Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 363: My Precious!

"Wait, so it was Jake behind what happened in the Night Sanctuary?

" Michael’s voice carried a trace of disbelief mixed with irritation as he stared at me for affirmation.

I nodded back at him.

After everyone had gathered around and sat down to join me for dinner, I used the moment to tell them everything.

Well...

not everything.

Naturally, I kept several details to myself.

Like the part where I had a very long and very disturbing conversation with a Demon Prince inside my dream, who had very politely offered me a job working for him and his boss.

Or the minor little revelation that mostly everyone sitting here was apparently a Destined One, chosen by fate to safeguard fragments of some cosmic power before they could fall into the hands of a malevolent deity.

You know.

Small, insignificant details.

Oh, and they were the Destined Ones.

I had no doubt in my mind.

They all were supposed to be the heroes of this story, after all.

Anyway, by the time I finished speaking, the group was sitting there in varying degrees of quiet bewilderment, their expressions ranging from confused to deeply troubled as they tried to process the implications of what I had told them.

"And what exactly is this...

uh...

Syndicate of the Nameless Lords you mentioned?

" Vince finally asked, dubious.

"A clandestine rebel organization," I answered.

"Think of it as a shadow government.

They’re working against the Monarchs and pushing for a new world order.

" I briefly elaborated on how the Syndicate had been responsible for the fall of Ishtara as well.

Alexia’s face darkened noticeably at that revelation.

But it wasn’t her reaction that caught my attention.

Beside her, Kang had gone unusually quiet.

He was frowning deeply, looking thoughtful while staring at the sand like he was trying to piece together a puzzle that finally made some sense.

"So let me get this straight," Vince said slowly, scratching his chin and narrowing his eyes.

"This Jake guy came across a Card that housed a Demonic-rank entity.

Something like Vaeghar...

or whatever lives inside Michael’s sword.

That entity helped him grow stronger, and then eventually manipulated him into doing everything he did in the Night Sanctuary.

" "More or less," I confirmed with a nod.

"And after we ended up stranded in this cursed forest, that demon indirectly nudged us toward the route where we would have run into Vaeghar," Vince continued, thinking out loud now.

"All of that then led to Alexia getting critically injured and taken out of the next fight, which was against the God Who Eats Is.

Correct?

" "Correct.

" Vince grimaced.

"So all of that happened because that demon wanted to get that...

that stake?

" "The Extraction Needle.

" "And now that he has that stake, he wants Jake to deliver it to the leader of this Syndicate," he finished, looking back at me.

"You’re telling me that’s the whole story?

" "Yes.

" He dragged a hand down his face.

"There are a lot of inconsistencies here," he muttered, leaning forward slightly.

"For starters, there was never any guarantee we would end up stranded here.

Think about it.

Instructor Selene successfully teleported most of the Cadets to the Golden Sanctuary.

We were just the unlucky few who got veered off course.

If her teleportation had gone perfectly, then the entire Night Sanctuary incident wouldn’t even have mattered.

" He wasn’t wrong.

If Selene had flawlessly teleported everyone to my father’s Sanctuary, then even with Asmodeus’s assistance, Jake would never have been able to traverse the Crown of Thorns and enter this jungle.

He wouldn’t have been able to escape.

And the main cast would never have gotten stuck here either.

In that scenario, the massacre itself would have accomplished absolutely nothing other than hundreds of pointless deaths of inconsequential NPCs.

I had realized this myself, and it had been bothering me for a while now.

Because this conclusion led to the belief that there had to be another objective behind the Massacre of the Night Sanctuary.

In the game, the reasoning was simple.

Samael was supposed to die.

He needed to be killed by either Juliana, Michael, or Alexia.

Then, the rest of the main cast was supposed to bond through shared trauma in the Noctveil Wilds.

Their relationships were going to deepen and the story was going to move forward.

It was a clean narrative device.

But reality had no need to follow some pre-written narrative structure.

If we set aside fate and destiny for a moment, then the simple truth was that our ending up here — and the Prince of Temptations managing to manipulate us, or more specifically me, into killing the God Who Eats Is — could very well have been nothing more than a coincidence.

...

Alright, fine.

Not just a coincidence.

A series of coincidences, carefully nudged along by an alarming amount of planning.

But still!

There had to be a proper reason, a real reason, behind why Asmodeus started the Massacre of the Night Sanctuary in the first place — something beyond simple plot contrivance.

And no matter how many times I turned the thought around in my head, I still couldn’t figure out what that reason was.

"Then there’s another thing," Vince continued, clearly not done dissecting the situation.

"Why the hell would an entity as old and powerful as you’re describing him as bet on...

children like us?

" Okay.

That, funnily enough, did make sense.

Asmodeus himself had explained that Destined Ones were favored by fate.

You could even say they possessed genuine plot armor.

Unless something happened, something drastic enough to shake the algorithm of fate itself, they simply wouldn’t die.

So if they were placed in a fight-to-the-death scenario against someone whose own fate also dictated survival, then at least one of those two contradictory fates would inevitably have to give way.

It created a paradox.

And more often than not, that paradox would shift in favor of the main characters.

But that line of thinking led me to something else.

In the game, during this Stuck In The Spirit Realm arc, there were countless scenarios that players couldn’t avoid on their first playthrough.

The difficulty spike was so brutal that the main characters died left and right.

However, in this reality...

Well.

Everyone was still alive.

Why was that?

The answer, frankly, was obvious.

Because of me.

I was the variable that had changed everything.

Now don’t get me wrong.

Even without my presence, I wouldn’t have counted these people out so easily.

As I had mentioned before, every single one of them was the elite among elites.

Lily, in particular, was practically the walking embodiment of the plot armor I’m talking about.

I had long since lost count of the number of times she saved our collective asses.

And she was only one of the six main characters.

Everyone else — Michael, Juliana, Vince — was just as important in their own way.

Together, they formed the kind of team that could realistically survive the horrors of the Noctveil Wilds.

But adding me to that equation significantly increased the odds of survival.

For example, I doubted anyone else would have been able to bring down the God Who Eats Is.

Even I barely managed it and I still didn’t fully understand how I had done it.

I knew the answer had something to do with my Shade Mark.

It had infused my sword with the power to inflict the Oldest Death.

But what exactly that meant...

what the Oldest Death truly was, or how I had even managed to tap into such primordial power...

I had absolutely no clue.

Also, sure, you might argue that if I hadn’t been here, these idiots would never have chosen the Vaeghar route to get out of the forest.

To that, let me say this: Fuck off.

Don’t put that shit on me.

The other routes would have been just as dangerous, if not worse.

Some of those routes would have permanently destroyed Michael’s ability to suppress Xaldreth in the long run.

Compared to those outcomes, we were honestly still better off right now.

Okay, fine.

I had lost an arm.

Michael had lost an eye.

Ray had lost a hand.

Juliana suffered a punctured lung.

Lily was stabbed through the lower abdomen.

Vince’s shoulder blade was shattered.

And Alexia had to put up with the corruption of both soul and flesh.

...

Yes, most of it sounded catastrophically bad.

But they all recovered, didn’t they?

Well.

In a sense...

Anyway, thinking about all that led me down another interesting train of thought.

Was I...

their plot armor?

Huh.

After a short stretch of silence, I shook my head and decided to answer Vince with a lie.

"Well, I have no answer to that.

" This simply wasn’t the right moment to reveal the truth about their destinies...

or the myth of the Nine Hands.

Partly because I still needed to dig deeper into that entire subject myself.

Fate.

Gods.

Immortality.

The fact that my Loom had collapsed and I had no clue what was now in store for me.

And most importantly, I needed to investigate those Architects that Asmodeus had mentioned with such unsettling amusement.

There were far too many things I didn’t understand yet.

And I had no intention of preaching about mysteries I couldn’t even comprehend myself.

So I kept quiet.

"I also have a question," Ray murmured after a moment, squinting at me with suspicious seriousness.

I gestured toward him with my chin.

"Go on.

" He frowned.

"Why...

the fuck are you still hugging your sword?

" We were sitting in a circle outside the wooden cabin, gathered around a small crackling fire.

The cool breeze from the silver sea drifted across the beach, carrying the quiet sound of waves.

And everyone was staring at me.

Because I was sitting there, single-handedly (literally) death-gripping the hilt of Aurieth.

The massive golden blade rested across my lap like a very sharp, very expensive emotional support animal.

"Because...

I’LL NEVER LEAVE IT!

NEVER!

I’M NEVER LETTING IT GO!

YOU CAN’T TAKE THIS FROM ME!

YOU’LL HAVE TO PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS!

" I pulled the five-foot slab of gold closer to my chest without the slightest concern for how the crossguard was digging into my ribs.

"Yes, my baby, yes!

You’re mine.

ALL MINE.

No one is taking you from me, my precious~!

" Ray slowly turned his head toward Vince.

Vince looked at Michael.

Michael kept looking down into the fire and began carefully counting the embers, clearly deciding that making eye contact with the resident lunatic (me) was not worth it.

"Sam," Michael said eventually, with the patient tone of a saint trying to reason with a rabid animal.

"No one is taking the sword.

We just thought that...

for the sake of your circulation...

you might want to put it down for five minutes and—" "NEVER!

" I barked.

"NEVER!

" "Well, he’s lost it.

" "Again, did he ever actually have it?

"