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

The air went still.

Not in the way of silence or quiet anticipation.

No—this was a stillness so absolute that it suffocated movement itself.

The wails of the surviving Pallid Mermaids had ceased. Their grotesque, veined bodies stiffened mid-hover, their frozen faces locked in unnatural anticipation. It was as if they were waiting—no, bracing.

Then, I felt it to the very core of my soul

Something immense. Something beyond anything that could be contained.

It wasn't approaching. It wasn't moving. It was simply—arriving through force and sheer dimensional weight of its own existence. Explore stories on My Virtual Library Empire

A slow, creeping pressure sank into the very fabric of this space, a suffocating weight that did not belong in a realm as small as this.

And then.

The sky fractured.

Not a crack, not a tear—but a failure of space itself to accommodate something that should not fit.

It pressed inward, as if the realm was too fragile to resist, its very boundaries groaning against the incursion of something too vast, too grotesque, too wrong.

"A surface...."

It slithered into view—a grotesque expanse of pallid, veined flesh, rippling like the skin of some ancient, rotting leviathan. Showcased physically, thick, semi-translucent membranes stretched taut over its shifting bulk, swelling and contracting in slow, nightmarish undulations.

It wasn't moving into the realm. It was simply… overlapping and pressing in without care.

Imagine an entity so massive that it could not truly enter this space—only press itself into its contours, like a thing too large for a container but forcing itself inside anyway.

And the sky—the concept of the sky itself—began to warp under its presence.

I knew what I was looking at, thanks to the heightened hatred and wrath that was overflowing through me by the harpoon that I clenched on my arm.

A Pallid Whale.

Bigger than any mortal sea could hold. Bigger than any sky could frame.

Bigger than this entire realm.

And yet, it kept pressing inward, its grotesque, membranous hide stretching across the entire abstract expanse, trying to force itself into a realm too small to contain it.

It failed.

The boundaries of this place resisted, shuddering against its presence, distorting and compressing under its weight like a dying lung.

And just as I thought the absurdity of its sheer scale would make direct confrontation impossible.

Something gaped.

A slow, horrible parting of flesh—not a mouth, but something that acted like one.

It was a slit, peeling itself open in the middle of its endless expanse of shifting membranes.

At first, I thought it was another wound. Another grotesque, veined orifice on its malformed body.

But then—

It expanded.

Not a mouth.

But something that resembled that of an eye—a colossal, unblinking eye, wider than the entire realm itself, peering downward without sound, without emotion—without reason.

It gazed at me.

Not just at my body. Not just in my presence.

It gazed into me.

Through my form. Through my mind. Through my soul.

I felt it probing—not searching, but studying.

It saw my vessel, my psyche, my divinity, the intricate weave of my existence stretched across layers of awareness.

And then—

It squinted.

A tiny, almost mocking expression for something of its scale.

As if it was smirking behind its enormity.

A subtle, knowing shift in its gaze, an unspoken acknowledgment of what it had seen inside me.

"The Pallid Whale…"

The Pallid Whale retracted.

Its grotesque flesh peeled back, receding from the sky, pulling itself out of the realm as suddenly as it had arrived.

But in its wake—

It left a hole.

A pitch-black void, a wound in space where its presence had failed to fully integrate.

And then—

Something fell from it.

A humanoid figure, descending slowly, its form wrapped in the same pallid, veined membranes as the Whale itself.

A fragment. A shard of an unwarranted calamity that may or may not exist in the Carcosa I was starting to get familiar with.

A piece of something much worse.

It landed without a sound, and the Pallid Mermaid scattered away, retreating to an entirely different time and space as if they were bereft in fear.

Then—the fragment moved.

Not hesitantly. Not cautiously.

Before it started to shape itself into that of a sapient being.

Its veiled head turned toward me.

And in that moment—I knew.

It acknowledged me as something it was meant to face for a reason that may be hollow yet needed to appease something greater than itself.

Slowly, it reached down—toward one of the countless spectral harpoons buried into the ground.

Its fingers curled around the weapon's shaft. And with a single, fluid motion, it tore the harpoon free.

As if it had always been its own weapon.

A deep, visceral sense of urgency surged through me.

I did not question the instinct.

A flick of my wrist, and a spectral harpoon rose from the ground, humming with unearthly force.

I tightened my grip. Two harpoons, ten fingers. The air crackled, thick with energy.

And then the entity struck.

It didn't hesitate. No warning, no flourish—just pure, predatory instinct. Its harpoon streaked forward, a white flash aimed straight for my chest.

I twisted, shifting my form as if slipping through water, the attack slicing past me by inches. A miss. But only just.

I retaliated.

My harpoon cut the air in a sharp arc, aimed at the creature's membranous chest. But it moved—not dodging, not retreating, but folding itself away from the strike, bending in ways that defied anatomy.

It moved like me.

A predator. A hunter unbound by the rules of motion.

The harpoons weren't just weapons. They were anchors—markers in space, defining the battlefield in ways only we understood.

I hurled a harpoon, not at where it was, but where it was going to be. A perfect prediction. A snare in motion.

The entity's head snapped toward the incoming weapon. It recognized the trap.

And countered.

Instead of dodging, it launched its own harpoon straight at mine. The two spectral weapons collided midair, detonating in a burst of force that rippled through the space between us.

I clicked my tongue. It had already adapted.

But I was faster, thanks to my Floating Through Life.

Another harpoon shot from the ground, summoned by sheer will. I caught it mid-motion, shifting my stance.

The entity did the same.

We moved—fluid yet clashing, a discordant rhythm of war. Harpoons slashed and curved through the air, thrown at impossible angles, bending moments and tearing through the fabric of space itself.

Every strike was a prediction. Every evasion is a countermeasure. Neither of us relented.

The battlefield blurred into a storm of spectral steel and motion, two forces locked in perfect, violent symmetry.

"You're relentless!"

A second harpoon rose from the ground—another whisper of wrath, another spear of bound hatred.

I grabbed it mid-motion. The entity did the same. We both moved in a dissonance flow yet clashing rhythm.

The battlefield became a blur of spectral steel and rippling motion, harpoons clashing and curving, thrown at impossible angles, redirecting momentum and cutting through the very logic of space itself.

Neither of us stopped. Neither of us slowed.

"Are these harpoons yours? They are certainly quite helpful, but definitely not in its current intention."

"Ka&#lagh, var@#%aghsa'isk!!"

"I have no idea what you're saying."

The world warped beneath our feet, shifting between incomprehensible landscapes with each clash of our weapons. One moment, we battled atop a sea turned sky, luminous fish swimming through the air like living constellations. The next, the ground cracked into an abyss of spiraling eyes, blinking in unison to the rhythm of our strikes.

Even in its miniature size, it seems like the realm did react and reform itself based on the event currently happening inside it.

And speaking of the event happening, things get crazier as the battle went on. Every thrust, every arc, every feint set a new law in place, a shifting battlefield that only we could navigate.

All of the harpoons it threw at me never missed its mark, but I abused my Floating Through Life a lot, that the so-called 'hit' would never reach its target, despite it destined to hit true on its destination.

"Get a load of this one!"

The next harpoon I threw did not obey any law of motion. It spiraled erratically, flickering in and out of existence as if rejecting the very idea of movement.

The entity saw it—recognized it—but its adaptation lagged behind.

A fraction of a second.

The harpoon wasn't my real attack—it was actually a diversion, a splintering of attention.

My true strike came from below, a jagged thrust aimed not at its body, but at the space it had yet to occupy.

For the first time—its form staggered.

The spear grazed its membranous chest, and for the first time, the entity bled.

Or perhaps it leaked.

The wound did not spill blood, but a conceptual essence—something that dripped from its form like unraveling strands of existence.

The moment the conceptual liquid touched the air, it distorted, splitting into an array of tiny, shrieking reflections of myself, each one caught in the act of dying.

It began corrupting the environment with the same disgusting membranes that covered its body.

"Aww, you soiled this beautiful realm…"

I wrenched my harpoon free, twisting as I did, my body flowing like a wraith, ready to blink in and out of existence and breaking as many universal laws as I possibly could.