Chapter : 01
I am currently driving an excavator to demolish a private house.
The reason is absurd.
The author killed my favorite character.
Confession of the Dawn was a fantasy ensemble novel written by an author named Park Myeong. It had been serialized online for a year, and it briefly became a hot topic early on because of its insane production rate of ten chapters a day.
But there were far too many characters. And far too many of them died. With the story constantly jumping from one person to another, the plot was constantly interrupted, and, above all, the author simply couldn’t write.
Not just couldn’t write.
They were terrible at writing.
It must have been some kind of special talent to be this bad at third-person limited omniscient narration. How bad was it? The sentences were so atrociously constructed that my concentration was shattered once every three lines.
Do you understand how impressive that is?
The author never made typos. Their spelling and grammar were flawless.
And yet they possessed the unique talent of destroying the reader’s concentration through nothing but malformed sentences.
The readers who had flocked to the novel in the beginning disappeared in droves before they could even reach Chapter 100.
Even so, a small number of readers continued following this novel of more than 3,000 chapters.
The reason was probably that the characters felt like real human beings.
The relationships between the characters felt realistic, and the world itself was so detailed that it seemed as though the author had actually lived there.
It was the unfortunate result of what happened when a setting otaku had no writing ability.
But to us, Confession of the Dawn was a brilliant, one-of-a-kind novel.
The view count at Chapter 3,504 made that obvious.
No less than thirty people had followed this horrendously written novel all the way through, feeding solely on the characters’ personalities and the setting.
Perhaps that was why.
Those of us who were obsessed with the setting and characters eventually started getting to know one another.
The author even joined our little circle, and the fans enthusiastically sent gifts. As the head of the fan café, I eventually received the author’s address and became responsible for delivering those gifts to them.
That ends today.
They shouldn’t have sent him off like that.
Prince Seiyan had survived 3,503 chapters, doing all sorts of dirty things just to stay alive.
And they killed that poor kid with something as pathetic as an epidemic?
I could understand when my second-favorite character, the heir to a duchy, was sent to the executioner’s block.
That couldn’t be helped.
He had committed both insulting the imperial family and threatening a member of the imperial family. And the woman involved had been ridiculously proud, to the point that she rejected the option of severing ties with her family and living as a commoner.
I could accept that as her end.
That was exactly Chapter 121, wasn’t it?
Anyway, I was furious, but I lived every day holding onto the hope that my favorite was at least still alive.
So when the author sent me a message saying they had a gift for me, I was actually happy for a moment.
I thought all the gifts I’d sent over the years had finally paid off, and that they were going to give me some new detail about Seiyan.
Maybe something cute, like Seiyan couldn’t eat mushrooms.
Or that his favorite fruit was peaches.
I thought they were going to give me some adorable little setting detail.
I never imagined that the gift would be Seiyan’s death.
That bastard of an author.
That bastard had to be Satan himself.
—Bzzzt… A massive tower has suddenly appeared in the middle of the city. Bzzzt…
That guy told me not to watch TV while working, and yet he bought and installed something like this again.
If I have to report to the police station tomorrow morning, I’ll contact the company while I’m at it and tell the boss everything.
Come to think of it, I had done something terribly inconsiderate to my boss.
I’d begged him to lend me some equipment because I’d bought some farmland this time and wanted to tear up a field.
And now, if I charged straight into this author’s house and demolished it, I’d end up on the news tomorrow, get arrested, and throw the entire company into chaos.
Still, what can you do?
Just think of all the money I’ve made for you until now.
Consider it as though you had employed me as a full-time employee and were paying me severance.
—I’m sorry.
I’m the one who should be apologizing right now.
So why are you saying you’re sorry?
—It’s already too late, so at least go receive the blessing.
“Excuse me?”
Come to think of it, there wasn’t anyone around me.
Was that a ghost’s voice or something?
Was I hallucinating?
I slapped my ears repeatedly, and then my vision flickered.
◇ ◆ ◇
I shouldn’t have been walking around hitting my head on a cold day.
A concussion?
A cerebral hemorrhage?
Whatever it was, since I was still alive, I was probably in a hospital.
Relieved that I hadn’t left this world yet, I raised myself up.
There were iron bars in front of me.
“……”
Why was I already in a detention cell?
I hadn’t even done anything yet!
“Huh?”
A strange memory surfaced.
I was Mitchell Nepthis.
“……”
What?
Why was I Mitchell Nepthis?
What the hell was this?
How could this possibly be a joke?
I didn’t know why, but I was now the villain from Confession of the Dawn who had tried to force Seiyan Crowell, the Empire’s only prince, into becoming mine by abusing my power, only to be rejected and publicly humiliated, thrown out of my own home, imprisoned for insulting the imperial family, and ultimately killed in Chapter 121.
I knew what this was.
Possession into a novel.
And if you wanted to categorize it further, I had become a villain who died early in the story.
Amid my confusion, I grasped the crystal-clear memories of that day and calmly went over them in my head.
Mitchell, the eldest daughter of the House of Nepthis, heir to the duchy, an exquisitely beautiful girl with silver hair and blue eyes, and a woman infamous for being garbage in every conceivable way, had been in love with Seiyan.
That’s why I had become so emotionally invested in her, cheered her on, and loved her enough to call her my second favorite.
Do you know how fiery this woman was?
She desperately desired the position and power of the next emperor, but she lacked the ability to ever defeat the crown princess.
So she attacked that weakness and threatened Seiyan:
Marry me.
Sit down and she’s a villain.
Stand up and she’s the mastermind behind everything.
The way she walked made her look like a terrorist.
People praised her lofty bearing and called her the Mad Dog of Nepthis.
Yes.
I remembered.
Mitchell—
No.
I—
That day, at a banquet in the imperial palace, Mitchell had lured the drunken Prince Seiyan away and dragged him into her bedroom.
Then, while saying some painfully cheesy line like,
“Keheheheh. You want a powerful backer, don’t you? Then become mine.”
she had sat down on the bed and pulled Seiyan toward her.
“Oh my, oh my.”
This is incredible.
I loved it so much.
How could you have kept something this wonderful all to yourself, Ms. Mitchell?
This is a loss for the entire nation.
The members need to know about this too!
A man with long black hair falling all the way to his waist and a slender 29-inch waist let tears drip from eyes as black and deep as an abyss. In a resigned voice, he said that she could do whatever she wanted—
No matter what happened, this scene absolutely had to break new ground in terms of progress.
“……Hmm?”
I tilted my head.
Wait a minute.
Didn’t Seiyan reject her?
Wasn’t that why Mitchell gave up, went home, and smashed the entire front door to pieces?
Thinking it strange, I snapped the fingers of my left hand.
If this really was the world of Confession of the Dawn, my status screen should appear with this gesture.
Mitchell Nepthis
Status: Terminally Ill, Blessing of Urshu
Experience: 0
N) Freeze Lv. 2 — 200 until next level
N) Throw Lv. 3 — 300 until next level
N) Healthy Lv. 5 — 122 until next level
R) Noble’s Dignity
UR) Fusion
Holy shit.
It actually appeared.
The status window really appeared!
Citizens of the Crowell Empire are registered as citizens at birth, issued identification cards, and implanted with biological chips made from magic stones.
These chips help visualize and improve their talents and abilities.
Generally, most skills people acquire are Normal-grade, and there are hardly any offensive skills at all.
Yet Lady Mitchell possessed two offensive skills, as well as an Ultra Rare skill.
Fusion.
Perhaps that was why my memories had become mixed with Lady Mitchell’s.
And apparently Lady Mitchell had the potential to become an ice mage…
There was a high probability that the advanced version of that Freeze skill would be Ice Magic.
As for the status…
The blessing was one thing, but why was I terminally ill?
The Dawn has been updated. Execution in D-3 days.
“……”
Right.
Mitchell was a death-row inmate.
Since she was about to die, it made sense for a status ailment to appear.
But I didn’t panic.
Even though I was a condemned criminal, there was an easy way to avoid execution.
Mitchell was the kind of person who would rather break than bend, and she had died only as a way of atoning for hurting Seiyan…
“……”
Wait.
Was I atoning?
No, no.
Was Mitchell actually feeling sorry?
My memories and hers had gotten mixed together, so I couldn’t tell what was what anymore.
But still—
Was that heartless, tearless, shameless Mitchell actually feeling guilty just because Seiyan had shed a few tears?
Wow.
They say life is a continuous series of surprises, but this one really came out of nowhere.
If you keep doing things like this, you’re going to shake up my ranking of favorite characters.
Although, technically, that position belonged to me now.
More importantly, I needed to do what I could only do because I was now myself.
The Mitchell of the past had decided that she would rather die than abandon the name Nepthis.
But the current me was completely different.
Even if I had to roll around in a field of dog shit, being alive was still better than being dead.
I wanted to live.
I poured all of my desire to live into a desperate cry for help.
“Is no one there?! Save me!”
……
……
Wait a second.
Let’s try that again.
I definitely meant to say, Please save me.
Take a deep breath.
Inhale…
Exhale…
Clear my throat…
Then—
Please save me!
“Save me!”
……
……
Surely I wasn’t going to have to live the rest of my life talking like some character in a historical drama.
I had a suspicion.
So I snapped my fingers once more and touched the R) Noble’s Dignity skill on the skill window.
A detailed description appeared.
R) Noble’s Dignity: A noble does not bow to just anyone. Members of the House of Nepthis offer reverence only to the imperial family of the Crowell Empire.
