Surviving as the Villainess’s Servant in a Martial Arts Novel Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 

There was a novel I read that I found absolutely boring.

Its title was <The Lord of Heavenly Pillars> 

It was a martial arts novel.

How did someone like me, who had always avoided not only martial arts novels but even epic dramas because they were too difficult to get into, end up reading a martial arts novel?

 

[Get 200 Cash instantly by reading the free chapter!]

 

Because I got baited by a cash event.

At the time, I was reading a mature romance-fantasy webtoon. Just as the male and female leads were about to have their steamy first night together, I found myself short by exactly 200 Cash.

‘Fuck, what do I do?’

I had enough Cash to rent the chapter. But it was their first night together, for crying out loud. That meant it was the kind of chapter I had to purchase permanently so I could come back and read it over and over.

However, I had recently had my part-time work hours cut, so I had to tighten my living expenses as much as possible. While I was debating whether I should just rent it and buy it permanently later, I happened to discover this event.

‘There’s no way I’m passing this up.’

With nothing but the determination to get my Cash quickly so I could savor every last bit of that first night, I opened the first chapter.

And before I knew it…

“Oh.”

I came to my senses and realized…

“This is the end?”

I had stayed up all night reading it….

“What the hell kind of novel is this?!”

The story of the novel was simple.

A protagonist who lived in the countryside with his widowed mother gets caught up in an incident involving the martial world one day, obtains various fortuitous opportunities, and eventually becomes the greatest martial artist under heaven.

It was a stereotypical premise, but it was fun.

Although the protagonist had a foolish personality that was out of step with the trends, he couldn’t stand by when he saw injustice. Watching such a righteous man gradually grow stronger and uphold his convictions was even more exhilarating.

If the protagonist had safely become the greatest under heaven like that, <The Lord of Heavenly Pillars> would have become the novel of my life.

“No.”

But that wasn’t how things turned out, and there was one reason for it.

“No, another heroine just showed up?”

There were simply too many heroines!

“How many is this now?”

To be fair, having a lot of heroines isn’t necessarily a problem. It wasn’t as if this was my first time reading a male-oriented harem story, and although there weren’t merely ten heroines but more than twenty, well, that could happen.

But there was a problem with the protagonist falling head over heels for every single heroine the moment she appeared.

 

[He gazed at the woman before him as though he were bewitched. Her fair skin, glowing white beneath the moonlight; her slender waist, delicate enough to fit in one hand; the sweet scent of a virgin carried on the gentle breeze made him feel his body growing hot.

 

‘Ah, if only I could spend the rest of my life with that woman…’]

Was it because he’d never seen a woman other than his own mother while growing up in the countryside? Whatever the reason, the protagonist completely lost his mind whenever he saw a pretty woman. And if he even happened to make eye contact with one, he’d immediately fall in love.

After watching the protagonist’s heart flutter for the twentieth… no, twenty-fifth time already, I was left speechless.

‘You want to spend the rest of your life with her again? Again?’

Hey, hey, you bastard. Didn’t you fall head over heels for another noble family’s daughter just yesterday?

You said that there was no better future wife than her because of how devoted and single-minded she was. You said you wanted to spend the rest of your life with her, confessed your love, and even came back with a token from her, and now what? You want to spend the rest of your life with another woman?

Is love a joke to you?!

‘Apparently it is.’

Because he’d made promises to spend the rest of his life with exactly ten women as a joke like that.

Who the hell could put up with a lunatic like him?

 

[“Yes, I did.”]

 

If he was going to turn this into a harem story anyway, then they should’ve just made all the heroines idiots so they could all live happily ever after, laughing and joking together!

But unfortunately, all the heroines were perfectly sane, so they couldn’t stand the male lead constantly changing his mind. Yet apparently they couldn’t bring themselves to let go of the protagonist either, because they went mad with jealousy and eventually began committing all sorts of atrocities.

 

[“Wh-why are you…! ”]

 

[“What? Didn’t I tell you before? I said that if you so much as looked at another woman’s face one more time, I’d ruin the bitch’s face. You agreed to that too, didn’t you?”]

 

All kinds of incidents and disasters occurred.

Sometimes one woman would slash another with a sword. Other times, they’d drug someone and throw them into the sea, bury them alive, frame them for a crime, and slaughter their entire family right before their eyes, and so on.

‘Is this supposed to be a martial arts novel or some imperial palace intrigue story?’

Eventually, even the heroines’ parents got involved in this mess. Unable to stand by and watch their daughters suffer from lovesickness because they loved the protagonist so much, the parents ended up kidnapping him.

 

[“You have three seconds to decide. Will you marry my daughter, or will I castrate you and turn you into something that is neither man nor woman!”]

 

Naturally, I was rooting for the parents.

‘Yeah, cut it off. Cut off that useless thing.’

But he was, after all, the protagonist of the novel.

No matter what kind of crisis he found himself in, he would escape through some absurd coincidence, and after barely getting away, the protagonist would tear the heroine’s parents’ limbs to pieces. As an added bonus, when the heroine eventually learned what had happened, she killed herself out of guilt.

I couldn’t help but sigh as I watched the carnage unfold.

‘For fuck’s sake, the guy who should’ve died is the one who survived…’

Fortunately (or unfortunately), the protagonist seemed to have learned something from this incident as well.

After bawling his eyes out in front of the grave of the heroine who had died, saying things he didn’t mean like, ‘I truly loved you. I wish I could follow you…,’ the protagonist suddenly reflected on himself and made a resolution.

 

[‘How can a true man blame others? It is all my fault. My indecisiveness brought about this disaster. If I remain like this, I’ll only hurt more people… I need to make up my mind now!’]

 

‘Seriously?’

I was genuinely surprised. I wondered if the man who couldn’t tell up from down whenever he saw a woman had finally developed some normal reasoning, and I even began to hope that perhaps this would be his chance to return to the righteous man he’d been at the beginning.

And sure enough, after that day, the protagonist disappeared for a while. He went deep into a secluded mountain valley, quietly meditating as he reflected upon his heart.

After a long period of contemplation, he thought.

 

[‘I’ve met so many people over the years. Among them were women who merely passed through my life for a moment, and there were also some with whom I shared deep affection.’]

 

‘Yeah, even you have to admit you’ve met quite a lot, huh?’

 

[‘But there isn’t a single one among them who isn’t attractive. One has a coy charm, another has a coquettish charm. Though each of them is different in appearance, every last one of them is unbearably lovable…’]

 

‘Oh, what the hell? Look at this bastard.’

 

[‘How could I possibly choose only one among all those lovable women? Furthermore, there isn’t a single one of them who hasn’t treated me well, nor is there one who hasn’t been sincere with me. How could I ever forsake even one of their deep feelings? If they were to become disappointed in me and leave… if I could never see them again…!’]

 

And then, all of a sudden, he cried out.

 

[“That’s right, I truly love them all!”]

 

I shouted along with him.

 

“You fucking ×××—!”

 

It was even worse when I saw the protagonist thinking, ‘Why don’t I honestly tell them all how I truly feel? And then I’ll love everyone equally. If I do that, they’ll all get along without fighting, right?’

I nearly collapsed from high blood pressure. I instinctively clicked the next chapter, feeling like I was going to get sick with rage if I didn’t see the protagonist get torn apart by a villain right then and there.

But there was no next chapter.

Looking again, I discovered that this novel had been on hiatus for a whopping three years!

“What a fucking piece-of-shit novel!”

I angrily opened my memo app right away.

Half out of my mind, I spent more than twenty lines writing nonstop insults about the novel and the protagonist… Then I suddenly came to my senses and threw my phone aside.

But when I thought about that filthy novel occupying a corner of my bookshelf, my blood started boiling again, so I picked up my phone and deleted everything from my download history to my purchase list.

Finally, as I gazed at my now-clean bookshelf, I smiled with relief.

‘That’s right! Who the hell needs martial arts novels? I’ll just read something sexy and forget about it.’

So, with the Cash I had left, I happily bought the permanent viewing rights to the mature webtoon, watched its fucking amazing first night, and erased <The Lord of Heavenly Pillars> from my mind.

“Huh?”

I transmigrated into that goddamn <The Lord of Heavenly Pillars>.

As the brain-dead ×××’s host of the protagonist? No.

As one of the countless heroines manipulated by the protagonist? No.

As some extra I’d never even heard of before.

Fuck this shit.