I Possessed The Worst Character In The Hellish Game

*Shhhhh—!*

The cold water streamed from the showerhead in a steady rush as it filled the bathroom with the soft hiss.

Mikael stood beneath it with eyes closed as he let the chill seep into his tired body.

Rivulets of cold water traced the sharp lines of his face and dripped from his jaws as he simply stood there in silence.

When he had finally emerged from the washroom back at the Silver Rabbit Inn, Jeanne had taken one look at him and nearly dragged him to the nearest healer by the collar.

He’d really tried to pull himself together before stepping out.

But some things weren’t so easy to hide--

The pallor of his skin, the dark smudges carved beneath his red-rimmed eyes, the way his hands still trembled faintly no matter how hard he tried to steady them.

Jeanne had seen it all in an instant as her face went from relief to alarm.

And before he could get a word out, she was already fussing.

"You look sick, Mikael. We’re going to the healer right now."

Then, it had taken him several minutes of patient reassurance to talk her down.

He told her that it was just the nerves catching up with him—the essence pressure from Edmund Varn, the stress of the interrogation, everything catching up to him at once.

He had just needed a bath and a hot meal to fix it.

She didn’t sound entirely convinced, but she let it go.

After that, they’d taken the carriage Jeanne had arrived in and booked two adjoining rooms at another inn deeper in Thornhaven city to get some rest before the evening Royal Banquet.

"Fuu...."

He let out a long breath, watching it form a mist in the cool air.

The chill seeped into his tired muscles, pulling his scattered thoughts back into something resembling order.

His mind had settled enough now to think more clearly.

He turned his attention to the thing that had been gnawing at him since the incident in the washroom.

That feeling of triumph.

When he had used the essence bullet spell on the carriage driver Thomas in the forest and watched the light leave the driver’s one remaining eye.

He hadn’t felt that same thrill that time.

And he was certain of it.

In that moment, there had been nothing but guilt--a sick, heavy weight in his heart that refused to go away.

There was only horror for what he had done.

But now, when the memory surfaced, it brought something else with it.

That faint curl at the corner of his lips and a warm pulse of triumph.

It made absolutely no sense.

The act hadn’t changed, only the remembering of it-- Which meant something in him had changed.

Something had happened after he came back from Liren’s trial.

He had spent three years in it.

Three years locked inside her memories, trapped in the labyrinth of her past.

He had felt everything she felt--her grief, her rage, the endless, aching solitude of a girl abandoned by everyone she loved.

He had stood at the edge of her madness and somehow refused to fall, though even now he wasn’t entirely sure how.

Drowning in someone else’s suffering.

Three years of holding onto his own sanity by just a hair’s breadth.

He didn’t for a single moment think that this kind of ordeal would leave a person unchanged.

Maybe the trial had cracked something open inside him, some wall that kept his own darkness at bay.

And in this world, where Awakeners were already more susceptible to madness, that crack might be all it took.

He’d been exposed to something that should have broken him, and maybe, in a way he hadn’t noticed until now, it had.

He shifted his weight, letting the water hammer against his shoulder blades, and considered another possibility.

What if it wasn’t just the trial?

What if it was the original Mikael personality bleeding into him?

He had perhaps naively assumed that the original Mikael’s consciousness was gone when his own soul was dragged into this body.

But what if there were still remnants of his personality?

Remnants that were slipped deep into the recesses of his mind and were slowly being overtaken by his own personality.

The original Mikael had grown up bitter and powerless, watching others advance while he could barely light a candle.

Who knew what resentments had festered in that boy over the years?

What if the joy he’d felt... that thrill at killing, at winning.... belonged not to him, but to the remnants of a boy who had spent his whole life losing?

That was also why he was not actively searching through the fragmented memories he had inherited from the original Mikael, unless it was necessary.

He shook his head as water sprayed from the ends of his hair.

Then there was the third possibility that probably made a lot of sense.

Contracting with the Red spirits.

It wasn’t even supposed to be possible.

Red Spirits were the twisted remnants of human souls that had refused to move on to the afterlife after all.

They were created through extreme trauma or a final, unfulfilled wish that had soured over time into a deep, desperate obsession.

Because they were born from such intense suffering, they were characterized by unstable, bent minds and were often described as being "half crazy."

In the game, contracting with a Red Spirit was never an option.

It wasn’t a hidden path or a secret mechanic.

Whenever the Red Spirit was rolled during a spirit contract ritual attempt, the outcome was always the same--

It was either death or possession.

And possession meant you had to delete your character and start anew.

And yet.

Mikael had somehow managed to do it.

He had done something that was considered impossible in the Eclipsed Realm.

And he had done it without having the faintest clue what the consequences might be.

What if this was the price?

What if the cost of binding himself to a Red Spirit was exactly what the lore had always hinted at—the madness, the instability.

He also knew that power never came without a price.

But he had been too desperate to care that time.

Sophia herself had admitted she knew nothing about spirit contracts.

That was also likely why she hadn’t warned him of any side effects, because she genuinely didn’t know there were any to warn about.

The Archbishop of the Order of the Veil, a Tier 9 Monarch, and even she was in the dark.

That left Mikael navigating uncharted territory alone.

Which only brought him back to the larger, more troubling question.

How had he done it?

The trial.

Those three years inside Liren’s memories, the test that had pushed him to the edge of his sanity.... that had never been part of the game.

Trials weren’t a mechanic in-game, nor could players convince a red spirit to form a contract with them.

So how exactly--

{Mikael.}

Liren’s mental voice cut through his train of thoughts from his essence core.

{I.... I think it might be because of me.... The madness.}

She couldn’t hear his thoughts, but she had likely also reached the same conclusion as him.

{Your shift in personality. The... the joy you felt. The thrill. Maybe it was because you contracted with a Red Spirit like me and not a Blue Spirit.... I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen. I didn’t mean to hurt you.}

Mikael opened his eyes as cool water dropped from his eyelashes.

"Liren." He said in a firm voice. "It’s not your fault."

{But—}

"Contracting with you was my decision. You didn’t force me. You didn’t trick me. I knew the risks.... maybe not all of them, but I knew forming a bond with a Red Spirit was dangerous."

He paused.

"But I don’t regret it. You gave me hope, a way to fight back, a way to survive in this world from this crippling curse. Whatever side effects come with that, I’ll deal with them. I’m not going to blame you for something that was never your fault."

"On the plus side, I would have never gotten this unique class if I had not formed a contract with you."

{....}

"And besides, it’s not certain that the bond is the cause. I’ve been thinking about other possibilities too. The trial.... the three years I spent in your memories--that could have affected me just as much. Prolonged exposure to intense trauma can change a person’s psychology. I was never the same after my little sister died back in my old world. Three years of your memories on top of that? It would be strange if it hadn’t changed me."

He had already told Liren the truth about his transmigration.

That he was a stranger wearing Mikael Morwell’s face, a soul pulled from another world and dropped into a life that didn’t belong to him.

She had listened to him without judgment in her own quiet way.

But he hadn’t told her everything yet.

The part about this world being based on a game he used to play, and the part about wanting to find a way back to his own world — that he had kept to himself.

It wasn’t the right time yet.

Some confessions were easier to postpone than to face.

He pushed the thought aside as he let his voice turn more serious.

"And then there’s the Red Eye."

{The entity in the Spirit World you told me about?}

"Yes.... That massive red eye that tried to erase me. I still don’t know what it was or why it attacked me. But what if it left something behind? Some kind of corruption. Some kind of madness."

He had never heard or seen such an entity in Eclipsed Realm before.

But still, an entity capable of erasing with just a mere gaze?

Was it Tier 9 or Tier 10?

Or something that defied the game’s classification entirely?

{That’s... possible.... The Spirit World is full of dangers that even I don’t know much about. There are things in the deeper places of the spirit world... that even high-tier Spirits fear.}

"Exactly. So before we blame your influence, we need to consider all the variables. The trial, the original Mikael’s residual personality, the bond, the red eye..... any of them could be the cause. Or it could be a combination of several. We just don’t know yet."

.

.

.

Silence settled for a moment, filled only by the steady hiss of the shower.

Suddenly, an abrupt thought occurred to him that made his eyes widen, and his hands suddenly moved to cover his crotch.

"Wait a minute, Liren."

{What?}

"You’re... you’re in my core right now."

{Yes}

"And from inside my core, you can... see things? Outside things?"

{Yes}

"...."

{I can see everything as clearly as if I were standing beside you.}

"Everything?"

{Everything}

He pinched the bridge of his nose as a weary resignation settled over him.

"Right. Of course you can. That’s... that’s something we should probably have discussed earlier."

{Why?}

"What do you mean, why? I’m bathing, Liren. This is generally considered a private activity."

{Your body isn’t unpleasant to look at. I like it.}

She said it with such genuine, uncomplicated sincerity that Mikael found himself momentarily derailed.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Of all the responses he’d anticipated, that hadn’t been one of them.

"That’s not the point."

{But you already saw mine.... and you also touched it.}

"...."

"That was.... that was completely different. That was a medical situation. Your body was burned. I had to apply the medicine to your wounds. I didn’t have a choice."

{Still....} Liren said, and now he was almost certain he could detect a hint of amusement in her voice. {...that doesn’t change the fact that you saw my body. I’m simply returning the observation. It seems fair}

"I don’t think reciprocity applies to bathing."

{Why not?}

"Because there are social conventions! Cultural norms, Privacy."

{I don’t understand these conventions.}

"No, I’m getting that impression."

{....}

"...."

{Would you like me to close my eyes?}

"Yes. That would be ideal."

{And sleep?}

"Even better."

{Very well. I will close my eyes and rest. You can finish your bath in peace.}

Mikael didn’t move, his hands still in place.

"You’ve actually closed them?"

{Yes.}

He hesitated a moment longer, then slowly, cautiously, moved his hands away and resumed washing.

There was only silence for some time.

{Mikael?}

He stopped mid-motion.

"Yeah?"

{You have a small mole on your left—}

"Liren."

*****