Prologue
A brilliant golden light flooded my field of vision. A man with golden hair and golden eyes — his features gentle yet solid, the face of a hero that anyone would recognize at a glance. That man shoved me against the wall.
The moment my back hit the cold surface, a chill crawled up my spine. Those golden eyes, which had always been so docile, were now blazing as they took me in. The eyes of a man who had lost his mind. Someone who could see nothing else, who would charge forward heedless of fire or flood. Coming face to face with that half-crazed gaze, I felt something close to fear.
“Th — Theo…? What are you talking about?”
I forced a harmless smile onto my face and called out to the man before me. To Theo, that is.
But my carefully crafted smile seemed to have had the opposite effect. The hand Theo had clamped around my shoulder tightened with force. At this rate, he was going to snap my collarbone.
From his lips came a voice — low and ominous, nothing at all like his usual bright tone.
“Lihen. Did you think I wouldn’t know?”
“Know… what…?”
“You’ve been doing shameful things every night behind my back. Things you knew I wasn’t supposed to find out about.”
I froze completely.
Don’t tell me he figured it out.
Did he discover that I’m the infamous Demon Legion’s 13th Legion Commander? Did he also realize that Lihen is just some name I threw out carelessly as an alias?
I was sure I’d hidden it well. Where exactly did I slip up?
Question after question chased each other in a relentless chain. So many questions pressed down on my throat that I could barely breathe.
No — the real problem started from the very beginning, with the appearance of this character “Shane” that I’d possessed.
Shane was what you’d call a slit-eyed character. The kind with the classic archetype of a traitor or a villain hiding his true identity. In the original game, he truly was a Legion Commander and spy for the Demon Legion, all while pretending to be an upstanding human.
Narrow, sharp eyes. Unsettling, blood-red irises. Ash-gray hair that resembled the ruins left behind after everything had burned to the ground. A smirk that crept onto his face at every opportunity. Objectively handsome, but with an ominous impression that made you instinctively not want to get close.
A person who looked like that had been sneaking around every night, muffling his footsteps. Whenever Theo asked where I’d been, I always brushed him off with some variation of none of your business. No wonder I looked suspicious to him.
Every single word had to be chosen with care. Right now, one wrong sentence could mean the difference between life and death. If I said the wrong thing, this righteous hero — whose memories may be incomplete, but whose sense of justice remained fully intact — might just cut my head off on the spot.
I forcibly steadied my pounding heart and started working my mind.
Should I just confess honestly.
Admit that he’s right.
That during the day, I played the role of his guardian — reading him books, teaching him swordsmanship, showing him the world — all while he’d lost his memories… and then spent every night roaming around doing every wicked thing imaginable.
That I’d smashed statues of the God of Light, set fire to temples, destroyed the holy knights’ weapons storehouse, and committed countless other atrocities.
But that all of it — every last bit of it — was for him. For this world.
If I said that… would he forgive me?
One day, I was transmigrated into an RPG game called “World Salvation Method.” And of all things — into the evil faction.
A game where you could choose between two sides: good and evil. I had played the good route more than five hundred times, but the evil route I had only tried once.
That was because racking up infamy points by committing murder, arson, and human trafficking — even if it was just a game — left me feeling deeply unsettled. On top of that, I couldn’t stand the idea of destroying the world I had saved hundreds of times, this time as the villain.
So I had turned the game off halfway through and gone to sleep — only to open my eyes and find myself as “Shane,” the character I had used for that evil playthrough.
The game’s basic systems remained unchanged. Complete a quest, and you receive reputation points if you’re on the good side, infamy points if you’re on the evil side. With those points, you could learn new skills, raise your stats, and even purchase rare items impossible to craft with human hands alone.
And you could also raise the stats of characters you’d set as “companions.”
Even though I had transmigrated as someone from the evil faction, I loved this world. I wanted to save it. So I chose “Theo” — the character I had treasured most during my good-route playthroughs — as my companion. Theo was the key figure in re-sealing the Demon King, and the hero of this nation.
If I gathered infamy points to raise his stats and put the best skills in his hands. If I raised him into the most powerful hero capable of standing against the Demon King — then even while possessing an evil character’s body, I could still save this world. The process might be a little wrong, but I was confident that the outcome could be made more righteous than anyone else’s.
And in my own way, I had held to a line. I carried out the evil quests in whatever way would minimize meaningless slaughter. The principle of not sacrificing innocent people was one I never once abandoned.
To a righteous hero like Theo, this kind of reasoning might sound like nothing more than a coward’s excuse.
I let out a long, deep breath and looked straight at Theo.
“I’m sorry. But there’s a reason behind all of this….”
“Of course there’s a reason.”
Theo spoke in a trembling voice.
“Raising me — someone who’d lost both his memories and his abilities — properly must have cost a great deal of money. But even so, selling your body every night is—”
“…Huh?”
Only then did I realize something was off. He hadn’t found out my true identity. Instead, I was being wildly, spectacularly misunderstood.
Why does this guy think I’m some breadwinner who built the household on OnlyFans. The injustice welled up and my voice rose on its own.
“What are you talking about. Selling my body. Why would I do something like that?”
Even after saying it, my chest felt tight. This wasn’t just a misunderstanding — this was the kind of delusion that turned a person into an entirely different type of human being. That I, who had been grinding away every night for the sake of saving the world, was now a male prostitute cashing in on his pretty face. How could this be. But Theo didn’t back down. Those golden eyes narrowed.
“You’re still going to deny it. Last night, I clearly saw Lihen walking into a brothel.”
He saw that. The air caught in my throat. I composed myself and spoke plainly.
“I didn’t go there to sell my body. I had something else to take care of.”
That was the truth. My assassination target just happened to be a regular patron of that brothel. I had merely slipped inside to carry out the assassination quest. That said, I couldn’t exactly blurt that out plainly.
Theo seemed to think I was lying. He brought up one small detail after another.
“Your clothes were different going in versus coming out. And you were reeking of that heavy perfume they say the male prostitutes use.”
My mind went blank for a moment. The clothes — they’d changed because blood had sprayed all over me during the assassination. I couldn’t walk out wearing blood-soaked clothes, so I’d hastily put on a courtesan’s outfit. I’d been bothered by the smell of blood still clinging to me, so I’d doused myself in perfume from the drawer. I hadn’t anticipated that choice coming back around like this.
I had absolutely earned this misunderstanding. There was exactly one way to clear it up. Confess that I hadn’t been selling my body every night — but rather, that as the infamous Legion Commander and spy of the Demon King’s army, I had been out committing murder, arson, and every manner of evil deed.
If I took the time to think it through, I might be able to come up with a more convincing cover story — but right now, with my mind gone completely blank, it was as if I only had two options.
Become a tragic male prostitute — or be exposed as the most ruthless, cold-blooded Demon Legion Commander of them all.
Fighting back tears, I chose the former.
“Looks like I’ve been found out….”
I hung my head low. As though I couldn’t bear how pathetic I was, I muttered with a hollow, defeated laugh.
“I knew it was something I shouldn’t be doing. That’s why I tried to hide it until the end.”
I was quiet for a moment, then added in a voice that had sunk low:
“I’m sorry. For being this kind of guardian to you….”
Theo pressed his body in closer to mine. His face was near enough that I could feel his breath. Those golden eyes were fixed on me as if they intended to take me apart.
“I’ll buy.”
“What?”
“Tonight, I’ll buy Lihen.”
I doubted my own ears. I couldn’t understand what this guy was babbling about, and I didn’t want to. Theo pressed his lips close to my ear and whispered, his voice low and grinding:
“If it’s a body you sell to anyone for money, then selling it to me for one night should be fine too. The money… I’ll arrange enough that Lihen won’t feel shortchanged.”
An alarm blared in my head. This was an emergency. I tried to keep my expression composed, but the cold sweat beading at my temples was beyond my control.
Where exactly did my life go so thoroughly, irreparably wrong.
Right. It all started with…
The moment I was transmigrated into the body of the game character “Shane.”
