The frail figure of Emilia Lyon lay on the soft hospital bed, hugging her comfy, long silver hair, feeling each passing heartbeat weaker than the last. Her sad, lonely crimson eyes wandered around the empty room, devoid of any other signs of life. Complex machinery lined the dimly lit walls, designed to keep her dying heart alive.

Her mother died when she was two from an assassination attempt on her father. Her father, John Lyon, was the CEO of Lyon corp - one of the largest weapon and armor manufacturer in Liona. To her though, he can hardly be called a father. Of the sixteen short years of her life, the number of times she got to see his face can be counted on one hand, the only people that she really had contact with were her personal helpers, who were rotated every few months.

She had always wondered why her sickness was not being cured, considering her father’s powerful position. Until she had overheard a conversation from the maids, that the Lyon corp’s finances had been in the red ever since he had to perform the summon hero procedure twice, and that her father is sacrificing her treatment to help the company develops the technology to achieve his goal, he had even invested heavily into his other genetically modified children - her younger siblings.

They too had never visited her once, it seemed the fact that she was still alive was being kept as a secret by her father. For all her life, she had not understood why he did those things, What have I done to deserve this? , she often asked herself.

Heroes huh, mused Emilia, she had always envied them, she envied at how they are always in good physical condition, how it seemed so easy for them to make friends and how they can travel the world without having been locked inside their own mansion like an imprisoned princess.

The tired Emilia clenched her teeth as she stared bitterly at her monitor, watching her ever-deteriorating heart condition that worsened by the minute. Just as when her mother died, when she was locked inside her whole life, when she often lay motionlessly on her bed, she could do nothing to change her fate.

Even then, as she laid there, watching her death coming ever closer, all she could do was to welcome it with open arms.

While she was not the gentle or brave type of person who would not be afraid of death, she still couldn’t refuse it either. For death might be the only hope that will free her from this pitiful, lonely and painful life. I guess this is goodbye, thought Emilia as she laid there, quietly accepting her death.

For years, brief flickers of flashbacks had been replaying through her mind, telling her of a time when she had a loving father, mother, and maybe even a lover. Though she only attributed the incomplete and broken memories to be fantasized by her lonely deprived mind.

Yet in her last hours, she took refuge in those delusions.

Moments later, the machines sounded their alarms as they voiced their helplessness in keeping her heart beating. Hurried footsteps followed by the servants panic shouts as they tried to keep her alive, and failed.

##

Inside the highest office of the Lyon corp building, stood a priced oak desk made from the kind of wood that was extinct around 100 years ago. Various picture frames littered the desks, some were pictures of a man and his wife, and Emilia, while others were with his other children.

Sitting in front of the workstation was the figure of John Lyon working tirelessly, streams of text pour on the hologram screen as he checks the latest test results. “Beep beep”, he sighed as the incoming call had broken his concentration.

“Make it quick.”. Answered John with an irritated tone. However, his eyes went wide open as the caller’s identity is revealed.

“It's David, I have some really bad news, make sure you are prepared”. John’s body stiffened, he turned off his monitor and steeled himself. “Tell me”. His tone was neither rushed nor strained, it was authoritative and demanding, it was the only facade that he can put up as his insides are filled with anxiety and pain.

“Emilia’s heart has been stopped for 30 minutes, we are doing all that we can. Personally, I don’t think we can bring her back, John”.

“Then you should proceed as planned, I will notify my family and schedule an unofficial burial”. John’s solemn voice sounded after a brief silence.

##

Beep

Ellowyn opened her eyes as a strange notification appeared. Am I still alive? Bewildered, she started to read the hologram. The message was in a lighter shade of blue and with a different font than the ones she had read before.

This is Carl again if you’re seeing this message, it means that the system I attached to your soul had been integrated successfully. Welcome to your new hero life!

Begin syncing the dormant soul part with the main body

She would have puked due to the overwhelming disorientation, had she a body.

Soul sync completed, gathering body state data

The familiar screen of her body’s status appeared before her, only this time there was no heartbeat and her blood pressure was critically low.

It seems your heart has been stopped for 4:05 hours, emergency blood circulation has been running for 4 hours.

Would you like to view the emergency recovery options?

YES! She thought desperately, had I really been practically dead for over 4 hours?

Loading Carl’s Emergency Recovery Module

Her blood ran cold, then again, why should I think it would get the other more trustworthy recovery modules when it was Carl who had put the system into me.

Looks like your heart has stopped and it seems rather unlikely to be restarted using electric shock, your heart’s muscles are too weak and brittle.

Suggestion: maintain and increase emergency blood circulation while reinforcing the heart by repairing and rebuilding heart muscles

“Emergency blood circulation?” asked the gawking Emilia as another definition window appeared.

Emergency blood circulation is when the system attempts to circulate the user’s blood by various methods such as applying force directly into the bloodstream to keep the body alive in the absence of a functioning heart

For the moment, I will be living without a functioning heart? Despite the critical condition, a chuckle escaped her lips she thought about living and moving around without her beating heart. Does that make me qualify as being heartless I wonder? Yes.

Warning, due to low system sync proficiency, a portion of energy spent will be consumed by light emission

She closed her eyes, the confined space she was in was bathed in the vast amount of lights emitting from her body.

Body condition returned to normal. Starting phase 2: syncing with current memories

She resisted the urge to scream as a foreign stream of images and information started flowing into her mind, overwhelmed by the feelings of pain and loneliness.

It took all Ellowyn had to hold on to her thin thread of insanity, as she overwhelmed psyche threatened to bend and break with such pressure. She held onto the happy memories of her life, her loving and doting parents, the friends she gained over her bedridden years and the questionable buddies she hanged out with on the deep web.

When the stream of memories finally ceased, she exhaled in relief and started going over them in detail.

According to the system messages, those memories were from the life she had experienced after the successful reincarnation. The most astounding fact was that it wasn’t the new memories that were merged with her, it was her old memories from her life on Earth that was merged with her current body.

That meant she had in a quite literal sense, took over the new body and life that she had reincarnated into the new world. She, Ellowyn, was the newcomer.

Shifting through the rest of the memories, a rather daunting task considering there were eighteen years of it, she frowned deeper. She understood the cause of such strong loneliness and despair experienced by her reincarnated self. To be kept locked in the same place for the majority of one’s life was nothing but brutal cruelty, and she had been through sixteen of such years.

She was also surprised that even though her DNA had obviously changed, considering that she took the looks of her deceased mother in this world, it seemed not only had incurable heart disease remained and plagued her for the second lifetime, but also the peculiar albino trait - white hair and red eyes - had remained. So severe was the heart condition that Emilia - her identity in this world - had also been bedridden.

She was very intrigued, if not a little worried. What kind of traits would remain even after my DNA had changed, does it mean that they stick with my soul and not body?

In addition, the stark difference between Emilia and her was that Emilia never got to experience family love, aside from brief visits of her father a few times a week, she never got to talk with her sisters or brothers, whose identities she had only learned of through the maids gossiping.

An indescribable emotion surged up within her as she gritted her teeth. The emotion brought heat to her face and made her weak heart beat faster in fright. Then she realized what it was, anger.

There were few times in her previous life that she was angry, so few that she herself wasn’t used to the raging emotion. Loneliness, despair, uselessness, and self-loathing, she had experienced them all often enough, but not anger.

Ellowyn was angry at her current father - John Lyon, who did nothing but lock her in that place. Despite his apologetic look and clear determination to take care of her, he was nothing but her jailor. She was angry at Carl’s carelessness that brought her here, and at the system that didn’t restore her memories sooner.

But most of all, she was angry at herself for making such a foolish decision. She thought that with a new world she could enjoy more freedom and perhaps a new chance at life, but all she got was nothing but hellish captivity.

She shook her head, neither regret nor anger was going to get her through this. She needed to figure out where she was, the blackness around her didn’t help much and she couldn’t move.

Memory sync completed. Suspending consciousness for extensive diagnosis.

Then her consciousness went out like a candle.