Chapter 1: I Thought It Was Dark Fantasy, But It Was a Romance

I met up with an old friend after ages, ignored my drinking limits, and chugged until I blacked out.

When I came to, I was no longer myself—I was the eldest son of a count’s family.

“What the hell is this?” I muttered.

It took a while to piece together, but I learned the name of the body I’d possessed: Ian Balthazar, the firstborn of the Balthazar family, a noble house steeped in darkness and curses.

At first, hearing the family name only sparked a vague sense of déjà vu—a nagging feeling that I’d heard it somewhere before, though I couldn’t pin it down.

That flicker of familiarity turned to certainty the moment I met my socalled younger sister.

“Congrats on getting dumped, you idiot brother,” she sneered.

The one spitting such brazen venom was none other than my supposed sibling, Sylvia Balthazar, or rather, the sister of the body I now inhabited.

Sure, siblings are supposed to throw insults at each other now and then, but this was different.

It wasn’t the usual lovehate banter; her words dripped with raw contempt, the kind you’d reserve for a deadbeat relative who’d gambled away the family fortune.

“Dumped? What are you talking about?” I asked, bewildered.

“Ha! Now you’re pretending you forgot? Get lost, you’re disgusting.” With that, Sylvia shoved past me, her shoulder knocking mine as she stormed off.

Once she was gone, I turned to the attendant trailing behind me.

“Who was that again?”

“…That was Lady Sylvia Balthazar, your younger sister, my lord,” he replied, his tone cautious.

Sylvia Balthazar.

The moment her name hit my ears, that nagging déjà vu crystallized into certainty.

The Balthazar family wasn’t just any noble house—it was straight out of a game I used to play obsessively.

Desperate to deny the impossible, I pressed the attendant further.

“Is the head of the family named Tyran Balthazar?”

“…Yes, my lord.”

It wasn’t just the family name.

The head of the house, the siblings, even the extended family—everything matched.

My cousin was Emilio, my uncle Gerhardt.

And then there was the family motto: “Even if the soul shatters, the blood endures.”

Every single detail aligned perfectly with the game’s lore.

I clutched my head, a hollow laugh escaping my lips.

If this was possession into a game world, I could’ve dreamed of exploiting my knowledge to rise as a hero, as the clichés go.

But not in this world.

This wasn’t just any game—it was a soulcrushing, dark fantasy Soulslike game, where I’d died thousands of times just to scrape through a single playthrough.

And now I was supposed to live it?

After wrestling with the reality, I made my decision.

“Time to run.”

The Balthazar family was doomed to fall.

The mad patriarch, Tyran Balthazar, would inevitably turn every member of the household into monstrous beasts.

No matter what choices the player made in the game, the outcome was always the same—everyone either became a monster or was devoured by one.

Staying here meant certain death, or worse.

That night, I slipped into the armory, grabbing a leather cuirass and a steel sword.

As I prepared to flee, Sylvia blocked my path.

“Where do you think you’re going? What, when all else fails, you just run? You’ve really hit rock bottom,” she taunted.

“This family is doomed to collapse,” I said, my voice low.

“I’m getting out before it does. Sylvia, come with me.”

If she stayed, she’d likely end up a monster too.

Her eyes widened, blazing with fury.

“What the hell did you do to our family, you bastard? Answer me!”

I opened my mouth to explain but stopped.

The way she glared at me, she wouldn’t believe a word I said.

Convincing her would be a waste of breath.

“Take care,” I said, turning away.

Sylvia didn’t try to stop me.

That night, I left the Balthazar estate behind.

The first place I headed was the North.

For four hundred years, since the first fiend appeared, the North had been overrun with monsters.

In the game, the Central Empire held the line, keeping the rest of the continent safe—for a time.

But by the midtolate game, the northern front would collapse, the empire would fall, and the entire continent would descend into chaos, swarmed by beasts.

I tossed a branch onto the campfire, watching the flames crackle.

I didn’t delude myself into thinking I could singlehandedly change the world.

Clearing the game a couple of times didn’t mean I could pull it off in real life.

But that wasn’t a reason to do nothing.

If I was going to survive in a world on the brink of ruin, I needed to get stronger.

It was nonnegotiable.

“Damn it, why does the only place to learn aura techniques have to be there?” I grumbled.

Aura techniques were humanity’s answer to the crisis sparked by the first fiend.

By harnessing an energy called “aura,” one could wield superhuman strength.

Designed to combat monsters, these techniques could only be mastered in the monsterinfested North.

There was the Academy, sure, but enrolling required a noble family’s backing—something I no longer had.

So, the northern front it was.

“Enlisting twice in one lifetime. This is insane,” I muttered, feeling my sanity fray.

It was a dog’s life.

But if I didn’t do this, surviving in a world that would soon be overrun by lunatics—sentient monsters, cultists tempting people to become beasts, and even pagans flooding in from the East—would be impossible.

God, what a mess.

Could I even survive?

As if to prove this was indeed a postapocalyptic dark fantasy, the journey to the North was long and brutal.

I ran into bandits now and then, and on bad days, monsters.

“Hand over your money!” or a guttural “Graaah!” would echo, and each time, I either bolted or drew my stolen sword with a sinking heart.

I’d never swung a blade in my life, but oddly, my body moved like it knew how.

It hit me later: the Balthazar family was a renowned house of knights.

Though they’d never produced an aura user, they’d churned out exceptional swordsmen for generations.

Ian Balthazar’s childhood training must’ve been etched into his muscles.

Still, since I hadn’t trained myself, I struggled.

I hesitated when I could’ve struck true, getting stabbed or bitten for my trouble.

Each time, I clung to consciousness and stabbed wildly.

Whether it was this body’s talent or sheer survival instinct, my swordsmanship sharpened with every neardeath experience.

By the time my body was covered in scars, I could cut down bandits without a scratch.

“Just a little farther,” I told myself, staring at a map.

The Central Empire, 77.8 times the size of the Korean peninsula, made the northern front feel like another world.

This sucks.

Why isn’t there a bus or something?

Even a carriage didn’t make the distance feel any shorter.

After a grueling year and a half, the end of my journey to the North was finally in sight.

I was a wreck—unshaven, my beard a tangled mess, my leather armor reduced to rags.

Even the fine Balthazar sword was chipped and cracked.

I stopped at a nearby village to reequip, buying a new leather cuirass and a fresh steel blade at a blacksmith’s.

Slaying bandits and monsters had left me with enough coin to afford it.

Climbing a snowy mountain, I spotted a carriage under attack by a monster.

The closer I got to the North, the more frequent these encounters became.

Figuring I could hitch a ride, I decided to help.

“Arghhh!” “It’s a monster!” The beast looked like a wolf, but its form was crude, as if a child had molded it from clay.

It was a lowtier creature, weaker than most on the northern front, which explained how it had slipped through.

I spun to its flank, slashed its foreleg, and as it rolled in the snow, I severed its neck.

Thanks to my growing mastery of Balthazar’s secret sword techniques, a beast like this was no challenge.

“Excuse me, could I hitch a ride—” I started, but a man interrupted, “Thank you, thank you! You saved the lady!”

“…Huh?” I turned to see a woman with fiery red hair slumped on the ground.

I’d just wanted a ride, but apparently, I’d stumbled into something bigger.

The carriage belonged to the daughter of the Nordelheim ducal family, traveling alone to deliver an urgent letter.

Since our destinations aligned, they let me hop on.

“Sir, why are you heading to the northern front?” the redhaired woman asked.

“To kill monsters,” I replied bluntly.

“Oh, that’s perfect! I’ll ask my father to help you!” she said, her eyes sparkling.

Wait, something felt off.

But before I could protest, it was too late.

“Thank you for saving my daughter,” boomed the Duke of Nordelheim.

“You want to protect the North, eh? Haha! Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get your chance to shine!”

And so, Ian Balthazar was assigned to the front lines.