I Just Wanted a Happy Ending
I wanted to see a happy ending.
There are games in this world that should never exist. A dark fantasy game packed with misery, corruption, regret, and NTR. Its name: Endless Fantasia.
This game is utter garbage. The protagonist fails to save the people around him in every single episode. They break down one by one until he’s left standing alone as the world is destroyed. Or, in the ultimate false choice, he saves the world at the cost of being erased from everyone’s memories. It’s the kind of trash that makes you want to scream.
Still, the gameplay was solid. The skill and technique systems were vast and deeply satisfying to build around, and the boss fights featured grand visuals and music that could rip your soul apart. If not for that, I would have dropped it long ago. Whoever made this thing… even if I tore their limbs off, would the judge really forgive me?
“Please, please, please, please…!”
“Luke, what’s wrong…?”
The status window and skill list floating before my eyes. The middle-aged man who introduced himself as my father, calmly explaining the world’s lore. It all clicked.
I had transmigrated into Endless Fantasia.
“Why… of all things…?”
A world where everyone but the protagonist is doomed, or the protagonist himself must be destroyed. And I had become an extra noble whose name I didn’t even know.
Well, shit.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
If you’re going to drop someone into this nightmare, at least make them the protagonist. Or a helper. Hell, even a villain would have been better. What’s the point of shoving someone in as an extra? Just to tell them to die?
No. It wasn’t that simple. I would have to live on, praying that the protagonist, Eres, would somehow muster superhuman mental strength and fight through it all.
Because Eres was a magic swordsman. She covered her lack of experience and talent with the power of a demonic sword. The catch? The more she used it, the more her very existence would fade away.
So she would wield a blade that could erase her own being.
She would save her friend from being assaulted by upperclassmen in the Forest of Trials.
She would rescue the librarian possessed by a demon in the academy library.
She would save her little sister, who had been sold into slavery by human traffickers before enrollment.
She would free the student council president from magical brainwashing by a villain plotting a dangerous ritual.
She would take the princess’s side in the struggle for the throne and march to war.
And after all that… she would fight demons, and finally the Demon King.
Yeah. We’re screwed.
“That only works because she’s a game character. How is a real person supposed to handle all this?”
In truth, half the playtime consisted of Eres’s desperate, heartbreaking monologues about how she was going to die. And if she failed to save even one person, her mind would shatter. She would choose world destruction, declaring that a world like this deserved to burn.
Well, to prevent that destruction she would have to die herself, so maybe it made sense. The real miracle was that she had reached the end at all while her existence was slowly being erased.
“……What if she just didn’t use the demonic sword?”
They said the final boss couldn’t be defeated without it. But what if she could handle every enemy before that without ever touching the sword? Wouldn’t that solve everything?
Yes. In the end, every problem came down to the protagonist being too weak. If she had been as strong as any normal main character, this wouldn’t have been a tragic dark fantasy. It would have been a romance fantasy.
All I needed was for the protagonist to become strong.
If Eres could grow powerful enough to tear apart dragons and annihilate armies without ever relying on that cursed blade, then this world could finally head toward a proper happy ending.
But.
“Is that even possible…?”
She only used the demonic sword because she was weak. Of course, Eres wasn’t completely talentless. She had some. Just not enough to carry her through every battle without the sword. That much was clear from the setting.
It was possible. The reason our Eres seemed weak wasn’t because she was ordinary. Her awakening had simply come a little late.
The original Eres had been a normal person. She only picked up a sword after her younger sister Melina was kidnapped. From the start of the main story, that was barely two years ago. She obtained the demonic sword in Episode 1, after entering the academy. So in just two years, she had reached a basic level of skill.
Right now, it was ten years before that.
We had five times as much time, and I had all my game knowledge.
I knew exactly which equipment to use. Which dungeons hid which items. Which skills to level first for maximum efficiency. What to eat to accelerate growth.
Every method of becoming stronger was still perfectly preserved in my head.
First, I would raise my stats to their upper limits, then break through the level cap—
“Wait. Can I really follow the game system like this?”
Obviously the status window proved this was the game world. But blindly trusting it could be dangerous. The fate of the entire world was on the line. If I followed the system and still couldn’t grow strong, I would only be wasting time. And not just time—my body would be ruined too.
I needed to confirm whether treasure chests really existed in dungeons. Whether skill experience and stat gains increased in exact numerical values like the game. Whether consuming large quantities of permanent stat-boost items would cause any physical abnormalities.
I couldn’t afford to accidentally break our Eres. I had already seen two bad endings. I refused to create a third with my own hands.
That meant there was only one thing to do.
“I have to test it myself and make sure it’s safe.”
I was an extra. So if I could do it, most other people probably could too. If it turned out I was some hidden character with insane talent, then I would never forgive the developers.
Hiding a character like that and still forcing that kind of story? I already knew the devs were demons wearing human skin, but if they had even a shred of conscience as intelligent beings, then even if I had talent, it should only be at an ordinary level.
Therefore, if I could do it, Eres could do it too!
“Father! There is something I desire!”
“Cough…! You? How unusual. Tell me, what is it?”
Luckily, I had transmigrated as the eldest son of a count’s family. The foundation and range of things I could touch were quite generous. If I had been born a farmer or slave, even trial and error would have been nearly impossible. Things that would have been out of reach for the commoner Eres before entering the academy were now within my grasp.
What I had to be careful about was this:
Hidden pieces, things that are hard to replenish, and never touching game events recklessly.
It wasn’t me who needed to grow strong. It was Eres! If I carelessly claimed something and it became soul-bound, what would our Eres do?!
What about clearing dungeons myself, obtaining items early, and handing them to her? That wouldn’t work either. Going to get them counts as training too! I could only kill boss monsters halfway to check their specs and then withdraw. I mustn’t steal the experience! Of course, I also had to control the population of regular monsters. If the dungeon became too easy and someone else claimed the rewards before Eres could clear it, that would be a disaster.
Especially the dungeons with particularly good rewards. I would have to check on them regularly so no one else could conquer them first. For the sake of the world, I couldn’t let anyone else have even a single treasure chest.
“Cough! Luke, my boy. Your mother and I saw how hard you’ve been training lately, so we obtained some precious elixirs for you.”
“Elixirs? Father, how could you bring something so valuable for me to waste? That’s ridiculous!”
“We only wanted what was best for you…”
“I’ll accept them, but don’t do this again.”
My father, Count Colwen, was soft on his children. The support was overflowing.
In the game you could only get three of these stat-boosting elixirs. I’ll have to save them for the dungeon Eres will challenge later.
Although I wasn’t exactly a good son, I refused equipment support. After all, the strongest gear had to go to the main and supporting cast of the story. If that was the case, I decided not to use any equipment from the beginning.
I did plan to grow strong and be helpful, but I couldn’t steal the original characters’ narratives. Besides, if I used the top-tier equipment first and its quality degraded, that would be a problem too.
So I chose this.
“Brother… are you going to punch the ground again?”
“Do not interfere.”
I would aim to become a martial artist. If there was no equipment, I would simply use my body! That way, even if someone tried to hand me gear, I could make up a reasonable excuse.
“The house is shaking, stop it! Mom and Dad are…”
“Today I’m going somewhere farther away.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I’ll be back around tomorrow. Take care of the house and study hard.”
“Brother!”
Once I grew somewhat stronger, I decided to begin real combat training. Monster subjugation (carefully so I wouldn’t die). Dungeon clearing (without touching any loot). And.
“Luke… I heard you’ve been associating with some rough people lately.”
“I’m fine, so mind your own business.”
“Mother is worried about you…”
“I’m doing good deeds, so don’t worry and get some rest.”
Dojo-crushing.
Especially the evil organizations that appeared in the original work. They were going to commit all sorts of atrocities a few years from now anyway. Since this was a misery story, they didn’t just do bad things. They did things so disgusting it made you sick.
They kidnapped the protagonist’s little sister and sold her to corrupt nobles. They distributed forbidden items to throw the country into chaos. They attacked villages, slaughtered all the men and elders, and dragged away the women and children. They assassinated the parents of regular characters, turning bright personalities dark and sharp.
Wasn’t it a good deed to half-kill bastards like that?
Of course, since they were strong, I only picked fights with them. I didn’t actually kill them. As infuriating as they were, removing them entirely would break the original narrative. They had to remain as reasons for our friends to grow stronger. So I planned to exchange blows, gauge each other’s skill, and withdraw.
But there was no way a young child like me could easily defeat factions that became episode bosses in the game. It took four years of training before I reached a level I was satisfied with. By the time I had gathered enough information and gained the confidence to begin raising Eres properly—
“Uwaaah! It’s Luke Colwen!”
“Run! It’s that crazy bastard who picks fights with everyone he passes!”
“That demonic bastard…!”
I had become a famous maniac in the underworld.
It was strange. I had only beaten up bad people.