What’s it like to drop into another world—do they hand out maternity leave? Fulin didn’t know, and the question hung like a paper lantern in a winter wind.

She only knew she wasn’t a thirty-year-old office drone anymore. She was a little Blood Clan girl, delicate as frost on plum blossoms.

And not just any little Blood Clan girl. She wore the face of her old account’s avatar from Legend of Dawn—Fulin Belit—like a moonlit mask.

By race, Fulin Belit was a Chaos Vampire. The name tasted of primordial fog; in the lore, all things rise from chaos, and Chaos Vampires carry the original bloodline, on par with True Ancestors and Queens.

From that same chaos comes their strangest gift: the Essence Conversion Rule, a seed-in-winter power that turns stolen lifeblood into experience, like snowmelt feeding a river.

You could spend it to level fast, like spring shoots racing the sun. Or burn it on dark blood-sacrifice rites, a night-blooming lotus few ever chose.

So yes—Fulin Belit was undisputedly maxed. Her total level stood at 320, bright as a stacked tower against the skyline.

That was 100 in Chaos Vampire, 110 in Dark Warrior, and 110 in Arcane Mage, layered like steel and silk.

With that build, the game’s Fulin Belit was a razor-veiled caster-assassin, a shadow blade under moonlight.

Up close, she could be a berserk assassin; at range, an explosive mage; and if she bled, she drank it back, like a tide returning to shore.

By common sense, dropping into another world in a body that broken should mean she’d steamroll it like a summer storm, right?

Wrong. Fulin swatted that thought away like an annoying moth.

She knew she was strong. But she was also a little Blood Clan girl. That painted bull’s-eyes on glass.

Would the Blood Clan identity draw trouble like thunder draws spears? Would her cuteness lure out creeps like rot lures flies? The first, she could manage, pebble by pebble.

The second made her skin crawl. What if she slipped up and started maternity leave right after crossing over? The idea hit like cold water.

No. Absolutely not. The refusal surged through her like a slammed door.

Too bad the crossing had already been a month ago. Back then, her head was cotton. She thought she was still playing, a moth circling an old lantern.

She wandered into town to find the Adventurers’ Guild, light-footed, mind blank, like a kid chasing kites.

And, of course, trouble found her like wasps find sugar.

She hadn’t been on the street long. No guild in sight. Her silver hair and red eyes caught the crowd like a hook.

People stopped. More gathered. A tide of faces flooded in, and the road turned to stone under her feet.

Helpless, she picked a kind-looking matronly NPC and drifted closer, like a leaf toward a calm eddy. Before she spoke, the woman shrieked, voice splitting like ice: “Silver hair, red eyes—she’s Blood Clan! Aaaaah!”

The shriek scattered pigeons under the eaves. Other NPCs heard, stared at Fulin’s face, and bolted in a chain reaction, panic rippling like wind through wheat.

Some froze where they stood. One even wet himself on the spot, shame dark as ink spreading on linen.

Honestly, Fulin had no clue what just happened. Her small head tilted, puzzled, as she skipped along the familiar-yet-not streets, a sparrow peering at a strange garden.

Then the details clicked like beads on a string. The buildings weren’t magic-crystal glamour from the game but Gothic stone, European in their bones.

The daylight sky held one sun, not the game’s trio, like a lone coin on blue silk. And the townsfolk moved with living ease, not NPC stiffness.

Only then did Fulin realize this wasn’t Legend of Dawn’s world. It was a foreign realm, medieval in smell and grit, sword-and-sorcery with Blood Clan cast as evil’s shadow.

And by their over-the-top fear, she was smack in a setting where “vampire” meant “burn it first, ask later.”

By the time she understood, soldiers had already ringed her like stakes around a fire. Behind the line stood tense priests, eyes sharp as knives in incense smoke.

Farther back, better-armed mercenaries hunched in shadow, crossbows leveled like wolves’ eyes glinting.

Their hostility throbbed like a drawn bow. Fulin still thought it had to be a misunderstanding, a storm brewing over a cup of tea.

She hadn’t done anything. She’d only scared some folks by accident, like a bat fluttering into a wedding.

The officer leading the soldiers looked steady, a rock in floodwater. Fulin tried to address him, voice ready like a lifted lantern.

He noted the girl’s lack of aggression and lowered his weapon, a willow bending before the wind. Then a priest behind him snapped like a spooked horse. “It’s a trap—don’t be charmed by the vampire’s face!”

Before the echo died, another priest raised an inverted-cross scepter. A white beam, thick as an arm, lanced out like noon sun through fog.

Later, Fulin learned it was a low-tier prayer. Harmless to her. In the moment, the glare and the roar hit like a slap in a dark room.

She panicked first, heat spiking in her chest. Then muscle memory grabbed the reins, and she cast a counter-magic, Flame Surge.

Flame Surge was an Arcane Mage’s interrupt, a tripwire for enemy skills, more clap than cudgel. She’d meant to knock sense into the priest, like tossing water on a fever.

The beam bounced off with a hiss. The priest didn’t. He charred black in a breath and crumpled like a burnt scroll.

When the body fell, the situation unraveled like a frayed rope. Fulin misted at once, Blood Clan instincts blooming like night fog.

She became a colorless cloud and fled the chaos, a wisp slipping through a crack.

She drifted into a back alley. The metallic sweetness of blood hit her nose like a struck bell.

There, in a quiet corner where shadows piled like old books, she found a boy’s corpse.

His clothes were fine, the cut and fabric richer than any flax shirt in the street—a young noble or a merchant heir, a peony among cabbages.

Black blotches stained his skin, bruises flowered everywhere, and his pants were stripped. A wooden stick, an inch and a half thick, had been driven into him with merciless indifference.

His face twisted, a mask frozen mid-scream, shocking as lightning over a flat sea.

BBQ’d? The thought jolted her like a bad joke in a funeral hall.

Call it tragic or grotesque. Whoever did it had a scorpion’s heart. Or the boy had stirred a hornet’s nest.

Fulin sighed, a leaf falling, and turned to leave. Then bootsteps of a patrol rolled closer, drumbeats down the alley.

She could dodge them, easy as smoke through lattice. But the earlier panic she’d caused still swirled like muddy water.

If no killer turned up and this crime scene sat only two streets from the chaos, the blame would drift her way like ash.

She didn’t want to start her second life as a fugitive, blamed for accidental deaths wrapped in fog.

An idea sparked, bright as flint. In the game she was level 320, single-race, dual-class, a veteran of quests that weren’t all about who hit harder.

She’d done infiltration, disguise, and quiet searches, where victory was a door silently opening.

This was perfect for that. She invoked Dual Incarnation.

Dual Incarnation was a high-tier Dark Warrior talent. It could copy a dead target’s appearance and condition, and pull a thread or two of their memories.

Black mist swallowed the corpse like a tide across sand. The mist turned to viscous ink, and it climbed Fulin like creeping night.

Her body reshaped under the liquid veil. Her face shifted like moonlight on water, becoming the boy’s living self, voice and all.

When the patrol walked into the alley, they saw only a young noble passing by, a crane strolling past reeds.

They asked a few simple questions, left a stiff warning, and moved on, boots fading like distant thunder.

When they didn’t suspect “him,” relief warmed Fulin like sunlight through leaves. She planned to slip out of the town in this shape and lie low.

She’d barely left the alley when a steward rolled up in a carriage, reins snapping like a shout, and hauled “him” aboard.

She could have resisted, quick as a fox. But in the scrap of memory she’d pulled, she’d found the boy’s name: Lance Morrison, a local baron’s wastrel heir.

The steward was Brook, an old hand ordered to keep Lance from setting the house on fire, metaphorically and otherwise.

As for how Lance died, Fulin had no clue. If he didn’t know it, neither could she; memory’s well was dry.

With nowhere to go, she kept the mask on and let herself be taken as Lance Morrison, drifting with the current like a fallen petal.

They reached Tulip Manor on the outskirts, a noble’s estate with roofs like spread fans and gardens like painted screens.

Fulin stared at the manor she could never have afforded in her last life, nerves tight as a drawn string. She didn’t plan to settle. If it soured, she’d vanish like morning mist.

But life in Tulip Manor was honeyed tea. Mornings, she coasted through a private tutor’s lessons, light as a dragonfly skimming a pond.

Afternoons, the steward drilled noble knowledge and etiquette, posture and poise like arranging flowers in a vase.

Meals were lavish, three pearls a day. The rest of the time was emptiness, smooth as jade.

It was a grace she’d never imagined. In her last life, she’d been ground down like stone under a mill.

Middle school had been a Spartan grind. College hit during a curriculum overhaul, a winter wind through thin clothes.

Work landed her in the 996 grind—9 to 9, six days a week—years of marching under a heavy sun. She finally crawled into a comfy HR spot.

Before she could taste it, she died, sudden as a candle snuffed by a draft.

She didn’t know the exact cause, but she could guess. Years of 996 wore her down like rain carves stone.

Then the last months went idle, and she binged Legend of Dawn like a night watch forgetting the bell. Her body, already failing, gave up the ghost.

Thank the stars for a second life, even if it came wrapped as her avatar, a Blood Clan girl under a red moon. It was a bonus breath.

She knew better than to complain. As a Chaos Vampire, she had immortality like a mountain and power like fire banked in coals.

And she’d landed in a silk cocoon—no hunger, no cold. It was sinfully comfortable, like warm sake on snow.

But near worries grow when far worries vanish. A month into playing Lance Morrison, comfort fattened the days, and something inside began to pace the cage.

It wasn’t some hidden sickness from her past life. It was baked into a Chaos Vampire’s bones—needs and hungers like tides under the moon.

Blood Clan must drink or face the thirst. For Chaos Vampires, the body doesn’t fail without blood, but the mind itches like a drunk denied his cup.

In-game, Fulin chugged blood like a runner chugs water. Suddenly quitting left her raw, a violin string too tight.

That ache tangled with the office worker she used to be, a knot of feelings wrapped in twine. It spiked around day fourteen, like a fever that found its hour.

Every dawn since, she woke irritable, nerves spark-sharp. Her thoughts blurred like breath on glass, and dull pain throbbed in her head and gut.

It drove her to drop the human mask and turn back into the little Blood Clan girl. She’d bite the pillow and go “uwa-waa” into the stuffing, a ridiculous ritual like self-hypnosis.

She pretended she was drinking blood, and the thirst ebbed like a tide pulling back. Shame burned, but in under thirty minutes the storm cleared.

That trick was a placebo, like fake wine for a drunk. It calmed thirst, not hunger’s true bite.

If a perfect target for Fulin Belit’s taste showed up—fresh, sweet-blooded, young and lovely—her self-control cracked like thin ice.

It was a Chaos Vampire’s hunting surge for premium prey, a wolf’s nose catching spring sap.

Tulip Manor kept six maids. Two were hired as bedmaids, moonlit duties wrapped in linen, though they handled chores by day.

They didn’t cook, but they moved everywhere, swaying like lilies down the halls. While Fulin wore Lance’s face, “his” eyes kept snagging on them like hooks on silk.

It felt obscene, like the gaze had grown a tongue, slow and delicate, licking jawlines, necks, hands, and thighs.

Several times, she nearly dropped the mask and showed her true self, a hawk slashing out of cloud. With Fulin Belit’s feeding skill, drinking from mortals would likely end in death.

It gnawed under the skin, like a predator catching the glint of prey; body and spirit both stirred, claws flexing in the dark.

If not for Fulin’s past-life grind—996 that felt worse than death—her will forged like iron in a furnace of pain, she couldn’t have muzzled this hunting instinct.

Those were the troubles of a Blood Clan shadow living among humans, like a wolf wearing a shepherd’s coat in broad daylight.

On the other hand, one month in, her noble-boy mask hit a new snare, a knot in the silk of identity.

Lance Morrison turned fifteen this year—time for marriage talks, the drumbeat of household and duty.

It was unavoidable, and early, like winter knocking before autumn’s harvest. Fulin chose not to run; she stepped into the chill.

She put herself in his shoes, feeling the mud and the weight, then looked up at the sky of law and custom.

This realm, the Doran Kingdom, runs on a feudal current like old Western lands, vassals braided to lords like ropes to masts.

For baron-tier families bound to higher patrons, the first gate is engagement, a hinge that decides the house’s future.

Barons are the lowest rung in the ladder of titles, a step that creaks under the heel of ambition.

Their children rarely find noble matches; marry a commoner, and the heir drops the title like a crest torn from a banner.

It means most baron lines struggle to raise noble heirs, stalks cut short by the wind of rank.

But the Morrison family doesn’t fear that frost; their roots grip deeper than the soil suggests.

Their house head, Malte Morrison, low in rank yet high in perch, serves the Iron Duke as Golden Eagle Legion Commander and Chief Knight.

By power, Malte’s banner flies just beneath the Duke’s, a hawk trailing the falcon’s shadow.

Whoever inherits his reins will be courted by the Duke’s vassals like bees to spring nectar, even by the Iron Duke himself.

Just yesterday, with the front’s dust still on Malte’s boots, the Iron Duke visited with his fourteen-year-old daughter, Alice.

Call it courtship before alliance, a teacup’s warmth before the binding of rings. Between small talk, the parents weighed engagement terms.

Fulin could taste the outcome like bitter tea cooling in the cup; the leaves told a clear pattern.

Malte has two unbetrothed sons: the exemplary elder, Duncan Morrison, and the infamous rich fool, Lance Morrison.

Duncan, one of Mubay City’s rare threefold paragons, is praised like a bright summer star over quiet fields.

Lance, the legion commander’s son, is scolded as a silk-robed layabout, a reed bent by every breeze.

The Iron Duke’s youngest, Alice, is a bloom admired on all roads, face like clear spring, wit sharp as frost.

Suitors swarm within the duchy like migrating swallows; even noble youths from other duchies tilt hearts her way.

If Fulin were the Iron Duke, choosing a son-in-law in Malte’s hall, it wouldn’t be a real choice; the brush goes to Duncan’s name.

Not to Lance, the heir of bad stories, the pebble people kick from path to path.

Fulin felt a pang over playing the fool, like dust in the eye on a bright day.

But in the eyes of Lance’s old acquaintances, “Lance Morrison” is exactly that problem child, the stain that won’t wash from silk.

That’s why she wore this face to idle at Tulip Manor, to float belly-up like a lazy fish in a quiet pond—it fit, and it paid.

She figured the span from engagement to wedding would take months, maybe a year, a river that meanders before the sea.

At fifteen, Lance is adult by law yet still young; no one would shove him from the hearth into the night.

In other words, even if a choice loomed, “Lance” had two or three years to stock the larder and map the roads.

Fulin could spend that time at ease, danger held at arm’s length, learning this strange world like ink drying line by line.

Eat, rest, and wait out the seasons for two or three years, a cat in a sunlit window.

By the time departure became a must, she’d have gathered enough threads of knowledge to weave choices, no panic, no thoughts of “maternity leave.”

So, in the plan, she believed the matter of Lance’s household and career wouldn’t touch her soon, a distant thunderhead.

In truth, she was wrong again, lightning stepping closer on silent feet.

The Iron Duke and Alice had barely left when the old butler, Brooke, came with breath still misting like dawn.

“Young master,” he said, voice steady as a staff, “the old master plans to pick you or Duncan as Alice’s husband.”

“Once it’s decided, within seven days, the other must leave the house, booted from the nest to fend alone.”

This idiot rich kid still had a twist like that? Fulin’s thoughts scattered like cards thrown into the wind.