I slammed my controller on the desk as the screen flickered to black, displaying two gut-wrenching words in bold red:
"YOU DIED."
"Goddammit!" I cursed, my voice echoing through my empty apartment. My hands trembled with frustration. "Why the hell is this boss so overpowered?!"
It was the final boss of The Hunter Academy's Legacy—a game I had sunk over a hundred hours into. A brutal RPG set in a dystopian fantasy world where humans had awakened to mana and fought for survival against demons. I had grinded, leveled, theorycrafted. And still, I lost. Again.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my temples. The room seemed to blur, and then…
Everything went black.
Not the kind of black you see when you close your eyes. It was deeper. Endless. Like the world itself had vanished and taken me with it.
Then—light.
Warmth.
I gasped.
My eyes snapped open, and the stale scent of old wood filled my nose. A ceiling I didn't recognize hovered above me—plastered with intricate designs I was sure I'd never seen before. The dull tick-tock of a clock echoed through the room.
I sat up.
Gone was my cramped apartment. In its place was a spacious, vintage-style room—decorated with old bookshelves, polished furniture, and a chandelier hanging overhead. Rich velvet curtains shielded sunlight streaming through tall windows.
"What the…?" I muttered under my breath.
Was I dreaming?
I swung my legs off the bed and stood up. The wooden floor felt real under my feet. I scanned the room, my heart pounding.
A desk. A bookshelf. A closet. A suit of armor in the corner?
My eyes landed on something that made me freeze—a mirror.
It hung on the wall across from the bed. I walked toward it slowly, almost afraid of what I might see. When I finally looked…
I stopped breathing.
The reflection staring back at me wasn't mine.
He was tall, lean, with striking blue eyes that glowed like sapphires under the morning light. His hair was raven black, falling just above sharp, symmetrical features. Pale skin. Handsome in a cold, aristocratic way. Too perfect. Too unfamiliar.
"That's not me…" I whispered.
It couldn't be.
But the face in the mirror moved when I did. Tilted its head. Blinked. Raised a trembling hand.
I backed away, heart hammering against my ribs. That's when I saw it—an ID card on the desk, half-covered by a quill.
I reached for it, my fingers numb. The name printed on it sent a cold shiver down my spine:
Arthur Glaiz.
No. No, no, no.
That name… I knew it. Of course I did.
Arthur Glaiz was a character in The Hunter Academy's Legacy. A third-rate villain.An extra who made a deal with a demon for power he didn't deserve. He hated the protagonist in the early chapters, tried to sabotage him in the midgame, and ultimately got killed—humiliated and discarded like the trash he was.
And now… I was him?
I stumbled back to the mirror, hoping, praying that this was a mistake. But the reflection hadn't changed. That face—Arthur's face—was mine now.
"This isn't happening," I muttered. "This can't be real."
But everything felt real. The room. The weight of the ID in my hand. The cold sweat trickling down my back.
And slowly, the truth began to sink in:
I had been transmigrated into the game.
Not as the hero.
Not as a hidden powerhouse.
But as Arthur Glaiz, a doomed villain destined to fall.
The Hunter Academy's Legacy.
That was the name of the game I thought I was just playing. A hardcore, lore-heavy RPG set in a world where humans had awakened to mana—a mysterious energy that turned ordinary people into superhumans.
Five hundred years before the game's start, the first mana awakening triggered a new age. Humanity teetered on the edge of chaos. Powers manifested unpredictably. Entire cities fell to rampaging awakened individuals. But as always, humanity adapted.
They learned to control mana. Harness it. Build a new society where power determined status. Nations rose and fell. Guilds, families, and academies were born.
And then the real nightmare began.
Demons.
Beings from another world who craved conquest. They tore through rifts in reality, unleashing destruction upon humanity. Stronger, faster, and nearly indestructible, they brought civilization to its knees. And it was only through centuries of bloodshed and sacrifice that humans managed to survive.
At the center of humanity's resistance was the Hunter Academy—an elite institution that trained the strongest mana users, forging them into weapons against the demonic threat.
That was the world I had entered.
But not as a hero, or even a bystander.
I had been thrown into the body of Arthur Glaiz—someone who was fated to be nothing more than an obstacle. A man whose ambition outstripped his talent. A man who sold his soul to a demon for power, only to be outclassed and eliminated.
"No one remembers the third-rate villains," I thought bitterly.
But I wasn't about to let that be my fate.
If I was stuck here—if I really was Arthur—then I had no choice.
I had to survive.
I had to change the story.
Because in this world, weakness was death.
And I already knew how Arthur's story ended.