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

Chapter 362: My Awakening As An Empath!

I never, ever wanted to hear that I couldn’t console people ever again — especially not from Lily! In fact, I wished I could drag her here by the collar just to show her what a splendid job I had done with her (ex?-)boyfriend!

I think I had awakened my empathy while listening to Michael vent. And if I dare say so myself, I handled it better than any puny therapist ever could’ve had!

Aha! Perhaps I should consider a career in therapy after all this Spirit King drama is over!

Yeah. I realized I had a natural talent for this sort of thing. I could profit off other people’s trauma— wait, no! I meant heal their trauma.

No, really! I wasn’t even exaggerating!

Michael kept wailing about what he should do now, how he should move forward, how he had messed up and should’ve seen it coming, how he should deal with Xaldreth, yadda yadda yadda.

And I, like the newly enlightened man I had become, guided him through every doubt, every confusion, and every spiraling uncertainty.

I could’ve made jokes. I could’ve brushed aside his crying and overthinking with humor. I could’ve bullied him— god knows I had several golden opportunities to bully him.

But I didn’t.

Because I was mature now. I was a mature and responsible young man who had my emotional growth.

So instead, I gave him feedback. I offered solutions. I even endured the messy, snot-filled details of his internal crisis without once mentioning how he was currently devaluing my favorite (and only) bedsheet-toga by wiping his tears all over my sleeves.

I calmly helped him through his mental health issues.

And I succeeded.

Before long— actually, no, it was long. It took about two to three hours until his mood was lifted and his spirits were high.

...Then I started bullying him.

Okay, so maybe I’m not an empath. Sue me.

I did enjoy it, though. Heh.

It was right around then that the sound of splashing and yelling grew progressively louder.

I frowned. ”What are the others even doing?”

”Fuck you,” Michael snapped, clearly triggered by something I had just said. But being the goody-two-shoes that he was, he couldn’t maintain the sass for more than three seconds. ”They’re probably fishing for dinner. And building a ship.”

”Oh, I see,” I nodded sagely. Then I paused. ”...Huh?”

•••

When we rounded the corner to go around the cabin, the first thing I saw was Ray trying to wrestle a giant, bioluminescent, crab-like creature into submission.

It was, understandably, a difficult task for him... considering he only had one proper hand to work with.

Vince was assisting him by wielding a massive shield like a giant spatula, attempting to flip the many-legged nightmare onto its back so Ray could deliver a finishing blow with a short sword.

”Keep its pincers away from my good arm!” Ray roared, his face turning purple with effort. ”I’m down one hand already, Vince! If I lose the other, I’ll lose my mind!”

”Shut up and pin it!” Vince grunted, the shield sparking as the crab’s chitinous legs scraped against the metal. ”Okay! Now!”

Vince took several heavy steps back, then rammed back into the beast, successfully upturning it.

As soon as the crab was flipped over, Ray immediately plunged his sword into the soft underbelly of the monster.

With one wet KALCH sound, the beast became our dinner.

Ray staggered back, panting, and wiped a streak of glowing blue fluid from his forehead. ”That makes twenty-ninth for the day.”

”Those crabs are strong underwater. Invisible too,” Michael explained to me, ”but once we get them onto land, most of their abilities are useless.”

I stared at the pile of twitching remains and tilted my head. ”They killed twenty-nine of those things? What are we doing, opening a seafood franchise when we get back?”

Ray noticed us then and gave me a sly grin. He made a comment about how nice my ’dress’ looked.

I immediately called him an uncultured swine and informed him that this was a Roman toga.

It didn’t matter.

Vince joined in too, saying I looked pretty.

I told both of them to fuck off.

Just then, Kang burst out of the silver water, huffing and puffing. His face was bright red as yet another glowing crab chased him onto shore.

Ray and Vince swiftly moved back into position, intercepting the creature while Kang bent over, hands on his knees, recovering his breath.

Once the crab was dealt with, Kang dove straight back into the sea like a suicidal fisherman.

Michael grinned beside me. ”Actually, most of these aren’t for eating. Well, the legs are. But the shells... we need those for the hull.”

He gestured toward the shoreline, and that was when I spotted something that I had no idea how I missed until he pointed it out.

It looked like a ship. Or, more accurately, the skeleton of one.

It was a large structure, roughly twenty feet long, assembled from a bizarre mixture of sturdy wooden logs, flexible saplings, and the translucent, iridescent carapaces of the giant crabs that I just witnessed Ray and Vince hunting down.

All the materials were stitched together into a half-formed hull that glimmered faintly under the light of the crimson moon, like the bones of some otherworldly creature being reborn as a vessel.

And right in the middle of it all was Alexia.

From the way she casually carried heavy logs under one arm and expertly pulled thick plant fibers with the other — quite literally sewing wood and shell together as if she were stitching fabric — I could immediately tell that most of her strength had returned.

There was no strain in her movements. None at all.

Even as she exerted an unreasonable amount of power to shape the hull almost entirely by herself, her posture remained as relaxed and graceful as her movements were smooth and efficient.

Michael didn’t need to explain who had built the cabin anymore. It was obviously her.

I looked around again, and at a short distance away, I noticed Lily.

She was sitting cross-legged in the sand, surrounded by what could only be described as a mountain of oversized rib bones.

Her hands were holding what I assumed was Juliana’s katana, and she used it to methodically dismantle the carcasses of those translucent beasts.

Wow! Everyone is working so hard — is what I thought... until the moment my gaze landed on Juliana Vox Blade.

My Shadow was humming a catchy tune to herself, her cotton-white hair tied up in a high ponytail as she serenely roasted strips of tender meat over an open flame.

Did she take the easiest fucking job? I was absolutely indignant.

While the rest of them were wrestling aquatic nightmares and performing backbreaking manual labor, she was sitting there like she was at a summer camp barbecue.

What a slacker!

She didn’t even have a smudge of soot on her face.

Maybe Juliana sensed my judgmental vibes, because she turned her head in my direction and clapped pleasantly. ”Oh, you’re awake. Come eat. Nice dress, by the way.”

”It’s not a dress! It’s a toga! A toga!” I raged, then scoffed dramatically. ”And I will eat, but shouldn’t you be helping with something more strenuous? Poor Ray is out there fighting one beast after another with only one hand, and Alexia is building a goddamn ship alone!”

Juliana glanced at me dryly, then returned her attention to the sizzling crab meat and echoed my scoff. ”Since when did you start worrying about fair labor distribution? Also, Alexia is surprisingly good at naval engineering when she’s motivated by the desire to sleep in a real bed. So stop stressing about little things and sit down to enjoy my culinary brilliance.”

I wanted to argue. I really did want to bring justice to the other laborers!

But the closer I got, the more the scent of roasted meat invaded my nose, and my stomach suddenly remembered that it had been empty for what must have been like several weeks at that point.

My legs also began to shake because I had absolutely no energy left to stand and be morally outraged.

So I surrendered to hunger. I decided to drop onto a nearby log and devour the first batch of meat she was about to hand me.

...But just as I moved, something shiny caught light in the corner of my vision. I snapped my head toward it and practically gasped.

It was... a golden greatsword, plunged into the ground near the far end of the cabin.

It gleamed softly in the eternal dim light of this white shore, its blade reflecting the silver sea behind it like a mirror of moonlight.

My eyes widened. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Ever.

Slowly and reverently, I extended my hand toward it. The sword trembled once, as if reacting to my yearning.

Then it tore itself free from the white sand and shot toward me, drawn by an unseen force.

I started running toward it at the same time.

And I swear the entire scene started playing in slow motion with an emotional orchestral music swelling theatrically in the background.

The wind whipped my toga around my legs. White sand kicked up in a dramatic spray behind my heels. My heart hammered in my ribs with pure, unfiltered joy.

Aurieth! My beautiful, golden, priceless, god-slaying baby!

I reached out with my only hand, fingers splayed and ready to feel that familiar, weighted leather grip settle perfectly into my palm.

We were going to be reunited.

We were going to—

CLANG!!

The sword did not land in my hand.

Because I was a one-armed man with the balance of a confused toddler, I misjudged the trajectory entirely.

The hilt of the greatsword missed my palm.

Instead, the flat of the massive blade smacked me squarely in the forehead.

”GACK!” I went down hard.

The orchestral music in the background screeched like a dying record player and came to a stop.

I collapsed into the sand... but still did not let go of Aurieth!

Because I was never letting her go now! Never!

Yes, her, by the way. She was my baby now!

I hugged her tightly and rolled around in the sand while kissing her radiant blade, essentially cradling a five-foot slab of golden metal like it was a newborn infant.

I groaned, half in pain and fully in bliss. ”Oh, my sweet baby! I thought I’d never see you again! Why did you take so long to come back to me, huh? Do you know how worried I was for your safety? Are you okay? Did the God’s nasty ichor stain my pretty baby’s pretty face? Don’t worry, Papa’s here!”

The silence from the rest of the beach was loud.

Ray and Vince had stopped wrestling the thirty-first crab to stare at me.

Hell, even the crab was staring at me.

Michael was rubbing his temples with both hands. Even Alexia paused mid-seam to watch me make out with a broadsword. Juliana went right back to flipping meat as if this were a perfectly normal occurrence that she had to deal with on a daily basis.

”He has lost it.”

”Did he ever have it, to begin with?”

”Is he... is he happier to reunite with a fucking sword than he was to see us!?”