Chapter 1 : Chapter 1
Volume 1
Chapter 1 : Was Something Wrong with Being Doomed from the Very Start?
“Have I... transmigrated?”
Muen stared blankly at himself in the mirror.
His short golden hair lay in soft, scattered strands, like the first light of dawn.
His handsome features were flawlessly sculpted, as though carved from marble, and his pale blue eyes held the deep stillness of a tranquil lake.
He was absurdly handsome.
Muen felt his heart skip a beat from being struck by the sheer beauty of the face in the mirror.
Even his modern aesthetic sense, long since battered by countless idol dramas, could not help but marvel at how such an outrageously handsome man could possibly exist.
But this was not him.
No, it was him or rather, he had become someone else.
After getting off work at two-thirty in the morning, he had been overjoyed by pulling five five-stars in a ten-draw gacha—only to be run over and killed by a passing dump truck.
Then he had transmigrated into another world and become another person.
“Muen Campbell.”
A flood of memories surged through his mind, leaving his head heavy and dizzy.
At the same time, he could not help murmuring his current name aloud.
It was exactly the same name he had borne in his previous life.
And yet that very name made his heart lurch.
“No way... it can’t be that much of a coincidence, can it?”
Muen Campbell.
Because the name was the same as his own, it had left a particularly deep impression on him.
He was one of the characters from a western fantasy Soaring Phoenix novel Muen had recently been reading.
The son of a duke, noble in status, refined in bearing, strikingly handsome and even betrothed to the Empire’s Third Princess.
It was practically the perfect character setup, a man born with a golden key in his mouth and standing at the absolute peak of society.
One could say that the odds of transmigrating into someone like this were even lower than the odds of China’s national football team making the World Cup.
But there was one fatal flaw—
He was the blond villain of the novel’s early arc.
That was right.
Handsome, aristocratic, blond, wealthy, powerful, arrogant, and specialized in serving as a stepping stone for the protagonist to slap in the face—he was practically a template villain.
His only purpose was to oppress the protagonist in the early stages, force the protagonist to grow and send waves of underlings at different levels to feed the protagonist experience points, allowing the protagonist to enjoy meteoric growth amid constant humiliation and adversity, along with the ultimate thrill of fortunes reversed.
And Muen Campbell, of course, eventually met the ruin he deserved later in the story.
Through that incident, he successfully created a relationship event between the protagonist and one of the heroines—namely, his own fiancée.
When Muen had read that part, he could not help cursing the man as an idiot.
Muen Campbell—that was to say, the original owner of this body—had stubbornly concluded that Selicia had cuckolded him simply because she had grown too close to the protagonist and remained cold toward him.
In a fit of rage, he drugged Selicia at a banquet, intending to forcefully claim her for himself ahead of time.
Naturally, he did not succeed, because the protagonist arrived in time.
Worse still, that very rescue became the turning point.
Selicia, who had previously only paid the protagonist some attention because of her growing prominence, truly began to develop special feelings for her.
It was the perfect example of trying to steal a chicken only to lose the rice used to lure it.
As for the original Muen, he was charged with attempting to violate Her Highness the Princess.
The furious king personally ordered that his noble status be stripped away, and not even his doting parents could save him.
His final end was, of course, utterly miserable.
In Muen’s memory, the original owner had not died, but by the time the protagonist’s party saw him again in the latter half of the book, he had already become a beggar with one arm and one leg missing, struggling to survive by begging on the roadside.
“I can’t believe I really transmigrated into the body of the blond villain. This is ridiculous. As a transmigrator, shouldn’t I be covered in plot armor, blessed with a cheat, raging against heaven and earth, declaring that my fate is mine and not heaven’s? And if I’m not the protagonist, shouldn’t I just kill the protagonist and take the throne myself?”
Muen felt like crying.
But he could not think that way.
Because this was not an ordinary power-fantasy novel.
This was a yuri power-fantasy novel.
In other words, a Soaring Phoenix novel.
The protagonist was a woman! A woman! A woman!
And because of the setting, the romantic atmosphere in this world was extraordinarily free. Relationships between women were completely normal here.
There was even magic that allowed women to have children with other women.
Magic truly could do anything.
That was why the original Muen had grown jealous when he noticed the relationship between Selicia and the protagonist beginning to take a suspicious turn.
He had felt as though something that belonged to him was being violated.
But did a male blond villain in a yuri novel ever stand a chance of turning things around?
Of course not.
Readers would have torn that sort of cuckoldry plot to shreds.
So even a noble young master of Muen Campbell’s status could only serve as an early-stage villain.
He was written out at lightning speed before the story even passed twenty chapters, after which the plot fully shifted onto the princess route.
“So this is some kind of bizarre catastrophic opening.”
Muen stroked his chin and fell into thought.
“But if I think about it carefully, this identity still starts from an excellent position. As long as I don’t oppose the protagonist and simply live as an ordinary duke’s son, keeping myself completely on the margins, then even if I can’t marry Selicia, I can still marry some other beautiful noble lady and live the luxurious life of my dreams. Wouldn’t that be wonderful too?”
“The only problem is that I don’t know how far the conflict between the original Muen and the protagonist has progressed. Ideally, it should still be before the academy arc begins.”
Only someone who had read the original novel would know just how absurd the destiny and cheat surrounding that Soaring Phoenix protagonist truly were.
Muen was not foolish enough to think he could compete with such a protagonist in a pure wish-fulfillment world.
As long as I accept that I’m weak, then I’m invincible!
Now that he thought about it carefully, wasn’t his current identity actually rather delightful?
“Young Master Muen.”
Just as Muen was drifting into pleasant fantasy, a knock suddenly came from behind him.
A maid with dignified and delicate features stepped into the room.
“It’s Ann.”
Muen recognized her.
She had appeared once or twice in the book as well.
She was the original owner’s personal maid and confidante, someone extremely close to him.
Quite a few of the schemes used against the protagonist had been planned by this maid named Ann.
“What is it?”
“Madam has asked that you come to her.”
With her hands folded neatly before her lower abdomen, Ann gave a respectful bow.
“It seems that the formalwear for the banquet you are attending tomorrow has arrived.”
“Oh, I see. Understood.”
Muen answered casually, intending to send Ann away first.
After all, he had only just transmigrated and still needed time to adjust.
Otherwise, it would be difficult to avoid being noticed by a personal maid as close to him as Ann.
“Wait. What did you just say?”
But just as Ann was about to leave, Muen suddenly called out to her and asked stiffly,
“A banquet? What banquet?”
“Why, your coming-of-age banquet, Young Master.”
Ann’s delicate brows drew together slightly, her expression worried. “Are you unwell, Young Master? How could you forget something like that?”
“No, no, I’m fine. It’s nothing. I just... I just woke up, so my head is still a little foggy. Sorry. You may leave first.”
Muen forced a smile and dismissed Ann.
It was clear that she was still somewhat puzzled and concerned, but she did not dare disobey Muen’s order and obediently withdrew from the room.
After she left, silence once more filled the chamber.
Muen slowly turned his head and gazed at the person in the mirror, at that self who was both unfamiliar and strangely familiar.
His memories were still churning.
The memories belonging to the two Muens were continuously merging together.
Some once-vague images gradually sharpened and solidified.
Now he was Muen, and he was also Muen Campbell.
The causes were now his causes, and the consequences were now his consequences.
There was no escaping them.
“Ahhhh, how can this be?!”
Muen suddenly clutched his head in anguish and let out a miserable wail.
“Why is my coming-of-age banquet tomorrow of all days?!”
There was one prerequisite behind everything—becoming the idle son of a duke, marrying a beautiful noble lady, and living a happy, carefree, luxurious life.
That prerequisite was this:
He must not provoke the protagonist.
He must not become the suicidal blond villain he had been in the book.
Better yet, he should have nothing to do with that Soaring Phoenix protagonist at all.
That would have been his happy ending.
But now, that ending was no longer possible.
Because judging from the current timeline, he had already provoked the protagonist—and the conflict had likely already reached the point of a powder keg, needing only a single fuse to explode completely.
And tomorrow, at Muen Campbell’s coming-of-age banquet, was the day he would drug the Empire’s Third Princess, Selicia.
That was the fuse and that was the moment of his ruin.