Substitute - Chapter 40

Akira Tsukihara was a romance author who despised love. Though she wrote best-selling novels filled with idealistic romance, she harbored nothing but contempt for the genre and the readers who adored it. Love, in her eyes, was a lie—an illusion that blinded people from the true forces of the world: power, betrayal, and ambition. One night, in a fit of frustration, she cursed love itself... and woke up trapped inside one of her own stories.Reborn as Aira, a nameless peasant girl in the Kingdom of Seraphis—a world she had meticulously crafted—Akira quickly realizes that reincarnation isn’t the fantasy dream she had written about. She isn’t a noble, a princess, or a heroine blessed with beauty and power. She is a nobody. A commoner, struggling to survive in the harsh realities of the medieval world she had once designed as a mere backdrop for her grand romances.As Aira, she faces starvation, endless labor, and the crushing weight of insignificance. But Akira was never one to accept fate. If she couldn’t escape this world, she would rewrite the story on her own terms. She would carve her name into history—not as the lovestruck heroine of a cliché romance, but as the mastermind who would bend the world to her will.In a land ruled by noble bloodlines and political schemes, where the romance tropes she once loathed play out before her eyes, Aira sets her sights on one goal: destroying the very ideals of love that had imprisoned her in this wretched world.Even if it means becoming the villain of her own story.

There are all sorts of lunatics in the world:Self-centered, reckless, psychotic, impulsive, obsessive, and pe*verted.As far as Suin knows, that man embodied every single one of those traits—an obsessive, pe*verted psycho.And now, that lunatic is back.“Finally, we meet.”“Adult Lee Suin.”He didn’t even try to hide the sticky hunger in his gaze, like a starved lion finally spotting its prey.“A job reassignment?”“I want Lee Suin to help me.”Chairman Woo Ilhwa, unaware of his son’s true intentions, reassigns Suin, his chief secretary, to serve as his son’s personal secretary.This forces Suin into close proximity with the man who’s been preying on her from the shadows.“Wait for me, Lee Suin.”During his eleven years of exile, Jaehee had dreamed of one thing:A proper relationship—not as a restricted minor, but as a full-grown adult.A relationship where he could take what he wanted, whenever and however he pleased.That’s why, even though Suin was as rigid as a steel rod, his sly persistence ignited the spark within him whenever he faced her.“What do you want from me?”“You.”“Lee Suin.”But it seems Suin has been flirting with some bastard behind his back, and Jaehee’s jealousy and obsession explode.“Don’t take a single step.”“Unless you want to see me go completely insane.”What nonsense.You were already insane to begin with.

She was originally the young miss of the Marquis Estate, but became a peasant girl due to a mixed-up at birth.

After dying prematurely from an incurable disease, Yuka Hikano finds himself in a mysterious realm filled with endless doors, each concealing divine gifts from powerful deities. He is not alone—others who have met the same fate of death stand beside him, unaware of the trials that await.They are put through various tests and eventually transmigrated into different worlds. But these worlds are nothing like the Earth they once knew.For Yuka, however, this apocalyptic world feels eerily familiar. It is a realm of endless war, devastation, and chaos—a world he once played in a game. Certainly not the kind of place one would wish to be reborn into.From infancy to adulthood, he must gather strength, knowledge, and allies to survive the horrors that lurk ahead. But when he awakens a system granting him a power beyond imagination, he soon realizes that blessings can also be curses.[You have gained Infinite Mana.]Infinite Mana...?What could possibly go wrong?