After finishing cleaning himself and drying his body, "splash," Dennis stood in front of the sink and washed his face. He stared at himself in the mirror, observing a face that was worlds apart from his old self. Then, he tried to sniff himself to make sure the foul stench clinging to him was finally gone. But suddenly, an interface screen popped up right in front of his face.
[New Manager skill (gained at level 27): Manager Assistant and Secretary.]
"Hmm? Manager assistant and secretary?" Dennis asked.
He opened his talent interface and saw the new skill listed there. He tapped the text to study the details, but when his finger touched the interface, another window appeared.
[Activate assistant and secretary? [Yes] [No]]
Naturally, a curious Dennis hit YES without a second thought. All the interfaces closed, but then a voice suddenly echoed in Dennis’s head.
[Activating assistant and secretary with voice mode ver 0.1...10...20...30...40...50...60...70...80...90...100..pleted.]
[Good afternoon, Master. I am your new assistant and secretary. It’s a pleasure to et you.]
Hearing a digital female voice inside his head, Dennis imdiately grabbed his head in shock. His eyes remained glued to his reflection in the mirror, his jaw hanging wide open. Dennis tried to process what had just happened and who the voice in his head belonged to, but before he could even react:
[Please command on what I should do. To speak to , please speak within your head.]
"Hm... hello?" Dennis asked in his head.
[Hello, Master. How can I help you?]
"Wow... it actually works... so, who are you?" Dennis asked.
[I am your secretary and assistant, ready to aid you on your journey through life, Master.]
Dennis imdiately rembered that every character in the ga had an AI helper that explained how to play, tutorials, story lore, and so on at the start of the ga—though usually, they never appeared again after a certain point. He started thinking hard because the world he was in now clearly resembled the ga Eclipse Saga.
"So, what’s your na?" Dennis asked in his head.
[I am your secretary and assistant, Master.]
"No, I an, what is your na?" Dennis asked once more.
[I am your secretary and assistant, Master.]
"Geez... looks like she doesn’t have a na. Alright, from now on your na is Sami, short for System Assistant Manager Interface, okay?" Dennis asked in his head.
[....Okay. Please call Sami.]
"Alright, I’m counting on you, Sami. So, what can you actually do?" Dennis asked.
Sami imdiately explained that she could describe the state of the world and its history, replay Dennis’s buried mories split between two dinsions or tilines through visual projections, and help manage party mbers. Additionally, she could provide information on the progress required to unlock skills in the manager talent tree. Hearing what Sami said in his head, Dennis imdiately asked:
"In that case, what exactly is this world? A ga that rged with reality, or is it truly another world?" Dennis asked.
[This world is a parallel dinsion to your own. The incident at your school—the plane crash that killed you—coincided with an incident involving you in this world: the falling waterlon. That is why you swapped places and possess two sets of mories at once: your previous world and this one. That is what is known as an awakening.]
"Huh... really?" Dennis asked.
[Absolutely, Master. The ga you played, Eclipse Saga, is a ga used as a bridge between dinsions and a ga that adopted the systems of this world.]
"Huh... so the three developers and ga creators I saw yesterday?" Dennis asked.
[They were the ones who brought this dinsion into yours, and you played the ga without realizing it. Not just you—many players of that ga are here. You can surely notice that there are many people here just like you, but they rember nothing.]
"Hmm... that makes sense. Like Gary, Olivia, Jason, Kimberly, Bella, Brad, my wife Daisy, and the others—they’re exactly the sa as my mories from my past life, even if they’re a bit faint... our life paths are the sa too... only the world conditions are different... weird... but since I’m experiencing it myself, I believe it," Dennis muttered.
Dennis thought long and hard. He realized that the faces he recognized at school—like almost all his classmates—were people he knew played the sa ga as him. It had made him hide and refuse to confirm his real-world identity while in-ga. He also realized that many new people he t, like Naomi, Blake, Travis, the twins Viola and Fiona, and their husbands, Mario and Frank, were part of this.
"So I really did move to another world... and that ans in my previous world... I’m dead," Dennis muttered.
[That is correct, Master.]
"Uuuh... this is seriously weird. Is Daisy the sa?" Dennis asked.
[Do you rember your wife from your previous life, Master?]
"Huh," Hearing Sami’s question, Dennis naturally beca confused. He felt like he had known Daisy for a long ti, but he beca unsure because his mories of his previous life were faint while his mories of this life were becoming clearer. Finally, he realized he didn’t actually know when he first t Daisy. Suddenly, Sami opened an interface showing a recording of the mont the plane was right in front of his classroom window. Hearing a crashing sound, Dennis turned to see Bella falling—but this ti, Bella’s face and body changed. She beca Daisy, looking nerdy, wearing thick glasses, thin, and appearing awkward.
"Huh... this... is when Plane-kun hit, right? Back then, the one I caught and saved wasn’t... Bella?" Dennis asked.
[No, Master. The one you saved, and the one you eventually died with, was your wife. At that ti, she was being bullied by Bella and her friends. You didn’t notice because you were drowned in your own thoughts and misery, so you didn’t pay attention to your surroundings.]
Faintly, Dennis began to rember because of the footage he saw. It turned out he had indeed known Daisy since the previous world—a nerdy girl in the student council who was always bullied by Bella and her friends. And in this world, Daisy’s situation was reversed; she was a popular, beautiful girl respected by everyone, even Bella. The mindset was different; in this world, everyone fought for survival and didn’t think about harming fellow humans like in Dennis’s previous peaceful dinsion.
"So that’s how it is," Dennis muttered.
[But... your wife has seven personalities. That was already the case in the previous dinsion, and here she gained the talent to make those personalities real. And it was because of the prayer of one of her personalities that you were brought here.]
"Huh... you... are you serious?" Dennis asked, shocked half to death.
[I am serious, Master. Your wife arrived in this world first and underwent an awakening here. She does not rember her life in the previous dinsion, but she can feel it. That is why she was willing to marry you and patiently waited for you to awaken, all while manifesting her other personalities into reality.]
Sami replayed the events of the final monts of Dennis’s life to make him even more certain. Of course, as the footage shifted to Daisy’s life, Dennis only beca more confused seeing Daisy undergo her awakening in this world. It turned out what Sami said was true; in both the previous dinsion and this one, Daisy already possessed seven personalities due to the trauma she had suffered in her past—the disappearance of the older sister she loved so much, being bullied at school, always being alone without any friends, and enduring sexual abuse for over a year at the hands of her foster father.
Everything began to make sense to Dennis as he watched the recording, but sothing deeply troubled his heart. When she helped Dennis, Daisy had two reasons. First, she felt that Dennis was the person who had saved her and felt that Dennis shared the sa fate as her, even though she couldn’t rember it. Additionally, she wanted to hurt Bella—who had always tornted her—by taking Dennis for herself, even if she could only feel the resentnt without the actual mories.
And the only one who rembered life across two dinsions was just one of Daisy’s seven personalities: Daisy Number Seven, the cunning one who influenced Daisy Number One, even though she did it for her own sake and for Dennis in his new life. Back in the previous dinsion, it was Number Seven who had played Eclipse Saga; that was why she directed and manipulated the primary Daisy to create six characters for the other personalities, including herself.
Daisy Number Seven was the mastermind behind everything, even if she didn’t fully realize the scope of it. Dennis felt a chill run down his spine after the footage ended. Suddenly, soone touched his back. Dennis slowly turned around.
"You’re finished, right, dear? We’re all going to have lunch together, let’s go... eh, what’s wrong? You look so pale," Daisy Number Seven was already standing behind him, smiling at first, then looking at him with concern.
"Oh... yeah, dear," Dennis said, stamring and pale. "I’m fine, don’t worry," Dennis added, forcing a smile.
They walked out of the restroom and headed toward the yacht, which had now docked at the artificial island. While they walked, Dennis glanced at Daisy Number Seven, who was holding his hand and strolling casually beside him.
"So... she’s the one who brought here... even if she doesn’t realize it herself. Even though I’m uneasy because her goal is to use for revenge, she also helped because we shared a similar fate... though in truth, she had it much worse, enduring trauma so intense that she split into seven personalities... I have to act normal and start paying closer attention to my wife, who has been divided into seven since the original dinsion," Dennis muttered in his heart, his feelings a chaotic, tangled ss.
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