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.

The Grand Hall was no longer a room. It was a meat grinder.


My shotgun roared, obliterating three Imps that had leaped from the balcony. Their small bodies disintegrated into gore, but the mist of blood only seemed to excite the swarm behind them.


"They're too fast!" Alicia screamed, swinging her wand like a baton. A whip of fire lashed out, severing the wings of an Imp mid-air, but another one latched onto her leg.


She kicked it away, but the creature took a chunk of her stocking—and a strip of skin—with it.


"Close ranks!" I shouted, reloading with practiced desperation. My hands were slick with sweat and demon blood. "Don't let them surround us!"


We backed toward the heavy oak doors, but the horde was endless. The Rift pulsed, vomiting out dozens more every second.


Chapter 80 - Terror Attack [End]