[Congratulations! You have obtained the "Seed" of Omnitemporal Convergence...!]
[This is a primordial essence representing the unified flow of Past, Present, and Future. With it, you hold the potential to manipulate time itself to your will!]
[As a reward for claiming this Seed, you have unlocked the Aspect of the Past. The Aspects of the Present and Future remain to be acquired—perhaps through fulfilling specific quests or by encountering miraculous coincidences along your journey.]
[Additionally, alongside the Aspect of the Past, you gain access to two foundational Virtues associated with it: Recall and Recreate.]
[Virtue of Recall: This Virtue cannot be deactivated to the user. From now on, your memory becomes a flawless archive. Forgetting will be a concept of the past!
With this ability, any contact allows you to uncover a glimpse of histories embedded in objects and individuals. It's an invaluable boon for an archaeologist, historian, or anyone curious about the forgotten threads of time.]
[Virtue of Recreate: This Virtue lets you forge anew anything that once existed, provided it falls within the boundaries of the past. This ability ranges from reviving shattered artifacts and restoring extinct creatures to repairing broken relics and restoring imperfect things to their perfect, former states.
However, Recreate is not limited to the tangible. Abstract concepts, such as emotions, can also be called forth into the present. If you deeply understand a specific emotion rooted in the past, you can summon its essence to bolster allies with profound courage or undermine enemies with consuming despair.]
[Follow the "Principles of Omnitemporal Convergence", and you might achieve greater feats—time travel, alternate timeline creation, and, perhaps, even ascending to become the symbol of Omnitemporal Convergence itself!!]
"—urk."
Alex groaned, his vision a foggy mess for a few moments. When the vertigo passed, he snapped his head around to assess his surroundings. 'Where the hell am I?'
He found himself in a room that reeked of 'medieval' luxury—high windows covered by heavy curtains, a finely crafted wooden bedframe, and a tapestry that looked like it was barely hanging onto its glorious past. It was regal, but not the 'bow-to-me' peasant kind of regal.
'I don't recognize this place,' Alex squinted. 'And where are Aure and Felix? I'm pretty sure I saw them getting dragged into that black thing too.'
He tried to stand.
Big mistake.
"—Ugh!"
His knees gave way, slamming into the floor. His palms hit cold stone.
"What the hell is…"
A flash crashed into his head.
"—?!"
He grabbed his hair, overwhelmed by a flood of foreign memories. 'What is… this…?'
He is... Lucien Harberdt.
An eighteen years old boy. The son of Kael Harberdt and Anna Harberdt. The youngest heir to the Harberdt lineage.
He lived in a village called Dunbrooke, part of the Valdaris Kingdom, a small kingdom on Vyrholm Realm.
The golden-red sun, the violet moon, the starfall— these strange yet somehow familiar images kept coming into his head. His eyelids couldn't help but twitch nonstop.
With a strangled grunt, he hurled himself off the floor, and stumbled toward the nearest mirror. The moment he caught his reflection, he froze mid-breath.
The reflection wasn't his. He barely recognized the face staring back. He looked like a darker, more... royal version of himself—leaner but with sharp angles. The hair was a deep shade of blond, combed neatly, and the features were… familiar.
His frown deepened as it hit him. 'Wait… Am I… Did I transmigrate into some damn novel?'
This world—a pseudo-apocalyptic hellscape featuring humans and humanoids banding together against demonic forces, underworld denizens, otherworldly entities, —felt too familiar. Not just familiar. He 'knew' it. The world around him, the figures in it, and especially the character he seemed to have become—clicked in his head.
'—fucking hell, is it the Ascension Cycle?' he widened his eyes.
He collected the whole seven volumes freely in some old bookstore. He'd devoured it in one caffeine-fueled binge, drawn to its chaotic mix of worldbuilding, morally questionable protagonists, and absolutely insane plot twists. He even remembered ranting about the absurd cliffhanger to his cat.
And now…?
'I transmigrated into the novel— like a fanfic reject.'
'I only read up 'till Volume 3. It's supposedly ended on the seventh volume— fuck, if I knew it'll end up like this, I'll speedrun the novel before!'
He groaned loud enough to scare birds from nearby rooftops.
'And I'm in the prologue… The shitty opening where this entire village gets roasted alive for the dramatic effect of the Demonic Forces' introduction,' Alex paced, rubbing his temples in frustration. 'Do I fight? Hide? Pretend I'm dead? No, wait, if I'm here, do I have cheats? How does this even work?! Is there a manual, a starter pack, or am I just screwed?'
He quickly remember the interface floating around vaguely when he woke up here. 'Was that—'
A sudden knock on the door snapped his train of thought. 'Who the hell--- nevermind, must be that woman.'
He clicked his tongue while responding "Come in."
In walked a maid, prim and proper. She was tall and slender, with ashen hair tied back in a bun. Her eyes darted at him briefly, and he immediately felt judged. 'Of course she would judge.' He internally cringed.
Lucien Harberdt, the character he currently inhabited, has a charisma of a black hole so absurdly dense, it actively repels likability within a five-mile radius. Even Alex's C-tier skill of charming fast-food clerks into tossing extra ketchup packets felt like max-level charisma compared to this guy's personality stats.
"Luna," he said flatly, making direct eye contact to assert dominance, "fetch me a change of clothes."
"Understood, Master."
She left as quickly as she arrived, as though wanting to minimize exposure to his aura.
He couldn't really feel offended. The previous version of him—Lucien, to be precise—had treated her like sentient furniture, after all.
'No, that was generous. It's more like disposable furniture.'
Lucien had once slapped a tray of food out of her hands because she dared to bring it a full thirty seconds late—never mind that he had given her three conflicting orders about what he wanted in the first place.
Another time, he stood outside during a thunderstorm, screaming at Luna for not anticipating that the rain might ruin his plans to go falconry hunting. He even once dumped an entire kettle of boiling tea on her because it wasn't scalding hot enough for his refined taste. The bastard actually laughed as she screamed.
Alex couldn't help but scoffed and cursed him. 'What a pathetic waste of a carbon-based organism.'
But no need for bridge-burning the transformation of becoming a "better person".
Last thing he needed was to get dragged into some church for a makeshift exorcism because they thought he was possessed, and honestly, he couldn't even blame them if that happened.
'After all, I'm not just an extra, but also a third-rate villain. A very great start,' he thought sarcastically, scoffing.
***
A/N: Rate it from 1 to 10 with the reasoning as well, if possible. That'll help me covering what's lacking from the story.
Your Power Stones will help me potentially winning the WSA 2025. Consider doing so to support me.