The quiet lunch ended all too quickly.
After the small incident with Elara, Revan decided to skip the afternoon class.
"Fuck ' Theory'," he grumbled softly as he walked away from the academic building.
To him, that material was nothing more than a bedtime story. Besides, the lecturer wouldn't care whether "Revan the Trash" was present or not.
Arriving at the door of his dormitory room, Revan pressed his access card.
The door opened. Instantly, Revan's dead, lazy eyes, which had been dim all day, suddenly sparkled with emotion.
You must be thinking that because Revan is branded as "school trash," he lives in a small, run-down dorm or a broom closet like in those cliché comics, right?
Big mistake.
Even though he is ridiculed, Revan is still registered as a Class A student.
At Valtheris Academy, class status is everything. And the facilities for Class A dorms are more than enough to rival a Suite Room in a 4-star Tokyo hotel.
Cold marble floors, automatic climate control, and most importantly... a King Size Bed with a memory foam mattress as soft as a cloud.
"Ah... my beloved bed..."
Revan was ready to embrace his earthly paradise.
However...
The moment he took one step past the threshold, Revan's body froze.
His eyes, which had been sparkling playfully, instantly turned sharp and alert.
Something was wrong.
Swiftly, Revan's gaze swept the room like a scanner. He checked for any irregularities, looking for anything that had changed since he left this morning.
At a glance, nothing had changed. Everything looked normal.
Except for one thing.
On his pillow lay an object that definitely shouldn't be there—at least, it wasn't there this morning.
A jet-black envelope with a dark purple wax seal.
The Crest of the Duke Vespera Family.
"Ah... shit," Revan cursed softly. "I should have known."
He walked closer, reaching for the envelope reluctantly, like he was holding a ticking time bomb.
Without hesitation, he broke the seal and pulled out a slip of black paper inside.
"North Gate. 11 PM."
"Don't be late, or I'll cut off your tongue."
— S.V.
Revan crumbled the expensive paper into a ball and tossed it carelessly into the corner of the room. Then, he collapsed onto the mattress in Resignation.
"Hahhhh... I just want to run away..."
Revan buried his face deep into the pillow, letting his voice be muffled by the fabric.
If only he hadn't been born into the body of this cursed character, he would have run away from home when he was 10 years old.
Theoretically, his background sounded "Wow." The Von Alstaire family was once an elite military noble family. A hundred years ago, their ancestor was one of the 5 Pillars of the Kingdom, a Sword God respected by friends and foes alike.
But those great genetics went somewhere else and didn't stop by Revan's body.
"Bloodline's Disgrace," he cursed from behind the pillow.
This body was truly broken. He had been sickly since childhood. Even doing basic physical training—like lifting light weights—made his hands tremble like jelly.
His face? Don't ask. A permanent "bookworm" face that seemed to scream: 'Hello, please bully me as much as you like!'
"I should write a diary... or maybe a novel," he muttered in disappointment.
"Title: 'Day One Reincarnated as a Pig Character and Realizing My Life is Ruined.' It would definitely be a best-seller in this world."
But of all those physical defects... there was one thing that made Revan want to cry tears of blood.
The thing located in his crotch.
"Oh God..."
Revan shuddered in horror just remembering it. His face turned red with shame, even though there was no one else in the room.
"I shouldn't have posted mean comments on the forum back then... this must be karma. God really has a bad sense of humor."
That thing... wasn't even worthy of being called a penis. It was pathetic.
Revan groaned in frustration, then hurled his pillow randomly into the corner.
He forced his body up from the mattress, then walked sluggishly toward the left wall. There, embedded in the wardrobe, hung a mirror reflecting his figure.
Raven-black hair messy like a bird's nest. Skin pale as a living corpse. And the most dominant feature: a pair of eyes with permanent dark circles underneath them.
Staring back at him with a sharp, cynical, and numb gaze.
But instead of being sad, Revan grinned widely at the "terrifying" reflection.
This face... this cynical expression and gloomy aura... was a work of art he had created on purpose.
"Hahaha... look at that," he sneered while slicking his hair back. "What could the original Revan do without me? If I hadn't taken over this body, his face would still resemble a crybaby bookworm begging to be mugged."
Revan was very proud of the results of this image "modification."
According to his logic: If you are weak, at least don't appear weak. Act like a madman or a psychopath, so people hesitate to touch you.
Of course, poor Revan didn't realize (or refused to realize) that his current appearance didn't help at all.
People still bullied him. The difference was, they used to bully him because he seemed like a wimp; now they bullied him because he looked "pretentious" and "fake mysterious." The end result was the same: he got beaten up.
"Well... at least I did something with this body," Revan comforted himself, his eyes glancing briefly down at his pants.
"I'm not stupid like the original bastard Revan who was willing to be used."
In the original story, Revan was just a walking pawn destined to die a ridiculous death to protect his master, Sylvia, without ever fighting back.
"But sorry... I am not him."
The black letter in the corner of the room was the proof. Proof that he had succeeded in changing fate.
The original Revan—that trash NPC—would never receive a letter like this in his entire life.
In the original story, Revan was just a pathetic village dog. He always tailed behind Sylvia, begging for attention, begging for love, and forcing his presence like a sickening parasite.
Sylvia didn't call him because she needed him; Sylvia let him live only because he was useful as a meat shield.
But the current Revan was different.
This letter was an acknowledgment. Sylvia called him not out of pity, but because she needed Revan's skills.
To get to this point, the price was very high.
When he first opened his eyes as a crying baby in this world, he had hoped. He waited for a "Ting!" sound or a blue hologram screen reading [System Activated] to appear before his eyes.
Reality slapped him hard: He had no System.
No instant Level Up. No automatic Healing Potion. No Quest Rewards.
All he had was a dying baby's body, trash genetics that rejected muscle, and memories of the past about the Game Wiki that he had memorized by heart.
However, just "knowing" wasn't enough.
Knowing the location of bone-strengthening potions or ancient artifacts was only the first step. The main problem was: How to get them?
High-level items like S-Type Potions or Elixirs of Life had unreasonable prices. Just one small bottle could equal the budget of a small town for a year.
Revan, as a fallen noble who was poor, obviously couldn't afford them. He even had to think twice about buying meat in the cafeteria.
So, to get all that, he needed Capital and Power.
And in this entire kingdom, there was only one party that possessed unlimited resources as well as access to illegal channels untouched by the law.
The Duke Vespera Family.
His master's family wasn't just ordinary nobility sitting prettily drinking tea.
They were "Two-Faced Kings."
In the Upper World, they were known as skilled politicians and honorable nobles controlling the parliament. But in the Underworld, they were Godfathers.
They controlled dark trade routes, illegal auction markets, and networks of assassins.
Revan exploited that loophole.
Or rather, he exploited Sylvia back.
He didn't just offer information; he made himself indispensable. He forced his broken body to undergo hellish training, studying assassin techniques that relied on speed rather than strength, just so he could keep up with the demands of the underworld.
He clawed his way up from being a useless servant to becoming her most trusted shadow.
"Heh, with all that hard work, at least I got into Class A with my own skills."