Chapter 0: Prologue

[You failed to prevent the empire’s collapse. Seek a new approach.]

Another failure.

No matter how many times I regress, the outcome is always the same.

“What more do they expect me to do here…?”

The infamous dark fantasy game, Lost Emperor.

A brutal world where no matter what you do, it always ends in ruin.

In this world, I was transmigrated as the wastrel second son of a corrupt count’s family.

My name is Derek Minster.

As a noble, I had no shortage of wealth.

But wealth and glory are meaningless without an empire to enjoy them in.

Having never even held a kitchen knife, I devoted myself to swordsmanship to prepare for the collapse.

Driven by an obsession to survive and spend lavishly.

Thanks to that, I somehow became a sword master in my first loop.

But then a self-proclaimed saint appeared, inciting the masses.

The empire, swept up in a citizen’s revolution, couldn’t be saved by me alone.

I managed to execute her myself, but the empire still fell to the hands of its people.

Second loop.

I studied politics like a madman and rose to the position of imperial chancellor.

Caught in the feud between two grand elders as powerful as the emperor, the empire split apart.

“This won’t do. I’ll just kill them all.”

In the end, I chose the path of an assassin.

If I could just eliminate the sources of disaster, everything would be solved.

But…

This damned game mocked my efforts by unleashing a plague this time.

A witch cursing the world appeared, staining the entire continent red.

“This f*cking garbage game…!!”

And so, I returned once again to my days as the wastrel second son.

[You failed to prevent the empire’s collapse. Seek a new approach.]

“Hey, let’s be honest for once. Is there even a way to stop the collapse?”

[Seek a new approach. One chance remaining.]

If it keeps babbling like that, there must be a solution somewhere.

But after dying countless times, I know ordinary methods won’t work.

No matter how much I grow, there are beings I can’t touch.

The only way is to reform them before they become disasters.

The mad saint who incited the masses.

The grand elders who sparked civil war.

And finally, the transcendent sage from the East.

After tirelessly digging for information, I found a record.

A “place of exile” where all of them were imprisoned at the same time.

Berryhill Prison.

Not just those three, but many of the empire’s lunatics were held there.

My decades of experience in this game world tell me one thing.

The perverse developers who put them all in one place…

It means the key to solving this lies there.

My last chance after three failures.

I no longer have the swordsmanship of my knight commander days, the connections from my chancellor days, or the deft hands of my assassin days.

Even so, I boldly chose the path to the prison.

With the experience and knowledge I’ve accumulated, I’ll reform these damned disasters.

“How much was the warden position, again?”