282. Revolution
The Absolute Being looked at her with an expression of mild, detached boredom. “Why do you care so much, Joy Cha Kim? You are an Otherworlder. This is not your world.”
Ravenna felt as though the floor had vanished beneath her. She opened her mouth to argue, but the words died in her throat as he continued.
“These are not your people. This is not your family. You simply happen to occupy the flesh of a Solarius descendant, carrying a library of memories that do not belong to you.” He took a step closer, his gaze turning into a sharp, piercing glare. “Do you truly believe you belong here? Do you think these people would love you if they knew you were a ghost from another universe inhabiting their Princess's skin?”
He smirked, a human gesture that felt utterly monstrous on his face. “Do you not want to return to your own world, Joy? To the mother who finally smiled? To the father who sold everything to remember you?”
Ravenna’s composure shattered. She stumbled back, her voice a fragile stutter. “T-there is a way to go back? You’re lying.”
The Absolute Being chuckled, the sound echoing with genuine amusement. “If there is a way in, there is a way out. The laws of the universe are symmetrical, Otherworlder.”
He walked up to her, his presence suddenly overwhelming, filling the sanctuary with a cold pressure. “Your original body on Earth has already been reduced to ash; it is impossible to reinhabit a vessel that no longer exists. But the soul is flexible. You can take this body and I can help you bridge the gap. I can tell you the way back to Earth, to your parents, as a living daughter once more.”
He leaned in, his whisper cold against her ear. “All you have to do is turn your back on this dying world and let me finish my work.”
Silence descended upon the room for several agonizing seconds. The only sound was the low, sterile hum of the lights and fans, the rhythmic thud of Ravenna’s own heart. Then, unexpectedly, a sound broke the tension: a sharp, sudden bark of laughter.
Ravenna doubled over, clutching her stomach as her laughter grew into an outrageous, mocking roar.
The Absolute Being paused, his brow furrowing in a rare display of confusion. He tilted his head, his violet eyes scanning her for the chemical source of this irrational response. “What is so amusing, Otherworlder?”
“Oh... you really ought to learn more about the nuances of human conversation, Absolute Being,” Ravenna wheezed, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. She straightened up, her gaze locking onto his with a predatory sharpness. “You just said it yourself. You said, ‘I can tell you the way back to Earth.’”
She took a confident step toward him, a dangerous smirk playing on her lips. “Rather than saying you ‘will’ send me back, or that you are the only one who ‘can’ do it, you said you would ‘show’ me the way. You slipped up.”
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Her smirk widened. “That means the path exists. And not only does it exist, it means that it’s something I can find on my own, through my own strength and my own logic, without your ‘help.’ Isn’t that right?”
The Absolute Being’s expression returned to its blank, detached state. “You are making a grave mistake, Otherworlder. This world has nothing to do with you..”
“Oh, please,” Ravenna cut him off, her voice ringing with newfound authority. “If I hadn't been brought to this world, I would have died on a hospital bed back on Earth. My story would have ended in a drone of a vital monitor. But thanks to this world, I am alive, I am kicking, and I am a Princess who holds the fate of an empire.”
She began to pace around him, her daggers spinning idly in her hands. “And now you’re telling me there’s a way to go back’ because’ of this world’s magic and this Universal Origin? How do you suppose I’m going to turn my back on the very reality that saved me? I owe this world my life. I’m not about to let its ‘creator’ tear it down just because he’s bored with consciousness.”
With a sharp flick of her mind, she summoned the Reputation System.
[ Notification ]
Would you like to kick out the entity {Absolute Being} from “The Office”?
[Y/N]
“Is there anything else you’d like to say?” Ravenna asked, her finger hovering over the holographic ‘YES'. “Consider this our first and last formal conversation.”
“You might never see your parents again if you do this, Joy,” the Absolute Being warned, his voice regaining its chilling, resonant power. “The Universal Origin might be powerful, but it is nothing in the hands of the one who-.”
Ravenna’s smirk didn't waver. “Is that it? A threat is what you come up with?”
She tapped the [ YES ] button with a decisive click.
The Office began to shake violently once more, the white tiles cracking as the system reasserted its dominance over the intruder. The Absolute Being’s celebrity form began to dissolve into digital static, his violet eyes the last thing to fade.
“Just to be clear,” Ravenna called out into the collapsing light, her voice steady and proud. “I am part Joy, but the other half... the part that absolutely hates you? That part is Ravenna Solarius.”
As the Absolute Being vanished entirely, she finished her thought, her voice echoing through the void.
“I am not an Otherworlder, I live in this world And I’m going to protect it.”
The words seemed to finalize something within the Reputation System's core. The high-pitched white noise of "The Office" began to fade, replaced by a rhythmic, pulsing blue light from the interface.
[ Notification ]
Would you like to exit the origin domain ‘The Office’?
[Y/N]
Ravenna reached out and pressed [ YES ] with a hand that no longer trembled.
The white-tiled floor beneath her feet liquified into shadow. The fluorescent lights overhead stretched into long, shimmering streaks of sapphire before snapping shut. For a moment, the world went blank, not the hollow blackness of the void, but a warm, heavy darkness that smelled of lavender and expensive incense.
She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt like leaden weights. Her body felt impossibly heavy, as if she were being pressed into the earth by a crushing tide. Gradually, the sensation of the void was replaced by a familiar softness, the yielding luxury of silk sheets and a down-filled mattress of her bed.
Distant voices, muffled as if heard through deep water, slowly began to clear.
Ravenna’s vision flickered, the blurred shapes of her canopy bed and the ornate ceiling of her bedroom in Kim City finally coming into focus. The morning light was filtering through the heavy velvet curtains, casting a soft, golden glow over the room.
The chaos was immediate. Maids were scurrying across the rug, their faces tear-stained and frantic.
“Her Highness! Her Highness is awake!” one of the younger maids shrieked.