As Sulien lowered himself into the bath, warmth immediately enveloped his body, slowly easing the lingering stiffness in his muscles. Steam drifted across the spacious chamber in lazy waves, gathering against polished mirrors and marble walls until the room seemed wrapped in a thin veil of mist. The water had been infused with medicinal herbs, something Butler Lin insisted upon after every excursion, and a faint fragrance lingered in the air. It should have been relaxing.
Unfortunately, his brain rarely cooperated with what should have happened.
Leaning against the smooth marble edge of the tub, Sulien closed his eyes and allowed the warmth to soak into his skin. The water was clean. The room was clean. His clothes had been discarded. His shoes had already been sent away for cleaning. Rationally speaking, there was nothing left to worry about.
That didn't stop him from thinking about it.
The image returned uninvited.
Dark blood splattered across the edge of his shoe.
A stain no larger than his palm.
An ordinary person would have ignored it.
Sulien was not an ordinary person.
The memory alone was enough to make his fingers twitch beneath the water. Even now, after scrubbing himself for what had probably been an unreasonable amount of time, a small part of him remained convinced there was still blood somewhere. A spot he had missed. A stain hidden beneath a fingernail. Some invisible trace clinging stubbornly to his skin.
It was ridiculous.
He knew it was ridiculous.
Knowing that changed absolutely nothing.
With a tired sigh, he sank deeper into the water.
A week and a half.
That was how long he had been in this world.
A week and a half since a drunk customer shot him to death in a convenience store.
The thought remained absurd every time it crossed his mind.
Most people would probably have experienced an existential crisis after discovering they had died and awakened inside a fantasy novel. Sulien certainly should have. Instead, the past ten days had been spent adapting to a completely different set of problems. Apparently, surviving death wasn't the difficult part.
The difficult part was pretending to be someone else.
The servants expected him to be Sulien Von Wald.
The Duke expected him to be Sulien Von Wald.
His mother expected him to be Sulien Von Wald.
Even his siblings expected him to be Sulien Von Wald.
The only person aware of the truth was himself.
Back on Earth, family had never been an important part of his life. There were no parents waiting for him after work, no siblings to annoy him, and no relatives checking whether he had eaten dinner. He had grown accustomed to solitude long ago.
Then he woke up here and found himself surrounded by people who genuinely cared whether he lived or died.
It was deeply inconvenient.
Not because they were bad people.
That would have made things easier.
The problem was that they were good people.
His mother nearly cried every time she saw him awake.
The Duke constantly hid his concern behind a stern expression that fooled absolutely nobody.
Even his siblings, who should have been strangers, welcomed him without hesitation.
The novel never mentioned any of that.
As far as readers were concerned, the Wald family existed solely to create Aloysius's tragic backstory.
Now that he lived among them, that perspective felt almost insulting.
They weren't side characters.
They were people.
Which made their future significantly harder to ignore.
Sulien opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling through the rising steam.
The Wald family was doomed.
He knew that.
The novel had made sure of it.
Four children died.
Aloysius eventually lost everything.
The Duke's desperate search for a cure led him down a path that ultimately destroyed the family.
Back when he was a reader, those events had simply been part of the story.
Now they felt like a countdown.
And somehow, despite all of that, his biggest concern at the moment wasn't the impending destruction of a noble house.
It was the Academy.
More specifically, the fact that he had somehow agreed to become an instructor there.
The memory immediately dragged him back to yesterday evening.
As usual, Butler Lin was responsible.
The old man had cornered him in the study.
Again.
Sulien was beginning to suspect it was a hobby.
The fireplace crackled softly within the study, filling the room with a comfortable warmth. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, packed with books collected across generations of the Wald family. The scent of old paper mixed with freshly brewed tea, creating an atmosphere that practically screamed intellectual discussion.
Which was unfortunate.
Sulien disliked intellectual discussions.
They usually ended with someone assigning him responsibilities.
Sure enough, Butler Lin stood across from him holding a teapot.
"Young Master," the butler began, pouring tea with the precision of a man who had perfected the task decades ago, "I believe it is time we discuss your departure for the Academy."
There it was.
Responsibilities.
Sulien immediately felt his mood worsen.
"The Academy again?" he asked, leaning farther into his chair. "I thought we already discussed this."
"We discussed your refusal."
"Exactly."
Lin placed the teacup onto the table.
"We did not reach a conclusion."
"We absolutely reached a conclusion. I said no."
"The Duke disagrees."
Sulien pinched the bridge of his nose.
Of course he did.
"The Academy will benefit you greatly."
"That's what people say whenever they're about to force me to do something."
Lin ignored the complaint.
"Young Master, you have spent nearly a year unconscious and another week avoiding most social interaction."
"I speak to people."
"You speak to me."
"You're people."
Lin looked unconvinced.
The traitor.
"The Academy needs experienced instructors," the butler continued. "You possess practical combat knowledge, leadership experience, and a reputation respected throughout the kingdom."
"I also possess the desire to be left alone."
"Unfortunately, that qualification is less valuable."
Sulien narrowed his eyes.
The old man remained completely calm.
Sometimes he wondered whether Butler Lin secretly trained under the world's greatest interrogators.
Nothing seemed capable of rattling him.
"The Duke believes teaching will help you reconnect with society."
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"The polite way of saying I'm mentally unstable."
Lin's expression didn't change.
"I was attempting to be respectful."
"So I was right."
"I did not say that."
"You didn't have to."
The silence that followed felt suspiciously judgmental.
Sulien hated that.
"Young Master," Lin said eventually, "with all due respect, you have developed several concerning habits."
"I don't like where this conversation is going."
"You refuse to touch objects unless they've been cleaned."
Reasonable.
"You reorganize every room you enter."
Necessary.
"You become visibly distressed when things are out of place."
Debatable.
"You take multiple baths every day."
Okay, that one sounded worse when someone else said it.
Sulien looked away.
Unfortunately, Lin noticed.
The old man noticed everything.
At first glance, Butler Lin appeared to be a harmless elderly gentleman who spent his days serving tea and maintaining household schedules.
It was a lie.
Behind that pleasant exterior lurked a terrifying individual capable of dissecting Sulien's behavior with surgical precision.
The man had known him for one week.
One week.
And somehow he already understood him better than most people back on Earth ever had.
It was deeply unsettling.
Eventually, after nearly an hour of discussion disguised as concern, Sulien surrendered.
"I'll go."
Lin smiled.
The smile of a man who had known he would win from the very beginning.
"But don't expect me to enjoy it."
"I would never dream of such a thing, Young Master."
For some reason, that response annoyed him even more.
The memory faded as Sulien opened his eyes.
The Academy.
The starting point of the original story.
The place where Aiden McFerrin's journey truly began.
Aiden.
The protagonist.
The future hero.
The center around which the entire narrative revolved.
Sulien slowly rose from the bath and stepped onto the marble floor.
Water dripped from his hair as servants entered to prepare fresh clothing. Once dressed, he adjusted the sleeves of his shirt, smoothing away the smallest wrinkle before moving toward the mirror.
The Academy wasn't important because he wanted to teach.
He didn't.
It wasn't important because of duty.
It wasn't that either.
The Academy mattered because that was where the story began to move.
Where alliances formed.
Where future villains emerged.
Where countless tragedies planted their roots.
Could he leave and hunt down every future villain instead?
Maybe.
The idea crossed his mind more than once.
Unfortunately, reality wasn't that simple.
Every time he considered interfering directly, another problem surfaced.
What if removing one villain created two worse ones?
What if changing a single event altered everything else?
What if the information he remembered was no longer accurate?
Stories rarely appreciated being rewritten.
No.
Observation was safer.
At least for now.
After finishing his preparations, Sulien settled into a chair near the window and exhaled slowly.
"Status Window."
A familiar blue light materialized before him.
Name: Sulien Von Wald
Level: 79
HP: 3,010
MP: 4,479
Strength: 271
Defense: 269
Dexterity: 210
Agility: 263
Intelligence: 319
Skills:
Chaos Fracture
Void Gluttony
Phantom Sovereign
Sulien stared at the screen.
The numbers remained unchanged.
The skills remained unchanged.
Everything remained unchanged.
Which was precisely the problem.
This thing wasn't supposed to exist.
Above Helot had never mentioned status windows.
Characters didn't level up.
Nobody possessed game-like interfaces.
And yet this mysterious system had followed him ever since he arrived in this world.
Nobody else could see it.
Nobody else understood it.
As far as everyone around him was concerned, the floating blue screen simply didn't exist.
When he brought it up to Butler Lin a few days ago, the old man nearly summoned a physician.
In hindsight, that was fair.
Waking from a year-long coma and immediately discussing invisible windows was admittedly suspicious behavior.
Still.
The question remained.
Why him?
Why this world?
And why did the system feel connected to him specifically rather than Sulien?
The longer he stared at the glowing screen, the more uneasy he felt.
Eventually, he dismissed it with a thought.
The blue light vanished instantly.
Silence reclaimed the room.
Yet the discomfort remained.
Because no matter how powerful the status window made him, it couldn't answer the question that mattered most.
What exactly had brought him here?
And more importantly—
Was it finished with him?
Or had his role in this world's story only just begun?