"What do you have to say for yourself…?" A bold voice asked and the young man that was being asked the question raised up his head to look up.
His face was a bit swollen with bandages here and there from beatings from the other Clan members though he was still handsome with his black hair and crimson indents on it as well as crimson eyes.
"..."
All around him was a meeting room and he was on a lower podium, this would decide the fate of the young man below.
The Judgment Hall of Clan Mornay was designed specifically to make the person on the lower podium feel small.
Theo had read about it in the game's lore entries… these stone walls were carved with the crests of every Mornay generation dating back four centuries and a ceiling high enough that sound traveled strangely as well as every chair at the head table elevated just enough that looking up at them required actual physical effort.
His sister had put thought into this room… A little too much thought.
'She really committed to the humiliation architecture.' He thought flatly.
"The first matter to address… not only did you awaken a useless Martial skill but you're also so much of a disgrace that none of the women in the clan react to your bloodline." The man spoke, he was a much larger man sitting on his chair with black robes and his long hair tied in a ponytail. It was like his own as well. "You were meant to continue the lineage with your Half sister but you can't even do that."
The young man's eyes went to the woman standing below, her hair was a lot more darker than Theo's and she had cold emotionless eyes as well, making his gaze flinch downward as though he was a scared child.
'Solène.' He noted internally.
She hadn't moved since the proceedings started neither had she spoken. Instead she stood with her arms folded loosely as though she were watching something mildly inconvenient rather than her half brother's sentencing.
She was in full army attire which was a dark fitted uniform with the Mornay crest pressed into the shoulder plate… Solène was only here because here on holiday and had just arrived today.
Their eyes met for exactly one second before she looked away.
"Okay… we decided to arrange a Fiancee for you outside the clan, for the first time, The Great Mornay clan reached out and got their son engaged to a descendant of one of the Great clans as well but you lost her." The Clan head gritted his teeth and the other head members did the same. "You lost your Fiancee to another woman… Another DAMNED WOMAN, It was not even a man but a woman! Then you decided to fight that woman which is from a lower Great clan than us and then you had the gall to lose!"
He slammed his fist onto the table and the table crashed completely, causing several Elders to try and appease him.
"ALL OF YOU SHUT UP!" He shouted out, silencing every single person before looking at the young man on the ground again. "You… I knew you were useless but you're the only descendant of mine that's a male! Why out of all of them are you the one more useless? I knew it was a mistake, I should have killed your mother before she gave birth to you."
All of them looked at him but the young man didn't speak at all… He didn't even try to argue and that made them look down on him even more.
This bastard couldn't even defend his dead mother.
The elders shifted uncomfortably and a few of them looked away, even people who despised Theo Mornay apparently had a limit for how much of this they wanted to witness directly.
"I've seen enough! Despite all of this uselessness, I can't just sentence you out of here as you are my only son so I will give you one more chance of redeeming yourself. I am sentencing you, Theo Mornay, to two months in the Punishment Realm." The moment he spoke, all of them including Solene Mornay, his daughter, looked at him with wide eyes. "The Academy's entrance exams are in two months so if you can survive for that set time and qualify in at least Top 20 in the Academy's Entrance exams then you will have my forgiveness. Now! I've seen enough, take him away!"
The two burly men who stood at the door of the meeting room carried him out from both hands, dragging him off.
"If I can do this to my own flesh and blood then it could be the same for the rest of you!" Those were the last words of the Mornay Clan Head as the heavy doors shut behind them.
The guards carried him through the hallways silently and his legs dragged against the ground. Theo coughed and a bit of blood splattered on the ground.
The hallways of the Mornay estate were long and deliberately cold with stone floors and minimal decoration.
Servants pressed themselves against walls as they passed and none of them looked directly at him… If it was a few years ago they probably would have bowed but now they just waited for him to be gone.
'Two months.' He was thinking through the numbers again even as his boots scraped uselessly against the floor. 'The realm has seventeen documented monster types in the game files… and three of them can kill an Éveil cultivator in a single hit without the right preparation. I've accounted for all three though so I should be good.'
"I don't want to hear anything from you…." One of them barked at him. "You disgrace… you made Clan Head angry, I could be an even better son than you."
Theo said nothing. The guard had a point technically… almost anyone in this building could have been a better son to Ronan Mornay than the one he'd actually produced.
That wasn't an insult so much as an observable fact.
They went down several winding steps and finally at the base of the lowest floor behind locked magic steel doors, there was a glowing purple portal that swirled like a whirlpool and it made all three of them tremble.
The cold coming from the portal was a different kind of cold than mere temperature… It had the kind that pressed against the chest and made the body instinctively want to step back.
Both guards had gone visibly pale the moment the doors opened and one of them was breathing through his mouth.
Theo looked at it calmly.
'There it is.'
"J-just throw him in and let's get out of here!" The first guard nodded and Theo was thrown through the portal, it swallowed him whole and then they ran off.
…
Theo's body came crashing on the other side on the rocky ground and he rolled for a bit before coming to a stop and looking at the sky.
"Ha…" He let out a sigh and stood up. "Acting like the main villain sure is tiring… I'm glad I can finally move away from that part now."
Once he stood up, he looked at the storage ring on his hand.
"These people were pretty dumb not to take my belongings from me before throwing me in here." He muttered and then summoned a potion, drinking it down and healing his wounds. "I still can't believe I entered my Sister's game."
It had all started as a suggestion… She was making an eroge game with a lot of Yuri cause according to her, Eroges needed to have "creativity" in them and all the girls chasing after a specific guy because he was the Protagonist and helped them out at some point in their lives was insane.
So what was the peak idea? Replace the guy with a girl and instead have her pick up the Heroines by helping them out.
'Yeah… pretty smart.' He thought, but as he was her Big Brother.
He played the game himself and it wasn't bad, it was a modern fantasy world with clans and awakening which was one of his favorite genres though throughout the gameplay though there were some plot holes here and there which they fixed together but there was a whole lot of drama too as well however above all of these, Emery couldn't help but feel sorry for a specific character and that was the Main Villain… Theo Mornay.
He was only "main villain" in title, usually main villains had enough power to at least attempt to attack the Protagonist but this guy awakened a low-ranking Martial skill instead of Arcane Magic like he was supposed to because according to his villainous sister, It gave him character.
Not only that, He wasn't popular in his own clan despite being handsome… After all, everyone in this world cared about power and appearances as well.
If you had both of them, you could get anything you wanted, Jobs, Opportunities… your looks as well as your power mattered.
'I have to admit, she was a bit obsessed with looks.' He thought, almost all of the guys in this world were hunks and the bare minimum for appearance was a model back on Earth.
Theo's Fiancee who had been spoiling with his monthly allowance cheated on him with the Protagonist and the money was going to her and when he fought her in the original game… she beat him easily.
He was sentenced to the Punishment Realm for two months and by sheer will, he survived and grew a bit stronger to enter the Academy's Entrance exam only to get beaten up again by the Protagonist and failed to qualify to enter the Academy so he got expelled from the clan.
She introduced him a few more times before finally killing him off… He wasn't a Main Villain at all, but more like the class clown.
"But I'll change all of that now." Theo sat down on one big rock while looking at the dark grey sky, in the distance was a brilliant black tower spiraling in the sky. "Thanks to a good decision I made."
Given the lack of stakes in the game and the Protagonist wielded the power of the Sun God, he had made his sister code in the blessing of the Moon God which would grant the one that found it the full power of the Moon God to oppose the Protagonist and she had assigned a character to get it pretty late.
'But that was meant to be a fail-safe…' He thought, he had really bad luck and what if that bad luck caused him to die from being struck by lightning and reincarnating in his Sister's Game?
The chances were low but not zero.
'I'll be the one to get the Moon Goddess's blessing now.'
He was lucky that this was the updated version that she had edited, if this was the original with all of those mistakes, he would have genuinely died by now.
"I'm burning time that I don't have." He stood up. "Open Menu."
A screen unfolded in front of him, it was the Menu available for the player to access their Status and Inventory so he opened his Inventory immediately and looked at the stock of items.
'Luckily I was able to reincarnate three weeks before this point.' He thought, he had to follow the plot to make sure that everything led to him being thrown in here.
It left a bad taste in his mouth being a Simp but it was all for good reason. 'Now I'll need this.'
He tapped on a set of Full Light Armor and it materialized over his body, it was a light set of armor with a strong black material covering it however for the vital parts of his body like the chest and torso as well as his back, plates of stainless mana steel were there.
'Okay… that's for protection, I'll need this as well.' He thought and tapped a Sword, it was a Mid-quality sword which was as much as he could afford while still spending on the Heroine to keep the plot going.
Theo held it in his hand and flexed it for a bit.
"I practiced sword fighting while I was at school." He muttered, it was a High-school for Awakened where all of the nobles practiced. "And I've gotten down the first and second styles of the Mornay Sword Art."
Well they were adopted from the cool styles he did with sticks when he and his sister were kids so it was easier for him to master.
"And finally, two spell scrolls." Theo said as it appeared in his hand,
Spells corresponded based on the skill you awakened… If you awakened a Martial skill then you would be limited to Martial spells while if you awakened an Arcane skill then you would be tuned in with Magic spells.
As for the original Theo, he had the Martial Skill known as Brutal Mantle which once it was activated multiplied raw physical output, strength, impact force and physical pressure by a random factor between 1x to 5x with different percentages per roll, it was a completely random multiplier per activation and the skill only lasted for 10 minutes with a cooldown of an hour.
'The only issue is that I've never gone past 2x before so I'll need these skills.' Theo thought, once he received that blessing then he wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.
He opened the first Spell Scroll and a tab appeared in front of his eyes, above the scroll.
[Martial Spell: Iron Grip]
[Tier: Tier 1]
[This spell concentrates mana into the hands increasing grip strength and impact force.]
[Would you like to learn this Spell, Y / N]
"Y." As he said that, a flow of knowledge entered his head and he tucked it back into his Inventory while looking at the second scroll.
[Martial Spell: Body Harden]
[Tier: Tier 1]
[This spell works by hardening the body with mana to reduce physical damage for a short window.]
[Would you like to learn this Spell, Y / N]
"Y." He said again and another flow of knowledge came out, he could perform the skill now and it would work alongside his Light Armor. "The Cooldown's almost out."
He returned it into his inventory and began running forward.
There was a cooldown of three minutes before the monsters in the punishment realm appeared and began attacking… and as he ran, he passed by a skull that had been lodged directly into the ground and stripped of all of its meat.
It was even rotting.
'That must be the recent guy that was sentenced here.' He thought as he continued running and there was a flash of purple light from the top of the tower in the distance as the gray world gained some color and monsters began appearing in the distance.
[Ding!]
[You have received a new quest: Survive the Mornay Punishment Realm]
[Rewards: Your Life]
'Alright.' Theo thought as he continued running. 'It's either I succeed or I die… I've come to terms with it, I'd rather die here than go back up there and surrender myself to Fate.'