Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

There are moments when the universe shows you mercy.

Moments when the benevolent gods look down on you and say, “Hey, this poor bastard’s been through enough. Let’s throw him some good fortune now.”

This… was not one of those moments.

Because out of all the things that could’ve ambushed me in this oversized terrarium of a jungle — out of all the mandible-snapping, spore-belching, flesh-devouring abominations — the one I woke up to just had to be her.

Lily. Freaking. Elderwing.

I stared at her.

She stared back.

Somewhere, a tree creaked.

Something chittered in the dark.

A nearby vine coiled a little too deliberately.

And I seriously considered throwing myself into the maws of the nearest carnivorous plant just to end this conversation before it even began.

“You—” I croaked, trying to sit up, but pain made sure I regretted it and immediately punched me right back down. “Arghh!”

Lily looked torn between concern and mild panic. “Don’t… try to move too much.”

I ignored her and circulated Essence through my body.

Almost instantly, the pain dulled and strength came trickling back into my veins.

I took a deep breath and staggered upright.

My legs felt a little shaky, like I’d been resting for days and my limbs had forgotten how to move.

A breeze passed through the clearing. It smelled like wet moss and rot and rain that hadn’t fallen yet.

“How long was I out?” I asked, keeping an eye on my surroundings.

She hesitated. “Almost two days.”

“…What?!” I blinked. “Two?”

She nodded. “You were in really bad shape. Dislocated shoulder. Three cracked ribs. Wrist punctured clean through. Internal bruising. Bleeding profusely. You’re lucky I found you when I did.”

“Lucky’s one word for it,” I snorted. “Where the hell are we?”

“The Spirit Realm,” Lily answered oh-so-helpfully.

I wanted to smack her. “Where exactly in the Spirit Realm, genius?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine. I was in the Night Castle after getting eliminated in the Flag Test when the Spirit Beasts started attacking out of nowhere. I helped with evacuations, saw a flash of white light, and suddenly woke up here. After aimlessly wandering around for hours, I found you half-buried in a swamp a few clicks west. So I bandaged you up and carried you along. I didn’t think you’d wake up anytime soon, honestly. If not for your enhanced endurance, you wouldn’t have survived your injuries.”

…Well, fuck.

I resisted the urge to yank out my hair and scream curses at the heavens.

Because my guess wasn’t as good as hers.

It was better.

I knew exactly what was happening and where we had ended up.

You see, in the game, Selene had teleported everyone out of the Night Sanctuary some minutes after the massacre began.

She was supposed to teleport them all to my father’s domain — the Golden Sanctuary.

But just as she was in the middle of doing that, one of the Unholy Solbraith Titans attacked her.

Selene flinched and messed up the teleportation process.

As a result, a handful of poor souls were yeeted off-course.

They crash-landed far from the Golden Sanctuary.

And ended up right here in this nightmarish forest called the Noctveil Wilds — a jungle so hostile that even the trees in this region wanted you dead.

So who were these unfortunate people? Mostly the main characters, plus a few insignificant extras.

This arc was called Stranded in the Spirit Realm. And carried a grim tone much like the arc before it — Massacre During The Class Excursion.

Every side character ill-fated enough to get caught in this arc met a gruesome end.

Some even died in creatively sadistic ways right before the protagonist — just to show the severity of the situation and the lethal stakes at play.

For the main heroes, however, this arc served as more of a narrative tool — a plot device to bring them closer together.

It was during this time that the game introduced characters like Vince Cleverly and Ray Warner. And it was then that the heroes began to forge familiar bonds with each other.

By this arc’s end, they were no longer mere allies.

They had become a found family.

Even Juliana — a main heroine portrayed as deranged and cynical — began to tolerate the main cast. Which, in her language, was basically a love confession.

According to some players, this event was the story’s pivotal turning point.

Because in plotlines where this arc was skipped, rushed, or botched, the heroes took much longer to grow closer and fell apart far more easily when tensions rose later in the game.

Some of them even went rogue, depending on how badly this arc was handled. That’s how important it was.

So, what exactly was the problem?

Well, beyond the fact that the Noctveil Wilds was a maze of horrors…

I wasn’t supposed to be here.

Samael Kaizer Theosbane was not a part of this arc.

To be clear, I wasn’t just meant to be elsewhere.

No, I was supposed to be dead by now.

Yep.

In the game, Samael triggered the massacre under Asmodeus’ influence. By its end, he was killed — typically by Michael, occasionally by Alexia.

And in the rare plotlines where he somehow managed to survive, Juliana always made sure he didn’t.

In short, I had no business being here!

This was no place for a villain.

This was a place for disposable side characters to die meaningless deaths and for the main heroes to trauma-bond and call it character development!

It was then that Lily’s deeply worried voice finally broke my spiraling train of thought.

“Hey, hey! Sam—!” she shrieked, reaching forward to grab my wrist. “Stop it!”

And that’s when I realized — I’d actually started yanking at my hair. Hard. Hard enough to make my scalp sting.

I blinked, released my grip, and slapped her hand away.

“Get back,” I snapped.

She recoiled, eyes widening. “What the hell—?”

But before she could continue, I summoned my Origin Card.

A river of glowing light particles flooded out from deep within my soul and condensed into a solid rectangular shape above my shoulder, its surface etched with luminous golden runes.

At once, I willed the ground beneath me to rise.

And the ground obeyed.

With a tremor and a grinding rumble, the mossy earth under my feet surged upward into a column made of stone, dead roots, and dirt.

Lily stumbled back with a startled yelp as the rapidly growing column carried me toward the shattered sky like an elevator.

For several seconds, I kept rising higher and higher.

Above the trees. Above the canopy. Into the open air.

The wind tousled my hair. The scent of moss and rot faded, replaced by something thin and cold and clean. A few large insects buzzed nearby, but none dared to get too close.

They were all Infant Spirit Beasts. And they could instinctively sense that I was hopelessly stronger than them. Attacking me would only bring death.

So they didn’t.

When the column lifted me to the highest vantage point my ability’s range would allow, it stopped rising.

I squinted and looked around.

To my left, I could barely make out the silhouette of a distant mountain range — jagged black peaks jutting from the earth like the spine of a long-dead massive god.

“That should be the Crown of Thorns,” I murmured to myself. “Beyond that is the Night Sanctuary.”

Which meant…

I slowly turned a full one-eighty.

…And my heart sank.

Because to the west — where my father’s domain, the legendary Golden Sanctuary, should’ve been — I saw… nothing.

Nothing but an endless stretch of jungle.

Nothing but towering trees and plants as tall as skyscrapers, all painted in a sickly shade of greenish-black hue under the ominous crimson light of the bleeding moon.

Then I glanced down.

It turned out we were perched on what seemed like the highest step of a massive, multi-tiered plateau — like a stairway carved for giants.

Traveling west from here meant we’d have to cross several miles of jungle, climb down a steep ridge, cross several more miles, then climb down again. Over and over.

After repeating that process five or six times, we’d reach the deepest part of the forest.

And that, in itself, would be a challenge.

Because each plateau below was more overgrown than the last. The farther down we went, the thicker — and deadlier — the forest would become.

And the wildlife only grew more monstrous.

Far below, I spotted a beetle the size of a horse, gnawing on something disturbingly humanoid.

To the southwest, a swarm of wasps clustered around a colossal tree. Even from this distance, each of those wasps looked as big as my fist — which meant they’d be enormous up close.

Something howled in the distance.

Something else hissed back.

I could practically feel the predatory intent oozing off this place.

This wasn’t a jungle.

This was a decaying graveyard.

And the fact that I couldn’t see even a faint shimmer of the Golden Sanctuary or the Lake of Grief anywhere on the western horizon… meant we were far, far away from safety.

From near the foot of the column, Lily shouted up at me. “What do you see?!”

I didn’t answer.

I simply rubbed my face and let out a quiet sob.

Because, on top of everything else, I was stuck here with the one person I least wanted to be around.

This whole ordeal wasn’t just going to be physical torture — it was going to be mental as well.

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