The_One_Who_Was

"Now you see?" she shouted in a mix of annoyance and disappointment. "You can't outsmart Scrients! They're the most intelligent beings across the two realms." "You're right," I muttered, averting my gaze with a heavy sigh. "I made a mistake. I was too arrogant to think that a mere human like me could fool them." —BOOM!! "Heik! Wh-What was that?" "Hmm? I'm not sure. Maybe you should go and ask the most intelligent beings across the two realms. Oh wait, you can't. I killed them all.” ______ My name is Samael Kaizer Theosbane. On the last day of high school, I got into a fight with a kid I used to bully. It was a stupid, pointless scuffle, and in the middle of it, I tripped and hit my head on a rock. That’s when the memories came flooding in - the memories of another life, of a different world. Suddenly, everything made a twisted kind of sense. I realized two things. First, I was in a game I used to play in my past life. Second, I was a villain. A villain! Not the cool and mysterious kind, either. No, my destiny was to be manipulated and die a dog's death! I was the worst type of cliché: an ungrateful, privileged, insufferable young master. The sort you'd find in those poorly written fantasy stories. The kind everyone hates — a snobby brat from a powerful noble family who thinks he owns the world just because he was born with a silver spoon lodged in his mouth. You know the type. The one the hero beats to a pulp to prove his worth. Yeah, I was that guy. And the hero? The hero was the kid I’d been bullying all this time. The same one I got into a fight with. He was the supposed savior of this damned world. A world teetering on the edge of destruction, beset by wars, calamities, and a grim future that only I knew. And at the end of it all, the final antagonist of the game, the undefeatable boss… the Spirit King, was waiting. But could I even make it to the end? Could I conquer a game where defeat was the only certainty? A game that was now my reality! “Ah, fuck it.” I had no idea if I could, but I sure as hell was going to try. Extorting extras, manipulating main characters, twisting the story to my advantage, stealing the hero’s cheat items, killing villains before they could become threats - nothing was beneath me. Would the main characters be affected? Who cares! Would the story change? Even better! All I cared about was me—my survival, my life, my choices. “I will live this life with no regrets.” …But as I soon discovered, fate was not easily changed. And the price of altering one's destiny was steep.