"Ugh, I seriously have to stop reading novels right before I sleep. That's why I keep getting stupid dreams." Dante groggily opened his eyes and let out an annoyed groan. He was still exhausted, so he shut them again and tried to drift back off.
Dreams were always a gamble.
Sometimes they were pleasant, and sometimes they were so bad you wished you never fell asleep in the first place.
The one he just had was absolutely the second kind.
"Of all the characters it could have been, why that guy?" he thought bitterly. "Is it just because we have the same name? Because besides that, we have literally nothing in common."
The scenes from the dream kept looping in his head even though he was already awake, and the more he thought about them, the more irritated he got.
Who had it the worst in any novel?
Some would say it was the villains who had tragic pasts.
Others would say it was the side characters who showed up just to die and be forgotten.
But Dante had a different answer. It was the people closest to the protagonist.
Villains and expendable characters could at least get some pity from readers.
The protagonist's companions just suffered and nobody even cared.
Their whole purpose was to be tools for the protagonist to use, targets for the enemies he provoked, and eventually corpses that fueled his next power boost.
Honestly, they were the most pathetic group of all.
"Ah, for fuck's sake," Dante groaned. "I can barely sleep as it is after busting my ass at a garbage job that pays me nothing. And now on top of that, I have to dream about being the protagonist's obedient little lapdog who watches his childhood crush get snatched away. That was really the cherry on top."
He kept muttering complaints as he pulled himself upright and threw his arms into a big stretch, yawning wide enough to crack his jaw. His head was still foggy and his thoughts felt like they were moving through mud.
That was when he noticed the tent pitched in his pants.
A small grin crept across his face. "Good morning, little buddy."
It bobbed back at him in greeting.
"Alright, let me handle this real quick," Dante said, grabbing his phone.
He was about to pull up Cornhub and get down to business when he caught a glimpse of his reflection on the dark phone screen.
Something was wrong.
He looked like himself, but also not quite like himself.
What really threw him off were his eyes.
They were a deep crimson red.
"What the fuck?" Dante went stiff. "Did I awaken the Sharin-Gone or something?"
The instant he said that, every last trace of drowsiness vanished.
He rubbed his eyes again and again, convinced he was imagining things, but the color stayed exactly the same.
Only then did he actually take in his surroundings, and that made things even more confusing.
The room around him was one he had never seen before. It looked nothing like where he had fallen asleep. It was easily four times the size, filled with furniture that probably cost more than his yearly salary, and the whole place reeked of money.
"Hold on, why does this feel so familiar?" he whispered to himself. "Black hair, red eyes…"
Before the thought even finished forming, the pieces fell into place.
He bolted to the nearest mirror.
The second he saw his reflection, Dante went completely still. He slowly brought a hand up to his face, gave his cheek a hard pinch, and then jabbed a finger into his eye. The stinging pain made him wince.
"Shit… these are not contacts," he blurted out, totally dumbfounded.
Part of him desperately wanted to believe somebody was playing a prank on him. He wanted to believe some jackass was just messing with his head.
But reality was never that kind.
"Did I…" He gulped. "Did I actually transmigrate?"
He scanned the room one more time, and his voice was starting to tremble.
Then, like the universe decided to confirm it for him, a vicious pain ripped through his head out of nowhere. His vision went white, and a flood of memories that did not belong to him started pouring into his brain.
A long time later, Dante finally regained consciousness and dragged himself off the floor.
He had no clue how much time had passed while he was out cold, but after absorbing all the foreign memories that had been shoved into his head, one thing was absolutely certain.
He had been thrown into the novel he read the night before.
He was now Dante Ackerman, the same bastard he was bitching about after that stupid dream, except now the dream had somehow become his actual life.
"Sigh… I am never again touching a novel where a character has my name," he grumbled.
He drew in a long breath and made himself settle down.
"Not that any of that matters now."
It all happened so fast that it barely felt real, but there was nothing he could do except deal with it.
And honestly, it was not like anyone was missing him back on Earth.
There was also nothing worth going back to when his life was just a cycle of waking up, dragging himself to a garbage job that paid nothing, and doing it all over again.
This world was nothing like Earth.
On the surface, it looked like a regular modern city. But underneath all of that, awakeners and powerful organisations existed in the shadows.
Normal people walked around every day without the faintest idea any of it was real.
"Now that I think about it, Dante's master, or well, my master now, is an awakener herself. Even though she could hardly be called one.…"
He trailed off, and in spite of everything, he felt a sense of relief that he had at least read the novel all the way to the end.
The plot was pretty straightforward.
Ryan Raven, the main character, fell off a cliff, went missing for three years, and came back as a total monster.
Once he returned, he hunted down everyone who had wronged him. And while he was at it, he also won over the seven female students who studied under his mother.
Dante Ackerman happened to be the eighth student.
He was well aware that knowing the entire plot gave him a huge edge. If he played it safe, he could sidestep every major threat and probably make it to the very end alive.
But he had zero interest in doing that.
He was annoyed at how spineless the original Dante had been, especially when it came to letting his childhood crush get taken from him. But he also understood the guy's position.
Seriously, what was a regular person supposed to do against someone who could literally transform into a dragon?
On top of that, Dante was very clear on one thing.
Just playing it safe would not save him. He would still wind up with the same miserable ending.
"But it is not like fighting an awakener is something I can just wing," he muttered. "So what the hell do I even do?"
Even if he paid other awakeners to go kill the guy, they would probably just become free experience points for him.
Leave the protagonist alone for five minutes and he would trip over some legendary treasure, break through to the next realm, and somehow get stronger even while taking a shit.
The more Dante thought about it, the more absurd it all felt.
He sorted through his new memories and figured out that there was still a bit of time left before Ryan Raven made his return.
"But there is no way I can just become an awakener right now and get strong enough to beat his ass by the time he shows up," he said under his breath.
"And warning other people would be equally useless. Conventional methods do not work against that ridiculously overpowered son of a…"
He stopped mid-sentence, because a wild but strangely exciting idea just entered his mind.
The more he tried to dismiss it as crazy, the more he found himself genuinely thinking it through. He knew that trying to beat the protagonist while being noble and playing fair was a dead end.
After all, protagonists like Ryan did not actually have real morals either.
They were just self-righteous pricks who put on a good act while manipulating everyone around them.
Natasha Raven.
Ryan's mother, and also his master.
As soon as that name crossed his mind, the image of a stunning woman with black hair and golden amber eyes floated into his thoughts. Dante felt his throat go dry as his insane plan began to come together.
"If I need a way to keep Ryan in check, who better than his own mother?" he said quietly.
And when he thought back to how the original Dante ended up, his determination only got firmer.
"I am not going to die like a dog and get cucked by that piece of shit."
After his memories merged with the original Dante's, he had also picked up some of the feelings the guy had for Emma Evans, his childhood friend.
Even though he knew those emotions were not really his, he still could not stand the idea of Emma being with someone else.
"If the protagonist can turn into a dragon…" Dante said, a scheming grin spreading across his face. "I will turn into his dad!"
His grin stretched even wider.
"Ryan, by the time you get back, your mother will be mine, and I will be your daddy."
The very second he finished that sentence, a flat mechanical voice echoed through his mind.
[The destiny of a villain has been detected.]
[Analyzing the host's mentality and desire to determine a suitable system.]
[You have awakened the System Distributor.]