The streets of Silverdale buzzed with activity as night fell; it was teeming with pedestrians and their noisy, flying, vehicles. Workers hurried home, children struggled to finish their chores, and elderly individuals went about their grocery shopping, each person with their own purpose.
It was just another bustling evening in Silverdale, a city in the Eastern continent of the world.
Amidst this lively scene stood a mansion, not too far away.
Inside a room in the mansion, Lucius woke up with a throbbing headache. He felt disoriented and was bewildered to find himself in a lavish yet familiar bedroom.
It was a bedroom he hadn't seen in over three years.
"What is happening?"
"How is this possible?" He glanced around the room in confusion, hoping to find a logical explanation as to why he was alive and still breathing even after enduring a barrage of magical attacks from the hundreds of A-rank knights, heroes, and mages he had simultaneously fought against.
Branded a villain in a modern fantasy world where the most sought-after job was being a hero, Lucius was feared by many. Hundreds of those heroes met their demise with just a flick of his hand.
The scene was chaotic, with many fearing that their end was near. Even the S-rank heroes found it difficult to subdue Lucius. In the end, their unwavering perseverance yielded an unexpected result, as a single hero pierced the heart of the most fearsome villain, who was even more menacing than the demons.
It turned out the hero who defeated him was none other than his best friend, Alexis Wellington.
However, all these things happened just a few minutes ago. Now, Lucius found himself four years before the day of his death.
After a few minutes, he came to a conclusion. With each passing second, Lucius became certain that what he was seeing was real and not just a figment of his imagination.
There was no denying it, he had miraculously been granted a second chance to go back to the days before he was admitted to the Royal Academy and before his Aunt met her demise on the day of his entrance examination test.
Lucius was cursed at the age of five by a demon when he and his mother visited a city in the Southern continent, commonly known as the Beast continent.
At the time, no one could have predicted that not only the city, but also the entire beast continent would be invaded by demons. Countless influential families and commoners alike were slain and devoured by the merciless demons, leaving very few to escape to the neighbouring continents.
During the chaos, Lucius was inadvertently separated from his deceased mother and became cursed by a demon.
However, the reason he was cursed could also be described as a misunderstanding, because he was mistaken for someone whose dragon blood was flowing in Lucius' veins.
Now, he was fated to lose everything he held dear and as a monument to haunt him throughout the remaining years of his life, the curse left a mark across his body that instilled fear into a five-year-old Lucius.
He overheard a conversation between some healers who were familiar with the type of curse he had and the duration at which it would last.
It turned out that he was fated to have those he cared about die by his own hands at the age of twenty-two.
Fearing that this might be his Aunt or one of the seven girls he was living with, made Lucius to grow distant from everyone around him, including his Aunt, who took it upon herself to raise him. He never spoke a single word to anyone again, scared that if he did, he would become closer to them and would end up killing someone he cared about.
However, even though Lucius tried to change his fate by staying away from others, it didn't prevent his Aunt from being killed by demons when he was eighteen and undergoing his entrance examination at the Royal Academy.
This was a major blow to Lucius because his Aunt had been doing everything in her power to find a way to rid Lucius of his curse.
His Aunt's sudden demise brought Lucius to the brink of insanity, with his mind dead set on accompanying her and his parents. However, he changed his mind because of the seven girls living with him, with two beast girls in particular playing a major role in his sudden change of mind.
All seven girls were rescued by his Aunt during the merciless rampage of the demons in the beast continent a few years back.
Lucius grew to love one of the two beast girls while he saw the other as his little sister, and their names were Aurora and Luna respectively.
He cared about the other girls as well because they had all grown to view each other as family.
His closeness to the girls and his relationship with Aurora eventually made him open up to them and more people, until the day before his twenty-second birthday when he was manipulated and deceived by a demon into thinking that his best friend had claimed his girlfriend like a trophy.
The demon needed something only Lucius could give him, and in return, he promised to cure Lucius's curse and make him a lot stronger than ever before.
Thinking that if he finally got rid of his curse he would become a better version of himself, Lucius agreed to the demon's demands and the demon released a massive amount of corrupted mana into him, corrupting Lucius's mana core. This blackened his heart and he destroyed everything around him after the demon hypnotized him into thinking that Aurora would never be interested in someone like him.
This angered Lucius and he decided to eliminate the competition. In other words, his best friend.
He searched around for his best friend, to end him, but he was unsuccessful. So, he returned home that night, but to his surprise, seven assailants were awaiting his return.
Fearing that Aurora might have been captured or worse, he attacked all seven assailants.
However, when he pulled out his sword from the final assailant, he was surprised to see Aurora in front of him and not the last assailant.
It was then the harsh reality dawned on him.
He had been hypnotized to think that the only family he cared about were the assailants he was actually trying to protect them from.
Then the thin thread holding Lucius's sanity together finally snapped.
Everyone in his eyes became an enemy.
_____
"In the end, I lost not only my parents and my Aunt but also, Aurora, Luna and everyone who cared so much about me," Lucius said depressingly, reclining back in his bed.
However, he wasn't going to let this new chance at life go to waste.
Unlike his previous self, he wasn't really bothered about the curse because now, he knew there were two ways to rid himself of the curse.
The first way was to find the demon who placed the curse on him and kill him.
"But I do not know exactly where the demon currently is or how I can even find him," He said before thinking about the second option.
The second was to decipher the curse mark himself.
The curse mark was more like ancient magical runes that had been forgotten for centuries but was inscribed around his chest, arms and back.
This was what Lucius's Aunt had been trying very hard to solve but failed to do so until the time of her demise.
"I guess this is the path I'll be taking in ridding myself of the curse," Lucius concluded.
However, that didn't mean he wasn't going to try to locate both the demon that cursed him and the one who hypnotized him.
After all, they were the ones who ruined his happy family.
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A/N:- This " " signifies words being spoken.
This ' ' signifies the MC,'s thoughts. Thank you so much for reading my book.