"Ugh…"
Rubbing the side of my head where a dull ache throbbed, I slowly stirred from what felt like half a night's sleep. Not enough to be considered restful by any measure.
"Ah...my body.."
Maybe it was the luxurious stone-hard floor I had the honor of sleeping on, or the windowless cell that refused to let in even a whiff of fresh air, either way, getting up was a chore, and the world around me was spinning like a cheap carnival ride.
"...my head.."
Something like a lightning bolt struck me out of nowhere, zapping my skull and making everything wworse
I gave up on sitting up, at least for now, and let myself collapse back onto the cold floor. Eyes shut, limbs heavy, body screaming.
To be honest, unlike the headache that felt like someone was pounding nails into my brain, I did know why the rest of my body felt like I'd been used as a baseball bat, or hit by one. Hard to tell at this point.
And really, as pitiful as I was right now, I doubt many could walk away looking better if they went through what I just did.
Yeah… safe to say my lifestyle wasn't exactly "healthy."
From my upper back all the way to my sides, down to my legs, pain. Unending, agonizing pain. And let's not even talk about my arms. Every muscle felt like it had been stretched to its limit and then set on fire. I could barely move them.
Sprawled out like roadkill on the cold floor, which wasn't helping my back or my dignity, I cracked my eyes open again, wincing as the headache crawled outwards, pulsing behind both temples.
The ceiling above had become oddly familiar.
"..one long week..huh.."
The words scraped its way out of my dry throat as memories came pouring in, uninvited and far too vivid.
"Sora Asura. From this moment onward, all your rights as a noble of the esteemed Asura family will be revoked. Starting today, you are to serve the noble House of Heavens, as their obedient slave.."
Of course that would be the first thing I remember.
The butler's smug declaration..Waltimar Wintermere.
Man, what a name. It sounds like someone important, someone refined. But the guy himself? Just a glorified servant, commanding the other servants in this mansion like some glorified drill sergeant. Technically one of the personal aides to a member of the main family.
And yet, this nobody, this background extra, tore away everything I had and sentenced me like some high judge of a divine court.
Not even mentioned in the original novel. Not once. No name, no role, nothing.
Yet here he is, playing puppetmaster over every servant in the estate. Central to the plot now, apparently.
"..What the hell is going on.." I muttered, eyes shut tight as the pain flared again.
Still, even as I questioned it all, that one excruciating week I spent here gave me a decent enough idea of what's happening.
It's real. I've been actually reincarnated into the world of that novel.
I was skeptical at first, who wouldn't be?, but the moment I laid eyes on one of the countless art pieces in the mansion's never-ending hallways… it hit me.
It was a map. A large one, painted and framed like a royal portrait. I'd been lugging crates into one of the side rooms when I noticed it.
A vast kingdom illustrated in detail, with a portion shaded in a distinct violet hue.
I didn't need to study it. I didn't need to read every name or symbol. All I had to do was glance at a few names to know.
There it was, big and bold, in the top-center of the map:
[Kingdom of Avalis]
And below it, in a smaller box:
[Territories Controlled by House Heavens]
The entire thing screamed confirmation.
Sure, a huge chunk of the kingdom was under their rule, which was crazy enough. But what sealed the deal was the name Avalis itself.
See, after consuming more web novels than I'd ever admit out loud, most of which were just knock-off versions of better stories, which themselves were knock-offs of even older bestsellers, I'd gotten used to seeing repeated names.
Son. Lee. Kyle. You name it. Every kingdom, every character, every rival nation… same names, just shuffled around.
And it wasn't because authors lacked imagination. No, some of them could build entire worlds with their own mythologies, politics, magic systems, hell, even divine pantheons. But the moment it came to naming characters? Copy-paste.
Eventually, readers stopped complaining, and writers stopped trying.
Kingdom of Aslora? Cool. Kingdom of Aslara? Totally different. Add or remove a letter and suddenly it's "original" enough to win an award, if such an award existed.
Don't get me wrong, some rookie writers really tried to make unique names… but let's be honest. Half of those names felt like a dark spell that cursed your tongue the moment you tried to say them aloud.
In the middle of that naming mess, one author shone.
Sure, he reused a few names, but overall? His world felt solid. Believable.
Yeah, I'm talking about the author of Rise of Asura.
At least, that's how I saw it.
I'd memorized everything.
Characters, cities, seas, obscure village names, even noble titles.
And among all those, Avalis stood out the most. The setting for almost the entire story.
I swear, I never saw that name used anywhere else.
Back then, I didn't have time to gawk at the map. I just glanced at a few city names to confirm what I already feared.
Memorizing the geography of a fictional novel?
Yeah, seemed like a useless thing, until it saved my ass.
Not that I did anything remotely useful this past week.
In fact, I did nothing. Or more accurately, I couldn't do anything.
I went from being a human to a mule, hauling boxes around the estate to cleaning horse crap in a stable an hour away on foot, despite there being literal stablehands whose job that was.
And every evening, I had to rush back to catch what they generously called "lunch," served alongside the other slaves.
It wasn't the delicious food or warm atmosphere that made me hurry back. Hell no. The food was scraps, kitchen leftovers, and the only fresh thing was the bread. Barely edible, but at least new.
Still, no matter how exhausted or sore I was, like I'd been run over by a carriage, I made sure to be there on time, or I wouldn't even have rats fighting me for the scraps.
And that's not even counting the abuse the palace slaves endured.
Beatings. Whippings. Branding. Torturing.
And the women? Treated like playthings for the staff.
The line between servants and slaves in this mansion? Clear as day.
Didn't even take me a full day to notice it.
It's like a damn caste system, no, a noble society masquerading as one. The masters treat the servants like dogs. And those servants? They pass it down, venting their anger on the slaves.
That's just how it is here.
A place I can't take much longer.
"AGHH!!"
Like a thunderbolt ripping through my skull, pain struck again, so violently my vision blurred. I couldn't even open my eyes before it hit again.
"I summoned you, and only you, to live inside my body, to walk in my shoes. To suffer my pain. To drown in my despair. Until your soul shatters completely...and you become just as worthless as I once was."
"Shut up, bastard."
The words slipped from my mouth before I could stop them.
After a moment, the pain started to fade. I forced my aching body to sit up.
The room was empty, nothing but me, four cold stone walls, and a single metal door.
" How fancy." I muttered dryly.
This was my "special room," as one of the servants had called it. Apparently reserved just for me, the former noble.
No furniture. No windows. No freedom. But somehow, it was more comforting than being out there.
Clack.
That familiar metal sound echoed through the room.
I looked at the door just in time to see the small flap at the bottom swing open. A dish slid through and the flap slammed shut again.
With a tired sigh, I stared down at what I already knew was coming.
A plate. A hunk of bread. Some fish soup with a fish that didn't look safe to eat.
"Truly...five-star service."
I shuffled over, grabbed the bread with practiced hands, and pushed the rest of the tray back toward the door.
Yeah, I'd been doing this for a while now.
My "exclusive" breakfast, no need to rush out like dinner. But apparently, they didn't mind giving the slave in the "VIP room" the leftovers of the leftovers.
As I gnawed on the flavorless bread, the pounding in my head finally started to calm down.
It wasn't because of the bread, obviously. Whatever hit me earlier… wasn't normal. My brain just needed time to settle.
Yeah. That was definitely not something normal.
"Sora Asura.."
The protagonist of Rise of Asura, the man who captured everyone's hearts after enduring every imaginable form of torment.
The one who suffered beyond belief.
The forsaken hero.
A beacon of kindness and purity.
The man falsely accused of a crime he never committed, an accusation that haunted him for the rest of his life.
The hero who never gave up, no matter how grim things became. The one who, perhaps, defied even the author's will to kill him off, and somehow carved out his own happy ending.
"…I always did wonder about that 'defying the author' part."
It was just a passing remark by the sadistic author himself, who once admitted that he tried to kill the protagonist off in multiple chapters… but somehow, just couldn't.
Nonsense.
"_You disgust me."_
Complete, meaningless drivel.
I finished the last bite of the bread and waited, because I knew what was coming. I took the rare moment of peace I had to think back on that dream, no, that experience, that happened to me during the night.
"I really… got reincarnated into this world."
And I met him.
The protagonist himself.
The man who was supposed to embody everything noble, kind, and good. But what I saw? None of that.
He wasn't kind. He wasn't gentle. He wasn't the hardworking, humble soul we all knew from the pages.
No.
I remember it all clearly.
His eyes were filled with bitterness, with hatred… and an overwhelming, violent envy.
He was envy.
As if he were the living embodiment of that one deadly sin.
As if something deep inside him made it impossible to feel anything but that.
I was reincarnated, somehow, and ended up in his body.
I remember suddenly finding myself strapped to a chair, forced to watch a woman being violated right in front of me... and now, I was here. In this mansion. As a slave.
There was no need for more than a few seconds of comparison.
And with that, I was sure.
Despite all the missing details in the original novel, details the author never wrote, but some unseen force had clearly filled in, I was without a doubt following the exact same path.
The same storyline.
A story soaked in cruelty, ugliness, sadism, and every twisted, rotten emotion and ideology imaginable, all bundled together like some grotesque masterpiece.
"So, if I'm remembering correctly... the first problem the protagonist faced was..."
That was when the door rattled again.
But this time, it opened completely.
And for some reason, the man standing behind it wasn't the usual servant who came to drag me off for whatever hellish labor they had lined up for the day.
No.
My eyes landed on him, that man who wasn't even supposed to exist in the story. The one who didn't get a single mention in the novel.
Head butler of the estate: Waltimar Wintermere.
And just as my mind was beginning to recall what happened next, the cursed event that would lead to the protagonist's torment for an entire arc, forty chapters of relentless suffering, Waltimar opened his mouth.
And spoke the exact words I never wanted to hear.
"Get up, you filth. Her Grace, Lady Freya, wishes to see you."