[Tier EX - Akashic Terminal]
Alphonse's golden eyes shone blindingly. In an instant, his consciousness shifted into a space that transcended human comprehension.
In this place, there was no sky, no earth. He stood amidst an expanse of boundless light. The floor beneath his feet was as clear as tranquil water.
Beneath its transparent surface lay a breathtaking cosmic vista—clusters of shining stars and slowly spinning galaxies. Every time Alphonse took a step, the floor rippled softly. The water ripples emitted a widespread golden glow, dancing upon the solar system canvas below.
Giant pillars of light towered around him, supporting the void. Between these pillars, countless books made of pure pages of light floated freely.
The books moved with their own rhythm, traversing the space like swimming fish. Upon the cover of every book of light, a name was clearly engraved.
One book floated low, passing right through Alphonse's shoulder like an illusory projection.
Along with it, a fleeting sound of a child's cheerful laughter echoed in his ear. Alphonse glanced at the title on the cover of the book that had just passed him: Theodore Harrison.
It was a record of a soul. The track record of someone's existence.
Alphonse continued stepping toward the center of the room. He looked down, staring at his right hand. A glowing book had been in his grasp this entire time.
On its cover was written the name: Alexander Fonseca.
As Alphonse opened the pages of the book, its pages of light projected a three-dimensional image of himself—a man cloaked in black robes wearing a monocle, standing beneath an oak tree with glowing golden eyes.
He turned to the previous page. That page displayed a man in an expensive suit, standing behind a mahogany desk in a luxurious penthouse overlooking a metropolis.
The pages turned faster, projecting a sequence of vivid scenes into the empty air:
The image shifted to the atmosphere of a giant conference table. The man in the expensive suit sat at the head of the table, surrounded by multinational corporate executives who stared at him with a mix of stiff respect and restrained greed in their eyes. Above their heads, digital chart projections fluctuated wildly.
The scene shifted again. Now the image displayed a complex flow of Real Money Trading (RMT) data, resembling a matrix of light. Alphonse saw the projection of thousands of transactions, corporate caravans moving across the map of Orion Online, while in the background, real-world safes were filled to the brim with stacks of cash and gold bars. The image showcased control over digital assets worth trillions.
The final image appeared: an exclusive banquet.
Faceless figures bearing the nametags "Politician" and "Tycoon" approached Alexander's projection. They did not speak with words, but rather extended parchments of distribution monopoly contracts or begged for the protection of their caravans inside the game. The image revealed the manifestation of a king in two worlds.
However, as Alphonse stared at those images, he realized one crucial thing. Alexander Fonseca's power on Earth was entirely bound by server cables, civil laws, and stacks of paper contracts. The man in the expensive suit was merely the administrative facade of the true player entity.
Now, that server was disconnected forever. The billions of dollars in Earth stocks and contracts in those images now felt like meaningless dust. In this new world, monetary wealth could not stop the slash of a sword, and political connections could not control the flow of magic.
The only things relevant for survival and dominating once again were his identity as a player and as the leader of Pioneer. The avatar had now become the true entity.
Alphonse closed the glowing book with one firm motion. The images collapsed into pixels of light before disappearing. The look in his eyes turned sharp, leaving not a speck of doubt or regret over the Earthly wealth he had left behind.
"Alexander Fonseca is dead," he said quietly yet firmly.
"The one living right now is Alphonse."
As if responding to that acknowledgment, the book in his hand glowed brightly. The letters on its cover melted, rearranged, and locked in his new identity: Alphonse.
He resumed his steps and finally arrived at the core of the space.
Before him hovered a giant geometric structure composed of overlapping rings of light, spinning on varying axes, like a miniature center of the universe.
"The Cosmic Mandala," Alphonse murmured.
He stared at the grand structure with a sense of familiarity. This room was not much different from the interface space when he was in the game, the place where he often spent his time squeezing information from the server.
Yet, the atmosphere here felt far more mysterious, heavier, and real.
Akashic Terminal. This was the pinnacle skill of his unique job: [Akashic].
This was the core foundation of why Alphonse—who in the real world was merely Alexander, a nobody—managed to build a guild containing twenty-three members who all possessed unique jobs, including himself.
Unlike normal job awakenings, a unique job only existed as a single entity within the game; no other player could possess the same job.
Knowledge is power, and Alphonse held the key to the universal library that recorded all information.
However, truth was never given for free.
Even from the very first second his consciousness was pulled into this space, Alphonse could feel his mana reserves beginning to drain slowly, siphoned purely to maintain his consciousness in this room.
Inside the game, every piece of information demanded a mana payment. Asking about the location of the nearest water spring might only require a fraction of mana.
However, asking for the coordinates of a Phantasmal artifact could drain his entire mana capacity in an instant. The cost was determined by how greatly the information impacted the world.
Alphonse calmed his mind. He stared at the Cosmic Mandala before him and posed his first question.
"Identify the world my body is currently in, and explain how my body came to possess the exact same form as my game character."
The Cosmic Mandala responded. Its rings of light spun rapidly, emitting a loud hum.
In the empty air, projections of past memories formed. Alphonse saw the visual of his real body on Earth, lying stiff inside a Gaming Pod capsule.
Suddenly, the heart rate monitor beside the capsule flatlined.
The numbers blinked to zero. A shrill medical siren pierced the room.
The image shifted rapidly. Now the visual showed the final seconds in the Starlight Castle meeting room. When the server was announced to be shutting down, his game character along with the entire building faded, shattering into pixels of light.
The image changed again. An expanse of vast space unfolded. Colorful stars fell like a meteor shower, diving toward the land of an unknown world.
As those meteors struck the earth, there were no explosions; their light faded, knitting together flesh, bone, and clothing, leaving behind the visual of Alphonse having just opened his eyes in the Forest.
As soon as the projection ended, information pierced his brain like a light forcefully turned on inside his skull.
[Your soul transmigrated to another world named Orion. The laws of Orion detected your soul's resonance and wove a physical vessel that adopted the form of the last game character you played.]
Alphonse flinched. He drew a cold breath, his chest rising and falling hard as he felt half of his total mana reserves siphoned out instantly.
His legs trembled slightly, bearing the weight of that sudden energy void.
"One initial question already consumed half my mana," he hissed, enduring the dizziness. "But at least, I truly understand my condition now."
Aligning with his deduction, since he was in the meeting room with all the core members of Pioneer who experienced the same forced log out at the very end, he shouldn't have been thrown into this world alone.
Without wasting time, Alphonse posed his second question. "What is the number of players who transmigrated to the world of Orion?"
The Mandala spun once more. The room filled with numerous visual windows blinking rapidly like CCTV footage.
Alphonse saw players falling from the sky to varying fates. Some landed in the middle of barren deserts, face-planted in freezing snowy plains, plunged into the middle of a vast storm-ridden ocean, landed right inside the lairs of feral monsters, and some fell into the narrow alleyways of human cities.
[There are 10,000 players who transmigrated in the initial arrival wave.]
Alphonse felt his mana plummet.
He muttered softly in his mind, "Ten thousand... Did the server select based on level? Based on wealth? Or... are these ten thousand people those who were logged in right as the server update hit?"
But his focus turned to the Cosmic Mandala's choice of words.
"Wait... what is meant by the 'initial arrival wave'? Does this mean there will be a second wave, a third, and so on?"
Reflexively, Alphonse opened his mouth wide, intending to fire that question directly at the Akashic system.
However, in the very next second, his eyes widened in horror. His hand moved like lightning, clamping tightly over his own mouth, forcibly silencing his voice.
"Damn it," he cursed inwardly, cold sweat drenching his mental projection's forehead. "Good thing I realized in time."
Although theoretically the Akashic Terminal could answer any question, the law of equivalent exchange was incredibly cruel. Questions that attempted to pierce the veil of future fate, or tried to read someone's unuttered deepest inner thoughts, required an absurd mana cost.
Inside the game, Alphonse had once learned a bitter lesson from his arrogance. When he first acquired this job, he arrogantly asked for the precise location of a Diamond Treasure Chest in a server event that wouldn't take place for another two days.
The result? His mana was insufficient to pay for that future information.
The system immediately drained his entire HP (Hit Points) bar as compensation, causing him to die pathetically, lying in the middle of the plaza without receiving any answer.
Even for a trivial question like: "Will I hit the jackpot on my first gacha pull?", the system nearly drained his blood dry before answering:
[No, you will not hit the jackpot].
A painful answer that canceled his intention to do a hundred spins.
In the game, a pathetic death like that was a laughing matter because the respawn system would revive him at the nearest temple.
But in this world of Orion? All interface systems had vanished.
"If the entire game system has vanished, then the respawn system should also be gone," Alphonse thought firmly.
He had absolutely no intention of verifying whether he could come back to life after dying. He now only had one life.
Considering there were only ten thousand players out of Orion Online's millions of player base entering right now, he had to confirm the fate of his comrades.
"Search for the coordinate locations of the core members of the Pioneer Guild who landed in this world," Alphonse requested.
The Mandala spun slowly, weighing the weight of his question. Two visual windows appeared in the air.
The first visual displayed a man clad in a maroon suit with messy blonde hair. The man was standing on a rock in the middle of a toxic green swamp, laughing uproariously with his glowing bow while shooting at a pack of swamp lizards.
The second visual showed a female Elf with silver hair tipped with turquoise blue. She wore her asymmetrical combat suit, walking with efficient strides through a blizzard across frozen ice plains. Her face was flat and emotionless, a fragment of a crystal blade hovering at her side.
[Arcus - Coordinates: (421, 183, 2). Vrischil - Coordinates: (2850, 4120, 24)]
Alphonse's breath hitched. His head throbbed violently. He could feel his mana was nearly depleted.
"Only Arcus and Vrischil," he whispered softly. His other twenty members did not make it in this initial wave.
However, that sense of loss was slightly mended. Considering the two of them were elite combat units holding unique job awakenings from the Zodiac series—Arcus the [Sagittarius] and Vrischil the [Scorpio]—they were far from weak.
"At least, with their survival skills and combat dominance, our lives won't be easily threatened even if we have to face off against other Top Players in this world."
Yet, his paranoid instincts as a Guild Master were still unsatisfied. He had to know the true scale of the threat.
He calmed himself, drew a very long breath, and stared at the glowing geometric structure for the last time.
"One final question," Alphonse hissed. "What is the number of players out of those ten thousand... who are still alive up to this second?"
The Cosmic Mandala spun violently. The room shook.
Various visuals of player corpses who died from falling in dangerous territories, torn apart by monsters, or drowning in the deep sea flashed incredibly fast before Alphonse's eyes.
Golden numbers appeared hovering before him.
[9,873]
One hundred and twenty-seven player lives had been extinguished in merely a matter of minutes since they set foot in this world. Death here was real and permanent.
However, the price of that truth had to be paid right then and there.
The remaining mana inside Alphonse's body was sucked dry in the blink of an eye. The cost was insufficient. Without mercy, the akashic space responded. A cold, cruel pull immediately gripped his heart, piercing his body's defenses and forcibly plundering his vitality to cover the remaining cost.
In the next second, the Mandala structure dimmed.
The glowing mental space cracked like a mirror struck by a hammer, then shattered into pieces.
Alphonse's consciousness was hurled roughly back into his body.
Beneath the roots of the oak tree in the Eastern Forest, Alphonse collapsed forward. Both his hands slammed into the dirt, supporting his body which instantly felt as heavy as lead. His chest throbbed painfully, as if his internal organs had just been squeezed by an invisible hand.
Cold sweat poured profusely from his temples. Along with his rapid breaths, a warm, metallic sensation flowed down his upper lip. Drops of blood fell ceaselessly, staining the leaves beneath the shadow of his face.
This was not merely exhaustion; the Akashic had just consumed a portion of his life.
He roughly wiped his nose with the back of his hand, staring at the fresh bloodstains now clinging to his gauntlet. When he raised his face, his golden eyes behind the monocle, which usually radiated calm calculation, now reflected an emotion he had long forgotten.
The fear of death.