Every guy must have fantasized about being woken up in the morning by a cute childhood friend, right?
At least, back when he was still an ordinary gaming otaku in his past life, Greg had indeed fantasized about such scenarios more than once.
In those hazy, beautiful imaginations, the scene usually went like this:
The soft white light of early morning gently filtered through thin gauze curtains, casting dappled shadows on the duvet.
Reluctant to open his eyes fully, lazily buried in a soft pillow, a crisp, pleasant female voice tinged with a playful pouting tone would ring out beside his ear:
“Wake—up—already! You absolute cosmic super lazy pig! The sun's practically burning your butt!”
As consciousness gradually cleared, a fresh, delightful scent unique to a maiden would quietly drift into his nose—perhaps a faint blend of soapberry and sunlight, or perhaps some floral and fruity shampoo scent.
Then, as his vision cleared, he would see a cute girl straddling him, her cheeks slightly puffed out, her beautiful eyes wide and round. Even though she was urging him, her face harbored undisguisable care, as she pretended to be tsundere and added:
“Hmph! If you weren't my childhood friend, I wouldn't have bothered coming to wake you up! Hurry up and get out of bed, we're going to be late!”
Fantasies were always beautiful, bathed in soft, filtered light and heart-fluttering flutters.
As for reality...
“Aba... Aba aba...!”
A cold, hard, distinctly metallic foreign object intruded into his warm mouth without warning, bringing a near-suffocating sense of threat.
“Mmh! Ptui! Cough, cough—!”
Greg snapped awake from his sleep, his eyes suddenly flying open as he looked in terror at the source of his discomfort—
A beautiful young girl stood quietly in the middle of his somewhat cramped tent.
She had waist-length blue hair, deep and tranquil like lake water, tied impeccably into a high ponytail. Her ice-blue eyes were serene and rippleless, like a frozen lake surface in winter, looking down at him from above.
She wore Glory Cael Academy's standard uniform, draped with a dark blue, silver-edged short cape representing her status as the Student Council President, her posture as tall and straight as bamboo.
In her hand, she held a long sword with a thin blade that glinted with a cold light.
At this moment, the sharp tip—sharp enough to reflect the dim light inside the tent—was resting steadily right at the edge of Greg's open mouth. The blade was even stained with a bit of... glistening liquid, clearly saliva from inside Greg's mouth.
“You—! Are you trying to murder your former fiancé?!”
Greg finally dispelled the metallic taste and icy chill in his mouth. Shocked and enraged, he yelled at the expressionless blue-haired princess standing before him.
He could even feel cold sweat instantly breaking out across his back.
Indeed, this uninvited maiden who had woken him up in such a peculiar manner was none other than the First Princess of the Kingdom of Kahn, the second-year Representative of Glory Cael Academy, the Student Council President, and his former fiancée—Vivian Kahn.
If one had to be technical about it, in the background lore of the original game, Greg and Vivian could indeed be considered childhood friends.
When both were still young, due to the close relationship between House of Sass and the Royal Family, as well as young Greg's increasingly exquisite face earning the Queen's favor, both families had intended to match them. They often played together, learned court etiquette together, and ultimately even established an engagement.
However, as the years passed, the two walked down completely different paths.
Vivian's diligence and sense of responsibility allowed her to rise like a morning star, quickly becoming the First Princess that made the Royal Family proud.
Meanwhile, Greg, possessing zero magical talent, grew arrogant and engaged in an increasingly outrageous series of actions, gradually turning into the laughingstock of noble circles. The overlap between them grew smaller and smaller, and the rift between them deepened.
Ultimately, after Greg caused yet another scandal sufficient to bring shame upon the Royal Family, the King personally issued an order breaking off this long-defunct engagement.
From then on, the two completely severed ties on the surface, becoming strangers with virtually zero interaction in the original game.
Yet, in the player community of the original game, because both bore the tag of 'doomed villain' and shared the dramatically charged relationship of 'former fiancés,' a tiny, oddly-tasted group of crack ship fans had actually emerged, enthusiastically imagining all sorts of tragic, deep-love plots between them in fanworks.
Regardless, in the storyline of the original game, right up until they each met their respective miserable or ludicrous ends, there was indeed no noteworthy interaction between them.
So right now, facing Vivian—a former fiancée who theoretically should view him as a blot on her life—appearing out of nowhere in his secret camp inside the dungeon and even waking him up with a sword, Greg actually felt bewildered and lost.
What was the situation now?
Could it be... they were actually in some kind of hidden underground resistance relationship?
Cutting all ties and completely severed on the surface, while secretly maintaining contact behind the scenes?
Greg's imagination couldn't help running wild for a brief moment, but very quickly, Vivian's cold, businesslike voice shattered his unrealistic speculation into pieces.
“The Headmistress was worried you would continue skipping class, so she specifically entrusted me to come here... to remind you.”
Vivian's tone was flat, completely ignoring terms like 'former fiancé' that came out of Greg's mouth, as if it were merely an irrelevant form of address.
As she spoke, her wrist twitched slightly. The rapier moved like a living thing, smoothly tracing an arc before returning with a crisp clang precisely into the ornate scabbard at her hip with a clean, decisive motion.
Only after completing this action did she turn slightly, her ice-blue eyes slowly scanning Greg's makeshift camp tucked away in a shallow corner of the dungeon.
In her gaze was a barely concealed scrutiny and... an extremely faint touch of surprise.
When Headmistress Olivia personally summoned her to the office yesterday afternoon and told her, in that lazy tone laced with a hint of wicked fun, that Greg Sass was currently hiding in some nook in the southeastern corner of the dungeon's shallow first layer, Vivian's internal shock had been genuine.
Apart from professional adventurers who valued money over their lives, and the tiny handful of students forced to go deep inside for specific materials or cultivation needs, almost no one would be willing to enter a dangerous environment like a dungeon, let alone live inside it.
In Vivian's ingrained perception and impression, a pampered villainous young master like Greg Sass—who had been raised in a duke's manor surrounded and waited on by servants since childhood—should not have been associated with words like hardship, adventure, or dungeon in the slightest.
He should have been holding forth in comfortable noble salons, or wallowing in a stupor within the gentle embrace of some mistress. At the very least, he should have been hiding in some remote corner of the academy indulging in self-pity, but definitely not here.
Rate on N.U.
