A ruined world called Edest. A world that had undergone an apocalypse and was still trying to survive it.
Outside the sanctuary, humanity had already lost.
He knew that much, not from experience but from mory. The cities had fallen two hundred years ago, swallowed by the surge of mutated beasts that had turned the surface into their hunting ground.
What remained of civilisation had retreated into closed-off sanctuaries in different parts of the world, where resources were controlled and survival ca at the cost of freedom.
Even behind the reinforced walls, nothing was ever secured. A small mistake and everything would go down the drain.
"Harem in the apocalypse, " he said quietly, the na rolling off his tongue with familiarity that felt almost ironic in the kind of situation he was in," out of everything I could have ended up in..."
A humourless laugh escaped him, though there was no real amusent behind it.
He had read the novel casually. The way people consud a popular book without expecting it to matter beyond a few hours of entertainnt.
It had been predictable in many ways: the overpowered protagonist, the ever-growing number of won around him, and the escalating threat of the world collapsing.
A power fantasy.
What stood out to him were the side characters, especially how easily they had been discarded after their service was finished.
His fingers tapped lightly against the edge of the sink as his expression grew more focused.
"And I ended up as one of them. "
He wasn’t just any side character but the side villain, a talentless one at that.
Thought calling him that could be considered... generous.
"He wasn’t even competent," he continued, voice steady, analytical rather than emotional as he pierced through the mories that now belonged to him.
"Just an obsessive man."
The forr Silver had loved one of the protagonist heroines, but it wasn’t the kind of love that could be romanticized.
It was persistent to the point of discomfort, blind to rejection, and rooted more in fixation than genuine care.
Even now, traces of that emotion lingered in his mory. It wasn’t enough to control him but enough for him to understand how it had once driven the forr Silver into making increasingly poor decisions.
"No self-awareness," he added, almost critically, " no restraint either."
It was the kind of behaviour that guaranteed only one outco.
Rejection, humiliation, and eventually ...
His gaze slightly darkened.
"... removal."
That part had taken longer for him to process, it wasn’t because it was complicated but because it was just ... too ordinary.
It had been the worst kind of death anyone even the villain himself would have hoped for.
His own family had killed him.
Poisoned.
Silver let out a harsh breath.
"All of this for sothing I have not seen yet," he murmured, straightening slightly as his thoughts shifted to the one detail that made everything click in place.
"That inheritance. "
Whatever his parents had left behind seed to be very valuable to those who took his life.
He glanced at the ceiling in frustration.
"I should probably look for it."
The mory about it kept on eluding him ti and ti again.
Killing him, in retrospect, made sense in a way.
In an apocalyptic world like this, attachnt was secondary to survival, and resources mattered more than feelings.
Even the protagonist group, as righteous as they appeared on the surface, was not above making pragmatic decisions when necessary.
For Silver, it was probably worse, he never saw his death coming. Even in death, he never knew who had ended his life.
That was the part that lingered.
At that, sothing that his mind seed to have selectively forgotten, started to sit in.
"There is also that engagent," he murmured to himself his tone dropping with exhaustion.
It was one of the good things that the forr Silver never noticed he had fumbled, very badly at that.
The situation around their engagent was sowhat cliché. His grandfather had saved her grandfather and then both of them agreed on an engagent between the children.
Silver had been the sacrificial pawn in the old man’s fantasies.
His fiancée, Ravenna Arkland, was just as unlucky. She was deed the first villainess by the novel, the first for heriones to get rid of.
The book had glazed over the reason leaving it for the reader’s imagination.
She had been a pitiful character herself. Also a pawn, sent to marry but unlike him, she was a walking contradiction to her background.
She was hardworking, bold, and the type of person who could achieve anything if she put her mind to it.
And she had lived up to her character. The mont she had arrived at his sanctuary and found out about his infatuation, how he behaved, how he chased after a woman with no dignity...
She had dropped him imdiately.
She had coincidentally been saved by the protagonist during that period but no one knew how it went but a few Chapters later she was then branded the villainess.
It had been an unexpected twist since she had left with his group but was killed by the Herione, the one the forr Silver had been in love with.
With all of this hanging over him, Silver had a lot of thinking to do.
How was he going to survive a family that wanted him dead?
What about his fiancée, he wasn’t sure if she had even arrived.
The novel had been vague about a lot of things.
And his future, if left unchanged it would end up the sa way.
For a mont, Silver simply stood there, taking it all in without reacting outwardly.
Then he let out a slow breath.
"It’s manageable," he stared at himself for a mont then turned to leave," let’s clear this ss of his first."
Just as he had co to a full decision, a knock ca.
Silver paused for a mont, then left the bathroom.
"Young master," the voice called.
Just from the familiar tone, a mory trickled in.
Sander Miller, the forr Silver servant.
He sifted through his mories of the book, and then it ca to him.
The one who had administered the poison. The man had been sent by his uncle to spy on him and obtain the location of the so-called inheritance.
"Co in," Silver called out, his tone mimicking that of the forr Silver. Cold and disdainful.
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