While Seraph had his epical, myth-soaked awakening on a forgotten altar, not every player's journey began with cults, godhood, and winged dominion.
Some began with pirates.
Take, for example, the unfortunate soul who went by the nickname Trashmage.
Just moments before his arrival in this world, he'd been a retail cashier, the only magic in his life being how his boss expected him to smile for ten hours straight. Then, suddenly: black screen, strange lights, and boom, he was on a ship under siege by pirates.
Loud. Chaotic. And very, very real.
The crew fought bravely, but it was clear they were losing. That's when a frail man in tattered robes, the supposed "mentor" assigned to him, performed some kind of desperate spell, pulling every last bit of mana or whatever energy from his withered frame into one explosive attack that vaporized half the pirates.
Trashmage didn't even scream. He just stood there, stunned, as the old man collapsed and shoved a glowing space ring and a bunch of weird books into his hands before dying with dramatic flair.
Even in a daze, Trashmage opened his status menu.
Rank: Magician / Extraordinary Level 1
"Magician? Okay. That sounds cool. Magic, right? Wizard stuff?"
At the time, he had no idea what that really meant. No clue about class mechanics, no idea how this world worked.
Still, he tried to cast a spell.
Nothing.
He flipped through the books. Wall after wall of glowing runes, theoretical diagrams, advanced mana latticework that may as well have been alien geometry.
Trashmage slowly set the book down.
"…I'm a fraud."
He spent the next few hours crouched behind barrels in the coastal city where the ship washed ashore, quietly watching the natives handle the first monster wave of the night.
He didn't even pretend to help.
"I'm a support class," He told himself.
Then came salvation, from a completely unexpected place.
The World Chat.
And there, lighting up his feed like a message from heaven, was a single post by a player named Seraph.
[Seraph]: Classes won't unlock until you align with your path. Focus your mind, understand your origin. Your identity is the key.
Trashmage blinked.
Seraph didn't stop there. He posted several more messages, short, mysterious tips about Spiritual Power, class attunement, even basic world mechanics. It felt like an RPG developer leaking the source code.
The only price?
"Chant my name several times a day."
"…Weird price," Trashmage muttered, but he'd heard worse deals in retail.
He didn't really understand it. But it felt like his mind opened. His understanding about 'Magician' was too crude before. As someone who doesn't know about spiritual power, how could he just suddenly be able to use them, and throw spells here and there?
He then meditated, focused, and tried again, this time not to "cast a fireball" like a game move, but to channel something real. The spiritual power Seraph described.
Moments later, the air shimmered. A tiny ember formed at his fingertip. Then exploded like a firecracker, taking out a fleeing goblin.
He stood there for a moment.
Then grinned.
"TRASHMAGE IS REAL, BABY!"
His spells were janky. His aim was terrible. But now he could fight. And from that moment on, he fought with the same energy as someone who had failed every character creation tutorial and still insisted he was the main protagonist.
The nickname stuck.
He couldn't change it anymore.
But he doesn't care.
Because he wore it with pride.
But while Trashmage stumbled into magic with blind luck and firecrackers, others survived through grit, instinct… and a bit of fish-induced madness.
One such player was known as SaltyNavigator, experienced transmigration in a far more grounded, albeit equally bizarre way.
He didn't awaken on a grand ship or in a city under siege.
He woke up alone, drifting on a battered two-mast trawler, swaying near a rocky reef. The crew were long dead, their corpses bloated and half-decayed, riddled with sea-rot and claw marks. The only sign that life had once been normal aboard was a rusting fishing rod and a half-eaten smoked eel sandwich molding near the helm.
SaltyNavigator didn't panic.
Back on Earth, he had served in the military, done mountain rescues, and even ran a small survivalist YouTube channel with 47K subscribers. He could purify water with algae and stones, identify safe mushrooms by spore pattern, and once ate boiled boots to win a bet.
He was ready.
…Or so he thought.
The first thing he did was sweep the deck, toss the corpses overboard, and salvage what he could, knives, nails, even thread. He didn't know where he was, but survival was a universal language.
When he touched the ship's wheel, something strange happened. Knowledge filled his mind, sailing terms, wind angles, rudder control. Like someone had shoved a seafaring guidebook into his brain.
He blinked. Then sighed.
"Magic. Got it," He muttered, chalking it up to the gods, the system, or the whatever ghost of the eel sandwich.
Day One passed without incident. He caught a fish that looks vaguely like a red snapper and cooked it with some driftwood in a makeshift brazier. It tasted like salty mud and regret, but it was food.
When the night came and the system's [Survive!] prompt flashed, he fought off a few strange creatures that leapt onto the deck, but when the kill count didn't budge, he made a decision.
"I'm not dying for XP," He muttered, tossed the bodies overboard, turned the wheel, and fled into open water.
Day Two was worse.
Starving, he hooked a glowing, translucent fish with a thousand-yard stare and trailing membrane fins. It looked like sashimi and smelled edible.
He remembered the rule: If it glows, let it go.
But he ignored the rule because he was truly hungry.
It was a mistake.
He blacked out halfway through eating it, then spent two hours having a one-sided conversation with the boat. Not in a metaphorical sense, he heard the boat talking. He argued with the mast. He apologized to the anchor. He may or may not have tried to marry the sails.
He even composed a lullaby for the compass and wept when it didn't respond.
By noon, the hallucinations faded, but the damage to his pride lingered.
That was when someone in World Chat typed like they'd just licked a sea toad, and he couldn't help but reply with hard-earned wisdom:
[SaltyNavigator]: "Person above, what kind of meat have you eaten before? Just saying, but puffer fish can be toxic and can cause hallucinations."
After that, he closed the chat and returned to the edge of the ship, line in hand.
Even if his head still throbbed from the alien sashimi incident, his stomach didn't care. The small portion he'd eaten earlier hadn't been enough to fill a child, let alone a grown man with a high metabolism and no fridge.
He eyed the remaining fillet of glowing fish meat in his inventory.
Then very calmly, selected [Discard].
By evening, the pain in his skull finally began to fade. But in its place, he felt… something.
A strange current in his veins. Subtle, but real. His limbs felt lighter. His reflexes are sharper. Even his senses were keener, his eyes catching movements further out on the water than they should have.
That night, the system didn't let him rest.
The monsters it spawned were different, amphibious things called Murlocs, hunched, shrieking humanoid fish. And there were more than a few.
But SaltyNavigator, still riding the mystery power-up from his earlier "experience," decided not to flee this time.
He stood at the bow of his ship, machete in hand, and smiled.
"Alright. Let's see what you're made of."
He fought like a man who had nothing left to lose, and ended up carving through ten or more of the monsters before the deck was littered with slippery, twitching corpses. His ship reeked of salt and blood, and the faint blue glow of item drops shimmered across the boards.
Among the loot was a battered book wrapped in scaled hide.
He picked it up, flipped it open… and something clicked in his head.
[Personal Skill Gained: Survival Expert]
It didn't make him invincible. But it made him smarter. Faster. And Better.
And more importantly, it made everything finally make sense.
Back on Earth, his knowledge was gospel, like how to treat a sprained ankle in the wild, how to find clean water by following birds, and how long you could survive on boiled moss and tree bark. But here?
This world ran on different logic.
Now his rulebook had new entries:
Some fish had Spirit Affinity.
Others were laced with Dream-Venom.
One made him relieve a breakup from ten years ago and cry into a soggy rope for six hours.
Still, he adapted.
And like any good survivalist, he shared what he learned.
He began posting to World Chat again, small warnings, practical tips, hard-earned truths:
[SaltyNavigator]: If the meat whispers when you cut it, don't eat it. Burn it and pray first.
[SaltyNavigator]: You CAN eat Murloc meat. Boil it three times. Toss the first water. Don't fry. Trust me. And don't eat it three meals in a row. Or you'll start dreaming in fish language.
[SaltyNavigator]: Don't drink blood from monsters. That's not healing. That's spiritual saturation.
The messages caught on.
People started pinging him for advice. Asking questions. Sharing their disasters.
It felt good. Useful.
He didn't have a cool class. Or a divine inheritance. Or wings.
But he had knowledge. Experience. And now… a skill that made it work.
This world wasn't Earth.
But survival?
Survival was still survival.
He'd figure it out.
Even if the rules changed.
Even if the fish whispered.
He'd adapt.
And then… There were the one truly devout.
…
There's always another story at sea, or perhaps, the sea simply never runs out of them.
This one begins with a man who role-played just a little bit too well.
Player Name: Zealot Mackerel.
Unlike the others, Zealot Mackerel's transmigration happened during a moment of faith. A strange coincidence… or maybe not.
Back on Earth, he was a half-priest, a man raised in an orphanage run by the church, occasionally taking on odd roles in role-play groups and sometimes volunteering at services. He wasn't exactly devout, but faith had always been part of his script.
He was in the middle of reciting a prayer when the world changed.
He blinked once, eyes closed for less than a second, and when they opened again… the pews were gone.
The altar was replaced by a crumbling stone podium. His clean priest robes now pitch black, adorned in crimson thread and foreign sigils. Dozens of hooded figures knelt before him in silence, their faces hidden behind bone-white masks, their breathing slow, but reverent.
And somehow, he was standing at the center of it all, becoming their leader.
He spent the next twenty minutes babbling divine nonsense, trying to buy time, hoping someone, or anyone would explain what was happening.
No one did.
No one interrupted.
They simply listened. Worshiped everything he spout.
And followed.
When he tried to excuse himself after the sermon, two masked devotees flanked him, hands clasped over their chests.
"We are your protector, Lord Herald," One whispered.
'I want to protect myself from you!' He thought but kept the words to himself.
With no choice but to continue the act, he leaned into the role. At least until night fell.
That's when the monsters came.
Fish-like beasts swarmed their ruined coastal sanctuary, snarling and leaping from the shore. Zealot Mackerel didn't even have a weapon, but the cultists, his "followers", rushed in to protect him without hesitation.
One died screaming his name.
Another lit herself on fire to drive back a beast.
By the third death, Zealot Mackerel was trembling.
He wasn't a hero.
He wasn't even a good person.
"I'm just a dude who played a cleric in a Pathfinder game," He muttered to himself.
Desperate to escape the rising guilt, he opened the World Chat.
And there, like a divine beacon, he saw a message.
A player named Seraph was explaining the system, sharing insights, unlocking knowledge the others were still fumbling for.
Zealot Mackerel read each word like scripture.
And then, it clicked.
Something within him shifted. A warm pulse spread through his chest. His class was activated.
[Class: Cult Leader(10%)]
[Description: Lead with Faith. Command in Belief.]
Passive:
Your presence strengthens followers. Their loyalty increases, and they gain resistance to fear and spiritual attacks when near you.
Active: As a Cult Leader, you carry blind faith.
Offer your belief to the God you serve and Bless your cultists with a burst of spiritual energy. Increases their attack power and reduces pain briefly. Bonus effect if they share the same belief and faith.]
His skills were… concerning.
But considering his situation, it was useful.
Very useful.
Then he paused, the thought creeping in, 'If the gods in this world were truly real… and truly as dangerous as the mad ones described in scripture... What if these cultists were worshiping something evil?'
Better, perhaps, to guide their faith himself, before it landed somewhere horrifying.
Considering his sudden transmigration and the System.
He made his choice.
Rather than praying to some unseen cosmic creature, he chose to elevate players. Someone who had brought him clarity and doesn't have the power of godly horror.
Not to mention his name is also perfect for the situation concerned.
He declared to the cultists: "Our Lord has spoken. His name is Seraph, and He walks with wings upon the sea!"
That night, he used his class skill to bless his cultists, and they fought like zealots.
No, they fought like believers.
Unshakable. Wild. And victorious.
Then, without thinking, he typed in the World Chat:
[ZealotMackerel]: Lord Seraph, Your magnanimous knowledge has opened my mind. From today, I declare You as our object of faith!
The chat exploded into chaos.
Dozens of confused replies.
Some mocking. Some praising.
Some are genuinely concerned.
And as he stared at the screen, his expression froze.
'Shit… I forgot to use a normal tone…'
Zealot Mackerel mentally broke into a cold sweat. He didn't know if he was affected by his class or something.
But what was done, was done.
All he could do now… was try to explain.
So he started typing again, this time, with just a little less flair, hoping the others would understand that, beneath the theatrics, he was just a desperate man trying to survive the only way he knew how.
Later on, as the blood of monsters washed over the rocks, and the last of the sea-spawn fled beneath the waves, Zealot Mackerel stood alone atop the ruined shrine his followers had claimed for him.
His robe was torn. His health was low. His right hand trembled from overuse of his skills.
But his people were alive.
Around him, the cultists knelt in ragged prayer, chanting Seraph's name in a strange fusion of awe and violence. They had stopped asking questions. They had started building shrines. One of them had even offered him a cup carved from a sea serpent's fang.
He didn't know whether to be honored or horrified.
"…I'm too deep in," He muttered.
"Am I still acting?" He also wondered, "Or did I start believing somewhere along the way?"
A system message blinked faintly in his vision:
[Night: 1 (Six More Night To Go)]
[Unique Monster: 0/1]
He froze.
"…Excuse me??"
What unique Monsters? When did it die?
But there was no further explanation.
Only the wind, and the sound of chanting.
Zealot Mackerel rubbed his face. Somewhere between pretending and believing, between lies and desperate survival, something had shifted.
The cultists weren't role-playing.
And maybe… just maybe…
Neither was he.
He sighed and leaned against the shrine's altar, looking up at the darkening sky.
"Seraph," He muttered under his breath, "I really hope you're not an asshole."
Then, reluctantly, he opened the World Chat again.
[ZealotMackerel]: The faithful live another day. May the Lord of Wings watch over us all. Also, if anyone has extra bandages, I am bleeding out… Again.
And with that, the day ended.
The sea grew quiet.
But the faith?
It had only just begun.
…
While Trashmage stumbled through magic with firecracker fingers, and SaltyNavigator hallucinated his way to practical wisdom, another player walked an entirely different path, silent, methodical, and deeply rooted in the art of avoidance.
Player Name: GhostStep.
He was not here for glory. Not for memes. Not even for camaraderie.
Back on Earth, he had been a quiet presence. A night-shift security guard who read tactical manuals for fun, and dabbled in urban exploration. He didn't talk much, didn't post much. But when he did something… he did it thoroughly.
When the world changed, he didn't panic.
He observed.
Waking up alone in a foggy mangrove swamp filled with unknown sounds and strange footprints, he immediately crouched low, tested his footing, and blended into the reeds.
The system's first prompt didn't say "Fight." It said "Survive."
And so he did.
While others ran or cried or swung wildly at sea monsters, GhostStep vanished from sight, literally. His unique identity granted him an early passive: [Evasion Instinct], and a starting class labeled only as [Silent Stalker].
He didn't know what that meant at first. But he felt it, his footsteps grew lighter, his breath quieter, his presence diminished.
It was the perfect setup for someone who had spent his life slipping through shadows unnoticed.
He didn't use World Chat. Didn't leave comments. Didn't even ping anyone. The only thing other players noticed was the occasional corpse of a monster left neatly gutted, with no signs of struggle.
On Night One, while the others screamed and scrambled, GhostStep climbed a tree, wrapped himself in moss, and watched. He took notes on monster patterns, aggression radius, and how long it took for them to lose interest in a target.
On Night Two, he baited two creatures into fighting each other, then looted the survivor's corpse.
By Day Three, his stealth skill had evolved. His cloak was stitched together from monster hides. His knife had been sharpened with volcanic rock. And when the system finally rewarded him with a personal skill, it read:
[Skill Gained: Shadow Veil] Allows the user to mask spiritual presence for 10 seconds. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Perfect for scouting or sudden retreats.
GhostStep nodded once. Satisfied.
He was alive. Efficiently hidden.
Of course, all that silence made the World Chat's chaos even more jarring whenever he accidentally opened it.
[TrashMage]: Fireball's got recoil! WHY DOES FIREBALL HAVE RECOIL?!
[SaltyNavigator]: New rule: If a mushroom says "eat me," DON'T.
[ZealotMackerel]: The Lord sees all. The Sea hears His name.
[GhostStep]: …Unsubscribed.
He closed the feed, muted the chat, and returned to the trees.
If the others were building cults or soup recipes, so be it.
GhostStep wasn't here to be seen.
He was here to survive.
.......................
[System Whisper - Player Observation Log: Day 2 And 3]
[Trashmage]
Current Status: Currently responsible for three successful spells… and six questionable fires.
Notes: Claims it's all part of his "Trashpath" development arc. Confidence is rising. Recklessness... rising faster.
System Comment: An identity born of misfires and ember-fueled accidents.
[SaltyNavigator]
Current Status: Mildly irradiated. Mentally stable. Cooking dangerously.
Progress: Still distrusts glowing fish. Still labels monsters by food grade. Gained minor fame through edible warnings and boiling advice. Has spoken to his boat... Twice.
System Comment: An old-world survivalist who refuses to die stupidly. Believer of practicality, not prophecy.
Notes: Posted three food warnings, two fishing tips, and one impromptu haiku about sea hallucinations.
[Zealot Mackerel]
Current Status: Still pretending. But is he really?
Progress: Gained followers after declaring a fellow player as divine. Worship spreading faster than expected. Carved relics, rituals, and reverent chaos already forming.
Status: Faithfully unstable. Highly influential.
Notes: Followers carved "Seraph Saves" into a sea serpent fang. May require divine clarification.
System Comment: He may be a Pioneer.
[GhostStep]
Current Status: Unseen. Unbothered. Alive.
Progress: [Shadow Veil] unlocked. Stealth approach optimized.
Interactions: 0 messages. 1 accidental World Chat open. Immediately closed.
Other Interaction: brief nod to a confused crab.
Notes: May be mistaken for a ghost by other players. Has not died. Has not spoken.
System Comment: Recommended candidate for "Most Likely to Survive Everything Except Socialization."
World System Note:
Player trajectories are diverging. Faith systems are stabilizing.
Unique Event Probability: [Moderate → High]
Seraph's influence: Growing.