MIIS 1

Chapter 1
Prologue: The Beginning of Survival

One moment of carelessness in the face of the dazzling effects exploding before my eyes, and I might lose my mind.

But if I stand here absentmindedly, I’ll be dead in seconds.

How can I be so sure?

“Run! Get out of here, now!”
“Azel Viots! The Demon of the Holy Kingdom has appeared!”

Amid the screaming crowd, one familiar name rang out—enough to make me realize instantly where I was.

At a time when the capital was overflowing with chaos and terror, Azel stood there calmly, taking in the scene.

People fleeing in panic.
A capital reduced to ruins.
A red-eyed man wreathed in dark crimson smoke.

And the name I had just heard—

“…Azel Viots.”

This was a scene straight out of the game.

‘No—are you kidding me with this possession timing?’

There was one massive problem with my reincarnation.

Right before my eyes, Azel Viots—the game’s final hidden villain—was in the middle of his final awakening.

I already knew what came next.

Annihilation.

Once Azel completed his awakening, no one would be able to stop him.

‘If you’re going to throw someone into a game, shouldn’t you at least give them some time to do something first?’

The final chapter of a game barreling toward its worst possible ending.

That was the reality I was facing.

‘This is insane.’

It hadn’t been long since I’d made a New Year’s resolution to cut back on swearing, but faced with an unexpected twist of fate like this, that flimsy determination vanished without a trace.

At last, the end of this long life was approaching.

As I recalled the line of narration I’d heard so many times it made me sick, I finally accepted this miserable reality.

“…I’m screwed.”

Despite the hopeless mutter slipping from my lips, my mind was racing faster than ever.

Chapter 1
If You Mess Up This Act, You Die

Lately, I had been utterly obsessed with a certain bleak otome game.

That was because the game’s content was nothing like an ordinary romance sim.

Everything revolved around a single character: Azel Viots.

Azel Viots, whose route only unlocked late in the game, was clearly the protagonist of the hidden route—his meticulous customization made that obvious.

He was the game’s final hidden villain and the enemy of the Holy Empire.

This game told the story of the heroine, Yulia, who fought to protect the world from Azel, a man who dreamed of its destruction.

Naturally, Yulia and Azel stood on opposite sides. Under those circumstances, capturing Azel was never going to be easy.

But that wasn’t what truly caught players’ attention.

“How the hell are you supposed to clear this?! Are the devs out of their minds?!”

No matter what you did, the game always ended in destruction.

Regardless of whether you succeeded in capturing Azel or not, the world still met its end. Eventually, players stopped obsessing over character routes and became fixated on stopping the apocalypse itself.

And of course, I was no exception.

“Ha! This damn trash game! Like hell I’m ever playing this again!”

Even after scouring everything—official setting books released by the developers, bonus novels, and even scraps of half-baked community theories—I still saw the destruction ending yesterday.

“If I ever play this again, I’m not human.”

In the end, I admitted defeat and gave up on the game.

‘…And you’re telling me this is where you decided to possess someone?’

No matter how I thought about it, this violated every rule of basic decency.

‘What, did I send the company a hate email or post some curse-filled comment? The only thing I’ve sincerely cursed in my life is going to work! So why me, of all people?!’

But unlike my sense of injustice, reality was smoothly racing toward the worst possible outcome.

As people fled like the tide going out, the once-crowded plaza quickly emptied, until only Azel and I remained.

Perhaps because I was the last human left, Azel’s red eyes slowly turned toward me.

My breath caught.

‘Wow. At this rate, I’m actually going to die.’

I froze for a split second, struck by his devastatingly beautiful face—but now wasn’t the time to admire the final boss.

If I didn’t do something right now, I was dead.

The moment I realized I didn’t even have time to despair, a conversation I once had with my younger sibling flashed through my mind.

“Are you playing that again?”
“Your sister’s busy. Go outside.”
“Didn’t you say you’d never touch that garbage game again?”
“…This is the last time.”
“What do you mean ‘last’ every single time?”

That must’ve been after I saw my seventeenth destruction ending.

My sibling had asked me, as I sat there with sunken eyes gripping the controller.

“But that protagonist—Azel? Why does he want to destroy the world anyway?”
“Because he’s insane.”

I’d answered flatly.

“No, obviously he’s insane. Anyone who wants the world to end would be. What I’m asking is why he went insane.”
“He’s an infinite regressor.”
“Infinite regression? Oh, like that thing that shows up a lot in novels these days?”

An endlessly repeating life. A mind worn down to nothing.

Azel sought to destroy the world to finally put an end to his eternally repeating existence.

“But how do you beat someone like that?”

What had I answered back then?

“You can’t.”

Right. You can’t. There’s no way to win.

‘How could a normal person ever defeat an inhuman existence that’s already experienced every possible outcome?!’

But from my sibling’s words echoing in my mind, I finally found an answer.

‘If you can’t beat him… couldn’t you use him instead?’

“Are you seriously insane?”

For some reason, my sibling’s frequent “compliments” resurfaced at this exact moment.

I knew it myself.

This was crazy.

But…

‘So what? I need to survive first.’

My survival instincts, now completely unhinged, were screaming that this was the only answer.

‘I’ve already tried pretty much everything inside the game. So shouldn’t I try what I haven’t tried yet?’

Once I made up my mind, I immediately started walking—straight toward Azel, in the opposite direction everyone else had fled.

One step. Then another.

The more I forced myself forward against the crushing pressure, the closer I drew to him.

Up until then, Azel’s expression as he watched me was utterly indifferent, like he was looking at an ant by the roadside.

As if my sudden appearance meant absolutely nothing to him.

Fine by me.

Because from this moment on, I planned to shatter that indifference.

‘That’s the only way I live.’

When I finally stopped in front of him—

“Azel.”

At the sound of his name spoken boldly, a flicker of confusion surfaced in his crimson eyes.

“I… I’m here.”

With a bit of effort, tears welled up at the corners of my eyes and slid down my cheeks.

As the teardrops gathered at my chin and scattered into the air with the wind, I forced my trembling lips into something resembling a smile.

At the very moment we first met—

Toward Azel, who was only now recognizing my existence—

I smiled like someone so overwhelmed with longing that even smiling hurt.

“I’m… too late, aren’t I?”

At the end of my trembling voice, the tears finally spilled over.

Now that I mention it, I used to be the ace of my drama club back in the day.

‘If you’re dealing with a madman, you might as well go mad with him.’

This was worth trying.