Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 230: Stranded In The Spirit Realm [I]

I opened my eyes to a world that made no sense.

The sky was cracked.

And I mean literally.

It was broken like glass, fractured lines running through the troposphere as if the heavens themselves had been shattered by something— or someone.

And from behind that broken sky… a red moon bled.

It didnʼt glow.

It leaked.

Thick crimson light poured from its edges like slow-moving sap, spilling down onto the world below like blood dripping from a wound that would never heal.

I gazed down.

In front of me was a lake.

A silver lake, its water still — so still that it didnʼt ripple even when a titanic hand, pale as snow, broke the lakeʼs surface and reached toward the bleeding moon above.

The hand was long and slender, fingers like bone carved from milkstone. It trembled. It grasped. But the moon never came closer.

I didnʼt speak. I didnʼt even move.

I just… watched.

And then the world changed.

There was no warning. No shift in air, no pull of gravity. One moment I was under a broken sky, and the next—

I was standing alone on a dark marble floor.

The ceiling overhead was made of gold.

And the air was filled with silence… save for a single sound.

A piano.

Someone was playing a piano.

I looked around and realized I was in a hall so grand and old it felt unreal — like something built by gods who had long since forgotten they made it.

The floors were polished obsidian, the walls constructed from pearl and brass. Firelight flickered in crystal chandeliers, but gave no warmth.

And in the center of it all… was a beautiful man.

More beautiful than anyone had any right to be.

He sat atop a bench facing a grand piano like it was his throne, legs crossed, fingers lazily dancing across the keys.

He had long black hair that spilled down his back in waves. His face was pale and ageless, aristocratic and unbothered.

And his eyes — gods, his eyes — burned red. Not glowing. Burning. Like something deep inside him was always smoldering.

He played a melody that didnʼt quite fit the space. Something poignant and haunting. It was the kind of tune that stayed with you forever once you heard it. Not in the ears. But in the bones.

I knew who he was the moment I saw him.

He didnʼt introduce himself.

He didnʼt need to.

”Youʼre not an ordinary young man,” he said without looking up. His voice was smooth like oil. Like rose petals hiding thorns. ”Even here… you can keep your eyes open.”

He pressed a few more notes and let them echo. ”Most mortals who wander into my dreams come screaming. Or kneeling. Youʼre doing neither.”

”Why— H-How am I here?” I asked.

That made him smile. ”Who knows? Honestly, I was hoping you would, since you figured everything out so quickly earlier. About the boy. The massacre. His secret.”

He turned his head toward me, but I didnʼt dare meet his gaze. ”You immediately knew that not only was Jake Mel Flazer responsible, but he was also listening to… someone.”

There was a pause. Then, ”Listening to me.”

The man stood from the piano, graceful as a cat, and stepped toward me with charming ease.

”Do you know how rare that is?” he asked. ”To see the string, not just the puppet? To know the things no one should.”

He walked a slow circle around me.

And I felt frozen in place. Like my legs were turned to lead. Like my feet had been anchored to the ground.

The man continued, ”The names of my kind havenʼt been spoken in centuries. At least not in truth. And yet here you are. Somehow… you seem to have knowledge about me and my siblings.”

I said nothing.

And that amused him even more. ”You know who I am, right? You shouldnʼt. No one but your Dukes and Monarchs should know about us. But you do, donʼt you?”

More silence. Then he leaned closer.

”Say it,” he coaxed. ”Say my name.”

I finally looked at him. Then, as calmly as I could, I shook my head. ”No. I donʼt think I will.”

The grin that bloomed across his face was almost childlike.

”Ahhh… clever,” he whispered. ”Very clever! Good decision, boy. After all, names have power. A name spoken is a door unlocked. But the wrong name?”

His smile grew unnaturally wider until it was all teeth — too many teeth. ”The wrong name opens doors for entities you shouldnʼt invite inside.”

I frowned.

But before I could respond with anything…

Asmodeus snapped his fingers.

Immediately, everything around me shattered.

The piano screamed in a screeching noise.

The floor beneath me blinked out of existence.

And I fell.

•••

And I fell for a long time. Or maybe just for a moment.

It was hard to tell.

But then…

”Gaaaah!”

I woke up.

Gasping. Drenched in cold sweat. Eyes fluttering open.

My body lurched with a violence it didnʼt have the strength for. I sucked in a breath too deep, too fast, and immediately choked on it. My chest burned. My throat scraped raw. My ribs ached.

I was… alive.

But my body felt like it had been crushed under a mountain.

I blinked. My eyes hectically darted in every direction. ”Where—?”

Gone was the marble. Gone was the piano.

And gone was the Demon Prince of Desires.

Instead, I found myself lying on damp moss that seemed to be glimmering faintly.

The sky overhead was wrong. Not dark. Not starlit. It was red. A deep and metallic shade of red, like blood diluted in water.

But more than the sinister color, what really made me catch my breath was the fact that the sky seemed to be… fractured. Deep fissures stretched across it like a broken windowpane.

And in the center of that fractured sky was a moon.

A full crimson moon, casting a rust-colored glow over everything below. It looked too full. And far too close.

Its light didnʼt just shine — it spilled.

Thick streams of dark red light bled from its edges and vanished into the horizon somewhere far away.

This entire scene was familiar.

Of course it was.

Because I had seen it in my dream just now.

But I wasnʼt dreaming anymore. I could confirm because the pain I felt from moving my body was excruciatingly real.

And I wasnʼt exaggerating.

Every single part of my body hurt.

I looked down and noticed my ribs were wrapped in clean bandages. My shoulder was bound in a splint of black wood and damp cloth. My wrist stung like hell.

Someone had tended to me.

I glanced around once more — this time to properly scrutinize my surroundings.

And what I saw was not good.

Not good at all.

I was in a small clearing, hemmed in by an untamed forest.

The trees around me were vast, alien things — black-barked behemoths twisted into shapes that hurt the eye, flanked by grotesque and enormous plants that seemed to be… breathing.

The undergrowth was a tangle of oversized ferns and vines and bizarre vegetation, interwoven with monstrous weeds. Even the grass appeared taller than me.

The air was thick and heavy, bloated with a scent that made my stomach clench. It smelled sweet here. Too sweet. Like an overripe fruit that had just begun to rot.

It was the scent of decay. And it made my chest ache every time I took a breath.

I soon noticed that my thoughts were racing and my skin felt prickly.

Thatʼs when I realized the plant life here had supercharged the atmosphere with oxygen far beyond normal levels.

My lungs were working hard to keep up. My body was overclocked, struggling to stay stable.

But all of that paled next to what truly set my nerves on fire.

…The bugs.

This place was teeming with insects of sizes that shouldnʼt have been possible.

I saw a Megarachne the size of a cat stalking nearby, its exoskeleton glassy and its too-long limbs ticking across the glowing moss with eerie clicking sounds.

I also saw roachoids the length of my full arm — glossy and jittery — each with too many eyes and twitching antennae. Some of them hissed when I looked at them.

In the distance, a worm — gods, no, an arthropleura-thing — writhed its car-sized body along a tree branch, feeding on something it had just hunted. Its mandibles made a scraping sound like bone on metal.

Above me buzzed a group of massive griffinflies with wingspans nearly a meter wide. But their wings — flapping like helicopter blades — looked more like stitched-together patches of dead flesh stretched taut over throbbing veins. They floated in and out of view.

Everything I saw made my skin crawl.

It was the kind of place where evolution had gone mad.

But my horror didnʼt stop there.

Because what I saw next creeped me out the most.

I saw… a girl.

Ash-blonde hair tied in a pony. Eyes as violet as amethyst. She was sitting silently on a fallen log. Knees pulled to her chest. Arms wrapped around them. Her white jacket — torn in places — being used as a makeshift blanket.

And she was staring.

Right at me.

Like she had been doing it for hours.

Our eyes met.

She froze.

I froze harder.

For a second, she looked like she was about to scream. Or cry. Or run into the forest to get eaten by that centipede-worm-thing.

Instead, after a long beat of silence — while the world around us creaked and hissed — she tilted her head slightly and muttered, ”…Morning.”

My stomach dropped.

Of all the horrors that surrounded me — the alien megaflora, the prehistoric bugs, the ungodly oxygen levels making me half-dizzy — this was the worst.

This… was Lily Elderwing.