Free Web NovelChapter 1: The Main Villain
A handsome crimson haired young man sat in the middle of a luxurious bedroom sitting down cross-legged, the curtains were closed and the locks were bolted several times.
Caius slowly opened his eyes and sighed.
"I hate it in this place."
The words felt heavy.
It had been exactly seven days since the incident. Seven days since the blinding glare of headlights, the screech of rubber on wet asphalt and the crushing impact of a speeding truck had violently evicted his soul from his modern mundane life.
When he had first opened his eyes and seen the ornate, vaulted ceilings and the archaic, gold-threaded tapestries of this room, a brief fleeting spark of joy had ignited in his chest.
Reincarnation...
It was the ultimate fantasy. He had always wanted to leave the suffocating monotony of his old world behind, to step into a realm of magic, absolute power, and endless horizons but alas, he would rather it be anywhere but here.
This was not some generic, happy-go-lucky fantasy world where a benevolent goddess handed him a legendary sword and a pat on the back.
This was Ur... A brutal primeval supercontinent saturated in blood and divine authority and worse, it was a world he knew very well.
It was the world of [God Reborn].
In his past life, [God Reborn] had been a massive genre-defining hit video game.
It was a masterpiece that had dominated the charts, dragging millions of players into its incredibly dense lore.
On the surface, it played like a classic, high-budget fantasy RPG.
You took control of a blond-haired young man, the last surviving heir of a fallen, righteous noble house.
The first half of the game was a masterpiece of world-building and progression. You explored ancient ruins, leveled up your divine magic, and engaged in a beautifully crafted dating simulator mechanic.
The core objective seemed obvious: seduce the phenomenally powerful heroines of the continent, gather their militaristic clans under your banner, and rebuild your fallen house to its former glory.
It was standard addictive power-fantasy bait.
...Until Chapter 50.
Caius shuddered, his crimson hair falling over his eyes as he recalled the psychological horror of the game’s midpoint twist.
The game violently switched genres. The righteous, blond-haired Protagonist was not a human hero fighting for justice... He was the fully awakened psychopathic reincarnation of Helion, the God of Light.
The dating simulator mechanics? The romance? The emotional bonding? It was all a calculated grooming process.
The heroines were the highest-tier "Blessed" of their respective gods. They were the perfect untainted conduits of divine authority.
Once their affection meters maxed out and their divine contracts peaked, the Protagonist didn’t marry them.
He slaughtered them. He violently sacrificed them on golden altars to devour the authorities of their patron gods, using their blood to fuel his ascension past the normal pantheon to achieve ultimate unquestionable supremacy.
It was a sick twisted masterpiece of a game and in this sick, twisted masterpiece, Caius Draxos was not a bystander.
He was the Main Villain.
’Of all the people to possess,’ Caius thought bitterly, rubbing his temples as a dull ache throbbed behind his eyes. ’I had to become the Great Heretic.’
In the lore of [God Reborn], Caius Draxos was the ultimate final boss.
He was the only entity on the entire continent of Ur who possessed a hidden power capable of permanently stopping the Protagonist but reaching that power required the original Caius to completely snap.
Driven mad by his own inadequacy and the crushing expectations of his family, the original Caius was destined to abandon the 13 Major Gods, embrace the ultimate taboo, and sign a contract with a primordial Devil.
He would become the Heretic King, destined to wage a catastrophic, apocalyptic war against the reincarnated God of Light at the climax of the story.
And, inevitably, because it was a video game, the Protagonist would strike him down in a flash of blinding, righteous glory leaving Caius’s corpse to rot in the ruins of his own ambitions.
"Screw that," Caius muttered to the empty room. "I’m not dying for some blond lunatic’s ascension."
To survive this nightmare, his path was agonizingly clear.
He had to completely rewrite the whole game... He could not afford to wait around and let the Protagonist gather his sacrificial lambs.
He needed to strike first. He needed to rip the board to pieces. If the Protagonist needed the heroines to ascend, then Caius had to get the heroines over to his side.
He had to steal them, secure their loyalties, and pull them away from the slaughterhouse that awaited them.
If Caius could bring them under his wing, he wouldn’t just be saving their lives; he would be equipping himself with an impenetrable political and military shield but there was a massive, humiliating issue with that grand strategy.
Caius slowly lifted his right hand. He focused his mind, drawing upon the core that rested near his heart, desperately trying to summon the terrifying overwhelming power that a noble of the Age of Gods should possess.
The air in the room grew slightly warm as a small pathetic crackle echoed in the silent bedroom.
A small gray plume of ash trickled out of his palm and drifted aimlessly onto the expensive carpet.
Caius stared at the ash with his expression turning entirely deadpan.
"Fucking useless."
In the Age of Gods, power was absolute.
The 13 Major Gods did not just observe the world; they actively dictated its laws through their chosen vessels.
The power system, the Divine Ascendancy, was a brutal hierarchy. If you were "Unblessed," a mortal without a divine contract, you were nothing but fodder.
You relied on standard steel and human physical limits, destined to be crushed under the heel of the nobility.
To become something more, you had to form a contract. You had to become "God-Touched" channeling your patron’s specific mana to reinforce your flesh and bone and the higher you climbed... from Exemplar to Saint to Demigod, the closer you became to a walking natural disaster.
Caius was born into House Draxos.
They were an ancient hyper-militaristic bloodline stationed at the savage borders of the empire.
They were the shield and the sword against the untamed wilds and for thousands of years, the members of the Draxos bloodline were meant to sign their contracts exclusively with Valerion, the Major God of War and Blood. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
A true Draxos awakened with a terrifying crimson aura. They fought with a frenzied, explosive bloodlust that could shatter castle gates and rout entire armies.
Weakness in House Draxos was not just frowned upon; it was actively cut out but when it was Caius’s turn to stand before the ancestral altar and receive his divine right, the God of War had looked down upon him and found him entirely lacking.
Valerion had rejected him. The patron deity of his own bloodline had refused to grant him even a single drop of martial mana.
Faced with the terrifying prospect of immediate exile or execution by his own father for being an Unblessed cripple, the original Caius had done something desperate.
To secure his legal standing and force his way into the prestigious Divine Academy, he had reached into the absolute bottom of the divine barrel. He had bypassed the 13 Major Gods and formed a contract with a dying forgotten Minor God of Ash.
It was a contract so weak and so fundamentally pathetic that it barely registered as magic.
Caius clenched his fist, crushing the dying embers into gray dust.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with fucking ash? Blind someone? Give them a mild cough?"
The sheer absurdity of his situation threatened to crush his sanity. He was living in an era where the high-tier Blessed could alter the landscape.
Maeve for example could summon a fortress of hardened earth with a stomp of her boot.
Isolde could freeze a courtyard solid in a heartbeat.
Not only them but when Blessed of the Goddess of the Wind reached the Saint stage, they could literally tear oceans in half to allow their fleets to pass.
And the Main Villain... the great and terrible Caius Draxos... was sitting in his bedroom producing chimney sweepings.
How was he supposed to seduce the proud god-blooded heroines of Ur with this?
How was he supposed to command the respect of House Draxos, or survive the inevitable, apocalyptic clash with the reincarnated God of Light?
A Devil’s contract wasn’t even on the table yet... he didn’t even know where to begin finding a primordial Heretic altar, and even if he did, his frail ash-tainted body would likely disintegrate the moment a Devil looked at him.
He was trapped. He was a dead man walking, ticking down the days until his scripted execution. freewēbnoveℓ.com
Knock! Knock! Knock!
The sudden sound made Caius flinch, his crimson eyes darting toward the heavy oak door of his bedroom.
"Young Master Caius?" a soft, trembling voice called out from the hallway.
It was one of the estate’s maids. "The Patriarch demands your presence in the grand hall. Dinner is being served. He... he said that if you do not present yourself tonight, your rations will be cut for the remainder of the month."
Caius gritted his teeth with his jaw muscles feathering.
The ’Patriarch’ was his father, Lord Voran Draxos. A monstrous man who stood seven feet tall and reeked perpetually of blood.
To Voran, Caius was worse than dead; he was a living stain on the family’s flawless military record.
Going to dinner meant sitting in suffocating silence while his older brothers... true blood-soaked Blessed of the God of War mocked his frail constitution and his pathetic Ash core.
He kept quiet.
"Young Master?" the maid pleaded with her voice tinged with genuine fear.
Disobeying the Patriarch’s orders in this household usually resulted in severe physical punishment, and the servants were often the ones who bore the brunt of the collateral damage.
Caius remained perfectly still.
He felt a pang of guilt for the maid, but he simply could not face the wolves tonight... Not when he was this weak... Not when a single backhand from his oldest brother could shatter his ribs.
After a long, agonizing minute of silence, the woman stopped knocking. He heard her let out a shaky defeated sigh before her soft footsteps retreated down the stone corridor, fading into the vast oppressive echoes of the Draxos estate.
Alone once more, Caius leaned back against the edge of his massive bed and let out a long exhausted sigh, staring up at the vaulted ceiling.
’I don’t want any stre—’
Suddenly, the air in the room completely vanished.
Time seemed to stop as the dust motes floating in the faint slivers of moonlight froze perfectly in place.
Immediately, a pristine glowing blue tab pinged into existence directly in front of his retinas, casting a cold light across his face.
[Congratulations for Surviving Seven Days In The Age Of Gods, you are now awakening the Monthly Sign-In System!]
His breath hitched.
The blood rushing in his ears drowned out everything else. His pupils shrunk to pinpricks as he stared at the floating otherworldly text.
’After all of this time...’ Caius thought with his hands beginning to tremble as a savage desperate grin slowly split across his face. ’Have I finally been rewarded?’
[Welcome To The Monthly Sign-In System! Sign In Every Month To Receive Rewards! Would you like to sign in?]
