In summary, this was clearly not Earth, and while Toru was in Nacht’s body, this didn’t appear to be RWO either.
“Did I seriously just get isekaied?” he asked with a sigh. “There’s no sign of the god or whatever that did this... Nobody’s explained anything... I have no idea what I’m supposed to do...”
Toru sniffled. The smell of wet earth carried by the cold night wind filled his nostrils. It was far too realistic to be a dream. This was real. Toru had never believed in any kind of god, but he really had been blessed, hadn’t he? He’d thought he was dead only to find himself in another world. What kind of person wouldn’t be overjoyed by that? Here was the excitement of a virtual world! The challenge of the unknown! He had almost given up on that...
There was a cry of joy from his heart. It had been drowned out until now by the confusion and disorientation, but now it was growing louder.
Toru’s life in Japan hadn’t been bad. It was an unremarkable, peaceful life without any great difficulties. But he was bored and disengaged, and nothing seemed to help. He woke up in the mornings, went to school, sat at his desk, worked his part-time job, and spent every second he could playing video games. His own life didn’t feel precious or important in the slightest.
That was probably why his body had acted the way it did during the accident. In his mind, it was better for someone else to survive than for him to ignore what was happening and keep living his easy life of retreating into video games. This way, he would have been useful to at least one person.
Nacht felt a great sense of elation welling up deep in her chest, threatening to burst out of her mouth in a cascade. Her mouth turned up in a twisted smile, but on Nacht’s bespoke form, paid for in extravagant sums through the game’s real-money store, it looked alluring and seductive.
“Hah...” she laughed. Then, turning her head skyward, she laughed some more. It was a truly diabolical laugh. “Aaah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaa!” Nacht clenched her fist so tightly that it hurt. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she thought she could feel the wind welling up around her, the ground rumbling beneath her feet.
“This time...” she said, “This time, I’m going to live the way I want to!”
She stared up at the sky, cursing her former self for his uselessness. For running away from everything. Nacht Schatten would not repeat those mistakes.
Everyone had known Toru was a guy since back when he was playing his first character; it wasn’t as if he’d been pretending to be a girl on the internet. RWO didn’t restrict players’ gender at character creation. There was nothing to stop him from having his main character be a boy and his side character be a girl.
RWO placed a lot of stock in realism, but that was exactly why he’d put in as much effort as he did. He wanted to be convincing. He’d used a voice changer while voice chatting with his friends during fights against raid bosses or other serious challenges when there wasn’t enough time to type out a message. It was based on the Vocaloid Iotonore and helped him play the part of a girl. Thinking about it that way, the only thing separating him from the guys pretending to be girls online was that he was open about his identity.
Toru had a bit of an obsessive personality, leading him to get really into role-playing. His friends were tolerant of that, and had even started calling him Princess. But he’d also faced an endless slew of perverts hitting on him, openly drooling over the “femboy.” They apparently didn’t mind either, albeit for different reasons.
It occurred to Toru that he should properly inspect the body he’d been reborn in. He reached toward himself with trembling hands and first touched Nacht’s hair. It was long and black, softer than silk, and pleasantly fragrant. For a moment, he lost himself in stroking it.
Then he inspected her face. It was oval-shaped, which he had always said was ideal for a girl. She had golden rings in her eyes, and small red scales beneath them, shining like jewels. He could hardly believe that it was his own face he was touching.
And then his hands drifted lower. “I made the chest pretty small...” he said. “But ooh! It’s kind of soft! Wait! What am I—?!” Seized by a sudden base desire, he had inadvertently begun groping his own breasts! Panicked, he pulled his hands away.
“N-No,” he told himself. “There’s nothing wrong with it.” He needed to inspect them! There was nothing to feel guilty about! He had no reason at all to be ashamed of his own body!
“Wait.” Suddenly, there was a sinking feeling in his gut. “This is a girl’s body...”
Toru was right, and it turned him deathly pale. “It’s gone! It’s not there! But I never even got to use it!” Then he sighed. “Well, Nacht is a girl. It only makes sense.” After all, this was more than just an isekai story. Yes, it was a legendary genderbent isekai, spoken of only in legend!
Suddenly, Toru’s awareness of Nacht’s body’s femininity hit him like a truck. He could feel the wind blowing between her bare legs from under the skirt of her dress. He felt strong and full of energy, but somehow, in a woman’s body, he couldn’t seem to relax.
“Well,” he said, “no use crying over spilled milk. I need to figure out what I’m going to do next!” He needed to learn what this body of hers could do or else he’d never survive on his own in the forest.
Nacht was almost max level and had a great number of ability points invested in agility. Running away was the one thing she could beat almost anyone at. Toru shook off the dread pressing down on his chest, put his loneliness aside, and opened his mouth. “All right. Let’s start with the physical.”
With her evasive prowess, Nacht was probably one of the nimblest characters in the entire player base. Of course, with her completely neglected defense, taking damage would be sure to hurt. Toru wanted to avoid getting hit whenever possible, and to do that, he would need a thorough understanding of his new body’s speed.
Toru sprinted forward as fast as he could. It only lasted a moment, though, before he came to a realization.
“Huh—?!” he began, but his voice was drowned out by the horrible boom of the sound barrier being broken. Powerful shock waves spread as he ran, felling the surrounding trees, and the ground he had kicked off burst apart like it had been struck by a meteor, leaving behind a giant crater. Of course, he’d had no time to notice any of that.
Stop! he thought. Stoooop!
His body seemed to be moving on its own, speeding up against his will. When he reached the lake, he found himself running on top of the water, but still he couldn’t stop. Not until he collided with the face of a cliff.
“Owwwwwwww...”
He was stuck dangling upside down from a hole he had punched in the rock. Fortunately, the Night’s Embrace dress Nacht had been wearing sufficed to hide her shame.
The test had gone terribly wrong. Toru tried with all his might to get to his feet, causing Nacht’s body to leap high into the air and perform a single flip before landing back on the ground. It was a superhuman leap—far beyond anything Toru had ever been able to do in the game—but somehow, he’d known he could do it.
“What...?” he said. His mouth hung open in astonishment at the impossible feats he was performing. “What is this? Am I a monster? Is this even my body?”
He had only meant to do a simple dash, yet the damage he had wrought was nothing short of cataclysmic. He looked far into the distance, toward the crater that marked his starting line. The area around it had been completely ruined. Shock waves had dug out the earth, creating deep grooves where the ground had folded in on itself. Not even the lake had been spared, its waters raging.
Toru gazed out at the devastation, indescribably thankful to Night’s Embrace for shielding him from the brunt of the damage. Then he remembered something.
“Oh, yeah! Items!” Toru had a truly incredible number of items in storage. He had consumables of all sorts at maximum stock, a collection of useless items, and the tools and equipment he and his friends used. Many within that treasure trove were Legendary and Ancient artifacts.
Even more important, however, was his cross-character storage. That was where he kept the items he’d bought from the real-money store. Nacht’s weapons and armor were in there, as well as two of her guild’s Ultimate-tier items, of which they had only six. It was only through the cooperation of all of Nacht’s friends that they’d been won.
“Open storage list,” Toru instructed. All of his previous voice commands had failed, though, so he was pretty sure nothing was going to happen. “Nothing, hu— What?!” His outstretched hand plunged into a vortex that seemed to lead to some kind of pocket dimension. In his mind, he could see countless items. He was confused at first, but he poked around until he figured out how to select a potion and remove it from storage.
Placing the red liquid-filled bottle in the palm of his hand, he unconsciously touched his other hand to his chest in relief. “That’s something...” he said. “I still have my personal storage.” At the very least, there would be no need to worry about food. There was a veritable mountain of provisions stashed away in there.
“Wait.” he said. “Do I even need to eat? Demiwyrms are supposed to be half-dragon, right?”