Eric Porter just realized that he was a villain in a novel.
It sounded like the most cliche thing ever, doesn't it?
That's because it obviously was.
But holy fuck!
Why'd he have to become a villain in the novel called "The Thousand Deaths of Tomorrow?"
"Sigh, this is just so unreal." Eric slumped back on his white couch inside of his luxurious penthouse and facepalmed.
It really was absurd just thinking about it.
For some reason when he went to sleep last night, he had randomly dreamed about the 20 past lives he once had.
One of them being simply a nobody back on the planet called earth.
And the other 19 being the villain Eric Porter in this novel.
His first life back on earth wasn't all that important, other than in that life he had read about the novel he was currently in, so he won't go into details about it.
But for his first life in this world as Eric Porter, he had killed this really cute and hot girl named Aurora Scarlett simply because he had asked her out on the streets and she had outright rejected him.
Then after she was brutally killed and murdered by him in a safehouse he had managed to get people to lure her into, she regressed back, and thus, his 18 lives after that was just him getting killed by her, over and over again.
It really was pathetic to think about, especially considering how shamelessly Eric had acted throughout all of his 19 lives as himself, and how easy it was for Aurora to kill him.
But as expected of the female protagonist of The Thousand Deaths of Tomorrow, she wasn't ordinary by any means.
Speaking of which, as someone who has finished the novel and in all its glory, Eric had to admit, the novel wasn't unique by any means whatsoever.
Aurora Scarlett originally was an ordinary yet extremely beautiful 21 year old college student that had a really bright and optimistic personality, and was raised by her foster parents after her real parents died to a tragic car accident when she was just 2 years old.
But what she didn't know was that her foster parents weren't as innocent as she thought they were.
Behind closed doors, they had racked up a mountain of debt to some very dangerous people, and when the time came to collect, those people decided Aurora as the collateral.
So one night, while she was walking back home from school, she was kidnapped and dragged into a van by men she had never even seen before.
But things didn't go accordingly to their plan, and while trying to restrain her in the van, she was accidentially killed.
That was when Aurora ended up regressing back for the first time ever to the day before the loan sharkers attempted to kidnap her, and with her newfound knowledge of the future, she took her revenge on those men by killing them instead.
Thing didn't end there though unfortunately, and after she eliminated the first official "villains" in the novel, she was then killed by another one for other reasons.
The cycle of regression, vengeance, and death then kept repeating itself throughout the entire novel until she had finally grown strong enough to defeat the last villain.
In essence, there was quite literally thousands upon thousands of villains in the novel, and since she had to kill every single one again each time she regressed back, her kill count had totaled to be over 1 million kills by the end of the novel.
It really was one of those novels where the same thing happens over and over again for thousands upon thousands of chapters on end, with just different scenarios, antagonists, and locations.
Still, the novel managed to get the Eric back on earth hooked up on it all the way till the very end, so it wasn't all that bad.
But that's besides the point!
Since he can clearly remember himself killing Aurora once in one of his past lives, and Aurora has already killed him 18 times after that, then he's definitely doomed to get targetted by her in this life and die as well!
"Damn it, why couldn't I at least become a villain in another novel instead?" Eric cursed under his breath.
At least if he became a villain in a different novel, then he could've at least prevented himself from becoming enemies with the protagonist in the first place, or even steal the protagonist's future opportunities and potential power ups.
But since there wasn't any potential power ups to steal, not at least during this stage of the novel when Eric was still around, there wasn't really anything he could do about it.
Still, as someone who had suddenly remembered his previous lives now, there should be something in place that should be able help him out in a time of crisis such as this one, right?
Something like a...
"System."
No response.
"Status."
No response again.
"Menu?"
Still nothing.
"Great, that's a no then." Eric sighed and gave up on trying.
Nonetheless, Eric wasn't simply going to just idle around here and wait for his death.
No, Aurora might be a regressor and all, and could retain her memories as such, but he wasn't.
He might have the memories of his past 20 lives now, but once he's killed again in this life, his current self is most certainly gone forever.
So Eric wasted no further time leisuring around his house and grabbed his winter coat on the coat rack and exited his penthouse.
He needed to prepare himself for the worst if he wanted to survive and live to see another day.