The Villainous Noblewoman Is About to Be Forced into Love, Isn't This Wrong? - Chapter 17: Royal Knight

Cairn is a prince who is already tired of ruling. Faced with an imminent coronation and an overbearing father, he wants nothing more than to drown his responsibilities in cheap liquor and poor decisions. With the help of his sister, he hatches a plan to escape the clutches of the throne once and for all. It all goes terribly wrong, and Cairn finds his priorities shifting in the face of unimaginable tragedy. The change of heart comes too late, however, and Cairn dies. He reawakens to find himself transported ten years in the past. He immediately begins to plan for the future, only to discover his killer has somehow followed him. To succeed, Cairn must unite the kingdom and discover the motivation of his killer, using as many tries as it takes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I exhausted pretty much every time loop story ever written and decided to write my own. You'll see a few similarities here between this story and some existing stories, at least initially. There's a lot of inspiration drawn from both MoL and Re:Zero, though in terms of pathos and darkness, this story leans more towards the latter. Be warned, it is something of a slow burn. The main character will grow and become powerful, but a theme of this story is that power comes slowly and often at great cost.

This is a strange and inexplicable world…Mountains, water, stones, flowers, grass, trees, wood, the Sun, moonlight, stars… All creation under the Heavens and Earths are sources of energy. In this world, there are all the classics from his previous world, but there is a new addition: The Law of Dao. Fang Zhengzhi was conflicted. I can obtain power from reading books? Should I read Tao Te Ching first? Or should I read The Art of Becoming Invisible? What about the Analects of Confucius or… The Golden Lotus? With The Law Of Dao as his foundation, can Fang Zhengzhi master the Dao of All Creation and open the gate of God?

After a shocking reincarnation, our hero opens her eyes to a new (and messy) world the last thing she remembers is reading Lady Viper’s Vow, a dark fantasy novel about a cruel, misunderstood villainess and her path of doom. But when our protagonist finds herself reborn right in the heart of an attack, she’s moments away from a second, way-too-soon death. Just as she’s about to face the end, a mysterious “system” pops up with a single mission: Level Up or Die Trying. It’s bossy, snarky, and her new best friend. As she levels up into a borderline-cheater powerhouse, she discovers her fate isn’t to be a hero, a princess, or even a sorceress, but to protect the one person no one ever expected her to side with: the villainess herself.

Long ago a great calamity struck the earth, destroying much of it and merging what remained with pieces of other worlds.

With these worlds came Aether, a new form of energy that can allow one to transcend the bounds of normal mortality and human limitations.

In a world where humans absorb the essence of aether beasts to gain power, Aiden Hawke joins the class of humans known as arcanists, people who defeat aether beasts and absorb their essence into cores they forge within themselves, and who infuse themselves with the aether that permeates the world around them to increase the power of their body and mind.

However, unlike most, Aiden will find that he holds a unique gift and that his journey as an arcanist will not be so simple.