Trouble is quite a troublesome thing.
People think they can avoid it by staying safe... by not talking much or by staying still.
But yeah, they couldn’t be any more wrong.
The more you avoid trouble, the more it wants you. It’s a masochist like that. The harder you push it away, the more it latches on, like you’re its toxic ex.
In a way it’s even more clingy than gravity.
Which is exactly why I found myself standing in front of the protagonist of this world—Noah Ashen Noctharion—barely a second after getting thrown into a portal by that hollow-eyed bastard, Azriel.
I hadn’t even gotten the chance to say something cool before—
A long-ass scythe rested across my shoulder. One movement away from permanently separating my handsome head from my body.
Snow-white hair, which were practically glowing, and crimson eyes without a single trace of emotion.Twin obsidian horns curled from her head—the undeniable proof of a demon bloodline.
Her expressions were neutral... too neutral to be humane.
I recognised her at first glance.
Arza Ashen Noctharion.
Resident psychopath and a scythe enthusiast whom I would have loved to avoid at the beginning part of the story.
A nutcase who didn’t feel many emotions due to her demon bloodline being too pure.
She was only at E+ Rank currently, and yet she could fight off people at D-Rank without breaking a sweat.
In the novel, she wasn’t a villain or a hero either. She was just one of those quiet monsters who showed up in tragic flashbacks and plot-wrenching backstories.
Noah never recognised her true worth...
... but I was different.
Back in my past life, I practically built her fandom. Made her the playable female main character in the game adaptation of the novel.
Now, now, don’t judge me.
For some reasons, people liked female main characters in the game more than male characters.
In my game, if people chose male characters, then they could play as Noah, and if they chose female characters, they could play as Arza.
She topped character polls for three years straight, outshining Noah’s stats by a landslide.
So, technically? I was the one who actually made her famous.
This ungrateful wench was about to slice my head off.
Tsk. How ungrateful people can be.
Still, I didn’t flinch. I didn’t beg or panic or pretend to be scared. Because fear was useless.
If she were going to kill me, she would do it. If she wasn’t, no amount of groveling would change her mind.
So instead, I met her eyes and said,
"What are you doing?"
Even with the scythe at my neck, my voice was calm.
Her voice was calm, but her eyes shifted briefly toward the ground.
A small, slightly crumpled bar of dark chocolate lay on the dirt.
Huh? That’s it? Chocolate?
You’re trying to behead me over a damn candy bar?
Out of all the deadly reasons I’d imagined for my potential decapitation today, this one...
...well, this one definitely wasn’t at the top.
See, I knew a lot more about Arza than most characters in this world.
When I was designing the game, I made sure to ask Noah about her character information in extra detail. Obviously, I never told him my plan back then, I just said it was to get to know characters well.
Still, that guy gave me all the useful information he had planned about her.
Among them, there was one quirk that stuck out.
She liked chocolate. Not just liked. She was obsessed with them.
And of course, being the genius dev that I was, I capitalized on that. I even created an in-game event centered around it: "Sweet Surrender: Arza’s Chocolate Side-Quest!"
Players could buy limited-edition chocolate bars from the shop—at a very reasonable price, of course—to boost their compatibility with her.
It was just a useless event. I mean, compatibility didn’t actually do anything in the game, but people didn’t care. They threw their wallets to buy as much chocolate as they could.
So yeah. Chocolate really was a valid reason for attempted homicide. At least from her point of view.
I didn’t say sorry, it wasn’t my mistake in the first place.
Instead, I reached into my cloak’s subspace and pulled out two chocolate bars.
Honestly, I had thousands of these stashed away in my cloak. Along with other essentials like jerky, canned food, drinking water, hundreds of clothes, and enough instant noodles to survive a small apocalypse.
I extended the chocolate toward her.
She looked at the chocolate.
Then back to the chocolate.
A moment passed before she took the bars from my hand.
The scythe around my neck turned into glowing red particles before vanishing. Without a word, Arza turned around and walked off.
See, Arza might be a psychopath, but she wasn’t an unreasonable one. She knew when to attack... and more importantly, when to back the hell off.
She was terrifying, sure, but at least she had a consistent murder policy.
But then... there was someone else.
Someone who had a chronic and a medically concerning itch to die.
Noah Ashen Noctharion.
Protagonist of the world and the one who was designed after my best friend. And I have to say, this motherfucker looked eerily similar to the Noah I knew.
Noah—the real Noah—had said he poured all his emotions into building this character.
"He is the real me." That’s what he once told me.
But honestly, I didn’t have any intention to interact with this guy. At least not yet.
At this point this guy was too unstable. He could even try to chop my hand off if I try to talk to him, saying. "You are too noisy."
Not that I would let him succeed. I mean, Arza was different, because she was actually a full major rank higher than me.
This bastard, he had awakened merely for a few days with his strength being at F+ Rank.
I could at least hold my own against this guy. But for some reason the guy was looking at me in amusement.
But before I could dwell more on it.
A calm voice echoed from the air.
"Now that everyone is here, the entrance exam of Noxvalen shall commence immediately."