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

Chapter 444: Ray Has A Plan! (It Involves Me Socializing?!)

Juliana moved fast, even faster than I could track.

One moment she was tackling a poor girl to the ground. The next, she was behind the guy who had me locked up in a tight hug.

She grabbed his collar and pulled him backward with a wrench of her torso. The guy’s grip on me disappeared.

I gasped a confused breath and stammered out for my Shadow, trying to tell her not to hurt him.

But it was as if the dam of everyone’s restraint around us had broken.

Suddenly, people started swarming around me, talking at me, slapping my back so hard I stumbled, clasping my hands and arms, even kissing my cheeks and forehead.

In moments, I was separated from Juliana and Michael.

"Thank the heavens you’re alive!" a girl too close to me started sobbing, practically trying to climb my shoulder from the right. "If not for you, I wouldn’t have made it out of that plaza!"

"Samael! Samael, look at me! Do you remember me? I’m Terry!" another voice bellowed from my left, followed by a heavy slap to my lower back. "My knee was hurt. I was on the ground. You pulled me up! Do you remember?"

"Oh, look at your face! What happened to your face?!" a boy gasped.

"Oh, no! It looks bad!" said a girl from... somewhere. I don’t know — they were all everywhere. "Did anyone hurt you? Tell us their name!"

They were probably talking about the slight bruise on my jaw that Alexia had graciously gifted me during our earlier sparring session.

"I— It’s fine, it was just practice—" I tried to wheeze out, but my voice barely carried over the din.

"He’s a hero!" someone else yelled from the back, a sentiment that was immediately echoed by a loud chorus of cheers that made even the stone walls of the corridor outside vibrate.

From what I could tell, Michael was receiving a similar reception a few meters away. I could just barely see the top of his black hair tossing around like a buoy in a stormy sea of unfamiliar faces.

Before long I was starting to suffocate, debating whether I should use force to push them back a few steps or let myself be martyred by their gratitude tonight.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to reach a conclusion for a booming voice to cut through the chaos. "Get off them, you damn vultures. Give the gentlemen some space. You have an entire evening to talk to them!"

Some people in the crowd flinched away, others hesitated, a few still tried to cling to my sleeves as though letting go might somehow erase the fact I was standing in front of them.

Eventually, though, their sense of decency returned, and with it returned the concept of respecting people’s personal space.

I sucked in the first proper breath in a hot minute, finally allowed to exist as an individual rather than a communal emotional support pillow.

My lungs thanked me.

My ribs, however, would have filed a formal complaint if they could have.

I straightened up to my full height, trying to restore whatever scraps of dignity I had left, then looked for the source of the voice.

It turned out I didn’t need to, because a familiar figure was already stalking toward me.

Ray Warner had on a sheer lace shirt that showed off his defined chest, lean torso, and the silvery outlines of all the small scars crisscrossing his skin, paired with baggy white linen pants.

It was a ridiculously bold fashion choice that looked ridiculously good on him.

Maybe it was because of how he had accessorized the outfit with dozens of flashy rings and chains and piercings that made him look like a runway model.

Or maybe it was because of his face, which appeared even more dauntingly handsome than usual now that his messy brown hair was slicked back to reveal the sharp contour of his jaw.

"Look who’s alive?!" He widened his arms, offering me an excited smile as he came to a stop before me. Then he brought a hand in between our faces, waving it with great enthusiasm. "And look who has both his hands?! Me!"

Good for him. But I had more pressing questions. Like, "The fuck is this place? Why are there so many people here? I thought it’d be just us! Why are there drugs in this party? How did you even smuggle drugs past the security? When did—"

He clamped his brand new hand over my mouth, still beaming. "Relax, bro, relax. I’m getting to it. All these people—"

Michael, after wading through a horde of grabby hands and nervous apologies, chose that exact moment to stumble over. "Ray! What is this place? Who are all these people? I thought it would be—"

Ray used his other hand to clamp down over Michael’s mouth too.

"I’m getting to it!" He whispered in exasperation. "All these people are important members of first-year noble factions. You’d see a few new transfers but mostly they are old Cadets."

I shrugged off his hand before noticing Juliana, at some point, had wordlessly appeared beside me. "And they are here because... you want to throw a rager?"

"Of course I want to throw a rager," he gestured at himself, at the way he was dressed. "But they are mainly here because of you. Well, you and—" he pointed a finger at Michael, "you and—" pointed again in the distance where I saw Alexia sipping a drink out of a plastic cup while conversing with someone, "—her. You three saved the lives of the majority of the people here."

"So?" I tilted my head.

"So," he picked up, "lock their allegiances. The news about the Mock War between you and your sister has already spread throughout the campus. So I’ve gathered here as many noble cliques were in my contact who were still on the fence. Many of them want to repay you for saving them. But many others..."

He trailed off.

Not that he ever really needed to finish the explanation.

I had already grasped what he meant.

This was what Alice tried telling me as well.

The aristocratic circles of high society were where her influence and mine overlapped.

We nobles are very pragmatic people.

Gratitude was a beautiful sentiment, sure, but in the grand games of politics and power, sentiment alone rarely bought loyalty.

Many of the people in this room might have felt a lingering sense of debt for us saving them in the Night Sanctuary, but they weren’t about to alienate the Central royal family.

Because we nobles are also very easily offended.

By opposing not only the heiress of Theosbanes but also a future Monarch, they weren’t going to risk spoiling the standings of their houses out of the goodness of their hearts alone.

In fact, their families would probably already be pressuring them for either a neutral stance or an alignment with the royals.

So if I was going to convince them to throw their lot in with me, gratitude was just the foot in the door.

I needed to show them I was the winning horse. I was the better investment.

I needed to give them reasons and reassurances, promises and guarantees, of lucrative payoffs and political opportunities.

And once I assured them that they were getting a better deal with me than whatever Thalia and Alice were going to offer them, they would come around.

...After all, we nobles are also opportunistic creatures of greed.

•••

Convincing people to take my side was not as difficult as you’d imagine.

It was kind of expected, I guess.

While they were outwardly adopting a neutral stance to placate their demanding families, the very fact that these people were here at this party and not in the stands to cheer on my sister or butter up Alice and Willem meant they had already taken their first step over the line.

Their interest was already tilting toward me. And if not that, then they were at least clearing up their uncertainty and weighing their options.

That alone was enough for me.

Politics is rarely about convincing someone from zero.

Commoners who had never been a part of the upper echelons liked to imagine that great leaders won others over with a single brilliant speech or some grand display of charisma.

That’s nonsense.

By the time someone openly declares their allegiance, the decision has usually been made long before in their mind. The speech they are given is just a ceremony.

The real battle happens quietly, in the doubts they wrestle with when no one is watching.

Can this person win?

Will following them benefit me?

Will I regret standing against them?

Those are the questions that decide everything.

And right now, many of these Cadets around me had already begun asking themselves those questions.

The Night Sanctuary Massacre had given me something Thalia and Alice could not easily replicate. It had made me larger than life. My other feats only added to that impression.

Nobles love those sorts of things — bloodlines and achievements, legends and myths. They love attaching themselves to names that would one day be carved into history books.

Thalia was the Golden Angel of House Theosbane.

Alice was the future Monarch of Central and West.

And while I was initially only the disgraced fifth son of Duke Arthur, now I was the Tyrant of Apex and one of the three Heroes of the Bloody Night.

Now I had braved the abominable jungle of Noctveil Wilds and sailed across the savage depths of Lake of Grief.

It was already assumed that all the other survivors of that godforsaken Death Zone who had escaped alongside me were going to fight for my faction.

Rising legends versus the world leaders of tomorrow.

The question wasn’t whether people respected me anymore. They did.

The question was which kind of power they believed would matter more in the future. And convincing them it would be mine was, like I said, not the difficult part.

The difficult part was the act of convincing itself.

Flattering people up, pretending to remember their names from when we met in some boring gala years ago, asking them about their families, inquiring about their aspirations, sucking up to them with a smile, smiling while they suck up to me.

And after this endlessly exhausting ritual of making one another feel important draws to its end, we’d gracefully start dancing around the actual topic at hand.

I wouldn’t directly ask them, "Will you join my faction?"

That was far too crude.

So instead, I’d drive the flow with harmless questions that would give me an idea of their concerns and subtly pitch my counteroffers into the conversation.

By the end of it, we’d be discussing contacts and future ventures and the kind of wine we’d be drinking at the victory banquet.

Fucking. Frustrating.

I hated this tediously delicate waltz.

I hated politics.

And despite my sweet tooth, I hated wine! Why would anyone drink fermented piss when whisky existed?!

But uncaring of my unraveling mental health, I was strung along from one conversation to another. Promises were made and stories of my time in the Noctveil Wilds were told.

The Bloody Night was brought up countless times to relive my heroics and I had to nod and look appropriately solemn. A few times, Michael and I were pulled together. And a few times, Alexia was forced to join us, completing the trio.

Alexia looked even more tired than me. Surprisingly, Michael was faring much better than either of us high nobles.

In my defense, I was the only one actively recruiting people. Both of my friends were just talking about their experience and recounting the hardships of the journey we took to get back home.

And while I wouldn’t say I managed to convince everyone I talked to, I did pretty well.

Some nobles didn’t beat around the bush at all. They shamelessly laid out their terms and either rejected me based on my answer or negotiated to a compromise.

Those immediately became my favorite. Perhaps that was their motive after all, but I didn’t care. They were a godsend.

I didn’t see Juliana, Kang, and Ray until the party finally ended.