Chapter 1
If I had to sum up my life in the 20 years since my reincarnation in one sentence, it would be "I became the useless youngest child of a renowned prophetic family."
"Your prophetic abilities are truly terrible. Can you even make a living with those skills?"
"You'll never be able to inherit the family fortune-telling business that has been passed down for generations!"
"Prophecies about good fortune can be vague, but prophecies about misfortune must be precise!! They need to be very specific! You really are useless!"
The Jericho family I was born into was famous for generations of prophets. A family that made a living by seeing people's futures and receiving offerings in return.
The problem was that, perhaps due to their frequent interactions with the upper class, my parents were extremely extravagant.
They chased after various events and banquets even while accumulating debt, always living with the vain dream that they, too, could become part of the upper class.
It would have been better if they were just extravagant, but the fact that they also severely discriminated against their children based on their abilities was the beginning of my misfortune.
"Bread is wasted on an incompetent like you!!"
Hunger had been a familiar companion since I was young.
While my older brother and sister, who could prophesy as easily as breathing, ate and wore all sorts of nice things, I had to wear old clothes and live in a hot attic in summer and a cold one in winter.
On top of that, for 20 years, I had to do all sorts of menial tasks while serving my family like a servant rather than a child.
Unlike my parents, brother, and sister who could prophesize good fortune, I could only prophesize misfortune, and even then, I could only vaguely glimpse for moments of one to three seconds no matter how hard I tried.
The ability to prophesize misfortune was only meaningful if one could foresee specific and accurate misfortunes so that one could the exact opposite actions to prevent it, so it was important to foresee concrete misfortunes, but I was in that state…
When it came to prophesy, I really was useless.
How useless was I, you ask?
Even when my parents, brother, and sister all died in a traffic accident on the same day at the same time.
I couldn't foresee that fact at all.
My family disappeared overnight, but I wasn't particularly sad.
Given how they had treated me, it would be stranger if sadness lingered after their departure from life.
The only issue was…
"Mr. Jericho Amael, is it? I offer my sincere condolences. Your parents left quite the substantial, you see."
It wasn’t sadness that lingered after those people who called themselves my family had died, but the actions they took in life.
The debt was exorbitant.
It was so much that I had to sell the house I lived in, the fortune-telling shop, and all the inheritance I received to cover it.
Overnight, I became penniless.
And on that very day when I became destitute.
[Confirmed that you have passed your 20th birthday and become an adult!]
[Congratulations!]
[You have acquired a total of 4 skills: <Body Modification>, <Absolute Hypnosis>, <Time Stop>, <3000x Sensitivity>!]
[Train your sex slaves as you please!!]
For the first time in 20 years, I saw a Status Window appear before my eyes.
I had reincarnation skills, but they were adult game skills I couldn't use as a minor?!
***
With the life skills honed by 20 years of menial work, I was able to get a job at a small restaurant near the fortune-telling shop.
I spent the day serving food and wiping tables. At night, I finished the day lying on the small employee bed provided by the store.
Lying there, several times a day, intense desires resurfaced.
Unlike before when I only had garbage-tier prophetic abilities, now I had proper adult game skills.
Can't I use these skills to live well?
The life of becoming a kept man by approaching a rich, lonely widow and using my reincarnation skills to make her my complete sex slave.
It didn't sound bad at all.
If I combined my adult game skills with my superior physique and handsome face, the only things I was grateful to my terrible parents for, becoming a kept man became a realistic plan rather than just a simple fantasy.
But of course.
It was impossible to actually carry out what I was only thinking about.
Because of a poster prominently displayed on the wall of the restaurant where I work.
[Unregistered illegal magic use is a serious crime!]
[If you witness illegal magic use, report it immediately! Immediately!]
[Routine reporting of illegal magic! Makes the Empire and your life even safer!]
Let's say I carried out my plan.
Let's say I seduced a rich, lonely widow and completely made her mine with my skills.
The moment one of the servants heard the widow saying something like, "I can't live without Mr. Amael's huge manhood anymore! Nyaaah♥" and reported it, I'd be lynched.
Even if I somehow managed to win over the servants too, there was no such thing as an eternal secret.
The fact that a good-for-nothing suddenly attached himself to a rich widow's house, using strange magic-like abilities and spending money lavishly, would eventually become known.
When that happened, I'd have to prove that the abilities I was using weren't illegal magic, but did I have permission from the Magic Tower or the Temple?
Without those, the moment it was revealed, death was certain.
Why don't I just officially register these skills and use them, you ask?
Magic registration was difficult.
One had to explain to the picky mages and witches of the Magic Tower how the magic one wanted to register worked in principle...
How was I supposed to know the principles behind adult game skill activation?
If I could do that, I would have become a mage long ago!
And look at the list of skills.
How do you think people would look at me if I explained skills like these that only an incubus would use?
And even if I somehow managed to register them successfully and was able to use them, wasn't it morally wrong to use skills on an innocent woman to forcibly make her my source of money?
The conclusion was that living as a kept man using adult game skills was simply infeasible.
"Damn it, if you're going to give me adult game skills, you should create an adult game-like environment."
I covered myself with the blanket with a sigh-like mutter.
If one gave adult game skills, one should create a situation where they could be used.
What was I supposed to do if I was thrown into a country where I'd be immediately lynched if I was caught using them?
The grumbling was brief.
Restaurant work was hard.
Sleep began to weigh heavily on my body, and before long, I fell asleep.
***
The Arcal Empire was burning.
Mountains of corpses were piled up everywhere, and rivers of blood flowed on the streets.
The desperate screams of humans being burned alive echoed endlessly from all directions like a terrible concerto.
At the center of it all was a witch.
The witch, with four arms, exposed her naked body to the world.
With a laugh full of madness, unabashedly showcasing her sensual body, the witch was endlessly slaughtering people by casting all sorts of powerful spells.
The flames she was spreading were getting closer.
Just before the flames burned my body.
Our eyes met.
With her hair turned dark red with blood raised high in the sky, she asked me a question, "Do you think I'm ugly too?"
One side of the witch's face was incredibly beautiful.
But the other side was exactly the opposite.
On the distorted skin, more than 10 eyes were packed tightly like a spider and were blinking irregularly.
A horribly twisted form that made me want to vomit.
The witch smiled at me, filled with terror.
"You think I'm ugly too! Hahaha!!"
The witch casted magic.
The flames that burned the empire didn't stop there and soon began to burn the entire continent.
The world was burning.
And I, too, was consumed by the flames.
I had to add my voice to the screams of the people around me in terrible pain.
There was no more happiness in the world.
Only ash and flames and the screams of monsters who were once humans, twisted because they couldn't die, remained.
***
The first thing I felt as I sprang up from my bed like a coil was my clothes soaked in sweat.
As if I had taken a bath, my clothes and blanket were soaked in tremendous sweat.
Damn it.
It seemed my prophetic ability was the type that could only accurately predict prophecies on a huge scale.
A prophecy about the end of the world!
The problem was I didn’t when it would happen.
And who that witch in my dream was.
Even if I knew who the witch was, the point was that I had no plan on how to stop it.
I sat down on the bed, clutching my head.
"What... what am I supposed to do with this."
The only abilities I had were the adult game skills that were unlocked after 20 years and the insignificant prophetic ability that even my own flesh and blood ignored.
You want me to stop a witch who can cast magic powerful enough to blow away the entire empire with these?
I mean, how am I supposed to do that?
Wasn't this supposed to be an adult game?
How was I supposed to deal with suddenly being shown a scene from a dark fantasy that smelled strongly of post-apocalypse?
I can't sleep.
Let's think about what to do while pulling my hair out.
They said that when a person was in a life-threatening situation, their brain worked faster.
Like lightning, one idea flashed through my mind.
Half of the witch's face was very hideous.
A nightmarish appearance with eyes packed tightly together.
And she clearly asked me, “Do you think I'm ugly too?”
I didn't know exactly what was what, but I thought that maybe this situation happened because a witch went berserk due to her ugly face.
Then?
Can’t I just treat the witch’s face before she goes berserk and blows up the empire?
Now we’re talking.
But how?
How am I supposed to treat that hideously twisted witch face?
I'm not a priest, nor a doctor trained in treatment methods.
If I had been a medical student in Korea in my past life, maybe.
I was just a science student...
"Body Modification."
One of the four adult game skills I received.
This!! Can’t this change the ugly half of her face to be pretty?
"Status Window."
I quickly called up the Status Window and read the description of the Body Modification part again in detail.
To summarize the skill description that reached the pinnacle of vulgarity, to the point where King Sejong might shed tears and stop the creation of Hangul if he saw it, it was basically this.
It was a skill that allowed me to change another person's body into any form I wanted!
This was possible.
It was possible to change the witch's ugly half-face to be beautiful, preventing the end of the world, and allowing everyone to live happily.
My face brightened.
And then immediately wrinkles again.
[Unregistered illegal magic use is a serious crime!]
[If you witness illegal magic use, report it immediately! Immediately!]
[Routine reporting of illegal magic! Makes the Empire and your life even safer!]
I remember the content of a poster boldly displayed on one wall of our restaurant.
Illegal magic use.
What should I do about this?
If I got caught using the skill, I'd be lynched even after treating the witch.
What kind of advance notice is this?
If I didn't treat the witch, she'd go berserk and blow away the empire, and I'd die.
If I treated the witch, I'd be lynched for unregistered illegal magic use anyway.
Why are you doing this to me?
Why are you really doing this to me?
Is there any way to use the skill without being lynched?
A way to use the skill without getting permission from the Magic Tower or the Temple.
The contemplation continued all night long.
"Amael! Are you up? Let's start preparing to open the restaurant!"
The contemplation that continued without proper sleep was resolved around the time the restaurant owner called my name.
There was.
A way to use the skill without being lynched as an unregistered illegal magic user.
"I'll only work until today!!!"
"What are you saying? Why are you suddenly saying this?"
"I have something I must do!!!"
After working only until that day, I received the money I had earned so far and bought a train ticket to the capital with it.
The only way to use unregistered magic without being hanged.
I have to pretend to be a saint.