Barn fell into a deep, restful sleep, completely enveloped in an absolute peace and silence that seemed to press against the very fabric of reality.
But that quiet, sacred sanctuary existed solely within the four rotting wooden walls of his dilapidated room.
Outside, in the damp, shadowy alleyways surrounding his crumbling house, a living nightmare was unfolding for the men and women tasked with keeping watch over him.
Clad in pitch-black armor and dark, enchanted robes, a cadre of elite assassins, high-tier magic casters, and royal knights specialized in master-class stealth sat frozen in their hiding spots.
They were shivering—not from the bitter chill of the evening air that swept through the slums, but from sheer, unadulterated terror.
Sweat dripped silently down their pale, sunken faces, soaking into their leather collars.
It was taking every single ounce of their lifetime of professional discipline just to maintain their delicate cloaking spells and keep their suppressed presence from shattering under the strain.
Barn, completely consumed by his own internal spiritual discovery and the heavy exhaustion settling into his bones, had simply ignored them.
He had drifted off to sleep as if the deadly figures lurking in the dark didn’t even exist.
To the watchers, however, the sequence of events they had just witnessed through their scrying magic and specialized sensory skills was nothing short of horrifying.
They had seen it all—the casual, utterly effortless manipulation of high-tier Mana and compressed Aura; the instantaneous manifestation of unheard-of, law-bending magic; and the sickening, casual bone-cracking transformation of his physical body.
They had watched in silent horror as he altered his form from an adult into a child, then morphed into a weaponized monster bristling with half-meter bone blades, before casually smoothing himself back into human shape again.
They now realized the grim, suffocating truth: he had known they were there the entire time.
He hadn’t hidden his power.
He hadn’t sought privacy.
He had deliberately, systematically let them watch.
In their eyes, Barn was no mere mortal, nor was he some common slum-dwelling fraudster hiding from the law.
He was an ancient expert, an unfathomable, timeless grandmaster living among peasants, wearing human flesh like a disposable winter coat and altering his very existence for his own mysterious amusement.
To a monster like him, displaying such world-shattering, space-bending feats wasn’t a flex of ultimate strength; it was an adult performing basic, mind-numbing parlor tricks to amuse unwitting children.
None of them wanted to be there anymore.
Every hard-wired survival instinct in their bodies was screaming at them to abandon their posts, flee the Gozel Market, and never look back.
Yet, they knew the horrifying consequences of abandoning their mission—and the far worse fate that awaited them if they drew the ire of the entity inside.
And so, clinging to the rotting shadows of the alley, the kingdom’s finest stealth operatives remained perfectly still.
They hardly dared to breathe, desperately praying to whatever gods were listening that the entity sleeping inside the humble wooden house would not wake up and decide to wipe their very existence from the face of the world.
When the sun broke over the horizon the next morning, Barn opened his eyes.
His mind was entirely refreshed, sharp and clear.
As he stirred, a translucent, shimmering aura enveloped his body like a protective cover, radiating a subtle pressure.
He didn’t actively direct it or give it much thought, but the moment he moved to sit up, the shimmering energy dissolved effortlessly, dispersing into the ambient atmosphere like morning mist.
A profound lightness filled his limbs.
He felt a vast, surging reservoir of energy pooled deep within his core, making his physical frame feel exponentially stronger and more resilient than it had the day before.
It was early morning, barely six o’clock.
In the impoverished districts of the city, many were already awake; in a place where poverty stalked every street, everyone woke up early simply to survive the day.
Barn briefly entertained the idea of rolling back over and sleeping in, but his thought process was abruptly cut short by the sound of wood vibrating against wood.
Knock!
Knock!
The sudden, rhythmically sharp knocking sound jarred him into full awareness of his surroundings.
Expanding his perception outward, he immediately felt the dense, unnatural presence of numerous entities surrounding his home.
They were not local residents.
They were actively utilizing high-tier stealth magic and concealed techniques, shrouding their core energies so thoroughly that he couldn’t precisely identify their classes or equipment.
Yet, despite their elaborate concealment, their sheer spiritual existence stood out to his refined senses like ink blotted onto clean paper.
Ignoring the watchers in the alleyways for a moment, he focused his attention directly on his front gate.
As he concentrated, buried memories began bubbling to the surface of his mind, locking into place with sudden, clarity-inducing weight.
He recognized the specific flow of energy standing right at his doorstep.
’Why is she here at this time?’ he thought, his brows furrowing in genuine confusion.
For someone of her standing to come down to the disease-ridden slums of the Gozel Market—let alone knock on a door at six in the morning—was not just recklessly dangerous; it was an invitation for a political catastrophe.
As he stood up from the bed, taking a deep, measured breath, more context flooded into his conscious mind.
It was all aligning with the plot of one of the many web novels he had read in his past life—a story he had ultimately dropped in complete frustration because of how hopelessly cliché and poorly written it was.
”Huh…” he exhaled softly, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
He remembered the core premise clearly enough.
The story’s protagonist was a favored young master blessed with a powerful System—a cheat-like growth mechanism that allowed him to gain experience, steal skills, and rapidly scale in power simply by fighting, defeating opponents, and slaughtering monsters.
And if his memory served him right, a major plot point was looming right around the corner.
It was the grand Royal Gala—the high-society event where the Crown Prince was destined to publically announce his choice for the royal heroine.
To create artificial drama, the protagonist would deliberately distance himself from the heroine, while the villainess—the prince’s official, noble-born fiancée—would completely lose her composure under the public humiliation, spiraling into madness and turning herself into a laughingstock for the entire kingdom.
Back when he was just a reader sitting comfortably behind a screen, Barn had despised that entire arc.
He had found the forced tropes, artificial drama, and nonsensical character choices so repulsive that he had dropped the novel entirely.
He had hated even thinking about it.
But now, standing in the cold morning air, physically trapped inside the very fabric of that fictional world…
he found himself genuinely at a loss for what to do next.
Barn stood by the threshold, his posture relaxed despite the staggering weight of the atmospheric pressure lingering just beyond his walls.
As the silence stretched, he reached out and pulled the creaking wooden door open.
Standing in the pale early-morning light was a slender figure wrapped tightly in a dark, heavy traveling cloak.
A cowl was pulled low over her head, effectively obscuring her facial features from any prying eyes that might be lurking in the Gozel Market.
”Come in,” Barn said, his voice flat and unhurried.
Without a second thought or a moment’s hesitation, the girl darted inside, her movements sharp and rushed, as if desperate to erase her presence from the street before the slum fully awakened.
Once inside the meager room, she paid no mind to the dust or the rotting floorboards.
She walked straight over to his bed and sat down with practiced familiarity, settling in as if the humble space belonged to her.
”Rude as always, Luna,” Barn said, leaning back against the doorframe.
”Huh!
You’re the one who’s rude—ignoring my messages and never bothering to reply!” she snapped, reaching beneath her cloak.
She pulled out a small, intricately carved metallic artifact.
With a quiet hum, the item flared with a soft blue light, deploying an invisible soundproofing barrier that expanded to coat the room’s perimeter, ensuring no outside ear—scrying spell or otherwise—could intercept their conversation.
She turned her gaze up to him, her eyes narrowing.
“Besides, why are there so many hidden eyes around this place?
And call me Rosalina.
I am a noble, not your little friend from the slums.”
”Ha.
So that’s how you talk to your childhood love now?
The one you swore you’d marry?” Barn replied, a faint, teasing smirk playing on his lips.
”You…!” Her cheeks flushed a sudden, furious red, but she quickly caught herself.
Closing her eyes, she took a long, stabilizing breath to regain her composure.
When she looked back at him, her expression had hardened into something cold, pragmatic, and entirely self-aware.
“Look.
You know how I am.
I love you, Barn—I really do.
But I also love power, status, and money.
So the choice was always clear.”
She said it with a strangely resigned bluntness, as if openly admitting defeat to her own ambition.
This was Rosalina Artecus.
Once an orphan who had survived alongside Barn in the gutter of these very slums, she had been sharp, calculating, and mature far beyond her years.
That cunning had caught the attention of House Artecus, leading to her adoption into high nobility.
Yet, despite stepping into the treacherous world of aristocrats, she had never truly severed her tie with Barn.
She focused relentlessly on her new life as a noble, willing to sacrifice almost anything to secure her position—even her feelings for him, the only person she had ever genuinely cared for.
In the original narrative of the novel, she was merely a minor villainess—a side character who allied with the primary villainess to oppose the story’s heroine.
Her trajectory was a tragic spiral: when the real, lost daughter of House Artecus was eventually discovered, Rosalina’s desperate schemes were exposed.
Her adopted family stripped her of her name and threw her back into the mud.
Her noble fiancé abandoned her without a second thought.
In the end, she met a grim, quiet death in a covert attack orchestrated by the Crown Prince’s faction, forgotten by the world she had sacrificed everything to join.
Looking at her now, Barn couldn’t help but feel a subtle string of pity.
Rosalina, misinterpreting the quiet solemnity in his eyes for heartbroken grief, softened her tone.
Her hand fidgeted slightly against the fabric of her cloak.
“Hey…
it doesn’t mean I’m cutting you off completely.
We can still meet up secretly every now and then.
We can keep a normal relationship…
as friends.”
She reached up and unclasped her cloak, pulling back the hood and removing the silk half-mask hiding her features.
Her face was striking—framed by vibrant green hair, with delicate red lips and sharp, intelligent brown eyes.
It was precisely this rare combination of traits that had led to her adoption in the first place.
Rosalina had been born with a natural affinity for both Nature and Earth magic.
House Artecus was a lineage defined by those exact elemental matrices, renowned for producing individuals gifted in spellcraft, martial arts, or a hybrid of both.
At present, Rosalina was not a particularly High-Level mage, but her dual affinity made her a valuable asset—an ideal placeholder to secure the heir position for House Artecus.
Yet Barn knew the invisible clock ticking over her head.
In a few short months, the family’s true biological daughter would return.
A High-Level Mage and a Mid-Rank Warrior possessing superior dual affinities, the real daughter would be brought back into the fold through the intervention of the story’s heroine—her former childhood friend from their shared orphan days.
When that happened, Rosalina’s world would shatter.
Barn looked at her, the quiet determination settling deep within his core.
I know how your story ends…
but I won’t let you fall into that trap.
Rosalina, still misreading the heavy silence hanging between them, tried to break the mood, shifting her focus back to the immediate danger.
”You should be careful, you know,” she said, her voice dropping to a cautious whisper as she gestured vaguely toward the window.
“There are high-tier operatives lurking in the alleys outside.
Someone very important must have tracked a target down to this market.
It’s dangerous out there right now—don’t go getting yourself caught in their crossfire.”
Barn did not answer.
His fingers locked firmly around hers, his grip unyielding yet carefully measured so as not to crush her delicate wrist.
The silence in the small, decaying room grew unnaturally heavy.
Before Rosalina could snap at him again, the air around them seemed to implode.
”Arghhh!”