Chương 1: Oops, I Abused the Protagonist

Ophelia leaned her face against her fist, her cheek mushing up. The glow of her laptop was painfully bright in her bedroom. On the screen, the last page of Slayer's Requiem hung there, mocking her. What… a terrible ending. Slayer's Requiem was a female revenge fantasy manga. The main character, Rin, was an abused orphan girl with a special bloodline in a generically corrupt LitRPG society who rose up to save the world from the Third Demon War. Everyone who ever mistreated her was killed.

Those who laughed at her were stomped into the dirt. And anyone who stood in her way was roughly shoved aside. The audience never worried whether Rin would win, but only how spectacularly. For the last three years, Slayer's Requiem had been Ophelia's greatest guilty pleasure. It hit all the tropes, the female main character wasn't annoying, and the artwork was genuinely very good. The issue? At the end, in order to defeat the Demon King, Rin had to sacrifice all of her hard-won powers.

And to top it off, in the epilogue, it turned out she married her childhood boy best friend, became a housewife, and had three kids. She lived the rest of her days working on a farm as a normal human woman, with little contact with magical society. Well, this is gonna spark a new flood of fanfiction, thought Ophelia grimly, about to close the page. Then she caught the comments at the bottom.

'Reader for ten years here. I just have to say the ending was spectacular. All Rin wanted to be was to be a regular human girl, its wonderful to see that she finally got her wish.' Ophelia nearly fell out of her chair. Excuse me? How could you have been reading this story for ten years and come away with that impression of her character? Even if you just read the ending, you could clearly see that she only gave up her powers because it was the contrived last resort!

Did these people not have a lick of media literacy!? She decided to read more comments. Her temper only rose and rose. Are people... really this stupid? The hours passed in blur, her fingers aching at how many comments she was furiously typing. Suddenly, a sharp burning smell invaded her nose. What is that? Ophelia lifted her head. Her eyes widened. Oh shit! My ramen! I left it to cook while reading the last chapter! She ran down the stairs, careening into her smoke-filled kitchen.

In her panic, she grabbed the ramen maker's plug to yank it out, but electricity sparked in a violent rush. A numbing pain cascaded over her whole body and everything went black.

[Loading Transmigration System…] [Character Matchmaking Process Completed. 98% Compatibility] [All Qualifications Met. Commencing Transmigration into Slayer's Requiem] [Deducing Points Balance] In the endless darkness, Ophelia gaped at the system notifications. Of all the stories she could've transmigrated into, why Slayer's Requiem? So what if she got electrocuted by her cheap ramen maker and died? Couldn't she go to heaven instead? Even hell would be better than that angsty trash story!

Suddenly, Ophelia found herself inside a luxurious ballroom. Hundreds of noblemen and aristocratic ladies danced and socialized around her, the sound of the orchestra sweet in her ear. Servants rushed around the room with small silver platters. Looking down, she saw herself in a dark plum gown, her bodice crusted with black teardrop-shaped jewels. Rings adorned her slender fingers, the precious stones catching the chandelier light with a cruel gleam. Did I transmigrate into a random background character?

Ophelia mused. Well, if I'm part of the aristocracy, at least I have money. I can escape to a faraway island before the Third Demon War starts. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. A nobleman with a bald head, an overhanging gut, and stuffed into yellow and cream suit approached her with a flute of champagne.

"Ophelia, are you enjoying the party? If anything isn't to your taste, please let me know immediately - after all, this is all in your honor. The Royal Mage Academy deeply appreciates your donation." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. She froze.

"Ophelia?" she asked faintly. The nobleman awkwardly scratched his double chin.

"I apologize, Lady Vyx. You told me to simply call you by your first name. I… I must have misunderstood." Lady Vyx? System, did you say I was 98% compatible with Lady Ophelia Vyx because we have the same first name??!! How could Ophelia not know who Lady Vyx was? The ultimate starter trash villainess? After keeping up with Slayer's Requiem for years, some arcs were crystal clear in her mind while others were vague.

To be honest, she probably read millions more words of Slayer's Requiem fanfiction than the actual manga, and her recollection of certain characters and plotlines had no doubt been influenced by fanfiction. But Lady Vyx was the story's first antagonist - and she was totally irredeemable. Even in fanfiction, only the most disturbed shippers kept her alive. Otherwise most writers just competed to make her death more terrible and miserable than the last fic's. A cold sweat began to gather in the small of her back.

At the start of most novels in this trashy genre, the main character usually needed to have a "big win" to establish themselves as a worthy protagonist in the eyes of the audience. For Slayer's Requiem, that was Lady Vyx. The aloof, beautiful woman picked orphans off the street, offering them a roof over their heads and three hot meals a day. Except, of course, she was evil.

Ophelia Vyx was a famous archmage in the story, a hero from the Second Demon War, but during the war she had been taken down by an incurable poison. After spending years in hibernation, she recovered enough to wake up, and started experimenting on orphans to try and find a cure for herself. One of these orphans had obviously been Rin. When the story started, Rin had already been experimented on for almost a year.

Because she was the protagonist, this torture was actually more of an explanation for her immunity to all types of poisons and venoms and her inhuman pain tolerance. And the countless scars that shocked others, wondering what kind of hell such a young girl had been through. Even though Lady Vyx was extremely powerful, she would occasionally experience flare ups from the poison that left her very weak. The protagonist timed her escape during a flare-up, killing her and escaping.

The murder of the famous and beautiful Lady Vyx also put a massive bounty on Rin. All of the other heroes proclaimed they would stop at nothing to get revenge, making team-ups impossible. I actually transmigrated into the starter villain that dies in chapter one! Ophelia looked over at the sweating noble, offering him a slight, mysterious smile but saying nothing. At least she could change the story now. Never pick up Rin off the streets - or any other orphan.

Rin might be a psychopathic bloodthirsty murderess hellbent on revenge, but she never killed innocents. As long as Lady Vyx stayed out of her way, she could live!

"Lady Vyx, do you have any plans for the Blood Moon Festival next week?" asked the nobleman, this time red and sweaty for a different reason.

"I have two tickets for the first-class box in Crimson Stadium, and I don't have a companion yet…" Blood Moon Festival? Wasn't that… in the story, wasn't that the opening scene? A battered girl strung up in a prison cell, looking out the window at distant fireworks? Oh no. This time it was really hard to stop from blanching. Ophelia grabbed a flute of wine from a passing servant, pressing it to her lips to hide the nervousness in her expression. Afraid to learn the answer, she asked the system a question.

How many points do I have? [-10, 000] [You must have a positive balance to buy anything from the Points Shop] Negative ten thousand?? Don't tell me I've already started torturing the protagonist??? How was she going to save her own life now? Ophelia turned to the man.

"What an… enticing offer. Let me think on it." Without waiting for the man's response, she dashed out of the manor - er, glided elegantly out of the manor.

"Hey, I'm an archmage, right? Can I teleport home?" she hissed. [Spell knowledge still downloading…] [Do you wish to see the spells currently available to you?]"Yes!" A blue pane appeared in front of her, showing her a scrolling list of an ungodly number of spells. Ophelia gaped. The story implied that Lady Vyx had been some kind of fraud, an archmage that bribed and threatened her way into getting the title, and wasn't actually as great as everyone thought she was.

Yet, she knew thousands of spells - and more were still in the process of being downloaded! Ophelia skimmed the list, finally finding [Warp]. The knowledge of how [Warp] worked, and how to cast the spell, felt instinctual. She knew it like she knew how to write. Ophelia didn't even have to draw a spell array in the air with her finger like mid-level mages; she didn't have to imagine the array in her mind like high-level mages. She just did it.

The air stirred as she vanished from the rose gardens, her feet landing in her own dark, gloomy fortress. Castle Nighthold. For all Lady Vyx loved luxury and fine items, her home was an ancient ruin of stone and creeping vines. It had been built to withstand the artillery attacks of mages on dragonback, with secret passageways, hidden libraries, and a lot of cobwebs. It was a dismal place. Either way, Ophelia didn't wait a moment longer. She dashed into the prisons beneath the fortress.

In the dark, a thin girl with shaggy black hair was strung up on the wall, her body covered in scars and fresh wounds. Some of the injuries were bubbling, while others were green and yellow - some were thin as papercuts, others were so deep the bone was visible. She looked like a complete horrorshow. The protagonist tilted her chin up, ruby red eyes peering through a fan of eyelashes at Ophelia with a totally blank expression. Crap.