~~~
Jin's heart hammered against his ribs like a caged bird desperate to escape. His breath came in short, sharp gasps that echoed too loudly in the apartment's sudden silence. The dark veils pulsed in the distance, creeping closer with each passing moment like spilled ink spreading across pristine paper.
"This is it," his voice cracked like breaking glass. "This is how I die. Again."
Great. Just fucking great. I get a second chance, and I'm about to waste it in the tutorial zone.
The litany of his disadvantages played on repeat in his mind, each point hammering home just how utterly screwed he was.
No family here. No allies. No resources. No combat experience worth mentioning.
In his old life, he'd at least had Ren. Had doctors who pretended to care. Had a hospital bed and morphine to make the end bearable.
Here? Here, he had nothing.
"I survived two years of chemo just to die in my favorite story?" Jin's laugh came out as a wheeze, eerily similar to his old, dying voice. "Fate really wants me dead, doesn't it? What did I do in my past life, kick puppies?"
His legs gave out, sending him sliding down the wall to slump on the floor like a discarded puppet. The Vienna poster mocked him from across the room with its cheerful promises of adventure and discovery.
"Adventure. Right. The kind where everyone dies screaming and gets turned into monster food."
What's the point? I get a healthy body, a world with magic and possibilities, and I'm going to waste it all by dying in the opening sequence like some unnamed background character.
Jin stared at his reflection in the window glass—pale blue eyes wide with terror, light blue hair disheveled from his breakdown. He looked exactly like someone about to die.
Five minutes passed. Five minutes of wallowing in despair, of feeling sorry for himself, of accepting defeat before the battle had even begun.
Five minutes of being a little bitch.
Then something snapped.
Jin's head jerked up, and his hand rose almost of its own accord. The slap across his cheek rang out like a gunshot, sharp enough to make his eyes water and his teeth rattle.
"What the fuck am I doing?"
The words came out clearer now, stronger. His voice carried conviction instead of despair.
"A calamity's gonna strike, so what? Didn't I say I'd save the world? That thing that arrives in ten years is a hundred times—no, a million times worse than this!"
Vienna's fucked, but that doesn't mean I have to be.
Jin pushed himself to his feet, legs steadier than they'd been moments before. The terror remained, but it no longer controlled him. Instead, it sharpened his focus like a whetstone against steel.
"Am I going to hide? Hell no. Am I going to run away screaming like everyone else? Absolutely fucking not."
His reflection stared back from the window, but something had changed. Not the face of a victim anymore. Not the ghost of a cancer patient waiting to die.
"I'm many things, but a coward I'm not. If I die, I'll die with a smile on my face and my middle finger raised to whatever cosmic asshole decided to fuck with me."
That's more like it. Cancer couldn't kill me—some discount apocalypse sure as hell won't either.
The words felt right. True. Like an oath spoken to the universe itself.
"I, Jin, will live my life to the fullest. And if that means punching death in the face, so be it."
"I won't die before tasting all the beauties!"
As the realization settled into his bones, something shifted in his chest. A strange calm spread outward from his heart like warm honey, filling spaces he hadn't known were empty. The sensation was foreign but undeniably real—a presence that hummed with quiet power.
Latent aura.
Jin took a deep breath, feeling the energy settle into his core like a key finding its lock. He'd just broken through a mental barrier, transformed panic into determination through sheer force of will.
"That worked… I can feel it—the latent aura flowing through me like liquid fire," he said to himself, rolling his shoulders as his body moved with newfound purpose. "Time to use that big brain of mine. What do I actually know about Vienna's fate?"
Jin started tearing through the apartment systematically, muscle memory from Jin Winters guiding him to likely hiding spots while his reincarnated mind processed everything he could remember.
"Come on, think! The author was vague as fuck about Vienna in the main story, but the side materials..."
His hands rifled through drawers, checking behind picture frames, feeling along the undersides of furniture.
Just 'Vienna fell to darkness along with three other cities.' That's it? That's fucking it?!
Jin pulled books from a shelf, checking for hollow compartments. He knew he was overdoing it with the search, but anything to keep his mind working instead of spiraling back into despair.
Not much was said in the main books, just a passage that had haunted him during countless sleepless hospital nights:
"I can quote it word for word," Jin muttered as he searched. "The simultaneous fall of Vienna, Prague, Naples, and Istanna marked the beginning of the end. Four jewels of civilization, each home to millions of souls, simply... vanished."
His movements grew more frantic as he searched.
"When investigation teams finally reached the sites ninety-one days later, they found only craters filled with horrors that defied classification. No survivors. No answers. Only the terrible certainty that something vast and malevolent had announced its presence to the world."
"But wait—the side stories had more details!" Jin's eyes lit up as he remembered. "The fucking appendices that nobody read because they were 'boring worldbuilding bullshit'!"
Thank god I was a completionist nerd who read every single supplementary material.
Underneath the floorboard, wrapped in waterproof plastic, were several items that made Jin's heart race: cash, a combat knife, protein bars, and what looked like camping gear.
The original Jin was prepared for something. Smart kid.
"The reports!" Jin continued searching as he talked, finding more supplies hidden throughout the apartment. "One mentioned a wall of dark shadow—a veil that cut off the city. You could go in, but not out. Lasted exactly ninety-one days!"
And that veil is already forming. Which means...
"I'm already trapped," Jin said aloud, the words carrying surprising calm instead of panic. "No point trying to flee the city now."
His voice grew grimmer as more details surfaced from his memory.
"And another report mentioned monster corpses. Thousands of them scattered throughout the ruins. But here's the thing—no survivors, yet plenty of dead monsters. That means people fought back. They just weren't strong enough or smart enough to win."
Jin stopped moving, the full implications hitting him.
"But the big revelation came in Volume Seven's appendix—demonic essence signature detected in underground tunnels. A whole fucking compound built under the Cathedral of Prime!"
"It's already too late to leave the city, but I have advantages no one else does"
"I know it's coming. I know it lasts ninety-one days. I know about the underground compound."
"Most importantly, I know this world's rules. How Mantles work, how power functions, where resources can be found."
"Time to use every single advantage I've got. No holding back, no playing fair. If some cult wants to turn Vienna into their personal hell dimension, they're gonna have to go through me first."
And I'm feeling pretty fucking motivated right now.
Jin moved to the closet, his hands guided by muscle memory he didn't fully understand. Behind hanging clothes, his fingers found what they'd been seeking—a sword wrapped in cloth.
It was a simple practice blade, not enchanted or particularly well-made, but familiar in his hands as he unwrapped it.
"Oh, you beautiful piece of steel. This is my first time seeing an actual sword." Jin hefted the sword, testing its balance. "The original Jin trained. Not well, maybe, but enough to know which end is pointy."
I need to grow strong, but there's no time for conventional methods.
"I'll cheat my way through if it means survival and power. Meta-knowledge is the ultimate cheat code, after all."
The words carried the weight of an oath. Outside, the dark veils pulsed closer to the city center, but Jin no longer watched them with despair.
"You know what? I'm actually getting excited." Jin ran his hand along the sword's blade, feeling the cold steel. "This is it. This is my chance to live out every power fantasy I ever had while reading this story."
"Sure, I might die horribly. But at least I'll die doing something epic instead of wasting away in a hospital bed."
His voice gained momentum as he spoke, like a man convincing himself of a dangerous but necessary plan.
"Besides, I always wondered what would happen if someone who actually understood the story's mechanics got dropped into the world. Guess I'm about to find out."
In the distance, church bells began to toll across Vienna. But instead of the usual melodic chimes that marked the hour, these bells rang with desperate, discordant clanging.
Warning bells.
"So they finally figured out something's wrong with the veil." Jin's blood turned to ice, but his grin only widened. "Perfect timing. The show's about to start."
It was starting.
Time to show this world what a pissed-off reader with insider knowledge can do.
"And trust me," Jin added with a savage smile, "I'm feeling pretty fucking motivated right now."
~~~