【‘Reina Serenia’ has died.】
How many times had I seen this message now?
It was so absurd, unfair, and suffocating that I slammed my fist down on the desk.
THUD!
The keyboard jumped slightly with a clatter.
But no matter how angry I became, the message before me showed no intention of changing. Not that I could expect it to.
Beyond the monitor displaying the paused world was my favorite character, Reina Serenia—dead once again.
Their world belonged to an outdated game called [Spell Breaker].
It had a conventional story: the protagonist, the illegitimate child of the emperor, entered an academy, built a foundation for himself, took revenge on the imperial family, and saved the world from an unprecedented crisis along the way.
Its gameplay was nothing special. Instead, it possessed one tremendous strength: every character in the game was so multifaceted that they seemed like real people.
Reina was an extra with a somewhat unusual premise, and players called her a minor character.
Calling someone a minor character in a game might sound strange, but she had earned the nickname because no matter how anyone tried to save her, she invariably died in one of countless ways early in the story.
She was an unpopular character who would die before long, no matter how attached you became to her or how hard you tried to save her.
At first, I thought the same thing.
It was not long after I started playing [Spell Breaker].
While browsing the community in search of walkthroughs, I discovered a forum called ‘Saving Reina.’
The forum contained records of players’ attempts to save her—and tens of thousands of failures.
At first, I could not understand why anyone would become so devoted to a character who died as easily as an ocean sunfish.
Yet even after the failures had passed ten thousand, the players showed no sign of giving up. Eventually, I followed them and began my own attempt at ‘Saving Reina.’
I wanted to know why people were so captivated by her.
And so, I delved deeper into the game and began learning about Reina.
By the time I came to my senses, I had already fallen completely under her spell.
She had a bright, energetic personality despite her grim past.
She possessed the strength to stand her ground no matter how formidable the enemy or how dire the crisis.
Above all, she held an unwavering belief that she had to accomplish everything through her own efforts—and the will to work herself to the bone for it.
At this point, I could no longer understand how anyone could possibly dislike Reina.
The game itself had a reasonable, unremarkable level of difficulty. When it came to saving Reina, however, it was more difficult than most horror games.
Because of that, even those who had stubbornly tried to save her gradually drifted away.
Now that the game had fallen out of fashion, I was the only one left on the Saving Reina forum. The forum that had once hosted constructive discussions had become nothing more than a hate-comment board.
-He spends all day doing this. What a fucking unemployed loser. They might as well stuff this b*stard and put him in a museum as the definitive specimen of a fucking unemployed loser.
-At this point, it isn’t affection. It’s obsession. This b*stard would get dumped if he ever started dating someone and then commit murder. Oh, come to think of it, he can’t date anyone because he spends all day doing this. What a relief.
Those words would have crushed an ordinary person’s spirit just from reading them, but I was fine.
I only immersed myself in the game after work. I was not unemployed. I had only spent all day playing recently because of the string of holidays.
The part about not having a girlfriend hurt a little, though…….
Still, even I—someone who had never broken under vicious comments or countless failures—could not help but break today.
It would have been better if my skills had been lacking, if I had made a mistake, or if there had at least been a flaw in my plan.
The problem I faced today, however, was far more fundamental.
The game’s system made it impossible to carry out the method I had devised.
Everything had gone smoothly at first.
As with every other route, I had kept Reina safe and eliminated the people trying to kill her in advance.
Whenever I encountered a situation in which saving her seemed impossible, I had even resorted to exploiting bugs—using wall clipping to make Reina invincible or repeatedly pausing the game to dodge skills while attacking the enemy.
This damned game had no trouble allowing any of that, yet it had gone out of its way to prevent me from carrying out the simplest and most realistic plan I had ever devised.
No matter how often I saved and reloaded, that fact never changed.
I could almost sense the developers’ malice buried deep within the game.
Damned developers. If they hated Reina so much, they should have made her a simple villain…….
Or at least left a hole in her backstory. Why make her so needlessly captivating if they were going to kill her anyway……?
Emptiness washed over me. I let the strength drain from my body and sank into my chair.
Was this how the people who had left the Saving Reina forum felt?
A phrase I had once seen on the forum came to mind: ‘The smarter you are, the sooner you escape the Saving Reina forum.’
I had always believed I was the last one remaining because I had been the most persistent. But perhaps I had simply been the stupidest—the slowest to realize that Reina could not be saved, a fool who kept clinging to the impossible.
Perhaps that was why I was the last one left.
I should…… give up now.
I had started this partly because I could not let go in the first place.
It was about time I did.
Even if I saved Reina, my life would not change.
Reina was only a character in a game.
That was undoubtedly true, and yet…….
I could not bring myself to give up.
In the end, I reached for the mouse again.
“……Let’s try just one more run.”
If I failed again, I would finally let go of every lingering attachment I had.
I returned to the title screen and placed the cursor over the start button.
Until now, I had always analyzed each failure and spent about two days devising my next plan before starting again.
But the best plan I could conceive had already failed.
There was no point in wracking my brain any further.
So I decided to stake everything on a sudden flash of inspiration and started the game without a plan.
The title screen vanished, and the game began loading.
As I watched the gray line spinning like a hamster wheel, a sudden wave of drowsiness swept over me.
I wanted to shake off the sleepiness and continue playing.
But I could not save Reina with my mind this sluggish. Besides, I had been playing for so long that I was finally reaching my limit.
The thought that I should take a short nap before starting circled through my mind, but I slapped my cheeks and forced myself awake.
Everything depended on getting off to a good start.
But as if to mock that resolve, sleep descended upon me all at once, like an ambush.
***
“Young Master, we have arrived.”
I slowly opened my eyes at the elderly man’s voice.
Still half asleep, I rubbed my eyes and tried to clear my head.
What was I doing again?
Oh, right. I was waiting for the game to load.
But there was no computer monitor before me.
Instead, I found myself inside a narrow room covered entirely in orange.
It kept rattling for some reason. When I looked through the window, I realized that I was not inside a room at all, but a carriage as large as one.
Where am I? Have I been kidnapped? But what kind of kidnapping is this luxurious?!
My head spun at the nonsensical situation. Then the carriage door suddenly opened.
“Young Master! Is something wrong?!”
An elderly man stood outside, wearing a solemn expression.
He was dressed in a neat butler’s uniform, but the muscles packed beneath it asserted themselves so fiercely that the clothes looked ready to burst.
His white hair was slicked straight back, and the scar beneath his left eye gave him the air of a battle-hardened veteran.
After confirming that I was safe, he relaxed his fierce expression and sighed.
“I thought my heart would stop, Young Master. Please do not frighten this unworthy Albert so.”
Young Master? Did he just call me Young Master? What did that……?
Before I could resolve my confusion, Albert held out his hand to me.
“Now, you have had your satisfaction from startling me, have you not? It is time to leave the carriage.”
“W-Wait!”
I stopped Albert’s hand and asked,
“Who…… are you……?”
Albert stared at me before releasing a deep sigh.
“Are you planning to feign memory loss as your excuse this time? Ordinarily, I would play along, but not today! This is the day of your entrance examination for Iris Academy!”
What?! Iris Academy?!
That was……. That was the name of the academy that served as the main setting of [Spell Breaker], the game I had been playing…….
Could I have somehow transmigrated into the game?
It was difficult to believe, but the sight of Albert made it seem considerably more plausible.
There was no way a butler with muscles like those could exist in reality.
Stranger still, I was not entirely panicked or confused by the situation.
My pounding heart gradually calmed, and another emotion began to rise in its place.
Now that I had transmigrated into [Spell Breaker], could I carry out the plan that had failed in reality?
My heart began pounding again for an entirely different reason.
There was one problem.
I don’t know who Albert is.
I had memorized even the game’s setting guide. The only characters in the world of [Spell Breaker] whom I would not recognize were the most insignificant of extras.
In other words, I might have transmigrated into the body of an extra who had never even appeared in the game…….
This did not seem like a good situation at all.
Still, I had determined when I was.
Since Albert said I had come for the entrance examination, the tutorial must currently be underway.
In other words, this was the perfect time to become acquainted with Reina.
Good. That was all I needed.
Once I had roughly sorted out the situation, I felt considerably better.
Since this man named Albert called me Young Master, the owner of this body was a nobleman.
And since he showed no real suspicion even though I knew nothing, I seemed to have transmigrated into the body of quite a troublemaker.
Since I had ended up inside a scoundrel’s body anyway, I might as well brazenly fish for information.
“Who am I?”
Apparently still convinced that I was pretending to have amnesia, Albert heaved a sigh deep enough to sink the earth.
“Young Master, you are Van Astraea, the second child in the direct line of the Ducal House of Astraea—a prestigious magical family that has produced the Masters of the Magic Tower for generations and serves as the spear that annihilates the enemies of the Holy Azerum Empire.”
Van Astraea.
It was a name I had seen in the setting guide.
The problem was that Van Astraea was merely an extra with slightly more significance than Albert—and that he was known as ‘the Empire’s Greatest Scoundrel.’
The greatest problem was…… almost the only detail about him in the original game was that ‘his wanderlust leads him to roam from place to place, causing trouble as he pleases.’ The rest of the information about him amounted to little more than other people’s complaints.
Despite being the eldest son of a ducal house that formed one of the pillars of the empire, he had no presence in the game worthy of the nickname ‘the Empire’s Greatest Scoundrel.’
He was only mentioned near the beginning of the first year. By the second year, he had vanished without a trace.
So I had transmigrated into a scoundrel, but he was also an extra—and the Empire’s Greatest Scoundrel, no less…….
I pressed a hand to my forehead at this unfortunate situation. While I was distracted, Albert reached toward me. In the blink of an eye, I found myself standing outside the carriage.
Startled by how suddenly it had happened, I blinked.
I had only seen him extend his hand. I had felt neither my body moving nor anything touching me.
For all the loud presence of his muscles, his movements were as nimble as an assassin’s.
Wait. Did he not say this was a prestigious magical family that had produced generations of Magic Tower Masters?
Yet a character with this level of physical ability was serving as its butler. At this point, wasn’t he a knight rather than a mage?
While I stood there dumbfounded, Albert straightened my clothes with a gentle expression and spoke.
“Though no one else knows it, I alone know that you are a deeply thoughtful person, Young Master. Even while saying that you did not wish to attend the academy, you said that you had to go……. This unworthy servant cannot fully understand your hardships and is too inadequate to offer you a solution. Even so, I wish for your happiness.”
What kind of backstory is this supposed to be……?
Was the character I had transmigrated into known as a scoundrel despite not truly being one, or something like that?
I wanted to ask, but questioning him about something this serious might reveal that I was not Van Astraea, so I held my tongue.
“Nevertheless, you must go. Please endure just a little longer. Once you have, this unworthy servant shall free you from the academy, even if I must burn away my very life to do so.”
There’s no need to go so far as burning away your life…….
Before I knew it, my clothes were as crisp as though they had been ironed. Albert withdrew his hands with a faint smile.
“As you know, servants are not permitted to enter Iris Academy without authorization, so this is as far as I may see you off.”
He stepped back, bent at the waist with crisp precision, and spoke.
“It will be arduous, but this unworthy servant has no doubt that you will do well, Young Master.”
What had this scoundrel normally done to earn such complete trust from someone as upright and powerful-looking as Albert?
Well, it did not matter. I could learn about it gradually.
I slowly walked backward and waved to Albert as he straightened.
“Don’t worry! I have no intention of leaving the academy!”
I did not know what Van himself had thought, but there was no way I could leave the academy after only a year.
Albert took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped away his tears.
“Young Master……! You greeted me so warmly merely to set this unworthy servant’s heart at ease……. Hngh!”
Van, you should’ve treated Albert better…….
In any case, I turned around, left Albert behind, and looked at Iris Academy.
On either side, the immense outer walls dividing the artificial environments were beautifully decorated. Beyond the main gate, where those walls began, a lofty spire rose into view.
That was the main stage of [Spell Breaker]—and the place where I could meet my favorite character, Reina Serenia.
Standing before the main gate, I steeled my resolve once more before proceeding.
I did not know whether my arrival here was a coincidence, fate, or some god’s prank.
Perhaps the version of me in reality had died.
Suddenly dying while playing a game was a pretty shitty way to go.
But it did not matter.
As long as I had transmigrated into [Spell Breaker], my objective was clear.
Save Reina.
I had made that vow before falling asleep.
When I opened my eyes again, I would save her this time, no matter what.
I had played [Spell Breaker] for nearly five years, yet the world before me was already filled with things I did not know.
What had happened to Van, whom I had assumed was an ordinary extra? Why had I transmigrated into this world? Had I entered a game, or had I entered a world that truly existed?
Yet I was not worried in the slightest.
The world of [Spell Breaker] was more familiar to me than reality, and I was a veteran who had repeated this world thousands—tens of thousands—of times.
For now, I only wanted to accomplish the objective I had left unfinished in reality—the objective that had failed when I reached the limits of what the game allowed.
I had only one goal.
The character I adored beyond measure.
I wanted to save my favorite minor character.