Chapter Text
/It's impressive how life can change in a second/
Sung-Woon stared at the floor with tired eyes, in front of him was his sister's grave, the bouquet that he brought resting sadly on top of it.
/Much have changed since you left/ He said /My world had gone crazy/
It's been so long, yet so little time seemed to pass since Ji-woo left this world, so many additions, yet so little changed.
He felt like time passed too fast, and, at the same time, that it didn't pass at all.
Many years ago, the world had been filled with portals where monsters lived.
These portals brought danger, as monsters would come out if left alone for a long time, but they also brought opportunities as the materials obtained from them could be used outside of them.
Sung-Woon had always thought it was a stupid risk and never understood why people were always so desperate to enter these portals, or Dungeons, as they were called nowadays, but it might be because he was a normal person and not a Hunter like most of his family.
Not everyone could enter a Dungeon, they would be stopped on the entrance by the Dungeon itself, only Hunters could do so.
His sister was a Hunter, although in name only.
She was too sick and frail to enter and fight, and, ironically, what killed her wasn't even the Dungeons, but her own condition, who took her too soon from him and his cousin.
Life has been hard ever since.
He gave up on pro gaming and let himself slowly rotting away for a long time until he found a new light.
Lost World.
It was a game whose genre he wasn't familiar with, which helped him somewhat recover from his grieving situation as he quickly climbed the ranks.
He soon became number 1 globally, and stayed there for more than a year.
This game was his everything, the light in a dark tunnel that he had dived for too long.
Then one day it happened.
He somehow fell asleep in front of his computer, an unusual occurrence that hasn't happened in a long time, and found himself in a completely different place when he opened his eyes.
That was how his life turned completely.
He had become a God in an instant, and in the world of the game he played so much.
Everything went so fast after that.
/I became a God in another world/ He said /I found followers, I created creatures, formed alliances, made a Pantheon, fought the old Gods of that other world and even became a being higher than that to save other worlds, me, a normal player/
He couldn't help but smile at that, but the smile soon died.
/So much had happened/ He muttered /But it all came to an end/
Causality was a petty thing.
The entities known as Old Gods were the main link that kept them connected to Avartin, so when they were all killed or stripped of their Godhood in Aldin's case, the link slowly faded and their souls were forced back to their original bodies in their original world.
In a museum.
In a weird ass capsule.
All of them had been in the same museum and they tried (and failed) to run away.
Apparently, their bodies entered a coma-like state and did not age at all no matter how long passed.
Scientists couldn't be explained at the time, so they were preserved for investigations, but no results were shown and, as the decades passed, they were donated to a museum after long years of no discoveries.
Now, over a thousand years after their time, they stood as mortals once again in their birth world.
It was bizarre and confusing, especially since some of their families had changed a lot over the centuries, some completely falling and others rising in ways many would never imagine.
It took them forever to get used to everything, even their original language.
Even now, a year later, they still find themselves forgetting what some words mean in their original languages and have a very noticeable accent.
Their faces were all over the news during the time of their recent awakening, but everything soon died down when some of them tried to explain what had happened during the time they were in a coma.
They were labeled crazy (which was actually crazy because they literally did not age at all over the centuries and people still found their stories unreasonable) and became a joke on the news for a while, but were soon forgotten.
And now? They all lived in a big house where they could be as ‘crazy’ as they wanted, which means speaking in Avantir’s language and not worrying about anyone calling them names.
Sure, sometimes they are still recognized in the streets and some of them had to be careful because they were related to famous people, but life was very calm for a while.
Or so they thought.
After staying for a while longer, Sung-Woon left the graveyard and made his way back to his car, his eyes drifting to the sky deprived of stars above his head.
A sky with no stars and an air so heavy that made his lungs hurt.
That was something he couldn't get used to, which was why he got a house in the countryside, where the air was clean and the sky was visible.
Getting into his car, he left the place in silence and made his way to the limits of the city, leaving it behind as the stars slowly returned into view and the fog before his eyes dissipated.
He could never get lost when under the night sky, but the lack of stars made it difficult for him to find himself even when he could feel the stars above his head.
Even when the path is right before him, he can't be completely sure when following it.
And would he be able to feel the stars?
Well, things aren't as calm as they made it be.
Sung-Woon and the others, although still normal people to the public, still had some… uncommon… traits.
The only reason they never truly believed that everything was a big shared dream was because Sanctuary was still there, along with some of their original abilities, although no appraiser could actually see their status, as the System Earth had was of a lower quality and rank and couldn't detect Sanctuary.
Officially, they were civilians, when, in reality, they were technically Awakened.
Which brought the strange situation.
They still had some control over their abilities as Constellations, even the Area-like domains they eventually conquered back to their arsenals.
Sung-Woon could still summon his butterflies and see the world through them, magic was still flowing within him, the sky was still his to claim.
Yet he and the others couldn't fully use anything they had.
They were still classified as Constellations, their domains were still there, and their faith points were still accounted for.
But they felt physically and mentally weak after using some of their powers.
Sung-Woon would pass out after creating five butterflies or two birds depending on the size, but Hegemonia couldn't summon a single sabertooth no matter how hard she tried.
Winston theorised that it might be because they now had mortal bodies, as mortal bodies weren't made to sustain this kind of power, and since these were their original bodies, they couldn't simply shed themselves from them because the souls, conscious or not, wouldn't allow harm to be caused to their bodies, as they were part of themselves, liking it or not.
Sanctuary confirmed this theory after some deep research and taking into account the information it took from Aldin after some interrogation.
Although they were not happy with it, the Constellations accepted the answer, staying happy with simply still being able to contact the others, though with some difficulty.
The entire Hall of Myriad Stars had panicked when all 27 of them disappeared without trace, so things were pretty chaotic, but Sanctuary was already making preparations to bring the Hall of Myriad Stars to Earth and fetch them while they worked out their mortal situation.
So they let life go on.
Some started to work again while others were still sorting themselves out.
Sung-Woon opened an apiary to be in more contact with his original domain and gain some money from the honey.
Hegemonia, an ice skater (yeah, a great surprise to everyone involved), returned to her own competitions while also starting a channel to where she assumed her Lost World persona to play with Sung-Woon and the others.
Eldar also made a channel to make rpg campaigns that everyone was required to participate in, but also published some books about Avartin, though they were known only as rpg lore.
Winston was back at working as a programmer, though he sometimes liked to hack the internet to mess around when bored.
Jang-Wan, his cousin, RB and a few players were still minors and were still going to school, but, because of their situation, he was currently their legal guardian, so they lived with the rest of the Constellations full time and Krampus had managed to become a teacher at the school they attended, so he was usually the one to take them to school and bring them back, with Ovenwave, the college student, who took a ride with them since her college was close by.
Some returned to their original jobs after getting the grasp of the new laws and changes while others started working with Sung-Woon in the apiary to avoid the cities.
They all had agreed that the city wasn't a place any of them wanted to be oftem because of the air, light and noise pollution.
The hardest part was to get used to the flow of time, which was always between too fast and too slow, eating, drinking water and to speak to common people again, especially for some of them, but they got better.
Things were moving, no one knew if it was forward or backward, but they were moving, and they would adapt.
They were once Gods who fought wars against impossible enemies, then Constellations, being mortals for a third time couldn't be where they met their downfall.
They would live, they would prevail, they would continue and they would win, even if the board of this game was no longer under their control once again.
They just needed to hold on until the Hall of Myriad Stars arrived.
But, as they saw the Dungeons that tormented their first mortal lives grow more and more dangerous, none of them could stay still.
Well, they had all compromised in helping wounded worlds, so why not help their birth world?