several coins in his pocket, so he took out a few, before seeing there were three silver coins in the palm of his hand.

The waiter took two silver coins, then gave him several copper coins of different sizes. He didn’t forget to give a tip of one of the largest copper coins to the waiter because indirectly he had provided enough information about the currency here. Even though he didn’t know for sure, he wouldn’t be too confused for the future.

“Thy gratitude is received with honour, sire. Mayhaps thou art concerned about mine interest in frequenting this establishment. Fear not, for it remains undiminished.”

Perhaps because the tip he gave was relatively large, the waiter escorted him to the front door of the cafe.

The moon in the night sky looked so bright. When he was thinking about where he should go, he knew the place he should head to. That place was his rented room in an inn. Although it felt strange how he could know it, he chose to arrive there immediately so he could think about all this more calmly. Every building he passed was far from modern civilization. As he knew from his foreign memory, there were no buildings that had window features with glass as its cover.

“Mirrors are only owned by nobles, huh?”

The price of mirrors was relatively expensive. Ordinary people preferred to use money to meet their living needs rather than buying mirrors which had limited functions and were easily broken.

Arriving at a building, he naturally opened the door, before entering it as if he was used to entering the inn.

“Ah, ’tis thee, Master Rosario! We art overjoyed to see thee return. Welcome back, good sir!”

“Yeah.”

He spontaneously answered like that to a middle-aged man who was wiping a cup behind the administration desk. The call was not supposed to be directed at him, but he felt called somehow. And again, seeing the reaction of the middle-aged man, as if those words were indeed to welcome his arrival.

Small memories always popped up when needed. Specifically though, he knew the number of the room he rented.

The door was closed gently. Leaning on the door after entering his room, he took a long breath. Just holding back the flow of memories that flooded his head since he woke up, he felt dizzy. He felt a little calm when he was in his private room. There was nothing to worry about, just focus on understanding his situation first, he thought so after sitting on the edge of the rough-textured bed.

“So, in these flashbacks, I’m Kaeso Sebastianus Rosario, yeah? The Rosarios were once high and mighty, but then the folks messed up big time. Now, they’re just washed-up nobles. That’s why Kaeso hit the road and set up shop outside the city. Rough, huh?”

Some time ago, Kaeso in his memory intended to give a girl he adored a gift in the form of a bracelet. He took the bracelet that was in his pocket. The bracelet had a simple design with two gems on both sides, but inside the bracelet there were small intricate carvings. The small carvings looked like layered writing. It was difficult to read the writing, perhaps because its size was indeed very small, or also because the letters were foreign.

Because of its design, the bracelet was not only suitable for women, but also men. He tried to wear it, thinking that it would be wasteful if the bracelet was not used.

“Dude, it’s rough. His girl was caught smooching some other guy. Must’ve felt like a punch to the gut, you know?” he muttered while looking at the bracelet on his hand. “On top of that, he’s got all these family issues weighing him down. So, feeling super low, he sneaks some poison into his rosso at the café. Tough times, man.”

From the foreign memories that he began to compile, he began to understand in broad outline the situation he was experiencing. He speculated that maybe his soul possessed the body of a young man named Kaeso.

If it is true, then he himself must have died after finishing testing his latest game creation without realizing it.

The night was getting late, it was time to sleep. However, there were so many things he needed to understand about the strange phenomenon he was experiencing, so he couldn’t possibly sleep easily. It’s been a long time since his heart felt pounding like now.

“Ah, that’s right. I forgot about the bracelet.”

Because the size of the bracelet was quite small, and the size of his own hand was larger compared to his hand before possessing the current body, he must have had difficulty trying to wear it. But who would have thought the bracelet was able to change its size to be wider by itself as if adjusting when it was about to be worn. Then, when it was on his wrist, the size of the bracelet shrank again.

He was a little surprised by the behavior of the bracelet, but it didn’t make him confused. Foreign memories that most likely came from memories stored in the physical body’s brain had knowledge about magic. So, the behavior of the bracelet that can adjust its size is not strange.

Just as he was about to admire that the bracelet was not an ordinary bracelet, the bracelet on his wrist began to give off heat. The dangerous situation suddenly made him panic, so he tried to immediately remove it, but the bracelet did not widen.

“Whoa, you think this bracelet’s got a curse on it or something?!”

The bracelet couldn’t be removed, even though he tried desperately to force it off, causing his wrist to ache.

From the wrist, a pungent burning smell like singed hair began to waft. There was a sound akin to fabric being burned and submerged in water. A faint vapor also appeared, perhaps sweat evaporating instantly due to the heat emanating from the bracelet. The heat intensified. It felt as if his wrist was being scalded with boiling water, or perhaps even oil. All he could do was grimace in pain. Occasionally, he would shout when the pain became unbearable. He endured this suffering for approximately half an hour.

Several times, people outside the room knocked on the door, but he couldn’t even hear them.

At that moment, the heat radiating from the bracelet on his wrist reached its peak, and he could no longer suppress the pain. He screamed with all his might, his eyes even looking upward as if an angel of death awaited him. Like someone possessed, he made unconscious, erratic movements.

The scream must have echoed beyond the building. The people inside the inn were both disturbed and curious about the events unfolding in Kaeso’s room. They no longer waited for the door to be opened from the inside; instead, they forcefully broke it open.

As soon as the door swung open, his voice ceased, and the onlookers saw a young man drenched in sweat, unconscious.

A semi-transparent screen floated in the air, emitting light. From the bottom edge of the screen, a thin straight line connected to Kaeso’s wrist. The observers couldn’t see it, and Kaeso himself remained unconscious. The screen displayed a process of fusion, with a rotating circle in the middle and a progress indicator below the circle, showing a percentage.

—Congratulations! The Ruler’s System has successfully connected.

—You’ve received a reward for activating the Ruler’s System.

—Title: Ruler’s System Holder, successfully obtained.