PAF 02

Chapter 2

How could a pathetic beggar like me end up sleeping in a cozy place like this, even if it was just a rundown warehouse? There was actually a simple story behind it.

A while back, a massive fire had swept through this part of the district, and I had thrown myself straight into the roaring flames to drag a few helpless people to safety. The owner of this shabby warehouse happened to be one of them. Since everyone in this neighborhood was dirt poor, he couldn’t offer me much in the way of a reward, but he did grant me a soft pile of straw and a roof over my head.

I suppose his conscience wouldn’t allow him to let a young woman sleep out on the cold, unforgiving streets.

At any rate, they were good people. Despite barely having two copper coins to rub together, they always helped one another out.

They were folks who lived hand-to-mouth, unable to look beyond the next morning, yet they would still stretch out a hand to aid anyone facing hardship.

That was the exact reason why major crimes or bizarre incidents rarely occurred in these specific slums.

While I was lost in my own dreary thoughts, the lady who owned the warehouse spotted me and marched over.

“Hey! You’re still sleeping at this hour?”

“Ah… well. Yes.”

As I scratched the back of my messy head and offered a vague, half-hearted reply, the lady shot me a look that screamed pure pity and disappointment. It was only natural—to her eyes, I was a perfectly healthy adult idling the day away like a useless vagrant.

The thing was… I had zero motivation for life.

“Listen up! Someone from the Imperial Palace arrived in the district today,” she said, her eyes wide. “I have no idea what grand business royalty has in the slums, but you might actually land a proper job! You clean up nicely when you try, so you need to go out there and make a good impression!”

“Ughhh…”

Before I could protest, the lady forcibly began scrubbing my grimy face with a bowl of stale water and a rough rag she had brought along. She was a deeply kind woman—a persistent nag, sure, but genuinely desperate to see this lazy beggar land an honest living.

The Imperial Palace, huh?

A sudden, sharp intuition flickered in my mind, prompting me to ask.

“…Did you say someone came directly from the Imperial Palace?”

“Yes! Word is they’re recruiting workers on the spot. I don’t know what kind of labor it is, but any job handed down by the Imperial Palace is bound to pay well!”

So today was the day.

It was happening a bit later than I had originally anticipated, but the time had finally come.

✦ ✦ ✦

I might be a miserable slum beggar right now, but I held a secret advantage: I knew the future of this world.

How, you ask? Because I had read the book containing this world all the way to its very last page. And I hadn’t just idly skimmed it, either. I had thoroughly summarized, organized, and memorized every single plot point in preparation for specific events.

What does that mean? It means this entire reality exists inside a novel.

Truth be told, I wasn’t originally a native of this world. I was merely a traveler from another universe who had the terrible misfortune of possessing the body of this slum beggar.

In my previous iteration, I had possessed the grand protagonist of this book—the legendary “Azure Flame Mage”—and had fought my way to the absolute climax. No… I was supposed to reach the happy ending, but everything went violently off the rails at the finish line. I died, got dragged into a completely different body, and ended up trapped in the narrative as a nameless extra.

Thanks to that horrific twist of fate, I lost every single high-tier ability I had once possessed. I lost my way back to my original world, and I even lost the crucial memories of who had betrayed me at the end.

In short, my life was in a far more wretched state than that of a typical slum beggar.

That was precisely why I had grown so profoundly lethargic, doing nothing more than breathing and surviving day by day.

I suppose I could have simply accepted my new identity, given up on my past life, and settled into this peaceful routine. But unfortunately, this beggar’s life wasn’t scheduled to end peacefully, either.

The Empire’s current ruler was a tyrannical, arrogant tyrant who didn’t even view the impoverished residents of the slums as human beings. After scheming for ways to clear out these “useless leeching humans,” he decided the most efficient route was to offer them all up as dark sacrifices to a forgotten god.

Which meant… if these poor souls blindly followed the imperial soldiers today, every single person in these slums would be turned into a living blood sacrifice.

It was classic, textbook evil—the exact type of senseless, moronic atrocity expected from a corrupt Empire.

If I stayed here, I would inevitably be dragged off to the altar as well. Yet, I possessed neither the divine power nor the lingering willpower to derail the plot this time around.

Honestly speaking, if even the mighty Azure Flame Mage failed to crush the Empire, what could a powerless beggar like me possibly accomplish?

Sure, I only fell because I was stabbed in the back, but letting my guard down was my own foolish error. I just had to accept this pathetic reality as my new fate.

More than anything, my “original” self—not this beggar—had been bound by a special constraint that prevented me from altering the main plotline anyway. I had no choice but to stand by as a bystander.

Besides… living as a beggar wasn’t entirely terrible. The people here were genuinely kind.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—after I restarted my life as a beggar, the original plot seemed to have warped. The horrific sacrificial ritual that was supposed to occur much earlier never took place, and the Empire continued onward in peaceful prosperity.

But it seemed my baseless optimism had officially run out today. To think the Imperial Palace had actually sent recruiters to the slums…

What was bound to happen had finally caught up to me.

“Hey, you there!”

“Hm?”

A soldier’s thunderous voice, accompanying a finger pointed directly at my face, snapped me out of my spiraling thoughts.

I truly hadn’t wanted to come out here, but after receiving several aggressive smacks on the back from the warehouse lady, I had been dragged into the clearing to be evaluated by the imperial guards.

“And you… you… and you over there. Step out. Follow me.”

The moment the soldier finished declaring his picks, the chosen group exchanged bewildered, uneasy glances. A few wore thoroughly confused expressions, but as soon as I realized the common thread among us, my face twisted into an ugly scowl.

‘They only picked young, attractive women…?!‘

The Empire was a rotten country ruled by a trashy emperor and a nobility that was somehow even worse.

It took zero brainpower to guess what a scum like that intended to do with a collection of young, defenseless women!

‘Ah, damn it all!‘

Instantly assessing the danger, I spun on my heel and bolted in the opposite direction.

“Hey! Catch her! Quick!”

The soldiers’ angry shouts echoed behind me as heavy footsteps gave chase.

To be completely honest, since nothing out of the ordinary had happened up until today, I had secretly wondered if I had possessed a completely different novel by mistake. Time had flowed by so peacefully that it felt as though the Empire’s mad emperor didn’t even exist.

And now, out of nowhere, he was ordering his men to rounded up only young women?

Honestly, if we were being gathered as living sacrifices, there was at least a tiny chance the story’s new protagonist might swoop in and save us. But with a trashy development like this, wasn’t I just being turned into a tragic maiden destined for royal exploitation?!

And a tragic, powerless maiden like me stood absolute zero chance of outrunning trained imperial soldiers.

“No! Let me go! I said I’m not going!”

I was caught in mere seconds. Even though I bit the soldier’s arm, thrashed wildly, and threw an absolute scene, I was ultimately grabbed by the scruff of my neck like a stray cat and dragged all the way to the Imperial Palace.

And that was precisely how I ended up in this absurd situation.

‘What on earth am I going to do with my life…?‘

I stared blankly up at the ceiling of a lavish bedroom that easily rivaled the grand scale of the palace exterior. Reaching a hand toward the hand-painted moldings, my eyes fell upon my pale, clean skin—meticulously scrubbed by a horde of palace maidservants—and the ornate gold bracelets lining my wrists.

The sweet, heavy fragrance of perfumed oils drifted from my skin. Wrapped in silk and lying on a plush mattress instead of my usual pile of warehouse straw, my limbs sank into a state of involuntary relaxation.

So… these high-born bastards were the only ones allowed to enjoy such sickening luxury.

This exact injustice was why I had resolved to burn their entire kingdom to the ground in my past life.

Yet, some treacherous bastard had stabbed me in the back, causing the entire rebellion to fail and leaving me in this pathetic state.

My powers… my divine magic… all gone.

With a bitter sigh, I made a subtle gesture in the air. Space itself fractured with a faint ripple, spitting out a massive, leather-bound tome into my open palm.

Embossed across the dark cover in fluid, elegant calligraphy was its title:

[ Archive ] (The Book of Archives)

This ancient tome, now entirely devoid of the vast mana that once fueled it, was currently no different from a mundane notebook. Plain white paper, stark black ink. Nothing more.

The only contents residing within its pages were the meticulous, handwritten plot summaries of this world’s true ending—which I had drafted before entering this reality—and the bitter, hateful curses I had scribbled down immediately after being betrayed and cast into the gutter.

Well, even in this useless state, it served a minor purpose. Since my memory was far from perfect, I could re-read my notes to process my boiling emotions and keep my sanity intact. Still, considering what this artifact was truly capable of, I couldn’t help the crushing sense of loss that weighed on my chest.

Originally, this artifact possessed unimaginable power…

It could do far more than simply obliterate the Imperial Palace in a single night. At the very least, its authority would have allowed me to escape this disgusting silk cage in the blink of an eye.

The even larger problem was that I couldn’t even remember the full scope of what I used to be capable of anymore.

After losing my original magic and possessing this frail beggar’s body, my memories of the past had begun to fade like smoke.

I was slowly becoming a true native of this book—assimilating completely into its pre-written world.

If I spent a few more years trapped in this state, I would completely forget my true, original self. In fact, if I tried right now, I couldn’t even recall my own original name.

‘Though it looks like a useless book now… if it could just absorb a massive pulse of mana and be restored, it would regain its true form.‘

Of course, in a mundane location like this—and from the helpless position of a slum beggar—obtaining raw, high-grade mana was impossible. The only alternative was to wait decades for the book to slowly absorb the faint, ambient mana lingering in the atmosphere. But long before those decades passed, my soul would be fully assimilated into this world.

“How suffocating…”

I sighed and tossed the heavy tome back into the rift, letting space seal shut behind it. Then, as I casually glanced toward the heavy bedroom doors, I froze mid-breath and shot straight up in bed.

‘What the—when the hell did he get in here?!‘

A man was standing quietly near the threshold.

No… looking at his striking, youthful features, he was far too young to be the current emperor. He had to be the Crown Prince.

‘Don’t tell me… did he just watch me pull a glowing magical book out of thin air and shove it back into space?!‘

Before panic could fully set in, the sheer, unbelievable beauty of the Crown Prince wiped every coherent thought straight from my mind.

Setting aside the fact that this world was contained inside a novel, the sight before my eyes looked as though it had been plucked directly from a high-fantasy masterpiece. He was breathtakingly, unfairly stunning.

He possessed radiant golden hair that shimmered like sunlit dandelion petals and refreshing, clear eyes that blended the crisp blue of a summer sky with the vivid green of early spring. Topped with a soft, gentle expression reminiscent of a spotless fawn, he looked the part of a pure, fairytale prince. Based on his angelic appearance alone, he didn’t look like he belonged to the corrupt, bloodstained imperial bloodline at all.

The Crown Prince took a slow step forward, his striking eyes locking onto mine with an intensely emotional, wistful gaze.

“…I’ve finally found you.”

‘…Found what?!‘