Moya was someone with a lot of dreams but no talent. And if there was something he excelled at other than posting brainrot contents online, it would probably be running away. Running away from responsibilities. Running away from the debt collector. Running away from ex-girlfriends. Heck, if this was an Olympic Sport, he'd be winning gold, no doubt.
He was also quite good at denying reality. No food? Just sleep. Bills piling up? Ignore. Loneliness creeping in? Pretend the ceiling had interesting patterns and stare at it till morning. In fact, he'd had more conversations with the people inside his head than with real humans. And he knew damn well his mental state was never normal since the day he turned fifteen.
Of course, this routine changed the moment he was bound to a system.
He just woke up one day in a bathtub half-filled with cold water, terrified and utterly confused. Words couldn't capture the sheer panic he felt. To his right was a large arched window; a few feet ahead stood a sink with a rectangular mirror above it. To his left were the toilet and a dark green door.
But most importantly—why did he suddenly have a tail?!
He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window glass, and for some reason, his hair was now teal.
Moya settled down faster than expected.
"Damn! Did I just transmigrate?" he muttered with a hard to hide excitement. For someone like him who found reality agonizing, transporting to another world could only be considered miraculous.
And for someone whose pastime was reading webnovels, he was no stranger to plots like this. And in those stories, the MC was almost always accompanied by some sort of 'system' or magical entity. So he had to see if he also had one, right?
"Ahem! Uh… System? Are you there? Hello?"
He waited for a while, about to give up when there was no reply, when suddenly…
[Hello, Host!! Nice to meet you!]
Moya, who was planning on getting out of the bathtub, froze. The voice was child-like, making it hard to tell whether it belonged to a girl or a boy.
[I am the System bound to you. You have already died in your world and I brought you here. Your blood sugar dropped too fast and too low, too low your brain couldn't even wake your body up. But if you complete your mission here, you'll have the chance to return with a healthy body and a lot of money.]
Moya tried to hide his excitement, brushing off the fact that he had just died. He didn't even spare a thought for his corpse—whether someone had discovered it, or if anyone had buried it. None of that mattered for some reason. As already mentioned, his mental state wasn't normal at the moment.
"And the mission would be?"
[As of now, host, your identity is that of the villain's sidekick. Your mission is to cause trouble for the hero, get in his way whenever possible, and stand faithfully by the villain's side.]
"Hmm… I see," he replied casually, sifting through the memories he knew weren't his own, bombarding his mind. They clearly belonged to the original owner. As it turned out, the fool had drunk himself to death. It was alcohol poisoning.
He also found out he was on a desolate planet. One so old and abandoned that only a few outlaws lived. Its resources were almost depleted with air so polluted you could almost touch it, and the animals had evolved to survive the harsh environment. Of course, not only animals but humans, too. Like the original owner. As all this information poured into his mind, he suddenly had a lightbulb moment.
"System! Will the villain kill people in the future? I mean, a loooooooot of people?"
The system, who was preparing to give the long explanation it had prepared to convince Moya from going OOC like its last host, suddenly sensed something was off. But since it was still just a baby system, it didn't think too deeply about it and answered anyway.
[Of course, he will! He's the villain, after all.]
"Hmm… Will I, his sidekick, suffer a lot from him?"
[Huh? How'd you know that, host? Not only will you suffer, but you'll also end up dying in his hands! And when that happens, your mission will basically be complete. You'll be able to return to your original world and live the life of a rich man. Easy, right?]
It wasn't until a few hours later that the system would realize just how big of a mistake it had been to tell Moya all that.
[...Ho-Host! What did you just do?!]
The baby system could hardly believe what it was seeing. Lying on the floor was this world's villain, already lifeless, blood spreading across the floor. Its host was wiping the blood off his stinger tail.
"Eh? Can't you see? I killed him. I just saved myself and countless other humans. Aren't I cool?" Moya replied with a smug face, clearly proud of himself. "With this, I have no reason to cross paths with the hero. Also, since the villain is gone, there shouldn't be any conflict anymore."
[System:…]
Nothing scared Moya more than the word 'responsibility,' and becoming a villain's sidekick naturally came with a whole lot of it. Not to mention the guilt from all the crimes he would eventually be part of. Based on the countless webnovels he'd read, villain sidekicks were usually stuck doing the dirty work—cleaning up blood, carrying corpses, hiding evidence. They were often used as bait or shields whenever the villain needed to escape, and rarely given proper food, rest, or medical care. So, to avoid all that, why not just cut the problem off at the root?
"Besides," he added. "F*ck being a sidekick! Where's my golden finger? Hand it over." He grumbled while stuffing the villain's corpse into the suitcase, pleased with the strength of his new body.
[System:...]
The previous host had a massive brain hole, but this one's mind was on a whole other level.