Asta kicked at a loose pebble as he trudged down the cracked sidewalk, backpack hanging off one shoulder like it wanted to abandon him too. The sun had dipped low enough to smear the sky with a dirty orange, but it still glared straight into his eyes, mocking his mood.
He didn't bother hiding the annoyance twisting his face.
"Fuck this," he muttered, scrolling furiously on his phone with the kind of desperation only a pissed-off reader could muster. "I waited the whole damn day for this chapter, and what do I get? Nothing. Not even a crumb. Just the MC's mom talking to some random-ass NPC nobody gives a shit about."
The more he scrolled, the more irritated he became. He had hyped the chapter up in his head for hours. Maybe today would be the one where the author finally revealed the MC's next power-up. Or foreshadowed some big war. Or gave one of those SSS-rank villains an introduction so dramatic it made readers kneel.
But no. Instead, the author decided to drop lore about a side character's neighbor's uncle's emotional trauma or whatever the hell that scene was supposed to be.
Asta's patience snapped. He swung his leg and punted the nearest trash can hard enough to send it rolling across the pavement with a loud metallic crash.
A couple walking ahead flinched at the noise and looked back at him like he was a delinquent with anger issues. Which, to be fair, wasn't entirely wrong.
"The hell you looking at?" he grumbled under his breath.
He shoved his phone into his pocket and kept walking, shoulders tight with leftover frustration.
A voice called from behind him.
"You're still obsessed with that stupid novel?"
Asta groaned internally. It was his friend—Kairon—jogging to catch up, wearing that annoying smirk he always had when he thought he was being clever.
"Get a life, bro," Kairon added.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Asta muttered. "Like you've read a single book in your entire existence. Your grades suck just as bad as mine."
"True," Kairon snorted, "but at least I'm not a loser who gets emotionally devastated over cliffhangers."
"Shut up, idiot."
"You shut up."
Their insults continued naturally, as if their friendship only functioned properly when they were verbally abusing each other. They walked together until the intersection where they usually split. Kairon turned left; Asta turned right.
When the noise of Kairon's footsteps finally faded, Asta sank back into the thoughts he tried to ignore all day.
He hated school. He hated the monotony. He hated the pressure from teachers. He hated the way every day felt like a reminder that he wasn't going anywhere.
The only place where he felt alive was inside the worlds he read about—worlds full of systems, gods, villains, battles, evolution, betrayal, beasts, power-ups… everything he couldn't have in reality.
If I could reincarnate into a novel world…
The thought drifted through his mind for the thousandth time.
Asta shut his eyes briefly, imagining it. A new body. A chance. A real reset.
Fight demons. Get a system. Maybe even get a girlfriend… somehow.
A faint smile tugged at his lips. A small, stupid fantasy, but it warmed him anyway.
But reality had zero interest in entertaining his imagination.
A sharp sting hit the back of his neck. Cold. Precise. Wrong.
He froze mid-step.
"Huh—?"
Warmth trickled down his spine. A wet, sticky warmth.
His fingers instinctively touched his neck, and when he pulled his hand back, it was red.
Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Actually, horribly, unmistakably red.
The world tilted.
"What the—"
He tried to turn around, but his feet slipped on the pavement. His phone clattered from his hand. His vision doubled, then blurred completely at the edges.
Somewhere, people screamed.
"What happened?!" "He's bleeding!" "Call the police—call them now!" "Someone said the killer ran this way!"
Asta's pulse hammered in his ears, louder than the shouting, louder than anything he'd ever heard.
A killer? On the loose? Bodies in the city? And I'm the unlucky bastard who gets hit?
His knees gave out.
He crashed onto the cold concrete, cheek scraping against it, breath shuddering.
He wanted to scream fuck at the world, but the sound wouldn't leave his throat. Even his anger felt heavy, like it was sinking deeper than his body could hold.
Why me? Out of all the people here… why the hell me?
Voices blurred into meaningless noise as blood pooled around him.
His heart thudded slower. Slower. Slower.
Wait. No. Not like this. I can't just die. Seriously? This is how it ends? No backstory? No cool moment? No chance? I didn't even get to finish the latest arc, for fuck's sake.
His fingers twitched uselessly against the ground.
I'm sixteen. Sixteen. I didn't even get to try for anything. And now I just… bleed out like some random side character?
The anger burned bright for a moment. Then flickered. Then dimmed.
But even as his consciousness spiraled downward, something stubborn clawed inside him.
I wanted… a chance. I wanted to be the main character too… just once.
That final thought echoed faintly as the darkness swallowed him whole.
Everything went silent.
Everything went cold.
Everything stopped.
For a few long, empty seconds, there was nothing.
No sound, no pain, no thought. Not even the comfort of oblivion.
Just… stillness.
Then, slowly, warmth crept in. Soft. Unnatural. Like a hand pressing lightly on his chest, coaxing breath back into his lungs.
His numb fingers twitched.
His heartbeat stuttered, then steadied. His vision—if he still had vision—began to glow faintly behind his eyelids.
What… is this?
His mind floated in a bizarre calmness. The ache in his body dissolved. The panic faded. For a moment, he wondered if he was simply dreaming while dying.
But then he inhaled.
Air. Real air. Smooth and clean, filling lungs that didn't feel damaged at all.
He forced his eyes open.
The first thing he saw was a ceiling.
Except it wasn't the hospital ceiling he expected. It wasn't white. Or tiled. Or fluorescent-lit.
It was carved wood.
Dark mahogany etched with intricate golden vines twisting across its surface, shimmering faintly under soft sunlight. The patterns weren't random—they formed shapes, sigils, something artistic and deliberate.
Asta blinked.
He stared again.
Definitely not a hospital.
He lifted a hand to his face.
His hand moved too gracefully. Too smoothly. Like his joints had been oiled and replaced with something younger, healthier.
"What… the fuck?"
He slowly sat up, sheets sliding off his body with a silky whisper. The bed itself felt absurdly soft. Expensive, even. But he hadn't seen sheets like these before—embroidered patterns of beasts and lotus flowers woven with threads so fine they practically glowed.
He scanned the room.
Tall windows draped with velvet curtains that looked ridiculously expensive. Sunlight filtered through them in gentle waves, dancing across polished wooden floors that reflected everything like a mirror. A massive desk sat by one wall, carved from some dark oak-like material, covered with neatly arranged parchment and quills. The shelves beside it overflowed with thick tomes bound in leather, each stamped with symbols and metallic inks.
A chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, shaped like blooming glass lilies, each petal holding a floating sphere of light—no wires, no candles, no bulbs.
Magic.
Everything around him radiated wealth, age, mystery… and something else. Something that made his skin buzz.
He slid one foot off the bed and touched the floor. It wasn't cold like he expected. It felt warm, like the wood held heat from sunlight or maybe something beneath it.
Something metallic glinted near him.
A mirror stood beside the bed.
A full-length mirror, framed with runes he couldn't decipher.
And reflected in it… was not him.
Asta's breath caught.
The boy in the mirror had pale, almost porcelain skin. His features were delicate but sharp, too attractive to be real. His hair was silver-white, loose strands tied back with a silk ribbon. And his eyes… his eyes shimmered with a faint, unnatural glow.
Not brown.
Not black.
Not any color he knew.
He stepped closer, slowly, as if the reflection might dissolve if he moved too fast.
"Is that… me?"
The boy in the mirror mimicked his every motion. The same slow raise of the hand. The same stiff turn of the head. The same wide-eyed disbelief.
Asta's heart thudded painfully in his chest.
He grabbed the mirror's edges.
"What the fuck… is going on?"
He wasn't dreaming.
He wasn't hallucinating.
He wasn't in a hospital, or dead, or floating in some weird-between-world coma.
He was somewhere else.
In someone else's body.
The realization hit him hard, hammering through the fragile calm he'd been holding onto.
His breathing quickened. His fingers trembled on the mirror frame. The golden light of the room suddenly felt too bright, too unreal.
"No way," he whispered. "No fucking way."
He backed away from the mirror and nearly tripped over the thick rug under his feet.
This wasn't Earth. This wasn't anything close to Earth.
This was…
His mind froze.
A name surfaced, clawing its way to the front of his thoughts.
A world he knew.
A world he had spent hours reading about.
A world he had cursed earlier that same day.
It can't be…
But every detail—the architecture, the magic-infused lights, the wealth, even the glow in his eyes—fit perfectly.
Asta swallowed hard.
He knew this place.
"It's… that world," he whispered.
The realization tasted like shock and fear and a fucked-up sense of cosmic irony.
The world he had reincarnated into wasn't just any fantasy world.
It was the world of the novel he had been obsessing over.
The brutal, chaotic, villain-infested, betrayal-ridden novel he followed religiously.
The novel named:
"I Have 10,000 SSS Rank Villains In My System Space."
Asta stood frozen, breath trembling, heart clawing at his ribs.
He didn't know who he was in this world yet.
He didn't know his place, his status, his danger level, his enemies.
But one thing he did know:
He was inside a world built from betrayal, violence, cruelty, and insanely overpowered villains who didn't give a damn about human life.
And he wasn't prepared for any of it.
Not even remotely.
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