Sweetcrasy

He was the third prince of a doomed kingdom, just weeks before its destruction…

“Do you want to live?”

“Y-yes…!”

One day, the man known as Cedar Valencia, the Grand Marshal of the Empire,the very man who led the downfall of the Milos Kingdom,visited me in the underground prison where I was confined.

From that evening, he began humiliating me by dragging me into banquet halls. He made me lick soup off the floor or bark like a dog. That was how I barely survived each day.

“This is getting boring.”

Maybe he got tired of playing with me, so after a month, he suddenly stopped his ‘games’ and instead grabbed me by the neck.

“Guh…! Guh…!”

“At first, it was amusing to see a prince groveling like a dog…”

“Cough…!”

“But honestly, you’re useless now.… but I can’t just let you go, either.”

As if giving me a chance to plead for my life, Cedar loosened his grip on my throat slightly. Gasping for breath, I pressed my forehead to the ground and begged for my life.

“P-please… I’ll do anything…!”

“Anything?”

“Yes…! W-whatever you command—”

“Hmm… What exactly do you have to offer with that frail body of yours?”

With a faint sneer of disdain, Cedar gave me two options: You could either become a sex slave and be dragged to the Empire to live in disgrace, or could preserve your final shred of royal dignity and take your own life.

“Just so you know, since you carry the blood of a traitor… if I do decide to use you as a sex slave, I’ll have to cut off your manhood.”

It means he let me live if I am willing to endure the humiliation of castration just to stay alive. In this day and age, any royal member would have undoubtedly chosen death without hesitation. But…

“P-please…! I want to live! I’ll do anything if you let me live!”

My answer was already decided.

The Imperial knights, who had been watching with curiosity, now stare at me with a mixture of shock and disgust.

“…Alright. If this your choice. Who knows, maybe you’ll have some talent for this.”

“Haa… haa…”

“Then let me personally initiate you.”

And with that, Cedar Valencia grabbed my hair and dragged me into the royal bedroom—the one he had claimed as his own.

Since Cedar is a man of exceptional skill and a keen sense for detecting intruders, So no one is stationed inside his chambers.

The door shut behind us, leaving just the two of us in the bedroom…!

Then—

Cedar suddenly let go of my hair.

I stopped trembling. Straightening up from my awkward position I had been dragged. I dusted off my clothes and let out a deep sigh before muttering in admiration.

“Wow… Your acting was insane.”

“Hyung, is your neck okay?”

“Yeah.”

Cedar gave me a relieved smile before collapsing onto the bed as if his tension leaving his body all at once.

Since the royal bed is large enough, I sit down beside him and fall backward, lying down comfortably.

Then, as if rehearsed, we both let out a deep sigh at the same time.

“Haa…”

“Whew…”

A mix of relief and exhaustion from overcoming an important hurdle. Cedar must have felt the same way.

‘I can’t believe that actually worked…!’

Feeling a wave of emotion, I want to smoke but remembering that I quit smoking.Before I could say anything, Cedar spoke first.

“I really want a cigarette.”

“Damn, I was just thinking the same thing.”

I heard a quiet chuckle. But the laughter faded quickly, and soon, Cedar’s expression darkened.

I knew exactly why.

So, I patted his shoulder.

“Are you anxious?”

“No. Johan must be dead. You stabbed him in the abdomen.”

“We haven’t found the body yet.”

“With a wound like that, there’s no way he survived.”

But Cedar’s face remain grim. He is probably unsettled by the thought of leaving loose ends.

I know what he is thinking, so I lightly patted his back and reassured him.

“Even if you miss it … you miss it. It’s fine.”

“We still have plenty of chances.”

“…Yeah, that’s true.”

The thing is—

I transmigrated as the third prince of a kingdom doomed to fall.

And the moment I had possessed this body… was right at the introduction of the novel.

And lying beside me, Cedar Valencia who is closing his eyes to calm his complicated mind, the man who destroyed my kingdom and planned to enslave me… is actually a fellow transmigrator.

And the ‘Johan’ we mentioned is the next in line for the throne of this fallen Kingdom,Milos.

More importantly, Johan’s true identity is … He is the protagonist of the novel we are talking about ,

That’s right. Cedar and I had both transmigrated into the novel .

And in order to survive in this world… We had formed a secret alliance.

***

Right after I transmigrated, I quickly figured out my situation based on a few clues.

I possessed an extra character from the novel called —the book I had read before I fell asleep.

The character I possessed is the sickly younger brother of the main character prince, Louis.

In the novel, Louis was someone the protagonist, Johan, deeply cherished.

The problem is that when the kingdom fell, Louis was captured and taken as a prisoner.

Besides,I didn’t know if it ends with just being captured… but he ended up dying a miserable death.

Because Johan’s rival, the villain Cedar Valencia—used Louis as bait to lure Johan out by spreading rumors that he would execute Louis.

Of course, Johan tried to rescue him. But he failed. And because the execution ceremony was obviously Cedar’s trap, he couldn’t even see Louis in person.

Leaving the ruined palace, Johan shed tears of blood upon seeing Louis’s severed head displayed atop the castle walls.

He then swore an oath to the ‘legendary dragon’ that was only a legend in the kingdom Milos.

“No matter what, he will destroy the Empire and the Grand Marshal, Cedar Valencia, with his own hands.”

The introduction of the novel is that he changes from a dignified prince to a merciless harbinger of vengeance.

Now, here’s a question: How do I feel about being possessed by ‘Louis’ ?

‘F***!’

The kindness I gave to the author saying it was a good work, giving this book a five-star rating and calling it a masterpiece—only to end up inside it like this.

I cursed the author, the book, and most of all, myself for ever reading it.

‘Why couldn’t I have possessed Johan instead?!’

But I couldn’t be John and had to adapt.

‘First and foremost, Louis has to survive.’

So after I came to my senses, I tried to find a way to live on my own.

Since I was still a prince—especially the beloved youngest Prince of the harmonious royal family—I initially thought I could use my status to prepare for the war.

‘Once war breaks out, I’m as good as dead… I need to at least prepare some defenses. The kingdom in its current state can never defeat the imperial army.’

The “Dragon’s Relic” that the kingdom relied on could only awaken when it met its true owner, but centuries had already passed without that happening. An unawakened relic is nothing more than an ordinary object and the empire already knew this.

But the moment I possessed this body, the war was only a few weeks away. On top of that, most people in the kingdom placed blind faith in the so-called cheat key of this novel, the “Dragon’s Relic,” and didn’t take the empire’s provocations seriously.

No matter how much I cried out that war was coming, people merely thought that the young and sickly prince was once again raving in a fevered delirium.

That’s right. I am in the body of someone who would fall into madness whenever a fever arose, and the people of Milos only pitied me but they never believed my words.

‘And by the time I realized that war had truly begun and that the capital had fallen at an astonishing speed… it was already too late.’

There was no other way.

When the capital fell, those who finally realized that my warnings were true absurdly accused me of being a spy who had colluded with the enemy. As a result, they locked me away separately in the underground prison of the royal palace.

He was said to be the beloved youngest prince but who knew they’d just throw me into prison like this? I even started wondering if there was some secret about my birth in the original story that I didn’t know about.

‘Shiiiiiit! Stop screwing me over! I was supposed to escape through the secret passage with Johan when this place fell! Why the hell am I the one getting locked up?!’

Just before the capital fell, Johan, the eldest son, was the only one who escaped through a secret passage in the royal city, taking the place of the already deceased king. Meanwhile, his second eldest brother gathered the remaining people and threw away his life like a worthless straw to buy time against the advancing imperial army.

Thanks to that… or perhaps because of it…

I, who had been imprisoned far from the main battlefield, ended up as a prisoner of the empire without so much as a single wound.

…After all this effort… am I really going to die?