"Miss? Is that you?"
A young maid cracked the door open and leaned inside. The room was still. No response. Her eyes scanned the bed, where someone was curled up under the blanket with their back turned.
"I told you it was nothing," the second maid whispered, tugging her arm. "Come on—close the door before we get in trouble."
The door clicked shut.
A few seconds later, Ines pushed the covers off her face and sat up slightly.
So I'm not the only one here, she thought.
She let herself fall back with a soft thud, arms behind her head, legs stretched across the mattress. Her thoughts drifted to the memories she had inherited—familiar and foreign all at once.
Her name was Ines Vermillion. They shared the same first name which left her quite relieved and astounded besides that she was the daughter of two powerful cultivators from the Vermillion Clan—one of the five dominant clans in the kingdom of Nytheris. The clan name carried weight. People respected and feared them.
Her parents had disappeared when she was a baby. No explanation. No warning. They left her with her grandfather and vanished the same night. All anyone ever told her was that they had to leave quickly—and that her grandfather was now responsible for her.
That was sixteen years ago.
Any time she brought it up, her grandfather shut down the conversation. No details. No stories. Just silence. Eventually, she gave up asking.
The shocking part was that in this world—magic existed.
Ines was genuinely stunned by the revelation. She never imagined other realms existed beyond Earth. Back home, power like this was fiction. Here, it was very real.
In this world, people used a force called Rin—an elemental energy that flowed through everything. Every person was born with a natural affinity to at least one element: Fire, Water, Ice, Wind, Thunder, or Earth.
Most people only had one. Two wasn't common, but not unheard of. Three was rare. Four? Extremely rare. As for someone with all six? The last person with that kind of affinity hadn't been seen in hundreds of thousands of years. Some believed they didn't exist anymore.
What intrigued Ines most was something called Maera—a channel system within the body that Rin flowed through. Under normal conditions, these channels stayed dormant. But under extreme pressure or intense combat, some people could awaken deeper Maera channels, triggering the opening of the Maera Gates.
These gates weren't part of normal cultivation. They were a different system entirely—one most people never touched.
There were seven gates:
Kaimon – The Opening Gate
Retsumon – The Gate of Ferocity
Ketsumon – The Gate of Rupture
Gōmon – The Gate of Convergence
Zetsumon – The Gate of Severance
Shūmon – The Gate of End
Asura – The Gate of Hell
Each gate unlocked a massive surge of power, but also pushed the body past its natural limits. Most cultivators never got beyond the fourth gate. Past that, it was considered suicidal.
Only three people in the entire kingdom of Nytheris had ever opened all seven gates and survived. Just three.
Outside of the Maera Gates, there was the standard path of cultivation—refining Rin to rise in strength. There were six levels before a person could rise in rank. What they were called, Ines had no idea. The girl whose memories she inherited had quit class long befor that. Not caring to learn anything more.
She felt like it was pointless for her to attend, really.
Out of all the problems she could've inherited—poverty, illness, a tragic backstory—what did Ines get?
A body that was absolutely…
Useless.
Yes. In this magical, powerful, elemental world where people trained with energy called Rin and unlocked mythical Maera Gates, she… was walking garbage.
No talent. No power.
Not even a good starting stat.
"This is rigged," she muttered, flopping onto the bed like a fish in emotional cardiac arrest.
But that wasn't even the worst part. Oh no. The worst part?
The outside world thought she was a guy.
That's right. For reasons unknown, her grandfather went through tedious means to keep her identity as a male. Why? No one would tell her.
Only her grandfather and the maids knew her real gender. the maids were bound by something called a Heaven's Oath, which was basically a cosmic NDA that prevented them from speaking a word about it without exploding or something.
At least in her room, she could breathe. Walk freely. Be a girl. But the moment she stepped outside?
Boom.
Gender: M
Class: Emotionally Damaged
Title: Local Disappointment
To be fair, she didn't mind pretending to be a guy.
That wasn't the problem.
The real problem was what the old owner of this body had been doing.
She was, in a word,
Unwell.
Apparently, when she couldn't cultivate like everyone else, she decided to take up a different hobby. Something low-effort. Harmless. Casual.
Like…
Stalking hot men.
"WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?!" Ines howled into her pillow, already imagining herself being launched out of society like trash.
The previous "her" had been boy crazy. Like, aggressively. Desperately. Delusionally. Multiply your average fangirl by ten and subtract all common sense.
She followed men. Wrote about them. Drew them.
Once, she even tried to sniff someone's sleeve. She would probably sniff their panties if she could!!
Men were horrified.
They avoided her like plague mist.
And if it weren't for her family's status, she would've been—
"Executed thirty times over by now," she said flatly, staring at the ceiling with dead eyes.
Powerless.
Wrongfully gendered.
Carrying the social baggage of a legendary creep.
Truly, she had reincarnated into hard mode.