Isekai. The dream of traveling to a new world. A world where you could be great. A world where you could be a hero. I had the great luck of fulfilling that dream.

A truck did me the great favor of crashing into me, and I woke up in another world. I still don’t know how it happened. Why it happened. But I did know one thing.

I really, really, wish it hadn’t.

Why? Cause of where I had ended up. I hadn’t found myself in some random forest with superpowers, or in a room full of mages asking me to save them. No. I had instead found myself in another body, in a situation I was somewhat familiar with.

I had been reborn as a side character. A pitiful side character who died in the original book. And now that I had become said side character, I had come to realize…this was one of the worst isekai tropes! A horror that should not have been imagined! A torturous, inhumane transmigration that left the poor victim in a situation they did not deserve to be in!

I swear, if I got the chance to go back, I would protest against the entire genre and refuse to read it! But of course, I couldn’t. I was stuck as Aphra Eldanveir, a side character that only appears in two chapters before dying.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Aphra was the son of a Duke, and apparently had a high affinity for magic too! That was practically great compared to some other side characters. The character had potential, didn’t have a bad reputation and even had—err, what was that?

I blinked as red spots appeared in my vision, traveling across it until they splattered against the wall like paint. As I watched, unable to take my eyes off the wall, a blood-red drop began to travel downward leaving a line that reminded me of things I had seen in murder mysteries.

This was blood splatter.

And if there was blood splatter here, in the mansion’s garden then that meant -

“Oh, hello brother. I didn’t see you there.”

— that guy was near.

I slowly turned my head, my eyes falling upon the silvery-white hair and narrow dark purple eyes that differentiated the individual in question. A person I recognized. The person I had left my room hoping to avoid.

Leif Eldanveir, the future villain of the story and my new twin brother. Oh, also the guy who killed Aphra in the novel. And since Aphra is now me… I suppose he killed me.

Oh fuck, he killed me.

What kind of disgusting, idiotic luck did I have that I ended up running into him like this?! I specifically ran to the garden because I overheard servants muttering that he was coming my way. And now I ended up running into him anyway.

Leif tilted his head, a smile stretching across his face as he carefully caressed his prey.

I felt my eyes move, following his movement as they turned to see what he held in his hands. Even though I was prepared for it, it still made my stomach try to hurl its contents out. Leif held in his hands a human.

A human that was bleeding from at least five different places. The woman was probably dead. I hoped she was, cause otherwise she would be in far too much pain.

“What is it brother?”

The monster’s smile grew predatory as he looked at me like I was his next meal. A bright red tongue snaked out of his mouth flicking across his lips as if it couldn’t wait to taste me. “Are you perhaps scared of me?”

A hand reached out to me, and I could feel a headache build up behind my eyes, though for some reason it felt faint.

“Do not worry, my dear brother, I was simply feeding.”

Feeding. That was not an inaccurate description of what he was doing. But I doubted anyone other than him would refer to it as such. Well, there was his, and now my, father. That man would also call the killing of humans to absorb their mana ‘feeding’.

The living creatures in this world were born with mana. That mana remained the same throughout their lives, unless they managed to acquire more. The easiest way, according to the original novel, was to simply kill other creatures, which would give you a fraction of their mana.

Just like Leif was doing.

“Hmm,” my monstrous brother took a step closer to me, his face close enough to mine that our noses almost touched. I held his gaze, my body frozen in fear as I felt his breath upon me.

“Not even a word of protest?” he asked, his breath whispering against my skin as I struggled to stop my mind from fainting out of fear. Just his presence alone was enough to terrorize me. A part of it was probably his aura ability, Terror, but I suspected there was more to it than that.

I was genuinely scared of him. Or was that just his ability? I should run. I felt like I should at least be running. But I wasn’t. That was probably this guy’s work. Darkness and Mind were his two elements after all.

Just like your average story book villain.

The Duke was a character with actual depth and motivations. Leif had been the author running out of ideas and going with a random stereotypical ‘evil’ character. Even back when he was first introduced the readers had complained about how he was over the top and unrealistic.

Now, that ‘unrealistic’ character was standing in front of me asking me questions. What the heck had I done to deserve this? Had I committed some great evil without knowing?

I felt like curling into a ball on the floor and just crying. I didn’t wanna do this. I was gonna die again. And this time it would actually hurt.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Leif drew back, a faint expression of confusion appearing on his face as he looked from me to the dead woman.

“This is your maid, yes?” he asked.

I looked at her. How the heck was I supposed to know if that was my maid? I had just arrived here like ten minutes ago! Didn’t even get any memories from the body! Of course, I could not just say that.

Perhaps because of my frustration with the situation, I felt much less terrified. So much so that I felt confident enough to reply.

“Y-yes, she is.” I stammered out. Ok, maybe I was still afraid. But hey, at least I could talk now.

“Hmm.” Leif said, his face twisting into a grimace as he tossed the dead woman towards me. I caught her, surprised to find her body warm. Weren’t dead bodies, like, really cold?

“This isn’t even funny anymore.” Leif complained as he waved his hand. The blood splatter disappeared from the wall and the dead body, color returning to the woman’s face as suddenly she didn’t look like she was dead. In fact, it looked like she was just sleepy. It dDidn’t take me long to figure out why.

That had been an illusion.

The woman opened her eyes, squealing as she realized what position she was in. Showing greater agility than I had seen in my life, she jumped out of my arms and righted herself, kneeling on the ground next to us with her head bowed.

I froze, my eyes shifting between Leif and the maid. What she had done had bordered on superhuman. There might have been gymnasts that could do it back on Earth, but I suspected that she had used mana instead.

And that meant she had enough mana to be used.

That might not seem like a big thing, but it was. Leif’s ‘reason’ for his cruelty was that he was addicted to the mana rush he got from killing. That was why he killed so much, he simply couldn’t stop himself. If this was Leif in the novel, he would probably…kill her and eat her mana right here.

But this Leif just ignored her.

“This was boring,” he said, walking away. “Didn’t even get a reaction out of you.”

I stared, open-mouthed, at his back as it got further away. Had Leif Eldanveir just walked away without killing anyone? That hadn’t happened a single time in the novel. If he was in the scene, then blood was going to be spilled. That was why I had so readily believed that he would kill a maid right in front of me. Now that I thought about it, there were signs.

The maid was not screaming. A person bleeding from five different places should be screaming. There wasn’t even a smell of blood. That should have been there too. I should have noticed that it was an illusion.

“What? Did you think I had actually killed your maid?” Leif smirked, turning back, apparently having anticipated my reaction. “Father would have been furious if I had killed her. There aren’t many maids willing to work for us, you know.”

But that was because Leif kept killing servants. At least, it had been that way in the novel. How come he was being careful about this now? I narrowed my eyes as he walked away, more than a bit confused by his reaction.

The maid started walking as soon as Leif was out of sight, and I followed her. I recognized the direction she was going in. That was the door to my room, or rather, the garden entrance to my room. There were multiple.

But if she was going to my room, then she probably was my maid. There hadn’t been a maid inside when I had awoken, but I had made a run for it very quickly. I had woken up in an unknown room with a conversation going on just outside the door.

For some reason, I had been sure I had been in the world of this book as Aphra. The knowledge had just appeared within my head with a surety I had found difficult to deny. Even now it was the same. So when I heard someone say that Leif was coming that way, I ran away.

Now that I thought about it, perhaps they were talking about him coming to the garden. The direction might be the same. Well, whatever. That wasn’t really important. What was important was what I should do from here.

The first priority should clearly be escaping from here. Even if Leif was not the killer I had thought him to be, staying here was too great a risk. The question was, how did I do that? Aphra had not been particularly well liked in the book, though that could be different here. But either way, the Duke would not let him go easily.

The Eldanveir family had a very special power that had allowed them to climb the ranks of nobility quickly. A power they hid even from the royal family. If a member of the Eldanveir family killed someone they were related to, then they didn’t get just a fraction of their mana.

No, they got all of it.

That was why the Duke had so many children, and why he would not let go of any of them. As was tradition in the family, an inheritance battle would be held once enough heirs were ready. The battle would not just be between the heirs, but also the Duke himself. And it would be a battle to the death.

The victor of the battle would have absorbed the mana of everyone else, turning themselves several times as powerful. That was why the Duke would not let me go so easily. Cause as far as he was concerned, I was easy mana he just had to reach out to take. If I tried to escape, he would just drag me back.

And if he didn’t, Leif would. The more mana the person he killed had, the better he felt. That boy would not let go of such tasty prey as me. That was after all how Aphra died in the novel.

If I escaped, itI would give him an excuse to hunt and kill me. The Duke was protecting me now so I would have the chance to grow and acquire more mana. Leif would not be so objective. At least the one I knew about wouldn’t.

This one… I didn’t know about this one. I couldn’t trust this change, I had to plan as if he was still a monster out to kill me for my mana.

And if escape wasn’t an option then I had to fight back. To do that I needed power. Getting that would not be easy. But it was possible. I even had ideas of how to go about it. After all, I had a secret power of my own. I had read the book. I had knowledge of things that I could use. Like the ‘cheat’ the protagonist had mentioned in the last book.

Fae magic.

I hadn’t really understood how Fae magic worked, but I could try it. The protagonist had called it a ‘cheat’ while sharing his reward with his followers, so it was probably something good. And honestly I could do it.

I stepped into my room, feeling strangely enthused. Yes, it would take hard work and more than a little suffering, but I would survive. Like the many transmigrated into side character protagonists whose stories I had read, I would use what I knew of this world to survive. To build myself up until I had all the wealth and power I could wan—waah!

A spear broke through the window launching itself straight into the maid’s body. The same maid that Leif had ‘let live’. I had been so lost in my own thoughts that I had forgotten about her.

I looked at the spear that had pierced through her chest, the pool of blood forming beneath her. The maid let out a loud, painful scream that continued for far too long as she fell onto the floor. There was pain in her eyes as I looked into them, a pain that crept into her screams and threatened to deafen my ears. A strong metallic smell filled the air as I watched forward.

I doubted this was an illusion. Not this time.

I slowly turned my head towards the garden, more than a little afraid to know where the spear came from. Leif stood there, a large smile on his face as dark purple lights flew around him. I was sure they were mana, though they hadn’t been properly described in the novel.

“This, I like.” he said, his grin turning even larger as I turned back to stare at the maid. The now dead maid. Just one thought crossed my mind at that moment, staring at the dead body of a woman who had just been killed for a sick child’s amusement.

I wanna get out of here!