Chapter Text
Blue floating window.
Status and a jargon of numbers.
A game.
Was it…?
Ruby had no idea what was hovering in front of her face, but the giant blue square looked vaguely familiar. A character window, she had guessed. Something she had seen in games, except why did it look realistic? It was as if someone wanted to burn down their computer by cranking up the graphics to its maximum capacity.
“What the heck?” Ruby carefully inspected the blue window one more time. Abbreviations, numbers, status charts, experience points, a list of — oh wow, that was a super long list of skills at mastery level…
“Young heroine.”
Ruby pulled herself out of her jumbled thoughts.
“Uhh…” she said lamely, as she stared at the older gentlemen with blank eyes. He returned her confusion with a polite smile. He adjusted his spectacles and lowered his head. The second he did, every knight — huh, she realized there were even more people present in this room — adorned in heavy armor took a knee. “You’re talking to me?”
“Young heroine,” the older gentleman confirmed her question with a nod. “We humbly welcome you to the Kingdom of Vale.”
Cries sounded from all directions, praises trilled through Ruby’s ears, and chants were being lifted to the high heavens. It was rattling Ruby’s brain like a percussion instrument, and she was having trouble processing everything that came hurling to her all at once. She had no idea what was going on, and she was getting the worst headache in her entire life.
The wise gentleman lifted his arms in the air and silenced the crowd. “I am King Ozpin. I can see you have many questions. Come, allow me to address them all to the best of my ability.”
Oh.
She remembered reading about this once upon a time in a comic book. Except, she didn’t get hit by a truck. She vividly recalled racing out of the lecture hall because her stomach overturned. Once she squeezed inside the restroom stall and locked its door shut, she winded up here.
Wherever here was…
Ruby followed King Ozpin to a meeting room. The interior was lavishly decorated, fit for royalty, but it wasn’t archaic like the encased artifacts she had seen in museums. He gave her a crash course on history.
Remnant had been at war with the demons who ruled the northwestern side of the world. With the demons’ power increasing exponentially each day, the human race was drawing closer to their imminent ruin. To save themselves from a horrible fate, King Ozpin received authorization from all neighboring kingdoms and used the last of his diminished power to summon a hero. According to the prophecy by the two Brothers, a hero from another world had the power to slay the demon lord and would bring harmony across Remnant.
“I see…” Ruby got the gist of it. Her main questline was to kill the demon lord. That sounded simple enough, she supposed. She just needed to grind… like every other game she had played. “Do I just go… Like, now?”
King Ozpin chuckled. “While I did say the demons are growing in strength, it’d be wise to practice combat and learn a bit more of our culture before setting off.”
Which was a really good idea Ruby could get behind on.
As often as she skipped the tutorial in her games — because tutorial was for noobs — she didn’t know how magic worked or how to swing a real sword. Most important of all, she lacked basic education. Currency, law, yada yada.
“I’ll have Commander Arc oversee your training. Professor Goodwitch will tutor you in subjects you will find useful in your journey.”
On the first day of training, Commander Arc arranged a straw dummy to test her strength. Sitting at an embarrassingly low level 1, Ruby split the dummy into halves with her wooden sword. The powerful force of her mighty swing slashed through the castle walls and reduced it into rubbles. Now there was a notable, gaping hole exposed in the impenetrable walls for all of Vale to marvel.
On the second day, Commander Arc lectured Ruby about magic. He said magic wasn't as simple as swinging a sword because it required specific incantations. A person needed to be diligent, patient, concentrated… Chantless, Ruby snapped her finger and accidentally obliterated the royal garden using one of her long, unending list of spells.
On the third day, Commander Arc taught her how to dial down her strength before she annihilated the Kingdom of Vale. After many trials and errors, she got the hang of it.
On the fourth day, Commander Arc told her to apply everything she had learned during their spar together. One swing in, Vale’s champion was brought to his knees. The match was halted because they were done. He was so proud to see Ruby was capable of holding back, he shed a manly tear. He congratulated her with a well deserved high five, which sent him flying backwards.
On the fifth day, Commander Arc was bedridden with a few broken bones. Ruby profusely apologized.
On the sixth day, King Ozpin bestowed Ruby with the kingdom’s heirloom [Legendary] Amorphous. It was a weapon capable of shifting to any form. With its practicality, he hoped it would aid her journey.
She nicknamed her new, shiny weapon Crescent Rose.
On the last day of the week, Ruby set off to slay the demon lord. She traveled alone because they were afraid she might accidentally commit friendly fire. Before adventuring to the outskirts, she explored the heart of Vale. She wanted to try some of their cuisine, do a bit of sightseeing, and —
“Oh my gosh, a side quest!” Ruby lit up with excitement when she saw a billboard with a giant yellow exclamation mark hovering at its head. With how boldly bright it was, it could’ve been a lighthouse to steer ships.
Besides, how could she ever think about defeating the demon lord if she couldn’t help a poor grandma find her long lost puppy? There were other quests about collecting herbs, cleaning out a den of goblins, searching for a few adventurers who had gone missing, and many more.
While Ruby accepted all the side quests, she overheard a rowdy group of people at a nearby table.
“I play a spell card from my hand!”
Curious by the lively noise, Ruby waltzed over and squeezed through the crowd. Two adults were sitting face to face and playing cards she had never seen before.
“Say goodbye to your monster, Knight of Atlas!” Player One continued to exclaim.
“Not so fast, I activate my trap card!” Player Two countered and flipped their card face up.
“What are they playing?” Ruby asked an older gentleman who had been spectating the match.
“This lil’ miss? Why, it’s called Heart of Remnant. Plenty of folks around the world play this mini card game.”
“This looks really awesome! How do I play?”
“You can get yourself a starter deck and a guidebook from a nearby shop. The only thing unwritten in the rule book is that the winner of the match takes one of their opponent’s cards.”
For the next two years, Ruby forgot about her main questline to slay the demon lord. She got distracted by side quests, explored dungeons to find lost artifacts and collectibles, and collected all the cards for her favorite game Heart of Remnant. She found herself journeying to a hidden village on a remote island that wasn’t marked on the world map. The last card she needed to complete her collection was located here.
After doing grueling amounts of errands to befriend Villager A, Ruby was able to request a fair match with him for his super, ultra rare card Winchester the Tormentor. As the villager was making his final stand, their match was cruelly interrupted by a destructive explosion.
The island quaked and trembled. A demon with a pressurizing presence made an appearance. With a small purse of her lips, her voice resonated across the sky.
“I am Cinder.” She was setting the huts on fire and turning anything flammable into ashes, which was everything within line of sight. “You humans are now under our demon lord’s command! Bow, you filthy creatures. Resistance is futile.”
Before Ruby had the chance to claim victory, Villager A swept all his cards into his hands and scrambled. He fled, screaming, with his tail tucked between his legs. Ruby sat there, her eyes twitching. Now her card collection will never be completed. It was going to sit at a pitiful 99%, and the completionist inside of her was tattered.
“How dare you!” Ruby hissed and pointed at the demon general who was cackling like a hyena. “Do you know how many weeks I spent trying to convince him to duel me?”
Cinder ceased her laughs and glowered at the insignificant human dressed in — what in the world was that revolting outfit…? No thick armor or anything protective. A thin skirt with frills. Plus there were so many gaudy accessories and blings, it was starting to hurt her eyes.
“Who are you?” Cinder asked.
“The person who did all the side quests.” Ruby revealed her weapon and transformed Vale’s heirloom into a shape that was blood-curdling chilling. She was going to be the demon general’s living nightmare.
“Is that…” Cinder crinkled her nose at the legendary weapon. “...a fly swatter?”
Ruby snapped her fingers and applied a whole list of debuffs onto herself. “Yep.”
Cinder snorted. “You seriously want to challenge me, one of the demon lord’s trusted generals, with a fly swatter? You have lost your mind.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be begging for death soon.”
Ruby kept her words. It wasn't a fair battle, it was a one-sided slaughter. Within two minutes, Cinder was pinned to the floor and Ruby was beating her with a fly swatter.
“Stop—” Cinder hissed once she got smacked again. “—hitting—” she winced again. “—me!”
It was an absolute humiliation. Degrading, for an all-powerful being. Demons were meant to rule, and yet she was being conquered.
It was impossible for Cinder to shunt the girl off. She could struggle all she wants and it would be meaningless. What made it more mortifying was that the so-called fly swatter hurt a lot more than she anticipated. However, it wasn’t powerful enough to put her to death even though Cinder wished it did.
“I didn’t hear please.” Ruby raised her weapon and swatted Cinder again. The murmuring villagers gathered around them to witness the beat down.
Cinder cowered and shielded her head with her arms. “Please!”
Ruby stopped at the magical word, but she held her fly swatter threateningly over Cinder’s face. She finally remembered why she was summoned to this world in the first place.
It was time she continued her main quest line.
“Where can I find the demon lord?”
The debuffs hadn’t worn off, but Ruby marched herself straight into the towering castle where the demon lord resided. Cinder had warned her that the castle was heavily guarded, but Ruby wasn’t afraid. She was still mad that the funny looking blue window said 99% complete under Heart of Remnant.
“You look lost, little lamb.” A demon whose hair was as blue as her floating window blessed Ruby with his presence. As if he was sitting in the pinnacle of heaven, his entrance was even more dazzling than all of Ruby’s cosmetic blings.
“Do you know how to get to the throne room, mister?” Ruby bothered to ask. She wasn’t sure why the weird-looking blue haired demon was striking a bunch of poses like a possessed spirit that needed to be exorcized.
“I can give you directions to my room, there’s no need to hurry,” he said with an unmistakable flirt in his tone. He struck another provocative pose, and they stared at each other in dead silence. He gave it another minute, but the silence hovering over them was unbearable. “This is kind of awkward…”
“Tell me about it,” Ruby retorted. “I’m the victim.”
“I’m Neptune, the incubus. Why aren’t you being charmed or seduced?”
“I’m supposed to be the heroine, and I'm pretty sure I’m immune to seduction.”
“Oh,” Neptune realized. After she mentioned it, it really felt embarrassing to be posing like this. Also, why was she holding a wooden bat in her hands? When the heck did that get there?
“Oh,” Ruby parroted. She bonked him once, and Neptune was out like a light.
As Ruby navigated through the castle with the system’s map as her guide, it didn’t take long for her to encounter her next adversary. There was a giant red dot obviously marked and tailing her icon on the map. It kept warning her about a nearby foe, so Ruby just paused in her tracks in an empty room.
“I know you’re there,” she announced to no one specifically. “You can come out of hiding.”
One minute, and the silence was deafening. Ruby sighed and transformed Crescent Rose into a rolled up newspaper. She quietly crept to where her map had pointed, and the chilling air suddenly got nervous. If she were to describe in words, it was as if a gigantic sweat drop visually manifested into thin air.
Ruby lifted her threatening, rolled up newspaper at nothing particular and —
“Wait a minute!” the enemy blurted out, undoing her stealth and revealing herself. There were adorable cat ears sitting at the top of her head. “Sheathe your… weapon? I can explain myself.”
Too late, Ruby struck. “Bad kitty.”
The demonic cat hissed when she got thwacked in the face. “Why does that actually hurt?”
Ruby raised her weapon and whacked her again. “Where’s the shortest and safest route to the throne room? I’m tired of encountering low leveled mobs.”
“Low leveled mobs—” The demon’s questioning remark was interrupted by another whack.
“I ask the questions here,” Ruby said.
“I’m Blake,” the demon managed to say in time before the newspaper came bashing on her head. She withstood the brute force, then dashed out of striking range. “What makes—”
Whack.
“—you think—”
Another thwack and she bit her tongue.
“How exactly are you keeping up with me?” Blake hissed out loud. Her efforts were futile; she couldn’t put distance between them. The girl was chasing her faster than a hellhound. Every time she tried to escape from the newspaper’s range, it came back hitting harder.
“Tell me the shortest route.” Ruby struck Blake again with her terrifying rolled up newspaper.
“Hah,” Blake laughed at her threat as if she hadn’t learned her lesson. “I will not betray—”
Thwack.
Thwack.
Thwack.
“Go into the red door right there, turn right on the first corner, take the door with the gargoyle statue, climb the stairs, make a left, and go down the hallway,” Blake rushed out to say. Like Cinder, she was cowering with her arms protectively around her head because the newspaper was both humiliating and painful.
Ruby stopped her unrelenting attacks and thanked Blake with a smile. She followed the directions to the throne room and had a peaceful walk on the way up. No weak mobs to block her path, no annoying obstacles, or tedious traps. She found herself standing before a large, heavy door that screamed ‘big, bad boss’, and she entered the room without a knock.
The boss room was just as grandiose as the games would depict it as. The unlit torches suddenly burst into flames and lit up the dark room. It wasn’t as dreary as Ruby thought it’d be. There were splashes of color in between the monochrome. At the top of the few steps of stairs, a regal being sat menacingly on an imposing throne.
“An intruder,” the demon lord drawled. She did not rise in her seat as she looked down upon Ruby. “I, Weiss Schnee, do not recall mailing out invitations to my castle.”
“I’m here to file a complaint against your employee.” Ruby shook her fist angrily. The air was frigid cold, but she had resistance against freezing temperatures.
“Go ahead,” Weiss mused, “complain.”
Ruby kindly did exactly just that. “I was having a peaceful game of Heart of Remnant.”
“Mmhm.”
“Then one of your so-called demon generals came bursting into the village I was at and ruined everything!”
“Their name?”
“Cinder!” Ruby huffed in frustration. “You don’t even understand the amount of time I poured into convincing that guy to have a match with me!”
“I cannot sympathize,” the demon lord replied. “Is that all?”
“Yes,” Ruby said as a matter of fact, crossing her arms.
“Okay, get out.”
“What?”
“You’re done complaining, right?” Weiss asked, her expression unreadable and stoic. “Now get out of my castle.”
“I want compensation,” Ruby demanded.
“Or else what?”
Ruby cast her rolled-up newspaper onto the ground and let it morph into a new shape. After many experimentations, she learned she was able to shift her legendary weapon into anything she desired. If she could put her mind to it and had the mana for it, then it wasn’t impossible.
Weiss rose from her throne with narrowed eyes. The object before her was something she had never seen. A body built with what looked like steel and a very slim snout. Was it supposed to be some kind of horse, or a mount? What was that?
Ruby, rudely, opened fire. The armored tank blasted a highly condensed energy of magic towards Weiss, but Weiss backhanded it as if she was swatting a bug. The beam of light shredded through the side of the roof and shot outside into the sky. It exploded into a supernova. The shockwave shook the castle as hard as a seismic earthquake.
“Whoa…” Ruby’s jaws dropped with awe. She still had her debuffs, but it was amazing to see the demon lord repel magic that could one-shot a SSSSSS-Rank dragon. “That’s pretty hot.”
“Is that all?” Weiss raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.
The mockery baited Ruby into close quarter combat. She morphed her armored tank into a scythe and swung at the demon lord. Her movements were reckless, but her undoubtedly cheat-level skills compensated for her foolhardy actions. Every swing cleaving to kill was beyond the human’s eye, but Weiss parried every slash with the rapier once at her hips.
It was no wonder Remnant was destined for ruins. The demon lord was on par with the heroine, an entity who broke the limitations of reason.
Ruby grinned widely. She had never felt so alive or felt this much adrenaline in ages. Since the beginning of her summoning incident, every creature fell at her feet.
“Please don’t disappoint me,” she whispered, almost pleading. The debuffs were now worn. All her stats that had dipped redder than Earth’s stock market flipped green. Every integer that represented her strength climbed exponentially.
Weiss picked up the sudden change in air. She blocked the incoming slash more seriously which left her stumbling in her defensive stance.
“Hm.” She assessed the raw power that trembled up her arm and frowned. Words could not describe what she thought about the shift in tides. Weiss Schnee had never been pushed back by a human before. “Interesting.”
Weiss flicked the remaining vibrations coursing through her weapon and reinforced her grip. “Come, best me if you can.”
Ruby lunged with all her strength, and Weiss fought her with true respect. Their weapons clashed. High level spells were thrown, some were canceled as well. The sheer force of their power obliterated everything around them but not each other. They were strong, a calamity no one on Remnant could hold a candle to.
The fierce battle that would go down in history waged on for three days and three nights. It was a constant fight. The heavy injuries inflicted onto each other delayed their auto-regeneration, and inevitably both sides were wounded.
Ruby gradually recalled what it was like to feel pain and body aches. Back in the other world, she remembered crying about a paper cut underneath her finger nail. Now her worst pain was the gash on her thigh and shoulder. For the first time in a couple of years, she remembered what it was like to be human.
She had found the one. Someone equal, someone who could sympathize with her. She staggered forward, breathless and weary. She was also bleeding but that was the least of her worries. Give it some time and eventually her wound would close back up, like Weiss’.
“You are stubborn.” Unlike Ruby, Weiss stood tall and did not show her weakness. She was regal. However, she couldn’t hold herself up without the aid of her weapon. She tried to imitate the wicked demon lord depicted in stories, but she didn’t look any different compared to Ruby. Gashes and cuts, dirt and grime, a demon who looked just as human as Ruby.
“I’m more hungry,” Ruby joked, but it hurts to laugh because Weiss somehow left a nasty bruise on her stomach. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Starving,” Weiss truthfully admitted. She cast a glyph underneath Ruby, a powerful spell that would shake the crust of the planet. She hoped, and this was a very strong hope, that this will bring the end.
“Aw man, not again.”
A pillar of dark energy surged down like lightning and struck Ruby, but the heroine was still standing as if nothing had happened.
“Ugh, this is so unfair!” Weiss shouted at the top of her lungs. She wanted to pull all of her hair off with how frustrating this battle was becoming.
Ruby rubbed her noggin, whining. “That actually hurt…”
Weiss scowled at her in disbelief. “Don’t give me that rubbish.”
They weren’t going anywhere with their fight. They both understood, and yet Ruby still pressed forward, closing in on Weiss. Her movement was barely a walk, and Weiss stood her ground, ready and waiting to take whatever unpredictable magic or brute force the heroine had hidden up her sleeve. To her surprise, Ruby was the first to fall on one knee, but the heroine delivered the final blow.
She unequipped her legendary ring that boosted her stats by 50%, and proposed. “Wanna get married?”
Weiss blinked. “What?”
“We can’t kill each other,” Ruby said, smiling and shrugging at the same time. “So, let’s get married.”
A human marrying the demon who was responsible for wreaking havoc across the land. It wasn’t wholly sane, but under first impressions this human wasn’t sound in the first place.
Weiss laughed. “What kind of logic is that?”
“I might have a couple of loose screws in my head.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Weiss hummed, agreeing. She carefully considered her proposal. The heroine was the only obstacle in her way. Through this farce marriage, she could capture and manipulate her feelings, and together they could, 'romantically', destroy each and every kingdom on Remnant.
“Very well,” Weiss decided. It was an infallible plan. “I accept.”
Three days and three nights, their battle ceased. The shocking marriage between the young heroine and the demon lord was broadcasted to the public.
Whispers of skepticism and uncertainty spread throughout the kingdoms, but Ruby wasn’t worried. Meanwhile, Weiss was pleased to see her plans come into fruition. Things were progressing smoothly. Little did she know, instead of magic and swords, her future was going to be a losing battle against her own emotions.