The Villian Who Broke The Story

Six months.

That was how long I had been in this world.

Six months since I opened my eyes and realized that I wasn’t dead.

Six months since I discovered that the world I had spent countless hours playing was no longer a game.

And somehow, after all that time it’s still unusual for me.

I sat on the edge of a cliff, staring down at the forest beneath me.

The wind brushed against my face, carrying the smell of blood, dirt, and something that had died several hours ago.

A C-rank monster.

My latest kill.

I looked at the corpse lying several meters away from me.

I couldn’t help but sigh.

"Six months ago, I didn’t even know monsters were real except within the confines of my screen."

My voice disappeared into the wind.

It was strange.

Back in my old life, I had spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours playing this game.

I knew the world.

I knew the characters.

I knew the major events.

I knew which characters would become heroes, which would become villains, which would die, which would betray their allies, and which would eventually become powerful enough to shake the world.

At least...

I thought I knew the world.

Then I reincarnated into it.

And I wasn’t Leon.

I wasn’t the protagonist.

I wasn’t even an important side character.

I was Kael Draven.

A character who, as far as the original game was concerned, practically didn’t exist.

That was probably the funniest part of all this.

I had spent years memorizing the game’s storyline, yet I had never once encountered my own name.

Not once.

And yet here I was.

Living.

Breathing.

Growing stronger.

And apparently carrying a bloodline that shouldn’t even exist.

Demon royalty.

Even thinking about it still felt ridiculous.

When I played the game, I knew the demon races.

I knew about the Demon King atleast the myth of his existence in the game.

I knew about the ancient demons and the various demon clans.

But I had never encountered anything about a hidden demon royal bloodline.

There had never been a quest.

No character had mentioned it.

No item description had hinted at it.

Nothing.

Yet somehow, that blood flowed through me.

I still hadn’t explored it.

Not because I wasn’t curious.

I was.

More than curious, actually.

I was terrified of what I might find.

There was something about my darkness mana that didn’t feel normal.

Especially after what happened inside the simulation room.

The simulated version of myself had used Mana Emphasization.

I had fought it.

And my darkness mana had eventually destroyed the entire simulation.

That shouldn’t have been possible.

At least, not according to the game.

But this wasn’t the game anymore.

That was something I had slowly come to understand.

The moment I reincarnated, the rules changed.

And every time I thought I understood those rules, something happened that proved me wrong.

Perhaps that was why I had stopped trying to predict everything.

Well...

That was a lie.

I still predicted everything.

I just didn’t trust my predictions as much anymore.

I leaned backward and looked at the sky.

"Six months."

It really had gone by quickly.

My first month had been spent trying to understand my situation.

The second had been spent dealing with the academy.

The third...

I almost laughed.

Charlotte.

That girl had somehow managed to become one of the biggest headaches in my life.

And that was saying something.

Charlotte wasn’t supposed to be an important person to me.

According to the original storyline, she was supposed to become something far more terrifying.

A future Warlock.

A woman who would eventually stand among the world’s greatest threats.

A person whose name would one day be associated with destruction.

And somehow, that future Warlock had become someone who complained about my laziness.

She scolded me when I slept in class.

She complained when I avoided paperwork.

She practically dragged me into studying for exams.

And eventually, she joined the Disciplinary Committee.

Sometimes I wondered whether I had accidentally ruined the future.

Then again...

Maybe that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

If Charlotte really became the person she was supposed to become, then perhaps having someone around her who knew what was coming wasn’t the worst thing.

Then there was Zion.

I smiled.

That guy was something else.

He was one of my favorite characters in the game and a genuine powerhouse in the game, in the future his domains was one of the strongest in the world.

And the fact that due to me copying his celestial sword art have become his brother because of one of those strange dojo traditions.

Then there was Auriella.

I couldn’t help but smile when I thought about her.

The woman had one goal.

Defeat me.

Take the number one position.

And she had made that perfectly clear.

She had even defeated a simulated version of me.

That alone told me how seriously she took everything.

Unlike me but it feels kind of good, prior to the tournament she barely glanced at me and now I’m sort of her obsession I’m wondering how she’s taking my kidnapping.

But knowing her she might just double her training and wait for me the next semester after all she possessed the Eye of Ruin.

A dangerous ability and she plans on growing stronger.

And if she kept growing...

She would become terrifying.

Then again, perhaps I should stop calling everyone terrifying.

At this rate, everyone around me was apparently destined to become a monster.

Even Verdia.

My childhood friend.

My former fiancée.

That was another mess I still hadn’t figured out.

She had always been kind.

Strong too.

But her obsession with protecting people who couldn’t protect themselves had always bothered me.

Not because the goal itself was wrong.

But because she didn’t yet possess the strength necessary to accomplish it.

She wanted to protect everyone.

But the world didn’t care about intentions.

Power decided everything.

I had learned that much already.

Then there was my mother.

Madam Seraphina Draven.

I rubbed my forehead just thinking about her.

I already knew what awaited me when I returned home.

She might cuddle me the rest of the holiday and never let me leave at the very least.

And if she learned about Xavier...

I didn’t even want to imagine it.

Speaking of Xavier...

I looked toward the distant mountains.

The strongest Hunter in the world.

My master.

At least, and also my kidnapper, apparently.

I still wasn’t entirely sure how I had agreed to that arrangement.

I remembered waking up in that strange place and finding him waiting for me.

Then he had basically kidnapped me.

And now I was here.

Killing C-rank monsters.

That was it.

C-rank.

I wasn’t stupid enough to fight anything stronger without understanding my current limits.

Xavier might be insane enough to throw me into a battlefield against something far beyond my level, but I wasn’t.

Not yet.

Six months ago, I couldn’t imagine killing even a weak monster.

Now C-rank monsters were becoming manageable.

That alone was enough to make me realize just how much I had changed.

And yet...

I still didn’t know where my limits were.

Maybe that was what frightened me most.

I looked down at my hands.

These weren’t the hands I was born with.

This body wasn’t mine originally.

This life wasn’t mine.

And yet, somehow, it had become mine.

I had friends now.

Rivals.

Enemies.

People who trusted me.

People who wanted to kill me mostly.

People who wanted to surpass me.

And people who...

I shook my head.

"No point thinking about that."

There were bigger problems.

The Inter-High Tournament.

That was the next major event.

Our academy versus the Human Academy.

The Elven Academy.

The Dwarven Academy.

The Beastkin Academy.

Four academies.

Four races.

And one battlefield disguised as a tournament.

Our academy had only won once since its founding.

Once.

That was pathetic.

The original storyline made it even worse.

We were supposed to lose.

Again.

Then Leon would arrive.

The protagonist would appear.

And everything would begin changing.

That was how the story was supposed to go.

But Leon hadn’t arrived yet.

And I wasn’t planning to let the story unfold exactly as it was written.

Especially because I knew something else.

The Inter-High Tournament wasn’t just a tournament.

It was an opportunity.

The Velvet Gang had attacked the tournament before Leon’s arrival.

I knew that from the game.

That knowledge had become considerably more frightening.

Lilith was connected to them.

Evelyn was one of the Creed.

There were people inside the organization who were powerful enough to influence events from the shadows.

And they were planning something.

I didn’t know every detail.

But I knew enough.

An attack.

The second semester.

The Inter-High Tournament.

Velvet gang.

Those words were already connected in my mind.

I couldn’t prevent something I didn’t understand.

So I would prepare.

That was the only thing I could do.

I couldn’t tell everyone that I knew the future.

They would think I was insane.

I couldn’t reveal that this world had once been a game to me.

And I definitely couldn’t explain why I knew certain people would become villains.

Especially the principal.

That man...

I narrowed my eyes.

There was something wrong with her.

I didn’t know exactly what.

But I remembered the original storyline.

The Church.

The Pope.

The Outer Gods.

The demons.

The war that would eventually engulf the world.

The academy principal wasn’t just some ordinary administrator.

He was connected to the Church.

And that connection would eventually become one of the reasons the Outer Gods found their way to this world.

I didn’t know the entire truth.

Not yet.

But I knew enough to be cautious.

Perhaps that was the biggest difference between me and the person I used to be.

Back then, I played this world.

Now I lived in it.

Every decision had consequences.

Every mistake could cost someone their life.

Every character I once considered an NPC had become a person.

I looked down at the dead C-rank monster again.

Six months.

That was all it had taken for my entire understanding of reality to change.

And now...

The Inter-High Tournament would begin.

The Velvet Gang would move.

The other academies would send their monsters.

Human royalty would eventually become involved.

And somewhere beyond all of that...

Something much worse was waiting.

I stood up.

The wind blew against my clothes.

I looked toward the horizon.

"I don’t know what happens after this."

For the first time, I admitted it without trying to laugh it off.

"I don’t know whether I’ll survive."

I paused.

Then a smile slowly appeared on my face.

"But I’m not going to lose."

Not to the Velvet Gang.

Not to the geniuses of the other academies.

Not to whatever was waiting beyond them.

And certainly not to some predetermined storyline.

I had spent enough of my life watching someone else play the hero.

And now that I am in the story I plan on Breaking the storyline itself.