"Sir Windsor, Sir Windsor! Due to extensive inbreeding, many prominent members of parliament and concerned citizens have compared your family to the modern-day Habsburgs. Could you respond to these claims and shed some light on the situation?" A middle-aged woman wearing a navy blue cashmere suit held up a branded microphone towards the back of a tall man.

The man paused his hurried steps and turned towards the reporter; his elongated jaw, sunken eyes and crooked nose gave him a frightening appearance, yet the woman, determined for a response, pressed on. "Rumours are circulating that the heir to the Windsor conglomerate is suffering from severe birth defects and has been 'recovering' from his illness since he was born, that was over fourteen years ago! The public demands an official response!"

Damien moved his head with great effort across the pillow and focused his attention on the television at the foot of his bed; his Father paused for a moment, formulating the perfect response.

Damien held his breath in anticipation; his family prefered to pretend he didn't exist, a stain on their record.

His Father tapped on his smartwatch, avoiding eye contact with the eager reporter, "I have no such son; Kieran Windsor shall be inheriting the conglomerate-"

"Television off." The screen turned black, and silence filled the room. Damien let out a sigh, a guilty and hurt feeling swimming around his chest as he looked around the hospital room, eyeing his VR headset resting on a wooden table. His family refused to confirm his existence publicly, but they didn't mistreat him.

As descendants of the British Royal Family, even as a disgraced heir, such as Damien, lived-in comfort, well as comfortable as a boy with an uncountable number of genetic mutations and terminal illnesses could be. Without constant care and cutting edge medical technology, he would have died during his early years; many doctors considered him a medical miracle to live till fourteen years of age.

Damien looked at his bandaged body with pale skin, stick-figure limbs, and rotting black splodges. He certainly didn't feel like a medical miracle. Gathering some oxygen in his lungs, "Butler." his voice croaked due to his thin windpipe.

The heavy wooden door to the pristine white room quickly opened, and a middle-aged man with slick black hair walked in with measured steps, "Young Master?"

"Hi Freddie," Damien smiled slightly at the butler; Freddie was his favourite as he was also an avid player of Throne of Awakening, and they often discussed strategies for clearing the game.

Freddie returned the smile and gestured towards the aluminium and glass helmet resting on the nightstand, "I believe Young Master is yet to clear the game with Damien Nightshade?"

Damien rolled his eyes, "Freddie, how did you even clear the game with him? I've been at it for over a week now..."

Freddie nodded in understanding, "Yes, I have no idea what the developers were thinking. It took me over twenty tries before I got a perfect run. Although I did spend many hours watching guides and cheated a little."

Damien lightly shook his head, "Watching a guide is already cheating, yet you dared to cheat even more? Glitch abusing? Item spawning?"

Freddie turned his head and looked out the room's window; soft clouds lazily moved across the summer sky without a care in the world. Then, returning his attention to the sickly Damien, he awkwardly coughed, "Ahem... enough about me. Do you plan to go for another round today?"

"I will try as many times as it takes! Even if it kills me..." Damien resolutely proclaimed as Freddie carefully lowered the daft punk looking helmet onto his young master's head.

***

That's strange.

A wave of nausea accompanied by the monster of all headaches assaulted him. His throat felt parched as if he was a lost man in an endless desert. He struggled to string coherent lines of thought as his mind seemed chaotic; memories crashed and merged, some he recognised, others foreign.

Vivid images of endless caves filled with pale-faced humanoids committing the most heinous acts consumed his mind and furthered his relentless nausea.

Damien opened his eyes and squinted while observing his surroundings. The bed was massive, easily three persons wide. The cushions were rather stiff, and the hefty duvet weighed down his body. Four posts held up a grand canopy overhead, giving Damien a sense of majesty.

Streaks of sunlight slipped through half-drawn curtains and dimly illuminated the room's pale green walls. The room gave Damien a noble vibe from the middle ages but could also pass for his grandmother's bedroom, although it's worth noting that his grandmother did live in a castle.

Despite its grand appearance, the room was surprisingly empty, with only a mahogany writing desk in the far corner near the window with a stack of crudely made paper and a golden pocket watch upon its surface.

Damien froze as panic finally set it.

His senses and mind cleared as he frantically looked around; he recognised this room and the pocket watch. A terrible thought crossed his mind as he looked at his arms.

Muscular, nothing like his own twig-like arms. Briefly removing the white gloves, he observed his hands that ended with black nails that shone in the sunlight, showing their dangerously sharp edges.

"Damien Nightshade, " he muttered under his breath as he inspected his new body. His face... he needed to see his face to confirm his suspicions. His gaze landed on the gold plated pocket watch, silently resting on the writing desk.

Due to the habit of being bed-bound, the idea of standing up and walking over to the desk eluded him, and he instead glared intensely at the pocket watch. A warm feeling ran through his body towards his mind, and then it moved.

The pocket watch wobbled slightly from side to side.

Damien felt a connection with the pocket watch as if he wielded an invisible hand and could pick it up. His headache worsened, and his dry throat caused him to swallow his saliva, but he ignored his body's protests. He was determined.

It wobbled across the table until it reached the edge; with a final push, it tumbled off the side and paused mid-air.

Damien grit his teeth as he suspends the pocket watch in the air with his mind. Something impossible on Earth, further confirming Damien's suspicions.

The pocket watch slowly floated through the air, Damien felt awful with sweat accumulating on his forehead, but his objective had been complete.

Damien Nightshade's signature pocket watch lay in his foreign hand; the cold, smooth surface of the metal and sensory information were too realistic to replicate in VR. Not to mention the lack of an interface such as health bars, inventory slots or even the map that usually sat in the top right of his vision.

Snapping open the pocket watch with a click, he looked at the small mirror nestled inside the lid.

A devilishly handsome face stared back, with short white hair lightly falling over his fierce red eyes. Defined jawline and pale white skin, he looked like a Noble Vampire. Far too realistic for VR graphics, he could even control every joint in his face with ease, something not possible with current VR technology.

While pulling various faces, he inspected every detail with intense scrutiny and yelped as golden words suddenly appeared on the mirror's surface.

[Damien Nightshade]

[Noble Vampire]

Schools Of Magic:

[Psychic Magic (D)]

Psychokinesis [D]

Pyrokinesis [E]

[Blood Magic (F)]

=Null Spells=

Mana Control [F]

Traits:

[Germaphobe] Unable to learn melee skills / 100% Increased control over ranged spells.

[Control Freak] Increased affinity to control skills by 10%

[Lazy] Increased mana regeneration while resting by 20% / Increased exp to learn new spells by 10%

[Concentration] Increased affinity with mental spells by 5%

[Noble Aura] Intimidation increased.

Damien read and read again, his heart rate threatening to go out of control from anxiety and excitement. He had transmigrated into his favourite game, one he knew everything about with five years of experience.

But his mood quickly dampened as the implications of his situation set in. He was no longer on Earth, but instead, in a world set in the middle ages where monsters and magic ruled supreme, and everyone else was mere food.

Damien Nightshade was a notoriously difficult character to complete the storyline with due to his pitifully weak start and death flags hiding around every corner.

Looking back at the majestically crafted pocket watch, Damien observed the lower half that displayed the date and time in an analogue fashion.

9:10 am January 1st, 1520

'From what I remember, the game's official storyline begins in 1521, a year from now.'

The bedrooms door creaked open, and a fully naked woman with raven black hair and ocean blue eyes wandered in. When their gazes met, her eyes widened in surprise like a cat caught stealing food, "Master, you have been sleeping for days!"

She quickly walked over, leaving a trail of water droplets on the stone floor. She lay beside Damien and put her raven black hair behind her ear, exposing her slender pale neck, "You must be thirsty... please drink."

Damien's thirst transitioned into hunger as he could smell the blood pumping below the surface of her delicate skin.

A primal urge to devour the weak surged through his mind as his fangs elongated and cut his bottom lip. The woman's eyes trembled slightly, but she stayed put, with her neck exposed.

Without even thinking, Damien's jaw unhinged, and his body lunged forward; his fangs skillfully pierced her vein, and sweet blood began pumping through his teeth and into his mouth.

Like a dehydrated fool who discovered an oasis of spring water in the middle of the Sahara desert, Damien gulped down the delicious nectar of life.

The woman tapped on his shoulder a few times and struggled from his grasp but failed, eventually falling limp in Damien's embrace; the sudden weight pressing against him broke his trance.

'WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING?' He had never even felt the touch of another woman's neck, let alone bit into it!

Damien quickly brought his head away from the woman, and he felt his fangs retract. Damien then easily pushed the woman off himself, too easily. A sense of euphoria overtook him as he flexed his muscles; strength had always been his weak point. He carefully laid her onto the bed beside him with his newfound strength.

Two small holes oozed blood, dyeing the white sheets below. Damien subconsciously swallowed his saliva. He felt disgusted as if he had just bitten into a pig.

She was deathly pale and breathing shallowly but seemed alive, just passed out. Despite the evidence that the woman had just showered, he still felt disgusted from touching her, so he pulled out a white handkerchief and gracefully dusted off his shoulder where she had been leaning moments earlier.

With the thirst, hunger and headache gone, a sense of fatigue overtook his body, was his body tired or was his [Lazy] trait acting up? Damien laid back down and cursed in his mind;

'In a game where the player can pick any character, from the Emperor of Oshal to a street rat of Kassinki, I just had to transmigrate into the most hated existence, a pitiful and worthless side villain...

Damien Nightshade.'