Death, Damien had always assumed, would be an abrupt and final curtain drop. He had expected the crushing grip of the Demon God, Nesmeranda, to be the absolute end of his suffering—a swift plunge into an eternal, dreamless sleep where the horrors of the dungeons and the blood of his comrades could no longer haunt him.
Instead, he found himself drifting.
Damien's soul was wandering through a vast, incomprehensible void. It was an expanse completely devoid of light, sound, or temperature. He possessed no physical form to feel the cold, no lungs to draw breath, and no voice with which to scream into the abyss. He was merely a localized point of consciousness, suspended in an ocean of absolute nothingness.
He wanted to open his eyes. The instinct was overwhelming, a primal urge hardwired into his very essence. He wanted to see if Morgane, Lucy, Simon, or the old monkey Nicholas were waiting for him on the other side. But he couldn't. It felt as though his eyelids had been sewn shut by the fabric of the universe itself.
Then, the absolute emptiness began to shift.
The suffocating void dissolved, pulling away like a veil of dark mist. The sensory deprivation was suddenly replaced by an influx of overwhelming stimuli. The scent of blooming jasmine and damp, rich earth filled his nonexistent lungs. The gentle, phantom caress of a warm breeze brushed against a cheek he didn't possess.
The void had transformed into a paradise.
He felt the rough, comforting texture of bark against his back. He was seemingly resting against the trunk of a massive, ancient tree. The ground beneath him felt like a bed of perfectly manicured, soft green grass. He could hear the distant, melodic chirping of birds and the rhythmic babbling of a crystalline brook.
He tried, with every ounce of his metaphysical strength, to open his eyes once again. He wanted to see this heaven. And yet, it seemed the very laws of this realm were fundamentally opposed to what he wanted. His vision remained locked in darkness.
'Useless body,' Damien spat inwardly, his consciousness flaring with immediate annoyance. Even in death, even in what appeared to be paradise, he was still paralyzed. He was still stripped of his autonomy. The frustration that had fueled his entire life bubbled to the surface.
'Where the actual fuck am I, anyway?!' he questioned his own mind, his internal voice echoing in the darkness. 'Is this the afterlife? Is this Valhalla? Or is this just another layer of that godforsaken dungeon playing tricks on my decaying brain?'
[Hmm.]
A voice resonated through the paradise. It didn't enter through his ears; it bypassed physical acoustics entirely, ringing directly within the core of his soul. It was a voice of absolute, serene authority—ancient, warm, and yet detached from mortal concerns.
Damien couldn't see, but his heightened, spiritual senses painted a vivid picture of the entity standing before him. It was a man. A man with stark, snow-white hair, cloaked in flowing white garments that seemed to be woven from starlight. And across his eyes, masking his gaze from the universe, was a silken white blindfold.
It was the same man from his hallucination. The man the violet-haired woman had called 'Rudeus'.
[Why are you here?] the blindfolded man asked, his tone laced with genuine, mild surprise. He tilted his head, observing Damien's formless soul resting against the ethereal tree. [I thought I had already sent you to that universe? The transit should have been instantaneous upon your physical termination.]
Damien tried to speak, to demand answers, to ask who this being was and why he was interfering with his hard-earned death, but his spiritual lips were sealed.
The white-haired man stepped closer. The grass didn't even bend beneath his feet.
[Ohh, right,] the man murmured, a note of realization dawning in his cosmic voice. [It seems the structural integrity of your spirit was compromised during your final battle. The damage inflicted by my wife was... extensive. I need to tweak something within your soul before the integration can be finalized. Otherwise, you will shatter upon entry.]
The blindfolded man reached out.
Damien felt two distinct points of contact. One spectral hand gently rested against his forehead, right where his third eye would be. The other hand pressed firmly against the center of his chest, directly over the metaphysical location of his heart.
A surge of indescribable energy flooded into Damien. It wasn't the violent, necrotic power of his Black Death trait, nor was it the abrasive, artificial mana of the System. It was a pure, soothing, primordial warmth. It felt like being submerged in a hot spring after freezing in a blizzard.
The man was repairing the fundamental cracks in Damien's soul—the trauma, the despair, the suicidal urges that had frayed his spiritual tethers over the last five years. He wasn't erasing Damien's memories or his pain, but he was reinforcing the vessel so it could carry that heavy burden without breaking.
[There. It seems you are ready now,] the blindfolded man said softly, retracting his hands.
Damien felt a sudden, terrifying gravitational pull. The paradise around him began to warp and stretch, pulling away at the edges as if he were falling down an impossibly long, dark tunnel.
[Though, we will meet next time,] the man's voice echoed, growing fainter as the distance between them expanded across dimensions.
[After all, it is not your time to truly die.]
Damien wanted to scream. He had earned his rest! He had fought a god! Why was he being denied the peace of oblivion?!
The man's final words drifted down through the collapsing void, filled with a melancholic affection.
[My dear... Meus Egomet.]
My own self.
Suddenly, Damien felt the sensation of physical hands. The white-haired man's palms gently cupped Damien's face, and his thumbs brushed downward, forcefully closing Damien's spectral eyes, plunging him into an even deeper, more profound darkness.
[Hmm. I bid you good luck and farewell, my dear. After all...]
The voice was barely a whisper now, lost in the rushing wind of dimensional transit.
[This is not the last nightmare you will experience. Because this time around?]
[Your path will have far more obstacles, and...]
[Tragedies.]
[Goodbye. And I shall see you again, perhaps after...]
[You remember everything.]
The void collapsed completely. The sensation of falling accelerated to an unbearable speed. The darkness condensed, crushing him, squeezing him into a singular point of existence, until—
"AHH!"
A green-haired young man violently bolted upright in his bed, a strangled, panicked scream tearing from his lungs.
He threw his hands out in front of him, adopting a desperate, defensive combat stance, expecting to feel the searing heat of Nesmeranda's abyssal magic, expecting to be surrounded by the blood and ash of the Fifth Layer.
He was hyperventilating, dragging massive, greedy lungfuls of air into a chest that felt entirely too light. He was sweating bullets; his skin was slick with a cold, clammy perspiration that plastered his silk nightclothes to his back. It felt as though he had just violently jolted awake from a fever dream, drowning in the lingering terror of a nightmare.
Damien stayed frozen in that defensive posture for ten full seconds, his eyes darting wildly around the room.
There was no ash. There was no blood. There was no Demon God, no Nicholas, no Gayeol, no mangled corpses.
He slowly lowered his arms. His breathing hitched as he looked at his own hands.
'Wait,' Damien thought, his mind struggling to process the impossible tactile feedback.
He clenched his fists. He wiggled his fingers. He felt the soft, high-thread-count fabric of the blankets beneath his palms. He ran his hands over his chest, feeling the steady, rhythmic thumping of a perfectly healthy heart beneath an unblemished ribcage.
He had arms. He had legs. He wasn't a double-amputee bleeding out on an obsidian floor. The phantom pains that had defined his final moments were completely gone.
'Where... where am I?!' he questioned himself, his internal monologue trembling with a mixture of profound relief and escalating panic.
He threw the heavy, embroidered duvet off his legs and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. The floor beneath his bare feet was not jagged rock, but polished, expensive hardwood partially covered by a plush, intricately woven Persian rug.
He stood up. His balance was slightly off. The center of gravity in this body was different. It felt lighter, less dense with muscle, and noticeably younger.
He looked up at the ceiling. It wasn't the dark, cavernous roof of a dungeon. It was high, painted with beautiful frescoes of mythical beasts and winged angels, illuminated by an ornate crystal chandelier that hung from the center, casting a warm, golden light across the room.
The walls were lined with rich mahogany bookshelves, velvet drapes, and antique armoires. It looked like a dorm room, but a dorm room designed exclusively for royalty or the highest echelon of nobility.
Damien took a hesitant step forward. Then another. He felt a desperate, primal need to ground himself, to figure out what kind of illusion or afterlife this was.
He spotted a tall, gilded mirror resting on a wooden stand in the corner of the room.
He rushed toward it, his bare feet slapping against the hardwood. He gripped the edges of the mirror's frame and leaned in, staring directly at the reflection staring back at him.
He expected to see his own face—the face of Damien Vincenzo Leone. The hardened, scarred features of a veteran soldier. The crimson red hair, bleached white by the ultimate use of his trait. The terrifying, empty, obsidian-black eyes that had defined his existence since the Twin Dungeons.
But the person in the mirror was a complete stranger.
He saw a young man, perhaps around seventeen years old. The boy's facial features were sharp, aristocratic, and undeniably handsome, yet they carried a sickly, aristocratic pallor. His skin was too pale, almost translucent.
But it was the hair and the eyes that made Damien's heart completely stop in his chest.
The young man in the reflection had hair the color of deep, forest green. It was unkempt, sticking out in messy cowlicks from a restless sleep.
Beneath the messy green bangs, staring back at him with an expression of absolute, unadulterated horror, were two brilliant, piercingly bright, crimson red eyes.
'No way!' Damien's mind screamed, rejecting the visual information.
He raised a trembling hand and touched his own cheek. The reflection perfectly mirrored his movement. He pulled at a strand of the green hair. He felt the tug on his own scalp.
'NO FUCKING WAY!'
He backed away from the mirror, stumbling over his own feet.
'WHY THE FUCK AM I STILL ALIVE?! AND WHO THE FUCK IS THIS?!' Damien screamed inwardly, his mind racing through a million terrifying possibilities. Body-snatching monsters? An advanced hallucination cast by the Demon God to torture him? A simulation created by the Administrators?
He looked back at the mirror. He stared deeply into those crimson eyes, taking in the sharp jawline, the arrogant slope of the nose, the specific, rare shade of that green hair.
It was too familiar. It triggered memories that predated his time as a soldier. Memories from his childhood, sitting in front of a glowing monitor late at night.
'Don't tell me!' Damien gasped, his hands flying to his mouth as the pieces violently slammed together in his mind.
He hit a grim, world-shattering realization.
'DID I REINCARNATE AS FUCKING RUDEUS MAXIMILIAN BLACKFYRE?!'
The sheer absurdity, the profound, cosmic irony of the situation hit him like a physical blow.
'FUUCCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!!'
"No... no way!" Damien shouted aloud, his voice cracking. The vocal cords were different—higher pitched, less gravelly, the voice of a teenager who hadn't yet been worn down by war and chain-smoking. "You're joking, right?! This has to be a joke!"
He gripped his hair, pulling at the green strands as if he could rip the illusion away.
"Fuck... fuck, fuck, fuck!!!!" Damien cursed, pacing frantically in a tight circle around the Persian rug.
"FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK!!!"
The reality of his situation crashed down upon his shoulders, heavier than the physical weight of any armor he had ever worn. He didn't just reincarnate. He hadn't been given a second chance at a peaceful life. He had been thrust directly into the body of a fictional character. And not just any character—he had possessed one of the most pathetic, doomed figures in literary history.
Damien's legs gave out. He simply knelt on the ground, the plush carpet offering no comfort to his spiraling mind.
He looked down at his current physical state. His hands were smooth, uncalloused, the hands of a spoiled noble who had never held a weapon in earnest combat. But they were also incredibly thin. He looked at his reflection again. The boy looked severely malnourished, as if he hadn't eaten a proper meal in days. His cheekbones jutted out sharply, and deep, dark bags hung under those crimson eyes, making him look as though he hadn't slept for a whole week.
"What's the use of fighting that damn bitch if I was just going to be thrown into this world, huh?!" Damien questioned himself, his voice echoing in the large, empty room. He looked up at the painted ceiling, addressing the blindfolded man, the Constellations, the universe, or whoever had orchestrated this sick joke.
"Fuck! And here I thought I would finally get to join my parents!" Damien yelled, tears of absolute frustration prickling at the corners of his eyes. "I thought I would see Mel again! I thought I would see Simon, and Lucy, and that damn old monkey Nicholas in the afterlife! I earned my death! I earned my rest!"
He slammed his fists against the floor.
"Fuck! What did I do to deserve such treatment like this?!"
In a sudden fit of rage, Damien grabbed a heavy, velvet-trimmed pillow from the bed. With a roar of inarticulate fury, he spun around and hurled the pillow directly at the gilded mirror.
The pillow struck the glass. But Damien, even in this weakened teenager's body, retained the kinetic instinct of a master assassin. The force behind the throw was enough to topple the heavy wooden stand.
-CRASH!
The mirror slammed onto the hardwood floor, shattering into hundreds of jagged, glittering shards.
Damien stood there, chest heaving, staring at the broken glass. His fragmented reflection stared back at him from a dozen different angles—a dozen different Rudeus Blackfyres, all looking equally terrified and enraged.
He didn't pay any heed to the mess he had just made. He didn't care about the broken glass or the noise.
'I swear to god,' Damien said inwardly, his mind cooling from white-hot panic into a cold, lethal determination. 'Whoever sent me here... whoever that blindfolded bastard was... if I ever find a way to reach the heavens, I'm going to strangle him with his own bare hands! I'm going to choke him to death!'
He was incredibly angry. He was annoyed. But most of all, he was a survivor. The initial shock was beginning to recede, leaving behind the tactical, calculating mind of the Wombat Squad's Captain.
He needed to assess his assets. He needed to understand the rules of this new reality.
Then, he remembered something crucial. In all the trashy transmigration and reincarnation light novels he used to read to pass the time between deployments, the protagonist—especially poor, displaced souls like him—always received a "cheat." A golden finger. A unique power designed to help them survive their new, hostile environment.
And in his past life, he already had experience with an interface.
Damien stood up straight, clearing his throat. He puffed out his chest, focusing his intent, and shouted a single, commanding word.
"SYSTEM!"
He waited for the familiar, comforting blue chime. He waited for the holographic window to materialize in the air before him, detailing his stats, his skills, and his new class.
The room remained perfectly silent. Nothing appeared.
Damien frowned. He tried again, louder this time, channeling his nonexistent mana into the command.
"SYSTEEEMMM!!"
Only the echo of his own prepubescent voice answered him.
"SYSTEM?!" Damien yelled, waving his hands in the empty air, trying to trigger a motion sensor that wasn't there.
He dropped his arms in exasperation. "GODDAMNIT, DOES IT HAVE ANOTHER WORD TO SUMMON IT?! Status! Menu! Inventory! Open Sesame! Abracadabra!"
Damien tried every trigger word he could think of, performing ridiculous gestures in the middle of his opulent dorm room, but absolutely nothing came out. The air remained dead and mundane. There was no magical interface. There was no helpful AI guide. There were no quest prompts.
He was completely, utterly alone.
He sighed, a long, defeated sound, and just dropped himself backward onto the plush mattress of the four-poster bed. He brought his hands up and punched himself lightly on the side of the head multiple times, as if trying to knock a loose gear back into place. He was profoundly angry at this situation he was trapped in.
'Shit,' Damien groaned, staring blankly at the canopy above his bed. 'Of all the people I could possibly reincarnate into in this universe, it had to be none other than Rudeus Maximilian Blackfyre! The quintessential, punchable, pathetic minor villain and the literal middle boss in Arc 1 of The Chronicles of Adelina.'
He needed to review the intel. He closed his eyes, digging deep into the archives of his teenage memories, pulling up the lore of the game he hadn't thought about in a decade.
So, who exactly was Rudeus Maximilian Blackfyre?
In the overarching narrative of the otome yuri harem game, Rudeus was universally regarded as the most pathetic, infuriating, and annoying villain on the roster. He wasn't a grand mastermind like the Pope of the Demon God Cult. He wasn't an incredibly powerful, tragic anti-hero. He was just a bully. A pompous, elitist brat who used his family name as a shield to terrorize the commoner protagonist and her friends.
And yet, despite being the most hated character by the player base because of his insufferable arrogance, he was also objectively the most pitied and tragically written character in the entire game's lore—rivaled only by Eula Van Clovius, the terrifyingly beautiful villainess and the Final Boss of Arc 4.
Damien mentally scrolled through Rudeus's backstory, piece by painful piece.
His story of misery went all the way back to the very day he was born.
The Blackfyre Duchy was the most powerful military family in the Rosania Empire. They were known as the "Shields of the North," a lineage renowned for their unparalleled mastery of destruction magic and their distinct, iconic physical traits. Every true-blooded Blackfyre possessed hair as white as ash and eyes as cold as ice. It was the hallmark of their terrifying power.
But Rudeus's mother was different. She was a mere concubine to the Grand Duke, Raemond Blackfyre. She was a beautiful woman, but she possessed dark green hair and crimson eyes.
She died mere hours after giving birth to Rudeus. The official story was complications during labor. However, every player who had dug into the game's hidden lore text knew the truth: she had been assassinated. Poisoned by the Grand Duke's legal wife, the Duchess, who viewed the concubine and her bastard child as a stain on the family's honor.
But his mother's tragic death was not the primary reason why Rudeus grew up to become such a hated, twisted villain. No, the true rot stemmed from the treatment he received from his own blood after his birth.
His father, Grand Duke Raemond, completely and utterly ignored his existence. He didn't pay any attention to the boy, nor did he even attempt to care for him. Raemond viewed Rudeus not as a son, but as a biological failure. Because Rudeus was the only child in the history of the Blackfyre lineage who failed to inherit the signature ashen-white hair, instead possessing his mother's vibrant green locks, his father branded him a "defect." He was a walking symbol of the Grand Duke's momentary lapse in judgment with a commoner concubine.
And yet, surprisingly, the young Rudeus didn't inherently hate his father or his deceased mother for his status as a defect. The true psychological torment—the crucible that forged his vile personality—came from his half-siblings.
The legitimate children of the Duchess made it their life's mission to ensure Rudeus knew exactly where he stood in the hierarchy of the world. At the very bottom.
Damien closed his eyes, and suddenly, he wasn't just remembering the lore from a wiki page. He was feeling it. The residual memories of the body's previous owner surged forward, vivid and agonizing.
"Haha! Look at the green-haired defect!" The voice of his older half-brother, strong and cruel, echoed in Damien's mind.
"Bastard! Go back to the mud where your whore mother came from! Bwee!" His older half-sister's shrill laughter accompanied the sudden, shocking sensation of freezing cold water.
Damien's body flinched on the bed as the memory played out. He saw the young, eight-year-old Rudeus cowering in the corner of a grand, marble courtyard, shivering violently as a heavy wooden barrel of ice water was dumped over his head by his siblings.
The young Rudeus had cried. He wept bitterly, clutching his small knees to his chest. He was completely alone. He was terrified. In the massive, sprawling estate of the Grand Duke, surrounded by hundreds of servants and guards, he didn't have a single person who would step forward to comfort him. No one to wrap a warm towel around his shoulders. No one to pat his head and at least tell him, 'It's alright. It's not your fault.' It was a profoundly sad, hollow existence. For a little kid to receive such relentless, systemic psychological and physical abuse from his own family, with the tacit approval of his father, was enough to break any mind.
As Rudeus grew up, the torture and bullying only intensified. His siblings became older, stronger, and far more creative in their cruelty. They destroyed his belongings, locked him in dark cellars, and spread vicious rumors among the nobility to ensure he had no friends.
And yet, despite all of that horrific abuse, it was still not the primary catalyst for his descent into becoming a minor villain in the game's plot. The abuse only made him bitter and desperate for validation.
The true reason—the breaking point that finally pushed Rudeus over the edge into villainy—occurred after he was introduced to the royal family. Specifically, to the First Princess of the Rosania Empire.
Princess Veronica Adnelia Van Rosania.
In a bizarre political maneuver meant to secure the loyalty of the Blackfyre Duchy while simultaneously discarding a problematic royal heir, the Emperor and Grand Duke Raemond decided to forge a marriage contract between the two.
When the contract was announced, Rudeus was completely shocked. He was a bastard. He was the family defect. Why would the Emperor offer his daughter to him? He knew it was a political insult to the Princess, a way for the Emperor to sweep her under the rug by tying her to the lowest rung of the highest noble house.
And yet, Rudeus, starved for any ounce of affection or validation, didn't pay any mind to the cruel political implications. He was entirely blinded by the arrangement. He was intensely focused on how breathtakingly beautiful Veronica was. She had hair like spun light blue hair and eyes like shattered ice. She looked like an angel descended to save him from his hellish life.
But Veronica... Veronica completely ignored him. During their mandatory meetings, she would simply look down at her lap or stare out the window, treating him like a piece of unpleasant furniture. She was disgusted by the arrangement, and she projected that disgust onto him.
That was the moment Rudeus realized that the beautiful princess seemingly wanted nothing to do with him. And yet, fueled by a naive, pathetic hope, he still treated Veronica with the utmost respect, treating her as a human being worthy of worship, hoping to thaw her frozen heart.
For an entire year, Rudeus dedicated himself to her. He learned her favorite teas, studied her favorite poets, and defended her honor against the whispers of other nobles. Slowly, painstakingly, Rudeus fell deeply and irrevocably in love with Veronica.
But she didn't care about his advances. She didn't acknowledge his efforts. She just ignored his existence as thoroughly as his father did.
And then, after a year of unrequited devotion, the tragic climax occurred. During the Grand Spring Gala at the Imperial Academy, Rudeus finally gathered the courage to formally confess his true feelings to her in the royal gardens.
Another memory, sharp and stinging, forced its way into Damien's consciousness.
He saw it through Rudeus's eyes. He saw himself standing nervously in the moonlit garden, wearing an ill-fitting formal suit, his hands trembling violently.
"Princess Veronica... please! Please be my girlfriend! I... I have fallen in love with you for a very long time. More than the contract demands. I love you for who you are. So please! Accept these flowers!" The young Rudeus had bowed deeply, holding out a meticulously arranged bouquet of rare, light blue Glacial Lilies—flowers he had personally climbed a dangerous mountain peak to harvest because they perfectly matched the color of her hair.
Veronica stood before him, resplendent in a gown of white silk. She looked at the flowers with an expression of absolute, frigid disdain.
She raised her hand, and with a swift, dismissive strike, she slapped the bouquet out of his grasp. The delicate blue flowers scattered across the dirt path, crushed beneath the heel of her glass slipper.
Rudeus's crimson eyes widened in profound shock and heartbreak. He couldn't understand why the Princess would do something so unnecessarily cruel.
"I'm sorry. No," Veronica had said, her voice completely devoid of empathy. "I have already fallen for someone else."
Rudeus, hearing that confession, felt his entire world shatter. He clenched his fists, his voice cracking with desperation and betrayal as he interrogated her.
"Who was it?! Who was the first person you fell in love with while we were betrothed?! Who is it?!" He pointed a trembling finger at the crushed flowers.
"We are a couple arranged by royal marriage! We are bound by decree! So why?! Why would you choose a stranger over me! I gave you everything!"
Veronica looked back at him, letting out a long, heavy sigh of annoyance, as if she were explaining a simple concept to a slow child.
"Yes, we were arranged by marriage since we were young. But it was only a contract, Rudeus. A piece of paper signed by old men. It meant nothing to me. And you mean nothing to me."
Damien, lying on the bed in the present, physically winced.
'Author: Ouch! That's a critical hit to the soul right there,'
Damien thought, feeling the residual sting of the rejection in his own chest.
In the memory, Rudeus had started to shed hot, humiliating tears. He asked her again, his pride completely broken.
"Who is it?! Who is the person you fell in love with that is better than me?"
Veronica had looked at him with eyes full of absolute contempt. It was the exact same look his half-siblings gave him.
"Why should I answer that question? Furthermore, you have absolutely no right to ask me about my personal affairs. I, the First Princess of the Empire, do not need to answer such intimate questions to a bastard..."
She took a step closer, twisting the knife.
"...And a defect."
Damien inhaled sharply through his teeth.
'Author Again: Ouch! Double critical hit. Fatality. That hurts more than getting my arm cut off by the Emperor.'
Rudeus's eyes had widened in sheer devastation as he heard the word "defect" fall from the lips of the only woman he loved. It was the ultimate betrayal. He watched in silence as Veronica lifted the hem of her dress and walked away, abandoning him alone in the dark garden while the muffled sounds of the ongoing ball echoed from the Royal Castle.
It was a soul-crushing humiliation.
But the final nail in the coffin came a day later.
Rudeus, utilizing his spies, finally discovered the identity of the person Veronica had fallen in love with. He expected a handsome prince from a neighboring kingdom, or a heroic, high-ranking knight.
Instead, he discovered it was a woman. And not just any woman. It was none other than Adelina Van Hestianna—the orphaned, commoner-born Light Mage.
The Protagonist of the game.
When Rudeus learned the truth, he clenched his hands so hard his nails drew blood from his palms. He couldn't accept it. His long-time crush, his fiancée, was stolen from him by a fellow commoner bastard just like him—and worse, in the archaic, patriarchal mindset of the empire's nobility, she had left him for a woman.
He couldn't accept the profound public humiliation. The entire academy was whispering about the defect Duke's son who was cuckolded by a commoner girl.
That was the breaking point. After that day, the sad, desperate boy died, and Rudeus became one of the primary minor villains of the game's first arc. He dedicated his life to sabotaging the protagonist, Adelina, out of pure, jealous spite. He hired thugs to attack her, tried to frame her for cheating on exams, and attempted to publicly humiliate her at every turn.
Eventually, the plot reached its inevitable conclusion. After Adelina had gathered her harem of powerful allies and unlocked her hidden light magic, she confronted Rudeus in the academy courtyard.
She didn't just fight him; she offered him a formal, public duel. A duel to decide their fates: whoever won would stay, and the loser would be permanently expelled and dropped out of the Imperial Academy in disgrace.
Rudeus, being a complete fool blinded by lost love and bruised ego, and genuinely being a dumbass when it came to tactical combat, accepted the duel without a second thought.
And, bam. He lost. Horribly.
It was expected. He was a mid-tier boss, designed to be a punching bag for the protagonist to show off her new skills. He was beaten into the dirt in front of the entire student body, including a coldly indifferent Princess Veronica.
Following the rules of the duel, Rudeus was stripped of his noble crest, dropped out of the academy, and formally disowned by the Grand Duke. He was cast out into the slums, penniless and broken, and was never seen or mentioned in the story again.
Yep. That was the comprehensive lore of Rudeus Blackfyre. An incredibly annoying, but profoundly tragic, Middle Boss right there in Arc 1.
Damien lay on the bed, rubbing his temples, digesting the massive lore dump his brain had just synthesized.
"So, my destiny is to be a bullied, cuckolded stepping stone who gets his ass kicked by a teenage girl and thrown into the gutter," Damien summarized aloud. "Fantastic. Truly a step up from fighting a Demon God."
He needed a point of reference. He needed to know exactly when in the timeline he had been dropped.
Damien sat up and swung his legs off the bed. He walked over to an ornate mahogany desk situated near the window. Resting on the polished wood was a heavy, leather-bound planner and a daily tear-off calendar.
Damien looked at the date printed on the thick parchment.
Year 1024 of the Rosania Calendar. Month of the Griffin. Day 14.
His crimson eyes widened in absolute shock. He leaned in closer, tracing the elegant calligraphy with his finger to ensure he wasn't misreading it. He grabbed the calendar, holding it up to the morning light streaming through the curtains.
'Wait!' Damien thought, his heart performing a sudden, joyous backflip in his chest. 'This... this date! I fucking hit a jackpot!'
He rapidly did the mental math, cross-referencing the lore dates he had memorized a decade ago.
This year! This exact year was five full years before the main plot of the game officially started! It was five years before Adelina entered the academy. It was five years before the Grand Spring Gala!
That meant it was five years before Rudeus was cruelly rejected by Veronica and began his descent into villainy! He was currently a first-year junior student at the Academy, a twelve-year-old boy in the body of a seventeen-year-old's physical development cycle due to noble genetics.
"WOOOOOHHHHOOOO!"
Damien couldn't contain himself. He threw his arms in the air, a massive, uncharacteristic grin splitting his face.
"I FUCKING HIT A JACKPOT! HELL YEAH!" he screamed at the painted ceiling, doing a small, victorious dance on the Persian rug.
"HELL FUCKING YEAH!"
He had been given a clean slate. A blank canvas.
"Wait?"
Damien suddenly paused his celebration, freezing mid-fist-pump. He slowly lowered his arms. His tactical mind began to whir, calculating the broader implications of the timeline.
"If it's five whole years before the game's main plot starts," Damien muttered to himself, pacing the room, "then I have time! I have so much time! I have the time to train, to build resources, and most importantly, I have the time to just escape this stifling academy and completely avoid being involved in the plot of this goddamn trash story!"
He didn't have to fight Adelina. He didn't have to pursue Veronica. He could just pack his bags, leave the Duchy, become an adventurer, or open a quiet bakery in a border town. He was free.
Damien smiled happily as he realized the magnitude of the good news. He had survived the end of the world to be given a vacation in a fantasy realm.
"But—"
Damien stopped pacing. He brought a hand up to touch his chin, his crimson eyes narrowing thoughtfully.
"If it is exactly five years before the main plot starts..."
His mind flashed to the climax of the game. Final Arc. The grand, tragic finale that had made him cry as a teenager.
"It's also exactly five years before my absolute favorite character, the Winter Monarch, experiences the betrayal that turns her into the Final Villainess."
Rosetta Wisteria Arendelle. The Winter Monarch. The cold, ruthless, incredibly beautiful antagonist who commanded armies of ice and sought to freeze the Empire to exact her revenge on the royal family that had slaughtered her royal family from Arendelle Kingdom.
Damien remembered her perfectly. He had loved her character design, her uncompromising ideology, and the tragic inevitability of her doom. She was the one villainess you couldn't save, couldn't romance, and couldn't redeem. She was a force of nature.
And she reminded him, in a painful, visceral way, of Melissa. The same stubborn arrogance. The same willingness to become a monster to protect her pride.
Suddenly, Damien's crimson eyes gleamed with a brilliant, dangerous hope.
"Does that mean..." Damien whispered, his breath catching in his throat. "Does that mean I can save her? Can I rewrite her tragic fate before it even happens?!"
He wasn't a player bound by dialogue options anymore. He was an anomaly in the code. He had five years to alter the course of history.
"WOOOHHHOOOO!!"
Damien pumped his fist again, a new, fiery determination igniting in his chest. The depression of his past life was momentarily overshadowed by the prospect of a new mission.
"Winter Monarch! Elsa! Just you wait, here I come! I will save youuuuu!!!" Damien screamed to the empty room, feeling more alive than he had in half a decade.
He pumped his fist one last time, completely energized, and turned to look at the ornate grandfather clock ticking away in the corner of the room.
08:15 AM.
'Damnit! AGRH!'
Suddenly, an agonizing spike of pain lanced through Damien's skull. He grabbed his head, groaning loudly, stumbling against the edge of the desk.
It wasn't a system glitch this time. It was the integration process. The blindfolded man had said he needed to remember everything.
For a gruesome, excruciating minute, Damien was bombarded with a rapid-fire slideshow of Rudeus's immediate, mundane memories. He saw the layout of the sprawling Imperial Academy. He saw the faces of the sneering professors. He saw the intricate map of the dormitories.
And, most pressingly, he remembered his schedule.
First-year students were required to attend the mandatory "Fundamentals of Mana Core Theory" lecture in the Grand Hall at exactly 08:30 AM. Professor Vane, a notoriously strict disciplinarian who loved to publicly humiliate stragglers, taught the class.
"Shit!" Damien cursed, the pain receding, replaced by a sudden, mundane panic.
He didn't have time to process his grand cosmic destiny or plan his rescue of the Winter Monarch. If he was late on a Monday, Vane would dock his house points, which would give his half-siblings another excuse to torture him via letters from home.
He hurriedly rushed into the adjoining, lavishly appointed marble bathroom.
***
The Imperial Academy.Male Dormitory, East Wing.08:22 AM.
Fifteen minutes later, the heavy oak door to Rudeus's private suite burst open.
Damien practically flew out of the room, still adjusting the collar of his uniform. The Imperial Academy uniform was excessively formal—a tailored, midnight-blue blazer with silver trim, a crisp white dress shirt, a silken cravat, and dark trousers tucked into polished riding boots. It was designed to look regal, but it felt incredibly restrictive to a man used to wearing tactical kevlar.
He hadn't even stopped to eat breakfast. He was running purely on adrenaline and the lingering thrill of his new existence.
As he sprinted down the opulent, carpeted hallway, rounding a corner at a dangerous speed, he nearly collided with a young woman carrying a stack of fresh linens.
It was Maria, one of the dormitory maids assigned to the noble wing.
Maria squeaked, dropping a towel as she scrambled backward, pressing herself against the wall to make way. She immediately cast her eyes downward, trembling slightly. She was used to Lord Rudeus. The boy was notoriously foul-tempered in the mornings, prone to screaming at the staff if they made eye contact or blocked his path. She braced herself for the inevitable tirade of verbal abuse.
"Lord Rudeus!" the maid gasped, bowing her head so low her chin touched her chest, preparing for a slap or a harsh reprimand.
But Damien didn't yell. He didn't even slow his pace. He simply sidestepped her with an athletic grace that Rudeus had never possessed.
"Sorry! Excuse me, running late! Have a good morning!" Damien called out cheerfully over his shoulder, not bothering to stop as he rushed toward the grand staircase.
Maria froze.
"WAIT—!" she blurted out, her shock overriding her ingrained subservience.
She slowly raised her head, her eyes wide as saucers, staring at the retreating back of the famously miserable, arrogant green-haired noble.
Did Lord Rudeus just... apologize? To a commoner maid? And tell her to have a good morning?
"Is he... in a hurry?" Maria whispered to herself, bewildered, entirely unaware that the boy she knew was gone, replaced by a battle-hardened, foul-mouthed veteran who was currently sprinting toward a destiny he intended to violently rewrite.