Chapter 5: Chapter 5: First Base

Chapter 5: First Base

The Cathedral of Light towered over the holy city of Veythral, the capital of the theocracy Ecclesia Regnum, its spires reaching into the clouds. Deep within its heart lay the Council Chamber, a hall where only the highest in the Ecclesia Regnum could gather.

At the center of the chamber sat a young woman in flowing white and gold robes. Her long silver hair shimmered faintly under the glow of sanctified flames. Her presence alone silenced the room.

Liora. The [Holy Saint]. One of the highest-leveled individuals alive with [Level: 532]. Chosen by the divine, bearer of miracles, and living symbol of the Church’s power.

Around her, thirteen cardinals stood in a half-circle. Their robes were heavy with golden trim, their faces lined with age and fanatic conviction.

“Princes of the Ecclesia Regnum,” Liora began, stepping down into their midst. Her voice carried like a bell through the chamber. “I have gathered you because I bring unsettling news.”

The cardinals leaned closer, their breaths held.

“Last night, I received a divination.” Liora’s hands trembled slightly as she clasped them before her. “It was blurry, but clear enough to understand. I was warned of a great disaster descending onto Pangrea.”

Worried murmurs filled the chamber.

“I saw glimpses of the future. The Goddess herself showed me what will happen if the faithful do not act.” Her voice cracked. “I saw a new empire rising in the ruins of the fallen empire of Xares. I saw burning cities. Beastkin invading human lands. Sacrifices. Endless war.”

Tears streamed freely down her pale face. “I saw children burned alive. And I saw demons wandering upon our holy lands.”

Gasps filled the chamber. Several of the old men clutched at their rosaries, whispering prayers under their breath.

“Something happened yesterday,” Liora continued, bracing herself as her mantle trembled with the weight of her words. “After four hundred years, the Gates of Hell have opened again. A cataclysm-level being has stepped foot into our world.”

For a heartbeat, silence. Then the chamber erupted.

“A calamity—!”

“Impossible!”

“Level seven hundred at least—!”

“The world itself will burn—!”

An uproar broke out, voices shouting over each other, faces pale with fear and blazing with fanatic zeal. A divination from the Goddess was rare, but one of this scale?

Liora closed her eyes against the din. Her vision still burned in her mind. The fire, the screams, the shadow of a figure stepping through flames.

And she knew; the disaster was already here, they had to move.

☽⛧☾

Lily looked down at the pile of cultists in front of her. Every single one of them was unconscious.

Seriously?

The [Slight-Aura-of-Despair] was supposed to be a low-level passive. Barely stronger than a mood effect. She’d only activated it to give her speech a little extra punch. Instead, they’d all screamed, collapsed, and passed out like someone had unplugged their brains.

Of course, she’d deactivated it the moment they started wailing, but by then, too late.

She scratched her cheek, staring at the mess. “Well… serves you right for kidnapping me from Earth.”

But now what?

The feast was a joke. Rotten fruit, dry meat, cheese hard as a rock. It was not appealing. The house wasn’t any better—blood on the floor, broken furniture, the lingering presence of whoever had lived here before. The cult might not care, but even back in Xantia Lily hadn’t played like that. She wasn’t the kind to kill random NPCs just to squat in their homes. That was cheap RP.

She sighed and wandered over to Sevrin, and poked him with the toe of her boot.

“…Hello?”

No response. His eyes were rolled back, blank white. Completely out.

She crouched a little lower. At least they were breathing. Somehow that was more reassuring than she wanted to admit.

“Fine. Nap time for you idiots.”

Straightening, she raised a hand and cast [Telekinesis]. One by one, the six cultists lifted off the ground, hanging limply in the air like balloons. They floated behind her in a neat little row, bobbing slightly whenever she shifted her focus.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Again, she realized, that she didn’t even need to think about it—the spellwork just happened. In one way, it was reassuring. She wasn’t defenseless in this world. She didn’t need to start from scratch or figure out how magic worked like some noob in a tutorial zone. Everything was just… there; ready.

On the other hand, it creeped her out.

She had also realized something else. Her thoughts. The way she spoke. They were sharper, snarkier, more like Lilithia Nocturne—the persona she had played in Xantia for years—than Lily Carter, the tired student and cashier from Earth.

Was it really just roleplay bleeding through? Or was her new body nudging her into becoming that character?

She tightened her grip on the floating spell.

I really hope this body isn’t influencing me too much.

With her new “followers” in tow, Lily strode through the mansion.

Past the table piled with spoiled food. Past the stairs with bloodstains, they hadn’t bothered to clean. And past the echoing halls that felt more like a crypt than a home. Until she reached the entrance.

The door creaked open. Cool night air brushed her face, and darkness stretched ahead. Good. Less chance of villagers freaking out at the sight of a horned woman marching down the road with a parade of unconscious cultists floating behind her.

The house sat tucked away in the woods, far from the main road. Only a narrow dirt path cut through the trees, winding toward something larger in the distance.

Lily exhaled. “Great what a day. I got killed, then resurrected, and now babysitting six wannabe edgelords. What the hell am I even doing…”

And with that, she stepped outside, cultists drifting after her into the night.

At first, Lily had no idea what to do next. Then she did what she always did when she was idle in Xantia and said; “Status.” The word slipped out almost automatically. More habit than intention, like that thing where you mindlessly scroll through social media, close it, and then reopen it five seconds later for no reason.

And sure enough, the glowing window appeared in front of her again, waiting for her like a loyal pet. Tabs lined up exactly the way she remembered them from Xantia. Guild. Friends list. Messaging.

But every time she tried to click them open, they were still greyed out, like in her first attempt earlier to open them.

“Of course,” she muttered, sighing.

She tried the map interface. Also locked.

After a bit more idle testing, the pattern was clear: only Status, Skills, and Inventory were fully functional. Nothing else. Well… except she did find a few subsystems tucked into her status page. Housing. Pets. Alchemy. Crafting.

But every home she had owned in Xantia was missing. The housing list sat empty. The pet tab, blank. Everything else just mocked her.

Lily groaned, letting her head roll back. Enough fiddling. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen a regal demoness poking at invisible windows in the night sky while six unconscious cultists floated behind her like balloons. Probably hilarious.

“Great. Just great.”

Still… the housing tab had given her an idea. In Xantia, the first thing you did when entering the world was simple: find a place to call home. Somewhere to store things, sleep (log out), and plan. That part hadn’t changed.

Well, anything would be better than that blood-stained murder house she’d just walked out of.

Decision made, she raised her hand. “[Fly].”

Her body lifted smoothly into the air, hair swaying in the cool night wind. The cultists dangled after her in a line, still tethered by [Telekinesis], bumping and swaying like the saddest parade imaginable.

Once she had risen above the treeline, she scanned her surroundings.

In one direction, a scatter of lights. A small village glowing faintly in the dark. In the other, only endless trees, the forest stretching wider the higher she looked.

So, they were on a border. Civilization in one direction. Wilds in the other.

Lily chewed her lip, thinking. Village? Or forest? Her eyes flicked back to the floating baggage trailing her. Yeah. Showing up at a random village with this in tow was not the best idea.

“Alright, losers. Into the woods we go,” she muttered, angling herself to the woods.

After a while, Lily spotted a clearing below. A small lake shimmered in the moonlight, its surface catching the sky like polished glass. Red and blue flowers grew along the banks, glowing faintly, their light washing the clearing in an eerie, ghostly beauty.

She descended slowly, touching down on soft grass at the lake’s edge.

For a moment she just stood there, staring. The reflection of the moon on the water, the pale shimmer of the flowers, the quiet whisper of the trees—it was breathtaking. And it hit her again, sharp and cold.

This was real.

This wasn’t VR. This wasn’t Earth. She wasn’t going to wake up behind the counter at 7-Eleven. This was her new reality.

She let out a long sigh. “…Guess this’ll do.”

Looking around, she judged the distance. She had flown at least fifty miles. No villages, no cities, not a single light in any direction. It was remote, and hopefully safe here.

She raised her hand, scrolling through the endless list of skills hovering in front of her. She had a lot. Every spell she’d learned, every skill she’d unlocked. The question was—did they all work here?

Her eyes landed on the one she was looking for.

[Structure Summon] → [Build: Home]

It was a basic housing skill in Xantia. Useless inside towns or cities, but out in the wilderness you could throw down a personal base. The fact it was listed here at all gave her hope.

“Alright,” she muttered, clapping her hands together. “Let’s see if this works. Worst case, I’ll make the cultists chop some trees and build a log shack.”

She closed her eyes, focusing.

The moment she activated it, she felt it. A drain deep inside her chest. Mana rushing out of her body like a tide, pulling and pulling until her breath caught. It was nothing like when she used skills before. Casting [Telekinesis] or [Fly] had felt almost natural, like flexing a muscle. But this—this was heavy. Demanding. Like the world itself was tugging something out of her. Her knees bent slightly under the weight of it, and for a second, she wondered if she might actually black out.

A glowing magic circle flared to life across the clearing. It burned brighter and brighter until the ground itself trembled.

And then; black stone was rising up from nothing. Arches, spires, walls. The structure grew upward and outward in impossible speed, shaping itself into sharp lines and Gothic grandeur.

Lily’s eyes widened, her heart hammering.

As the glow faded, a mansion stood before her. It was built in neo-Gothic style, simple and beautiful. And it was her house. Her first house. The one she had built back when she’d saved enough gold to buy land in Xantia. She remembered every detail of it, because she had designed it herself.

She dropped the cultists unceremoniously to the ground and ran forward. Her boots clicked against the black stone steps. She pushed the heavy doors open.

Inside, the mansion was quiet, and every room was empty.

“Right. Structure summon,” she said, almost laughing. “Of course, it doesn’t come furnished.”

But she already knew what to do. Because she remembered what she had shoved into her inventory before logging out of Xantia. All the furniture, the rugs, the decorations she had bought for her new mansion.

Lily’s lips tugged into a grin.

“Guess it’s time to decorate.”