Chapter 1: Villains Never Die
"Arggh! Son of a pixelated bitch!"
A boy with short black hair cursed as he prepared to throw his controller against the wall out of frustration. But when he suddenly remembered just how costly a replacement would be, he froze mid-swing, realizing that maybe he wasn’t actually that angry.
Beside him, his friend burst out laughing and smirked. "Did you die again?"
The boy, whose name was Micheal, sighed and leaned back in his chair, then replied exasperatedly. "What do you think?"
"Then... why not just use a better class?" His friend adjusted his glasses as he advised. "Must you insist on using this High Priest? It’s not like the class is even that good. They’re terrible when it comes to actual combat. At best, they’re just pure support. What do you expect, trying to solo a boss like the demoness of House Fioravanti with a setup like that?"
Well, truth be told, everything Noah just said was true.
There were many interesting job classes in the game ’Crown of Fates’, but out of all of them, the High Priest was one of the least viable options for a solo player.
However, what’s the point of playing a game if you only choose the easy path? For Micheal, the real thrill was making the impossible work!
As an avid gamer, he lived for the challenge.
"I’ll definitely do it. I’ll kill that bitch, trust me." He grinned as he leaned forward again and clicked the respawn button.
His friend, Noah, just stared at him, knowing full well that was impossible. Killing a family of villains and the Demoness of House Fioravanti with a High Priest? As if!
These weren’t just third-rate villains who served as early-game roadblocks for low-level players. They were a family with a considerable amount of power.
Still, since Micheal had set his mind to it, who knows? Maybe he might just do it.
That aside, Noah yawned languidly and turned to the timer beside them which displayed the time: [02:20am]
He then stood up and tapped Micheal’s shoulder. "Good luck with the grind, but don’t forget you’ve got a shift early tomorrow."
Micheal scowled when he heard that. He didn’t really like going to work, although he did like getting paid. How he wished there was an easy way for him to get the latter and forgo the former.
’God, I hate Mondays,’ he thought, hammering the buttons on his controller as if his life depended on it.
A moment later, his screen flashed crimson as a notification appeared.
[You died.]
"Tsk." He clicked his tongue in frustration. But he wasn’t about to let a single setback stop him. He queued up again, and again, until...
"Should I just give up on this shitty class?"
He had lost count of how many times he had died and had to start over.
He leaned back to calm his head, then took in a few breaths to dispel his frustration. Currently, the time was: [05:35am].
His eyes lingered on the timer for a moment, before finally shifting to the notification on the screen that he had seen so many times this morning:
[Do you wish to try again?]
He thought for a bit, then finally decided. ’One more game. If I fail again, I’ll just go to bed.’
However, just before he hit the respawn icon, another notification suddenly glitched onto the screen.
[Think carefully before you hit that button.]
’Hm?’ Micheal arched a brow.
’This is new...? Why is this popping up?’
He scratched his head involuntarily and his heart raced a bit faster for a few seconds as he stared at the screen.
After a moment, he shrugged.
’What’s there to think about?’
He raised his thumb, then hit the button hard!
Suddenly, the screen went blank and began to glitch as if it had caught a violent virus.
’Huh?’ He frowned, ’What is going on?’
Midway through the thought, he suddenly felt as if the screen was pulling him toward it. His vision blurred and his world swayed. It happened so fast that in the next instant, Micheal lost consciousness.
...Just like that.
***
...
..
.
Clack! Clack!
The sound of wooden swords clashing against each other could be heard echoing through the training area.
In the middle of the space, a blonde man in his mid-thirties could be seen dueling the youngest son of the Fioravanti family.
Actually, dueling was not the correct word. It would be more accurate to say he was completely overwhelming the poor boy.
After a few more lopsided exchanges, the instructor knocked the sword right out of the youngest son’s grip. He then delivered a swift kick to the boy’s chest, sending him crashing onto his bum, before finally pointing the tip of his wooden blade directly at the boy’s throat.
The boy swallowed, and sweat dripped down the side of his head as he stared into the eyes of his training instructor. But then, the man lowered the blade, smiled and extended a hand.
"Not bad, Dante," he said as the boy took his hand. As he lifted him up, he added, "At this rate, by the time you’re eighty, you might actually manage to strike me. Heh heh."
’Well that’s because you are a knight with a lot of experience, unlike me!’
Dante extended his hands and bowed deeply. "Thanks for the warm compliment."
He then dusted his bum as he began walking over to the edge of the courtyard where a maid was waiting for him. Though she was one year older than him, she was also his childhood friend, having been by his side since he was much younger.
She had black hair cut in a bob and striking, vibrant ruby eyes. In one hand, she held a towel and a bottle of water in the other.
When Dante approached her, she handed him the towel first, then began walking alongside him as he wiped the sweat from his brow. When he was done, he just let the towel hang around his neck then took the bottle of water from her.
While he was gulping down the cold water, he couldn’t help but notice that his maid was looking at him with a look of pity.
He arched a brow and wiped his mouth. "What’s with that face? Did you also think I’d be eighty before I landed a hit, or has how I beautifully fly backward when kicked every time left an impression on you?"
"Both," the maid deadpanned. "But actually, I think you might die of old age before you even do him any damage. You have the strength of a noblewoman threatening a thief with a parasol."
Dante rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything.
The maid then tilted her head. "I’m curious, though. Why do you do this to yourself?"
"Mm?"
"I said why do you do this to yourself?"
"I heard you the first time, but I do not understand." Dante arched a brow questioningly.
The maid chuckled, before adding, "I mean... you suddenly asked Sir Gerald to become your instructor, and you wake up very early every day just to have your ass kicked by him. Why can’t you be like the other young masters? Like your brother, for instance. You know, wake up past noon, lounge in silk robes, and spend your afternoons drinking fine wine or chasing noble ladies around the estate gardens?"
Dante sighed.
Oh, how he wished he could live like that!
But then...
’We are a family of villains, who are destined to be wiped out not too long from now. Worst of all, not only did I have the misfortune of reincarnating into this doomed family, I awakened the High Priest class.
’What did I do to deserve this?’
Dante didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at his unfortunate situation.
His future had never looked bleaker!
***
It had been exactly seventeen years since Dante, or rather, Micheal found himself in this world.
After that strange phenomenon that had caused him to fall unconscious, he had managed to open his eyes a few minutes later.
But then, to tell the truth, Micheal had never been more shocked to see the surroundings he woke up in.
When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the face of a woman he had only ever seen on his monitor. This beautiful woman was none other than Countess Isabella, the wife of the notorious Count of the House Fioravanti.
Of course, he had immediately tried to scream, "What the fuck is happening?" But when he tried to talk, he ended up crying.
That was when he realized that for some bizarre reason, he had indeed reincarnated into the house of Fioravanti as a baby. To make matters worse, this was the same villain family that he had been trying to destroy in the game just moments earlier.
Crazy.
However, as time went by, he came to discover that simply waking up in this family of villains was the least of his problems.
The biggest issue, as he later found out, was the fact that he had been born with a broken mana core. Because of this, his body naturally lacked the capacity to store mana.
And as if that wasn’t enough, unlike the rest of his family who were born into the Mage or Warrior class, Dante was the only anomaly. The poor boy ended up being born as a High Priest.
Imagine that. A noble villain with a broken mana core, awakening as a High Priest. It meant he was about as profoundly fucked as a person could get.
In his opinion, no package could be worse than this for a reincarnator.
Dante sighed.
"What else am I supposed to do?" he finally replied. "I do not have a good mana core and I am not an apostle. So I figured that I might as well just train my body."
He shot Thalia a look from the corner of his eye. "Or do you really want me to just sit around and be entirely useless like a sack of vegetables?"
For a brief moment, his maid didn’t say anything and just stared at him with an unreadable expression. Eventually, she looked away and changed the subject. "Anyway, your sister came back last night, so she will be joining the family for breakfast."
When he heard that, Dante almost spat out the water he was currently swallowing.
"Wait, Caterina is back?!" he blurted as he whipped his head toward Thalia.
"Mm-hm," she nodded.
Dante shuddered.
Then, he sighed as he made his way first to his chambers for a quick bath.
After stepping into the hot shower, he ran a hand repeatedly through his black hair.
’I really hope father has been able to get the permit to the labyrinth for me,’ he thought as he lowered his gaze to the jade pendant on his neck.
He then raised a hand and began to caress the stone. After a few more seconds, he looked up and mentally said the word, ’Status.’
Almost immediately afterwards, a green screen, only visible to him, flickered into his vision.
~~~~~~ ============= ~~~~~~
Name: Dante Fioravanti
Race: [Otherworlder]
Age: [17]
Tier: [0]
Class: [High Priest]
Source: [—]
Traits: [Buffs], [Divine Attunement], [True Insight]
Divine Skills: [—]
~~~~~~ ============= ~~~~~~
Dante sighed as he took a look at his profile. Currently, he didn’t have any Divine Skills because he didn’t have a source and was not an apostle of any Divine Order.
In this world, most people could perform basic magic by learning certain spells depending on which class they were born into. However, there were a select few who were far more exceptional than others due to awakening what were known as Divine Skills.
These unique and extremely powerful abilities were said to be bestowed by the Gods themselves, as each deity held or shared dominion over a particular source or sources.
At the age of sixteen, most people, especially the descendants of most noble households would undergo an awakening where they would be chosen as an Apostle under the Order of one of these Gods. In most cases, these children usually awakened under the specific Order that their family had served for generations.
Take Dante’s family, for instance. They were all a part of the Order of the Moon, which belonged to the Lunar Goddess, Aurora, whose divine source of magic was water, ice and lunacy. They all also had the fortune of being chosen as her Apostles. So naturally, they all possessed powerful Divine Skills related to these sources.
But probably due to the fact that Dante did not have a good mana core, he was the only one in his family who failed to awaken. In simpler words, no God chose him to serve as their apostle.
Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem for him. He was rich now. As a previously broke office worker who had transmigrated into a wealthy noble household, he could have easily decided to live out the rest of his days lavishly, idling away in absolute comfort without a care in the world.
However, due to a series of unfortunate events, his entire family was doomed to be wiped out in the near future once their sins were inevitably discovered.
Of course, Dante didn’t judge his family for the deeds they committed against society.
They were a family of villains, after all.
And...
’Who in the world is born just to die? Villains have a right to live, too!’ he thought.
But to make that happen, he needed power. He needed to become a God’s Apostle so that he could finally gain Divine Skills.
So he had made up his mind. If the officially recognized gods of the empire refused to take him under their wing, he didn’t mind turning to any of the unknown, hidden, or even the slightly evil gods of this world.
Fortunately, due to his meager knowledge from the game he played in his former life back on Earth, he knew of one such hidden existence.
And so, right from the moment he failed to awaken as an apostle under the Order of the Moon, he planned to visit the temple of this hidden Goddess and pledge his devotion to her.