Lucien Ashborne was supposed to be a nobody — an early-game villain who existed only to be crushed by the protagonist. After provoking the wrong person, he vanished from the story without even a dramatic death scene.

When a player named James dies and wakes up in Lucien’s body, he inherits every bit of the villain’s broken reputation and zero of his privileges. Bullied, scorned, and abandoned by his own noble family, Lucien now stands at the bottom of the academy hierarchy.

To make matters worse, the world he knew as a game has no guaranteed happy ending… and the protagonist’s party treats him like a criminal.

But James isn’t the Lucien they think he is.

With fragments of meta-knowledge, a half-broken system that barely works, and a determination to avoid becoming cannon fodder, he chooses a different path.

He doesn’t seek glory.
He just refuses to disappear.

This is the story of a former villain trying to rewrite his role — not as a hero, but as someone who survives on his own terms.

As we walked away from Bordon, I glanced back once.


He was watching us go, chewing happily on a skewer of grilled meat, looking entirely too relaxed for a man standing in the middle of a target zone.


I mentally marked their locations on my internal map. They were scattered. That wasn't ideal. When the attack started, the protagonist party would be cut off from each other, unable to form their usual invincible formation.


But there was nothing I could do about it now.


"Lucien?" Ariana whispered, squeezing my hand tightly. Her palm was damp. "Is something wrong?"


I looked back at her, forcing a gentle smile to mask the tension coiling in my gut.


"Nothing. Just… thinking about what to say to my mother."


We reached the security checkpoint for the VIP area. I flashed my invitation, the gold crest gleaming in the sun, and the guards stepped aside to let us through.


Chapter 76 - Chaos