Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

It took us less than a minute to burst through the treeline and stumble into the clearing where our group had set up camp for the last two days.

The fog here was much thinner than in the woods behind us.

As soon as Juli and I stepped through, huffing and puffing, every eye in the camp turned toward us in varying degrees of concern.

Michael and Kang were still in the middle of discussing whatever topic they had been discussing before we left.

Meanwhile, Alexia and Lily seemed to have returned from their hunting trip and brought back a tentacled millipede for dinner — thankfully, I didn't think we would have the pleasure to eat it tonight.

Michael looked like he was about to walk over with a frown.

But before he could, Ray and Vince came tumbling out of the woods after us, both shouting over each other.

"Go! Go! Go!"

"Move, you idiots! It's right behind us!"

By then, I had caught my breath.

The ground started shaking again as the white wall of mist surged closer, rising higher than the massive trees and swallowing the forest whole.

Everyone in the clearing stopped in their tracks.

"What… what is that?" Lily breathed, taking an anxious step back.

"I-I asked you guys to bring firewood! What the hell did you bring?!" Michael exclaimed, grabbing his head.

Even Alexia's face drained of color — and that girl almost never looked afraid. Her sightless gray eyes widened as she stared aimlessly into the mist.

With her Origin Card floating above her head, her voice trembled as she spoke, "It's alive. All of it. The fog is emitting an aura that suggests it's a singular living creature."

As if on cue, the air turned colder.

The fire in the middle of the camp snuffed out like something unseen had sucked the heat from it.

Even our breath turned white.

The temperature drop was sudden and drastic.

Ray stumbled to a stop beside me, slightly bent over and panting. "Long story short — giant monster made of mist, hates us, we ran, crab's dead! Now hurry and pack up!"

Kang didn't need to be told twice. He was already shoving food packs and supplies into the dimensional storage chest.

Lily moved beside him in perfect sync, grabbing what she could.

Michael turned to me, looking a bit calmer than the rest. "Do you have a plan?"

"Yes! Run!" I pointed over my shoulder at Juli and Vince, the two traitors who were already halfway across the clearing. "Follow those cowards!"

Alexia blinked. "But you once said you never run."

I paused and rubbed my chin thoughtfully.

"…True. Then let's call it—" I gestured toward the retreating pair with a shrug, "—a strategic repositioning."

The blind girl gave me a look halfway between exasperated disbelief and bewildered amusement. "So… running."

Before I could reply, the mist reached us.

But it didn't simply roll in like mist is supposed to — oh no, it burst into the clearing like an avalanche.

Trees bent and cracked under the sheer pressure as the air turned from chilly to almost freezing.

"Move!" Michael shouted.

I stomped my foot on the ground and called upon my innate power.

The earth in front of us heaved, and a colossal wall of stone shot up from the soil, forming a barrier between us and the oncoming storm of fog.

Unfortunately, it didn't buy us much time.

We started running as fast as we could, but the damn mist kept creeping along the edges of the colossal stone wall, seeping through every crack and pouring after us.

The forest became a blur around us as we ran, slowly engulfed in the mist. Everything in our vision turned to white and gray.

The only sound I could hear anymore was the hard pounding of my own heart in my ears.

Then, the Mist Monster itself decided now was time to make its grand appearance and hunt us down.

A tall and thin silhouette came into our view, its inky-black figure sharply contrasting the dense white fog all around.

The creature's limbs were jointed all wrong, and its movements seemed eerily unnatural.

I dashed in to attack it head-on — but the beast simply faded away.

Then it reappeared elsewhere.

Michael rushed over and swung his longsword at it this time, but it slipped away just like before.

It continued to emerge and vanish within the mist, lunging from multiple directions all at once — its claws flashing and its monstrous screeches rattling us to the core.

Predicting its moves was nearly impossible, especially since it could make itself intangible and render all our attacks useless.

I won't lie. We would have been dead within the first few minutes.

There was nothing we could have done to change the outcome. We couldn't hold our positions, and we were losing composure, making mistakes.

The beast was strong. One clean hit from it could kill most of the people in our group.

It wasn't a fair fight.

No, actually, it wasn't a fight at all.

We weren't one step ahead of death — we were one step behind.

Thankfully, we had a seer on our side.

Lily's eyes glowed intensely violet as she shouted, "Left first, then front!"

Michael and I turned just as the creature lashed out.

His blade cleaved through the air where the monster had just been, while my transmuted spikes shot up from the ground to block the next strike.

For a while, the two of us managed to keep the Mist Monster at bay — barely — until it changed direction.

None of us had noticed that Ray was lagging behind at the back of our group. His severe blood loss made him sluggish and dulled his reflexes.

The monster decided to capitalize on this gap in our formation. It dispersed into the mist and darted straight for him.

Ray looked ahead and froze, his mind running too slowly to react.

He managed to raise one hand, but it was too late. The monster's claws were already slashing down toward him.

He was just a step out of reach for any of us to intervene in time.

Someone gasped.

Vince shouted his name.

…And then a blur of orange streaked through the fog.

It was Alexia.

She moved faster than any of us.

Somehow, she had been aware of Ray's position — thanks to her extraordinary spatial awareness, I guess.

She had already placed herself in a position where she could reach him quickly in case anything went wrong.

And when it did, she slammed into him, twisted midair, and the two of them rolled once before she lifted him up and kept running — her arm cradling him in a perfect princess carry.

Ray blinked up at her, utterly dumbstruck. His face was mere inches from hers. "I—uh— wow."

Alexia didn't even look at him. "Stop bleeding on me."

I managed to catch a glimpse of the way Ray was looking at Alexia — as if he was finally seeing her properly for the first time.

Up until that point, she had only been just another highborn girl occupying space around him. Cute, sure, but nothing that caught his eye.

Plus, she was blind.

What was the point of pursuing a girl who couldn't swoon over his drop-dead good looks every waking minute of the day?

So he'd never considered her as someone of romantic interest… or even someone worth flirting with.

But this time, when he looked at her, he truly saw her.

He noticed that her orange curls were a shade too close to tangerine. He inhaled her soft, citrusy natural fragrance. He felt just how delicate her shoulders were beneath her tunic.

This time, when he looked, he genuinely appreciated her.

And let me tell you — it was almost worth being chased by a Greater Spirit Beast just to witness that moment.

It was almost worth the pain, blood, and trouble.

It was almost worth the fear of death to see him fall for her so foolishly.

That moment wasn't anything dramatic or flashy like you'd see in old romcoms.

There were no slow-motion stares or grand orchestral swells in the background.

It was much quieter than that — like a spark created between flint and steel, gone almost too quickly to notice but still there, buried deep, kindling.

And Ray's heart had already begun to fan that little spark, probably even writing poetry about it too.

I wanted to say something — maybe congratulate him for finding love in the middle of a Death Zone — but like everyone else, I was too busy running for my fucking life.

The wind ruffled our hair as we sprinted through the forest. The mist kept roaring behind us, and the monster continued screeching somewhere in the haze, unleashing a flurry of erratic attacks.

We kept dodging. And we didn't stop.