Lucien Ashborne was supposed to be a nobody — an early-game villain who existed only to be crushed by the protagonist. After provoking the wrong person, he vanished from the story without even a dramatic death scene.

When a player named James dies and wakes up in Lucien’s body, he inherits every bit of the villain’s broken reputation and zero of his privileges. Bullied, scorned, and abandoned by his own noble family, Lucien now stands at the bottom of the academy hierarchy.

To make matters worse, the world he knew as a game has no guaranteed happy ending… and the protagonist’s party treats him like a criminal.

But James isn’t the Lucien they think he is.

With fragments of meta-knowledge, a half-broken system that barely works, and a determination to avoid becoming cannon fodder, he chooses a different path.

He doesn’t seek glory.
He just refuses to disappear.

This is the story of a former villain trying to rewrite his role — not as a hero, but as someone who survives on his own terms.

There was a specific villain who should have been causing major headaches around this time in the original game's timeline.


But I had already dealt with him. During the incident in the Aethelgard Desert ruins, Leon had betrayed his older brother, Instructor Valerius, and tried to kill Elisha and me. When he was backed into a corner, he sacrificed his own life to summon a high-ranking demon, which I subsequently blew to pieces.


"Stance! Your footing is entirely too cowardly! You cannot command the weapon if you do not stand confidently before the target!"


"Wow, that's amazing, Princess Celestia…!"


…A loud, distracting noise pulled me from my thoughts, but let me finish my train of thought first.


Chapter 226 - Brief time of peace