"Hiss…" Viego clutched his forehead as he sat up. He felt as if he had been hit head-on by a dump truck… every cell in his body was aching.
Inside his mind, the memories of two lives were violently colliding and merging.
In one memory… he was the king of Kamavia, a tyrant despised by the people, the Ruined King who had unleashed the curse of Ruination. The end of that memory stopped at the moment he finally succeeded in summoning Isolde back, only for her to pierce his heart with a sword to seal him once again. The last words he heard by his ear were: "Viego… I loved you until the very last moment… Is that still not enough?"
But in another memory… he was just an ordinary person born in the modern world. In his student days, he was manipulated by a bad woman until he became a simp without even realizing it. He poured his heart and soul into becoming her boyfriend, only to be happy for less than a month before accidentally discovering that she was dating several other men at the same time.
His first love shattered, causing him to lock away his heart, no longer believing in the thing called love. His life after that was simple: being single, slacking off at work, and coming home to play LoL. In the end, he pulled an all-nighter playing games, managing to carry a team of four "chickens" to victory with the champion Viego. But at the very moment of victory, his vision went black… he probably died of a heart attack in front of his computer.
A win in the game, but a true loss in real life.
And now, he had been reborn as Viego again… a simp times two. If he got one more, he could probably combine them into a two-star simp and become the King of Simps!
From his sorted memories, although he was Viego, he was not the Viego from the lore novel Ruination, the one who was full of love and immense charm. Instead, he was the clown king version from that big, nonsensical Sentinels of Light event, the one whose plot was written by some crazy game event planner just to sell skins… the version who was brutally backstabbed by Isolde, molded into something like an overgrown, man-childish brat.
—And he even had to be viciously mocked in the skin's voice lines by Graves… Twisted Fate's male-male ship!
Viego clutched his forehead, organizing his memories… When he finally understood his situation, he had the time to lift his head and survey his surroundings.
He was now in a dusty room, sitting in a corner. The clothes on his body were tattered, but one could still faintly see their original luxurious nobility. It wasn't the open-chested, navel-baring, chain-adorned outfit of the "Ruined King" Viego, but looked more like the clothes of "King" Viego, just without the armor parts.
He lifted his hands to look. Although they were covered in dust, he could still vaguely discern that his skin was deathly pale… as pale as a dead person, or perhaps a vampire.
Viego pulled open his collar, looking down at his chest, and found that there was indeed a black, hollow, inverted triangle shape there. It looked similar to the Arc Reactor in Iron Man's chest, but it was actually the mark left when Isolde stabbed him with a sword the first time he saved her life.
…It looked pretty cool, actually.
Did this mean… he was wearing the "King" version of the clothes, but his body was still in a state cursed by the Ruination? According to his memories, he should have been sealed again by that bad woman Isolde. So where was this place? Or could one move about freely within a sealed dimension?
Creeaak—
The sound of the wooden door scraping open caught Viego's attention.
There's someone else here? Or have I not been sealed again?
The next second, the wooden door was pulled open, and a woman with white hair and red eyes walked in. On her head were… two dark red, antenna-like… hairs?
Are those hairs or tentacles?
She looks pretty good… but those antennae on her head look a bit like…
A cockroach?
"Yo… you're awake, huh?" The woman looked surprised. "I never thought you'd fall from the sky and still survive."
The language she used was one Viego had never heard before, yet he could understand the meaning in her words.
The woman pulled a "gun" with a barrel as large as half a fist from under her skirt, pressed it against Viego's head, and smiled. "Since you're awake, pay up, will you? The clothes on your body are the kind only nobles can afford… don't tell me you have no money, okay? Otherwise, your head will go… 'BANG'! and explode into pieces for sure, hahaha…"
The woman muttered to herself and let out a shrill laugh, making Viego feel that her mental state was not quite normal.
"Wait… where is this? And why do I have to give you money?" Viego reached out and pushed the dark, looming muzzle away slightly, so that he could look directly into the woman's coppery-golden eyes. "And also… can you put this thing down before we talk?"
The woman lowered the gun and sat down next to Viego, as if she had no intention of blowing his head off as she had said. She just smiled and said:
"This is Kazdel. It's at war everywhere. Small-scale battles and conflicts have never ceased. You just happened to fall right into the middle of a battlefield… fell from the sky, you know. If I hadn't dragged you back, you wouldn't have survived. Even your clothes would have been stripped off completely. Who knows, even your corpse might have been 'used' by those muscular guys."
Viego felt a little disgusted. He didn't want to know what kind of "use" that was, but his mind, already polluted by the 21st-century internet, forced him to understand.
Wait a minute… Kazdel? Why have I never heard of this name before? In the midst of war… could it be a place in Ionia that was invaded by Noxus?
"Kazdel? Which country does Kazdel belong to? Ionia?"
"What's Ionia?" The woman looked puzzled. "Kazdel is Kazdel. Kazdel is the name of this country. Don't tell me you fell from the sky and scrambled your brain, did you?"
"Where is this place? I mean, this continent…"
"Terra," the woman answered Viego's question patiently.
Not the continent of Runeterra… or did I transmigrate again the moment I entered Viego's body?
What did she just say? Terra…?
Don't tell me it's… Holy Terra! From the world of Warhammer?!
Viego's face was filled with horror. He slapped his forehead.
Oh, sht… now I'm really, truly fcked.
Wait a minute… but she just said this continent is called Terra, not that this world is called Terra, right?
With a glimmer of hope, Viego looked at the smiling woman beside him, who seemed to be in a good mood.
"You said… this continent, not that this world is called Terra, right?"
"What's the difference? This land is called Terra, so this world must be called Terra, right?"
Sigh… still, it seems it's just a similar name. Viego breathed a sigh of relief.
"Are you done with your questions?" the woman beside him suddenly asked.
"Yeah, what's up?" Viego replied.
The next moment, his forehead was pressed against something familiar—something black, rough, large, and hard. A laughing voice sounded by his ear:
"One question costs thirty thousand Lungmen Dollars. Saving your life costs one hundred thousand Lungmen Dollars. Getting me to lower the gun costs twenty thousand Lungmen Dollars. The total is two hundred and seventy thousand… I'll round it off for you, let's just call it three hundred ten-thousand Lungmen Dollars. That's not too expensive, is it? Oh… and I only take cash~"