I woke up.
I felt a jarring sense of wrongness as I sat up in an unfamiliar canopy bed. Dim moonlight filtered through the window, revealing a room far too vast for any one person. Expensive-looking wooden furniture lined the walls as far as the eye could see.
...Where am I?
As I stroked my cheek, the discomfort only grew. My hands were tiny. My field of vision was much lower than I remembered.
What is this...?
I scrambled out of bed and rushed toward a full-length mirror standing in the corner of the room.
The reflection staring back was—
A boy, roughly ten years old, with dark blue hair and sharp, well-defined features. He had a somewhat unpleasant look in his eyes.
...Huh?
Wait, hold on.
I pressed my hand against the glass. The boy in the mirror did the same.
You’ve got to be kidding... I’ve turned into a kid?
My mind was a muddle, but I desperately tried to trace back my memories.
I was certain I had been a salaryman in modern Japan. I was your typical hardcore gamer, the kind who’d drop a fortune on microtransactions to chase the ultimate build.
Not that it mattered—I spent my days working myself to death anyway. Literally.
I remembered slumping over my desk at the office. My memory cut off right there.
...It looks like I actually died from overwork.
So much for work-life balance.
But what about my current situation? Had I been reincarnated as a child in Europe or something?
No, I felt like I’d seen this face before.
The dark blue hair, the unfriendly gaze... but it was more than that. Each eye was a different color—one purple, one blue.
—These eyes are a trait of the House Kronstadt bloodline, appearing only once in a great while!
The line flashed through my mind like a script.
...Kronstadt?
At that moment, a vivid flood of memory rushed back.
Arcana Academia.
It was a magic academy tactical RPG I had played to death in my previous life. There had been a character with this exact face.
His name was Albert von Kronstadt.
Haughty and arrogant, he was the quintessential villainous noble. He existed only to look down on the protagonist and hero candidate, Leon, and to persistently harass the heroine, Princess Eliana. He was the definition of a minor villain destined to be crushed.
"Are you serious...?"
I had been reincarnated as a mid-boss who was scripted to die in Chapter 2.
The blood drained from my face.
"Gah!"
A sudden, sharp headache forced me to double over, clutching my skull. As I did, Albert’s own memories surged into the forefront of my mind.
Once the overwhelming flashback subsided, I finally understood.
My guess had been right. The game’s main events hadn't started yet. I was ten years old. Since academy enrollment happened at fifteen, I still had five years.
I had to find a way to survive.
As I thought that, another memory surfaced.
That’s right. Albert had one other crucial piece of lore.
—The bloodline of an Ancient Mage.
In the original game, Albert was a fool who self-destructed through his own debauchery and conceit, but his character profile stated he was a descendant of the Ancient Mages from a lost civilization.
Ancient Magic.
In the world of Arcana Academia, it was a powerful hidden element. You couldn't obtain it through normal gameplay, but its sheer scale was enough to shatter the game's balance. It was the kind of magic that dealt maximum damage for a single MP. Both its range and power were staggering.
Defense bypass, resistance negation, guaranteed critical hits, zero cooldowns—
Every spell associated with it was a laundry list of game-breaking mechanics. It was completely, utterly broken.
Players had been obsessed with its cheat-like performance. Because the spells were so powerful and the visual effects were so over-the-top, it had gone viral. The internet was full of comments about it.
"Got Ancient Magic. It’s so broken it’s hilarious." "What was the dev team thinking when they added this?" "It’s a hidden element that most players never find, so maybe they thought it didn't matter?" "Even so, this is way too much. I can't stop laughing."
There had even been a common meme among the fanbase:
"If Albert is a descendant of the Ancient Mages, wouldn't he have been the strongest character if he'd actually tried?"
Basically, people wondered why a guy with such an incredible pedigree never bothered to use it.
I see...
That’s not bad at all.
I had been captivated by Ancient Magic myself and had played the game until I’d mastered every bit of it. Its addictive destructive power had been the only thing that kept me going.
Now, I could prove the theory of Albert being the strongest with my own two hands.
I still remembered every location where the Ancient Magic was hidden. The magic academy, the mountain ruins, the Royal Secret Library...
And even here, in the library of House Kronstadt.
This was getting interesting.
I needed to confirm if Ancient Magic actually existed here and if I truly had the potential to inherit it. The power that had fascinated me as a gamer was now within arm's reach.
If the world functioned like the game, I had nothing to fear. The Hero, the Demon King—I’d crush them all.
"...I have to go."
I slipped out of my room and hurried down the dark hallway.
I reached the library deep within the estate and eased the door open. Bookshelves reaching toward the ceiling were packed with volumes on magic theory, history, and politics. As I navigated the forest of shelves, the scent of old paper and ink filled my lungs.
None of these interested me.
I searched my memories of the game. There was a hidden room in the House Kronstadt library. Within it lay the sealed texts of Ancient Magic.
I found the bookshelf against the wall. One specific book was a dummy. I pulled it out, flipped it upside down, and slid it back into the shelf.
There was a distinct click.
The wall beside the shelf slid aside, revealing a passage.
Exactly like the game.
Knowledge of this room had been lost to time; even my father, the current head of the house, shouldn't know it existed.
I descended a narrow set of stairs into a small basement chamber. There, protected by a shimmering magical barrier, sat four ancient volumes.
My hands trembled.
This was it. This was the path to the true power I had only dreamed of in my previous life.
Every book bore the same title:
Imperial Book of Weather Control.
Bingo. This was the legendary text held by House Kronstadt.
I turned the pages, finding complex magic circles and long, dense explanations.
...I have no idea what this says.
In the game, you could use the magic the moment you picked up the book, but it seemed I hadn't mastered it just by touching it. To use Ancient Magic, I would need a proper foundation in magical theory. According to the lore, Albert had been a lazy student who only toyed with his studies, leaving his actual skills mediocre at best.
—It’s going to take effort.
But if I put in the work, the strongest power in the world would be mine.
I was playing the character with the highest potential in the game. House Kronstadt were the descendants of Ancient Mages from five centuries ago.
Inheriting that power was my destiny.
Something sparked deep in my chest. My fear transformed into pure excitement.
Death flags? They didn't matter if I had this power. I wasn't going to let the story play out like the original.
I would master Ancient Magic. And I would survive this world.
"I can do this."
Clutching the ancient text to my chest, I made a silent vow.
This was the start of my second life.