The light of the brilliant chandeliers dazzled against the marble floor of the imperial banquet hall.
At the center of that elegant space, where the highest nobles and knights of the empire had gathered, I stood holding an empty glass from which blood-red wine dripped.
“……I apologize, Lord Kailan.”
At my feet knelt the empire’s youngest Swordmaster and the heroine of this damned novel, Ellara von Valerius.
Across her pure white knight’s uniform, the finest wine I had just poured over her was spreading in hideous stains.
Deliberately tapping the floor with the toe of my shoe, I spat in a voice dripping with arrogance.
“Apologize? If you were born with such lowly blood, you should at least have learned to read the room. Did you think you could dare block my path and end it with a single apology? This is why bastards with no proper bloodline should never have been allowed into the knight order.”
The surrounding nobles held their breath and watched us with interest. Not one of them pitied Ellara.
Ellara kept her head lowered, biting hard on her lip.
The nape of her neck, visible between strands of silver-gray hair, was flushed red with shame and rage. Inside, she probably wanted to cut off my head right this instant.
‘Damn it, did I go too far? She’s not going to cut my head off twice later, is she?’
Outwardly, I wore the smile of the most detestable villain in the world, but cold sweat was pouring down my back like a waterfall.
To summarize the situation, it was like this.
One week ago, I had found myself possessing the body of “Kailan del Rothschild,” the worst piece-of-trash villain in the bleak dark fantasy novel I used to enjoy reading.
The original Kailan was an extra villain, steeped in an inferiority complex, who tormented the genius knight Ellara at every turn until, in the latter half of the story, his head ultimately went flying by her sword.
Right after possessing him, I tried to treat her kindly in order to survive.
But the moment I attempted to smile at her, a dreadful blue system window appeared before my eyes.
[Warning! The “Curse of Karma” left behind by the body’s original owner (Kailan) is active.]
[Condition: If you act in a manner that deviates from the original character’s personality (arrogance, verbal abuse, evil deeds), your heart will suffer a fatal blow.]
[Current remaining life force: 15%]
That was right. This damned body had been afflicted with a “terminal curse” that shaved away my lifespan along with heart-rending agony if I did not live according to its foul temperament.
In order to survive, I had no choice but to keep acting like a bastard who oppressed and tormented Ellara.
“Get out of my sight. Looking at that repulsive face of yours is enough to make me choke on the wine I’ve been drinking.”
Inwardly repeating, ‘I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!’ I tried to turn away coldly.
It was at that very moment.
A chilling metallic sound.
In the corner of the banquet hall, I caught sight of a shadow writhing grotesquely behind the heavy red curtains. Killing intent.
‘……Huh?’
Time began to slow.
An assassin in a black mask burst out of the shadows. And from his hand, a dagger coated in blue deadly poison shot forward.
At the end of the dagger’s trajectory was Ellara, still kneeling on the floor with her head lowered.
The original novel’s setting flashed through my mind like lightning.
‘Wait. The imperial banquet hall assassination incident? Shit! That’s the event at the end of the prologue!’
In the original story, Ellara lightly deflected that dagger and proved her martial prowess.
But now it was different. Because I had just poured wine over her and picked a fight, Ellara’s vision was obstructed and her focus was completely disrupted.
The distance was too short, and the dagger was too fast.
If left alone, it would bury itself in her heart. Ellara would die here.
‘If Ellara dies in the prologue…… then there’s no one to stop the Demon King’s descent event, and the world ends!!’
If the world ended, I would die too. No, before that, the survival route itself would be shattered to pieces.
There was no time to think. Before the instinct to run away, the selfish survival instinct screaming that I had to live violently hurled my body in front of Ellara.
“……My lord?”
Seeing me suddenly loom over her and throw myself down, Ellara’s face filled with confusion.
And in the next instant.
Thud—!
“Ah…….”
The horrible sound of flesh tearing and bone scraping ripped through the elegant music of the banquet hall.
The black dagger that should have pierced Ellara’s throat was buried deep beneath my left shoulder blade.
The poison smeared on the dagger spread through my veins, and a terrible burning pain surged in.
“L-Lord Kailan……?”
Ellara’s silver-gray eyes, which had been twisted with rage only moments ago, filled with shock she had never shown before.
Because the empire’s worst piece of trash, who despised her as if she were an insect and had been insulting her while pouring wine on her less than a minute ago, was now bleeding as her shield.
‘It hurts. Fuck, it hurts like absolute hell!’
I wanted to roll across the floor and scream for a physician. But my scream got stuck in my throat.
Because the system window before my eyes was spewing bloody warnings.
[Warning! A fatal external injury has occurred!]
[Warning! The body has detected extreme stress and mana fluctuations. The penalty of the “Curse of Karma” will be applied twice.]
[Life force has plummeted to 5%. Internal organ bleeding will be forcibly induced.]
“Kh, hck……!”
Instead of a scream, dark red blood surged up from my stomach and burst out like a waterfall.
Cough, cough! Once the blood began to spill, it did not stop. More than the wound from the dagger,
the penalty of my lifespan being shaved away was painful enough to feel as though my internal organs were being ground in a blender.
The hot blood I vomited soaked Ellara’s cheek and uniform. Strength left my legs.
As my body pitched toward the floor, Ellara hurriedly caught me in both arms.
“My lord! Lord Kailan!! Why……!”
Her voice, always cold as frost, was breaking miserably.
The banquet hall descended into chaos. The screams of nobles rang out, and when his single strike was blocked, the assassin immediately shattered a window and fled.
Through my blurring vision, I looked at Ellara’s face as she held me, trembling.
‘No. If I act weak here or pretend to be kind…… even the remaining 5% of my lifespan will be gone. I have to act like trash until the end if I want to live!’
I forced my blood-clotted lips into a twisted smile.
Every breath felt as though glass was lodged in my lungs, but I stubbornly put on a haughty, cold-blooded expression.
“……Kh, heh.”
“Do not speak! A physician! Someone call a physician at once!!”
I lifted my bloodied hand and irritably shoved Ellara’s shoulder as she held me. (Of course, with all my strength gone, it was probably about as impactful as a mosquito bite.)
“Do not…… misunderstand. You insect-like wench.”
“……What?”
At the venomous abuse that came from my mouth, Ellara’s shoulders flinched and stiffened.
“If someone like you…… were to die so pointlessly here…… my plans, cough! would all be ruined.”
(Inner thought: If you die, the world ends and I die too! Please, just stop the bleeding already!)
“What on earth do you mean by……”
“I was going to trample you down with my own hands…… Do you think I’d let you die by someone else’s…… Haa, haa.”
As I dragged in ragged breaths, another cough spilled black clots of blood onto the floor.
My vision flickered frighteningly. The loss of life force was reaching its limit.
‘This should be perfect. Just the right amount of detestable and just the right amount of selfish villain. She’ll believe I didn’t save her, and that it was purely for my own purpose.’
Reassured by my flawless villainous performance, I slowly closed my eyes.
But just before my consciousness went completely dark, I discovered a fatal error in Ellara’s expression.
She was not looking at me with contempt. Nor was she confused.
Her gaze was like that of an abandoned beast that had never once been loved in its entire life, looking down at its master who had become blood-soaked in its place…… so desperate and blindly devoted that it was almost grotesque.
(Ellara’s perspective)
Ellara von Valerius had suffered assassination threats from the moment she was born.
The emperor’s illegitimate child. The cursed silver hair. Those labels had driven her all her life onto a cold and lonely battlefield. No one in the world had protected her, and she, too, had trusted no one.
Especially this man who had collapsed before her, vomiting blood—Kailan del Rothschild—was the worst of them all.
He insulted and mocked her every day. Mere minutes ago, he had poured wine on her and treated her like an insect.
And yet.
Why had that worst enemy thrown himself in the path of the poisoned dagger flying toward her?
‘Do not misunderstand. If someone like you were to die here, my plans would all be ruined.’
With trembling hands, Ellara wiped Kailan’s blood from her cheek.
It was not blood from the wound caused by the poisoned dagger. This was a black clump of death he had vomited up, rotting from deep inside his organs.
Her intuition as a knight told her.
Kailan had long been suffering from a terrible incurable illness, his insides already ruined.
‘Ah……’
In her mind, all of the insulting things Kailan had done to her over the past several years began to rearrange themselves at a terrifying speed.
What if the reason he had driven her to the edge with such harsh training and verbal abuse was to sharpen her swordsmanship so that she could survive alone in this treacherous imperial castle?
What if the reason he had poured wine on her before countless nobles and drawn their aggro was actually a disguise meant to focus the other nobles’ checks and assassination threats entirely onto his own back?
He knew his own terminal fate.
That was why, in order not to hurt her—so that she would not rely on him and crumble when he was gone…… he had chosen to become a hated piece-of-trash villain himself.
“My lord…… Since when have you been carrying this heavy burden all alone……?”
Kailan’s body, collapsed on the floor, was as cold as ice. His usual arrogance was nowhere to be seen; his faintly trembling lashes and pale cheeks were only so pitiful that they brought tears to her eyes.
In Ellara’s ears, she heard the string called reason, which had bound her all her life, snap.
“No. No, no. I will not let you die like this.”
Ellara held Kailan’s blood-soaked body so tightly it was as if his bones might break.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, but in her silver-gray eyes bloomed a cold, sticky madness unlike anything seen before.
“If you willingly took on the role of a villain and walked through hell for my sake……”
Ellara carefully pressed her lips to Kailan’s cold ones and whispered.
“Then I will willingly destroy this world to save you. I will never let you die without my permission.”
It was the moment the curtain rose on a dreadful obsession.
Of course, along with a cosmic-scale misunderstanding that the unconscious Kailan would never even dream of.