"─────!"
"───?"
Voices. Somewhere around me.
As consciousness crept back, sensation returned with it — sharp and unforgiving.
A tilted world.
Concrete pressed against my cheek.
Fat raindrops hammering my body like fists.
Thud.
"Ugh—!"
Before I could even piece together where I was, a kick slammed into my gut. I curled in on myself like a worm.
Thud. Thud.
Back. Thigh. Shoulder.
Boots found every inch of me.
How many are there?
Three? Four?
"When else are we gonna get to kick a Blue Serpent officer in the ribs like this?"
"Murder charge, they say. Killed one of his own. Honestly a miracle he made it to prison breathing."
"Step aside. He and I have unfinished business from outside."
Organization. Officer. Betrayal. Murder. Prison.
I clawed at the fragments of conversation, trying to build something coherent.
Then came the wrongness.
They weren't speaking Korean.
A language I'd never heard in my life — yet every word landed perfectly in my head, clean and clear.
Jaw clenched, I took stock through half-shut eyes.
Four of them. Standing over me.
Different hair colors. Western features. Green uniforms — shirts and trousers — with numbered tags stitched to the chest.
I definitely fell off that cliff.
The ground beneath me, the walls around me — this was the back of some building.
Right. Me and Baek Jin-woo, that son of a—
Ding.
Rage began to rise.
And with it, a hologram blinked into existence before my eyes.
[Synchronization with 'Cain Libert' in progress.]
[Current synchronization rate — 65.0%]
[Quest and trait skills are now active.]
A small flame kindled itself in the air, drawing a rectangular window into being.
[QUEST — Flames of Hatred]
Objective: Drive a blade into the hearts of the betrayers. (0/3)
Skills Acquired: Audacity, Indomitable Will, Cold Reason
Reward: Return to the real world
[Audacity]
Type: Quest — Passive
Effect: Once a decision is made, nothing hesitates your hand.
[Indomitable Will]
Type: Quest — Passive
Effect: Your fighting spirit cannot be broken. Grants immunity to all mental interference.
[Cold Reason]
Type: Quest — Passive
Effect: Maintains sharp judgment and ruthlessness in any situation.
The heat in my chest went quiet.
My mind cleared — fast, like cold water over a fire.
My fingertips found a stone.
I wrapped it in my palm, then in one motion drove myself upright and brought it down on the nearest man's foot.
"GHK — AAAGH!"
Fewer kicks. But harder ones.
Through a swimming field of vision, far across the yard, I spotted a figure in a guard's uniform — watching. Just watching.
The beating ran another few minutes before it stopped.
"That should do it."
"Plenty more in there who want a turn anyway."
The men walked to the guard and pressed something into his hand. Paper, by the look of it. Bills.
"I'll handle the cleanup. Doesn't matter if intake runs late."
I watched the guard turn and start toward me.
Then the darkness took me again.
* * *
When I opened my eyes, I was in a bed.
Bandages. The smell of antiseptic. A dull, throbbing ache that made me furrow my brow before I'd even fully woken.
"..."
I looked around.
Curtained bed rails. A medicine box on the side table. Basic first-aid supplies.
An infirmary, by the look of it. Quiet — no one else in sight.
"A dream?"
I shook my head almost immediately.
Too real. Every nerve in my body said so.
I picked up the small mirror on the table.
Black hair. Blue eyes.
A blue serpent tattoo coiled at the back of the neck.
A stranger's face stared back at me.
Organization. Officer. Betrayal. Murder. Prison.
Blue Serpent. Cain Libert.
The puzzle snapped together all at once.
Then I saw the calendar on the wall — and the picture became complete.
Imperial Year 1072. April 13th.
The date of Chapter One. The day the story begins.
This isn't Korea.
I've fallen into the novel I wrote.
Not as the protagonist — but as a supporting character I'd sketched out and shelved, waiting for the right moment to use.
"Ha."
A hollow laugh. But no panic.
Maybe that was the [Cold Reason] trait doing its work.
I turned my gaze to the window.
Above the prison's razor-wire walls, a thin line cut into the sky — impossibly tall, reaching toward the clouds.
Distance made it look like a thread. But it was a wall. The great wall encircling the capital of the Empire, the story's central stage. So high it scraped the heavens; visible from anywhere on the continent.
Outside the wall — total lawlessness. That's what I wrote.
A near-modern world where magic and science had grown up together, tangled and strange. Inside the wall: prosperity. Outside: dust and desperation. Barren land, scarce resources. Corporations skimming every profit. Crime syndicates rooted into the soil.
The three largest of those syndicates — and one of them was Blue Serpent, the organization whose officer I now inhabited.
The quest.
The hologram surfaced at the thought.
[QUEST — Flames of Hatred]
Objective: Drive a blade into the hearts of the betrayers. (0/3)
Skills Acquired: Audacity, Indomitable Will, Cold Reason
Reward: Return to the real world
"Heh… heh heh..."
The irony was almost elegant.
The world knew Cain as the betrayer. In truth, it was the other way around.
Cain was the one who'd been betrayed. By fellow officers. By people he'd trusted.
"Looks like we're in the same boat."
I stared at the ceiling for a moment.
I'd only written about a hundred chapters — but the entire plot, start to finish, had been mapped out in my head long before the first word hit the page.
The story was simple enough:
The protagonist possesses a game character, grows into a mage in the capital, follows a chain of quests to bring down the wall, drives poverty from the continent, and returns home.
Return to the real world. The same reward sitting in my quest window.
If this truly was my novel — and every instinct said it was — then following the quest was the logical move. At least until I knew more.
And if I made it back to the real world—
"...Baek Jin-woo."
A hollow drop in my chest.
"I'll feed you to the dogs piece by piece, you miserable—"
The words came out before I'd chosen them. Cain's cadence. Cain's venom.
I stopped. Blinked.
[Synchronization with 'Cain Libert' in progress.]
[Current synchronization rate — 65.5%]
The number had climbed.
And with it — memories. Cain's memories, flooding in like water through a broken dam. Granular. Personal. His entire life pressing itself into my skull.
Too much, too fast. A spike of pain behind my eyes.
So the blank spaces in my setting filled themselves in.
I'd been obsessive about worldbuilding — my readers had called it out more than once. But no matter how meticulous the notes, gaps always remained.
Those gaps were closing now. Quietly. Steadily.
...As synchronization deepens, the host's memories surface and reshape the soul. I wrote that rule myself.
Cain had clawed his way from the bottom of the organization to officer rank on nothing but raw ability. Surrounded by rivals who'd take any weakness they found, he'd built walls of his own — sharp edges, cold eyes, a voice that didn't invite questions. In time, the armor became the man.
I turned back to the situation at hand.
First priority: get out of this prison.
If my worldbuilding applied here, I was sitting on an enormous advantage. Not omniscience — but enough foresight to keep ahead of almost anything.
I pulled up Cain's character sheet in my mind.
[Perfect Recall]
Type: Innate — Passive
Effect: Nothing seen is ever forgotten.
[Comprehension]
Type: Innate — Passive
Effect: Phenomena and objects are understood with preternatural clarity.
[Perfect Recall] seemed to extend to my real-world memories too. Good.
I'd always intended to bring Cain in as the protagonist's ally — a strategist, same role he'd played in the syndicate. So I'd loaded him with rare traits. Unique ones.
Creak.
The door opened.
"You're awake."
White coat. Blonde hair.
A cigarette between her lips.
She looked roughly my age.
Click. Click. Click.
She crossed the room and settled into the chair beside my bed. My eyes went to her name badge.
— Kentrak Prison Medical Officer.
— Estel Ellyuid.
...I know that name.
An emissary of the Church. A supporting character I'd placed in the second half of the novel.
"How are you feeling? You took quite a beating."
She reached toward me — checking my pulse, examining the wounds, all with the ease of someone who'd done it a thousand times.
When I flinched at the cigarette smoke, she gave a short laugh.
"Sorry. I get anxious without it. Anyway — you're not too bad."
"..."
Shameless, but the smile was hard to dislike.
"You were apparently quite famous out there."
"..."
"The prisoners have been buzzing. Word got around that the Empire's police caught a Blue Serpent officer. No idea how it spread so fast."
She studied my face.
When I gave her nothing, she went back to her work.
A soft white light gathered in her hands.
It wrapped around me, and I felt something like warmth moving through my bones — energy, returning. Then the light faded.
Holy magic.
I looked at the octagonal star etched into the back of her hand. The mark of divine authority, granted to the Church's consecrated.
"Anyway — you've got enemies in here. Inmates and guards alike."
"..."
"Are you mute? Your mouth didn't look injured."
"...Just thinking."
"Oh, that voice. Very husky. I like it. Doesn't quite match the pretty face, but."
"..."
I'm revising her character when I get back. Quiet. Reserved. Few words.
"Can you extend your arm for me? Palm up."
I complied.
She glanced around, picked up a thick book from the table, and set it on my palm.
My arm buckled immediately under the weight.
"Thought so when I first treated you. The tendon in your right wrist is severed. Both ankles too, probably."
I already knew. No surprise there.
The officers who'd framed him — his own colleagues, angling for the Boss's seat — had moved carefully. They'd planted the murder, then made sure he couldn't run or fight by cutting the tendons in his wrists and ankles. The police had arrived too quickly for them to finish the job properly, so the left wrist had been spared.
"That's beyond what I can fix here. Bones are easy — tendons are another matter. You'd need—"
"A blessing from the Church's main temple. Or cybernetic augmentation."
"—You know your stuff. You took this damage before you came in, by the look of it. I have a feeling I'll be seeing your face in this infirmary a lot."
She's not wrong.
A top-tier syndicate officer who can barely use his hands or feet. There wasn't a more tempting target in the building.
And I was wearing the brand of a betrayer — a man who'd killed one of his own. That kind of stain didn't wash off in any organization.
"A guard will come soon to process your intake. Rest while you can."
Click. Click. Click. Clunk.
The door closed behind her.
"Kentrak Prison."
Far end of the continent. One wall facing the open sea. Maximum security.
That was what I'd written.
The facility's interior was divided into wings by prisoner classification. You couldn't exactly house monsters — Demi-humans, mana users — alongside ordinary convicts.
I pulled up the traits window and scrolled down.
[Elemental Affinity]
Type: Innate — Passive
Effect: No restriction on magical element type. All attributes can be learned.
[Mana Sensitivity]
Type: Innate — Passive
Effect: Dramatically enhances the ability to perceive and manipulate mana.
I closed my eyes and focused.
The mana in the air was there — I could feel it. Like being submerged in warm water.
Under normal circumstances it takes years of training under a senior practitioner just to sense mana at all. None of this makes any sense.
But the inside of my body was hollow.
No mana circuits. The internal pathways needed to cast magic or channel ki — they hadn't been built.
Talent that could've been one in a continent, completely wasted.
Cain had known what he was capable of. He simply hadn't wanted it. Old wounds, buried deep, that made him turn away from the path of a mana user.
Wing One. General population. That's where they'll send me.
I need strength. And I can't do anything in this state.
I opened and closed my fist, confirming what I already knew about the severed tendon.
Cain had built himself on martial arts instead of magic — and reached a genuinely high level. If his body had been whole, consolidating power in Wing One would have been straightforward.
Cain. I'm going to go against what you wanted. But in exchange — I'll make the revenge perfect.
I steadied my breathing and began drawing ambient mana inward.
Wing One was the only viable path to escape. Two and Three had the bulk of the guard presence; One ran comparatively loose. Part of the reason for that loose watch—
"As expected. Nothing."
—was that once a person passed a certain age, the mana channels hardened. Circuit construction became impossible.
An ordinary convict spontaneously building mana circuits and breaking out? Laughable. And even if they somehow got through the guards in their reinforced suits, armed with mana-resistant alloy weapons — the outer wall waited beyond them. Mana-resistant alloy, solid and absolute.
Escaping Kentrak Prison is impossible.
Creak.
The door opened. A guard stepped in.
"Let's go."
...Unless, of course, you happened to know a hidden rule that the author had buried in the world and never told anyone.