Ch.1- A mistake.

They say self-improvement started with admitting you were the problem; however, Amy had long ago declared herself “demoness-destroyer-of-worlds,” and it hadn’t helped at all; if anything, the self-awareness only made her shit-talking skills better.
“…and this chapter, dear followers, once again proves why Quest for Avalon is the most egregiously overhyped piece of garbage ever to step into the manga industry,”
Amy paused to reread the sentence she’d just typed, then smirked. That was some good ass ragebait, and honestly, it deserved a reward.
With a smile, she reached for the energy drink on her desk, then cracked it open, drank it, then dropped it into the pile of trash at the side.
As her eyes fell onto the pile of trash, she winced. Her room was disgusting; when had it gotten this bad? If her mother finds out… The thought made her stomach twist— She should clean it up— she had to clean it up… tomorrow…
Back at the keyboard, she forgot everything about her shame and went back to writing.
“Because honestly, was I supposed to feel something when Lain sacrificed herself? To be honest, I even laughed when she blew up. For some reason, I found it kind of funny at that time.”
Amy leaned back and stared at the ceiling while still grinning at how absurdly funny Lain’s death had been. Yeah, maybe it was a little sad that she found it funny, or maybe a lot sad, but whatever.
With a small sigh, she leaned forward once again, then continued typing.
“Anyway, those are my thoughts on chapter 225: just shit. I give it one star, and I’m being generous, mind you.”
She exhaled very dramatically as she prepared herself to post, and without any further ado, she hit the button.
Click.
Within seconds, her phone began vibrating as notifications, comments, shares, and a crazy amount of people very mad appeared.
Ahh~ I can’t get enough of this feeling.
She hadn’t slept today just to catch the chapter drop, but it had definitely been worth it; ragebaiting immediately after a chapter release was simply broken.
“Another good day of work, you worthless ogre.”
With the job finally done, she began feeling the familiar brain fog of exhaustion creeping in. After a small yawn, she turned her monitor off and then deactivated the notifications from her phone.
Amy jumped into bed and set her alarm for noon. By morning, the comments would be straight-up warfare, and she needed to be charged up for the absolute bloodbath. Tomorrow promised more drama, more views, and more bag. At this rate, by the time she turned 18, she would finally be able to move away from this place, something which her mother would definitely celebrate.
As sleep claimed her, Amy’s face relaxed; she felt accomplished… Sure, her life had been a shitshow recently, and dropping out of school had surprisingly only made it worse. Yet still, these small moments of just hating made her feel better. If only for a short time, she was allowed to feel fine…
The happiness didn’t last.
Amy frowned as the light from her computer—which had turned back on for whatever reason—reached her eyelids and a ping sound at the same time arrived in her ears.
Amy groaned, then rolled over with sleep still clouding her mind as she glared at the fucking glowing computer on her table.
There was a notification, no, hundreds, or maybe thousands.
What in the…
Her inbox was filled with only one message which repeated over and over again: [Funny, huh?]
“What the…”
Amy’s words were cut off as more lines of text appeared.
[Let’s see if you’ll still laugh in a few minutes.]
There was a very loud and very painful high-pitched ringing as her vision blurred, which caused Amy to hold her head while her chest tightened and breathing became gradually difficult.
Then, not being able to stand it any longer, she lost consciousness.
 
-————-　■　-————-
 
Amy’s vision slowly returned. She blinked, trying to focus her eyes. Instead of her ceiling, she saw…clouds? No, not clouds, something more solid. Were those planets…?
“Huh…” she said as she slowly sat upright.
She wasn’t in her bed. She wasn’t even in her apartment.
Amy found herself sitting on a marble floor that stretched ‘to infinity and beyond’. She saw columns taller than skyscrapers which surrounded her, and in the ceiling (if that could be called a ceiling since it looked more like the sky) another marble dome.
She pinched herself hard, flinching at the pain.
Not dreaming, then a hallucination? Drugs? What the hell is going on…?
“You’re awake,” said a voice that somehow came from everything, everywhere, all at once. “Good.”
Amy scrambled up while spinning her head in circles, trying to locate the speaker. “Hello? I-Is this some kind of prank? Am I on camer—” Amy flinched as out of nowhere a figure appeared in front of her. They were a woman, if such a basic term could describe the person that stood there. With features that would surely make beauty filters useless, she towered at least seven feet tall with skin pale as snow, eyes appearing to have stars on them, and hair like gold.
The teenage girl stumbled backward, landing hard against the ground. “What the—” She scrubbed at her eyes violently. “…maybe this really is a dream…”
“This is no dream, Amy Stake. No hallucination either.”
Amy’s mouth opened and closed several times before words came out. “Do I…know you? How do you know my legal name?”
“I know many things about you, Amy, like for example, your morning skincare routine, your core memory from age seven, the real reason you dropped out of school, the…photos you hide under your bed.”
“!?” Amy felt her face flush. “Who ARE you, you creep?”
The celestial smiled, seemingly amused by her response. “I have many names across many worlds. But in the realm you know as ‘Quest for Avalon,’ I am simply called the Goddess.”
Amy tilted her head, her mind lagging behind, trying to process the woman’s words. Then, a strangled laugh escaped her lips. “Heh… okay, wow. So… this is your idea of a prank huh? Pretty funny, I’ll give you that, but seriously I was kind of busy… sleeping, actually; you really picked a bad time. Listen, goddess or whatever you like to call yourself, you know this is illegal, right?”
The woman raised an eyebrow while tilting her head to the side. “Illegal?”
Amy frowned, then nodded. “Of course it’s illegal; you obviously can’t just take someone out of their room in the middle of the night and do whatever this is… I mean, I have—”
“You speak too much.” The self-proclaimed Goddess flicked her wrist and the next thing Amy knew was that her mouth literally disappeared.
She frantically touched where her lips should be in panic as she tried to scream.
What the…
Amy’s heart was beating faster and faster as she continued touching for her mouth.
“Now onto important matters; your review,” the Goddess said while ignoring her panic completely.
Multiple blue screens suddenly appeared in the air and showed Amy’s online posts: blog posts, comments, videos—never showing her face, obviously—and more.
Amy’s panic increased not only because her mouth did not reappear but also because more and more screens continued to appear.
What in the fucking fuck is going on!??
The Goddess waved her hand and the screens vanished. “Saw all that garbage? It was all created by you.” The Goddess smiled at her, then waved her hand once again.
With the Goddess’ gesture, Amy’s mouth finally returned as suddenly as it had disappeared. “I—I—… This can’t be real…” She said, then pressed her palms against her face. “I’m hallucinating… I have to be.”
“This is very real,” the Goddess said with a cold voice. “As real as the constant garbage you write.”
“What…?”
“A critic, that’s what you like to call yourself, is it not?” The Goddess said with scary, cold-looking eyes. “You’re exactly what I’ve been looking for; you destroy without understanding and mock what others pour their souls into, and do it with such…glee.”
Amy frowned deeply, and it took her more than a few seconds for her mind to catch up. After some moments of silence, she finally found the courage to speak despite the surreal situation. “Look, I don’t have the slightest idea of what’s happening here, but aren’t you acting unreasonably…?”
“Mm?”
Amy gulped while staring directly at the woman’s scary-looking eyes, then continued, “If a story is popular, it should be able to withstand criticism; I’m not going to lie and say something is good when it’s objectively bad.”
“Objectively?” The Goddess’s eyebrow rose, and with it, Amy felt herself lifting off the ground. “Funny how you speak of objectivity while using phrases like ‘absolute garbage’ and ‘should be burned rather than—
The Goddess suddenly stopped mid-sentence, and her face froze as her eyes went completely blank and stared at nothing.
—rather than read,” she finished with her voice suddenly flat and hollow.
“Uh…” Amy frowned, confused, then asked hesitantly, “Are you okay?”
The Goddess blinked twice, then her head tilted. “Line… what was my line?” She muttered.
“Your…line?”
The Goddess’s frown deepened as she lifted a hand, then an red book with a yellow triangle suddenly appeared in her hand.
She opened it, then rapidly passed through its pages. “Sorry about that; sometimes I forget part of my script; I have lived far too long, you see. Give me a moment.” While she continued searching, she began humming a strange song.
Amy stared in confusion while the Goddess went through the pages.
Seconds passed with the Goddess’ hum filling the silence, then suddenly, the Goddess jumped with a face full of happiness. “Aha!” She exclaimed. The book disappeared shortly after she clapped her hands once, then she cleared her throat. “Let us continue,” she said with a gesture of her hands, which also happened to make Amy float in the air.
Amy dangled in the air with her feet kicking nothing. “What the— I’m flying!?”
The Goddess brought Amy closer until their faces stayed just inches apart. “Apologize.”
“Uhhh…”
Ok, so let’s get the facts straight. I was kidnapped into some sort of crazy fucking place, and now I’m speaking with a woman who does indeed look like the Goddess, and can somehow make my mouth disappear and make me fly…
I think I should probably start defusing the situation…but…
“…no.”
The woman blinked. “No?” She repeated with a completely dumbfounded expression.
“No…” Amy repeated with a somewhat shaky voice. “Why should I apologize…? For spitting facts…?”
There was silence and then a light chuckle as the Goddess—whom Amy expected everything but to laugh—smiled at her with a completely deranged grin.
Yikes.
“Miss Goddess, I’m going to be a hundred percent honest now… I haven’t said anything wrong. You know what freedom of speech is? Well, I just used it and have been using it this entire time. It’s simply my right to say what I want. You can get mad all you want but…”
Amy trailed off as the grin on the Goddess’s face became wider, making her flinch a bit.
“You are funny.”
That was the only thing she said before Amy suddenly felt herself fall and hit the floor.
“Ouchhh…!”
Right as she fell and tried getting up, golden threads appeared from the ground and wrapped themselves around her feet and hands.
“Huhh…what is…?”
Amy tried pulling, but they didn’t move.
“Very well. You made your choice so now you shall live with the consequences. Everything that happens from now on is on you.”
The woman did another wave and provoked the whole place to start trembling. The column from before fell down and got absorbed into the ground while the ceiling basically disappeared and changed to a night sky with stars.
But that wasn’t all, as just under Amy’s feet planets also in space were clearly visible.
“Um… Miss Goddess?” Amy said very politely now.
I fucked it up.
The Goddess completely ignored her; instead, she stared at the ground where one of the planets floating got closer and closer—actually, it was them getting…
Oh fuck…!
Amy felt an indescribable amount of vertigo as they soon found themselves passing through the atmosphere and now seemingly floating in the sky with a medieval city right under them.
After the panic of falling subsided and Amy managed to get used to the sensation a bit, she realized there was something wrong. That city…
Eldoria???
Eldoria’s capital, the place where Quest for Avalon took place and where the academy where the protagonist studied and lived was.
It was at that moment that a single word popped into Amy’s head.
Isekai.
Nah, there was no way. No absolute way. It’s beyond absurd, right? Saying that she was about to be…
Fucking hell, who did she want to fool? This was actually happening.
It was as she thought this that she felt the transparent ground disappear.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, waiiiiiiittttt—”
“No.”
“Isn’t this the story where people die like flies in like the worst ways possible! Remember Ash???? The guy who got eaten alive by rats!? You can’t seriously be sending me there!?”
“Oh? So you do care about the characters’ fates. Funny how vividly you remember them now, coming from someone who claimed their deaths had zero emotional impact.”
“That’s not—I mean—”
The Goddess shook her head and looked at her disgust. “Such a pitiful, insolent creature… If you knew even half of how much you are about to suffer, that mouth of yours would have already apologized a million times over… Be grateful I am not without mercy.”
Amy looked up, and a tiny glimmer of hope appeared in her eyes. “So you’re not sending me there…?”
The Goddess laughed. “Oh, I most certainly am.”
Amy’s face fell.
“But,” the Goddess continued while raising a single finger, “I will grant you something that no other character in Quest for Avalon has ever had.”
She pressed her palm against Amy’s forehead, and a warm sensation spread through Amy’s entire body—like someone had injected hot honey straight into her veins.
“Hope,” the Goddess whispered. “A power that grows stronger with every person who comes to stan you.”
“…I don’t understand.”
“It’s pretty simple, actually,” the Goddess said while beginning to circle around her. “Your special ability—its nature, its strength, and honestly, your very survival in that world—will all depend on how much the readers like you and what they believe you to be.”
“Readers?” Amy stammered. “What readers?”
“Quest for Avalon is a fictional story in your world, no? Which means it obviously has an audience. The moment you cross over, you become a part of the narrative. If the readers believe you hold a certain power, then that power becomes yours; the more they like you, the stronger it grows.”
Amy swallowed hard. “So basically… I have to make people like me…?”
“Precisely.”
Her brows scrunched together. “Why me, though? This isn’t fair…”
“You’re right, it definitely isn’t; this is a completely disproportionate punishment for some internet trolling, but it sure is poetic, isn’t it? You, who built an entire career out of being an annoying piece of shit, must now learn how to be loved; for a creature as cruel as you, there is no harder challenge I could possibly give.”
Rude…
“One more thing, Amy Stake. You know better than anyone that Quest for Avalon is a tragedy; every single route eventually leads to some kind of bad outcome.”
“Yeah, and that’s exactly why it’s garbage,” Amy muttered, then immediately shut her mouth when the Goddess glared at her.
“Your challenge is this: change the ending. Find a way to turn tragedy into happiness.” The Goddess said while leaning in close. “Do that, and I will send you back to your world.”
“Seriously?” Amy asked with her voice shaking.
“Yes.”
“Seriously? You’ll actually send me back?”
“That is what I said.”
“For real? On god?”
“Yes! I said yes, human, stop asking the same question over and over again!”
The golden threads squeezed tighter around Amy’s limbs as the world beneath her grew larger and larger.
“Wait, I’m not ready! I don’t even know the whole story; I just skimmed most chapters for the highlights!” Amy said while thrashing. “I only wrote those reviews for the engagement, please!”
The Goddess tilted her head, then shook her head. “Perhaps that makes this lesson all the more necessary—” She said while smiling, then her eyes began glowing gold. “Learn and grow, Amy; that’s the only way you will be able to rest, once you have learnt to deal with your sins. Either by dying, suicide, or victory. I don’t care which path you will choose. Just make sure to take an entertaining one, otherwise… all this stupid charade would have been nothing but a waste of time.”
It was during those last words that the Goddess’s expression changed from a smile to completely emotionless as she looked at Amy. Then, with a flick of her wrist, the threads snapped and Amy plummeted toward the world below.
The last thing she saw was the Goddess’s face—completely blank, as if the many emotions she had felt moments ago were all gone, yet somehow in her eyes, she could still see some kind of… hope.