The streets were crowded and noisy, and the dejected figure of a young man walking through them did not seem particularly eye-catching.
Clearly, he was quite tall, with black hair and a pair of striking gold-colored eyes. Yet his hunched back, slightly long hair, four-diopter prescription glasses, and utterly ordinary aura made him seem completely unremarkable.
Ethan carried a cardboard box in his arms, recalling everything that had happened over the course of this very morning.
He had been laid off due to staff cuts. The girlfriend he had been dating for a year, whom he had not even held hands with yet, broke up with him for no reason at all. She screamed that he was useless, as though she had completely forgotten the money he had been giving her every month.
Everything ended before Ethan even had time to react. The moment he stepped out of the company building, he immediately saw his girlfriend clinging affectionately to the director's son. That young man was the perfect figure in everyone's eyes, yet had always targeted Ethan and gone out of his way to make things difficult for him.
Ethan hugged the cardboard box and listened to them mock him for a full ten minutes before he finally left.
Only after leaving the scene did it feel as though Ethan's mind had returned to him. He wondered why he had not simply walked away, but instead obediently stood there and endured the humiliation.
Did he have some kind of masochistic tendency?
He wondered why plots that only existed in novels kept happening around him, and why he only seemed clear-headed when he was alone. Maybe there really was something wrong with his nerves. Ethan had stopped questioning this a long time ago.
In any case, if this world were a book, he would definitely never be the protagonist.
Ethan thought this silently.
At that moment, the traffic light turned green. Ethan lowered his head, looked at the cardboard box in his hands, and walked forward in a daze.
He did not notice that at some point, the noisy stream of people around him had completely vanished. The air seemed to freeze, until a piercing horn suddenly blared from ahead.
The headlights were bizarrely bright, even in broad daylight.
A massive truck charged straight toward Ethan without braking at all.
Ethan's eyes widened. Everything happened too fast. By the time he could no longer open his eyes, the only thought left in his mind was—
How the hell is there a truck in the middle of the city center?! This world has completely gone mad!
Alright, and just like that, he was dead. He had never looked forward to death, but when it actually arrived, everything felt strangely ordinary. Or perhaps he had died too quickly to even feel pain.
Farewell, job. Farewell, all those stupid relationships!
Wait, hadn't he already died? Then what were these thoughts right now?!
Ethan jolted as if waking from a dream. He hurriedly tried to look around, only to realize he couldn't see anything at all. All his senses seemed to have vanished, and this bizarre feeling of being unanchored was truly unbearable.
At that moment, a distant yet resonant voice suddenly rang out, as though echoing across countless faraway mountains, emerging from the void itself.
"Master! We finally succeeded. I've come to bring you back!"
It was clearly meant to be a majestic voice, yet its lively, bouncing tone almost completely dissolved any sense of grandeur.
Ethan had never, in his entire life, been spoken to in such a cheerful manner. He couldn't help but pause. And that thing had just called him master?
Impossible. A life like his was only fit to be lived as a beast of burden.
As if it could read his thoughts, the voice suddenly wailed, "Please don't think of yourself that way, sob sob sob. I still arrived too late. But it's alright. Now we're finally ready to overturn everything…"
After a long, convoluted explanation that dumped such an overwhelming amount of information on him that Ethan felt his brain was about to explode, the strange voice finally stopped. It introduced itself as the "Protagonist Halo System," designated A07.
The entire space fell silent. After a while, Ethan slowly spoke up, "So what you're saying is that I'm a villain in countless other worlds, someone who gets suppressed, trampled on, grows stronger, and in the end gets dealt with by this so-called protagonist in the most miserable way possible?"
A07 immediately replied, "That's correct, Master. If I hadn't taken you away, then in this world, after being fired and betrayed by your girlfriend, you would stop eating and sleeping and throw yourself into building a career without rest. Five years later, you would return to make things difficult for the protagonist. In the end, you would be crushed by the protagonist's superior intelligence and financial power! Your final outcome would be going insane and being thrown into the sea as food for sharks!"
Ethan truly disliked that ending.
"And there are many other versions of me being manipulated like that across countless different worlds?" Ethan asked.
A07 spoke up immediately. "Yes, Master, but those are merely empty shells without souls. Once you return to those worlds, you will awaken to everything you have experienced."
"I can't maintain myself any longer. You need to jump to a new world. You won't be able to contact me during this time because my energy is still too weak. Oh right, there will be side missions for you. Don't forget to make your wife happy. She is our golden finger!"
A07 hurriedly left behind this stream of words. The next moment, Ethan felt the world spinning violently around him.
By the time he opened his eyes again, he was already in a completely different space. The floor gleamed, the ceiling was high, and the design was modern yet luxurious.
At the same time, unfamiliar memories suddenly flooded into his mind, accompanied by waves of stabbing pain so intense they were almost unimaginable. He couldn't help but freeze, clenching his teeth and lowering his head, forcing himself to suppress the groan that was about to escape his throat.
A worried voice quickly sounded beside him. "Chairman, are you alright?"
Very alright. Extremely alright, in fact.
Ethan opened his eyes, raised one hand to stop the assistant's anxious questioning, and looked toward the woman who was still sitting on the floor.
She was truly beautiful. Of course she was, because she was the female lead. Long, straight black hair, a pair of clear blue eyes, a delicate face, and snow-white skin.
The blouse and office skirt did not make her look ordinary at all. Instead, they only accentuated her alluring figure.
She was currently sitting sideways, her thighs pressed tightly together and wrapped in black stockings. Her fair hand rested on her own ankle. She pursed her lips with a hint of distress, her slightly lowered eyes shimmering with moisture, making her look pitiful at a glance.
That was right. Just moments ago, she had "accidentally" tripped right in front of Ethan, and now she had probably sprained her ankle.
In his previous life, Ethan had hated trouble and had not spared the female lead even a single glance.
But afterward, under the influence of the Will of the World, he was forced to "fall in love" with the female lead's kindness and occasional clumsiness. He began pursuing her, employing all kinds of coercive and overbearing tactics, pouring money into it without restraint.
The female lead resisted at first, but in the end, she still yielded.
Ethan thought that she had fallen in love with him, but in truth, that was not the case at all. The female lead was a spy planted in Ethan's company by the male lead. In the end, she not only deceived Ethan's feelings, but also leaked the group's business secrets to the male lead. This was precisely the reason the male lead was able to bring Ethan down and take the female lead back.
This might have been a happy and cathartic story for countless people, but Ethan was not among them.
In the middle of the night, he would always feel that he was unbearably foolish, making stupid decisions and acting blindly for the sake of love. Yet the next morning, everything would fall back into place, like an endless loop that never stopped.
But now things were different. There was nothing left that could force him back into that mold!
A faint glint flashed through Ethan's eyes. He suddenly smiled, knelt on one knee in front of the female lead, extended one hand toward her, and said softly, "Are you alright? Can you stand up?"
In this world, Ethan was a successful businessman, someone known for his arrogance and for looking down on everyone else.
Yet now, that very man was kneeling before her, wearing a gentle, considerate smile.
Lily looked at the large hand extended before her and felt her heart suddenly tremble, pounding even harder than it had when she deliberately fell just moments ago.
Why… this wasn't how things were supposed to be.