I woke up on the floor of a tavern, which was weird because the last thing I remembered was dying on a sidewalk.
The floor smelled like beer and old meat. I could feel my body again, which was a nice upgrade from the whole shutting-down-in-pieces thing. I opened my eyes and found a ceiling made of beams darkened by smoke, with an antler chandelier hanging slightly to one side. Three of its candles had burned down to waxy stumps, and late afternoon light came through a window to my left, thick and golden.
I sat up and looked at my hands. They weren’t mine.
The fingers were too thin, the nails bitten to the quick, and there was a scar across my left knuckles I’d never seen before. My hands immediately shot to my face. I touched my jaw, my nose, and the stubble along my chin. Everything felt wrong. The jaw was wrong, the nose was wrong, and I knew for a fact that I couldn’t grow a beard. My eyes scanned the place for anything reflective that I could use to take a look at myself. Eventually, I spotted a mirror behind the bar, a small, round thing tarnished around the edges. The face looking back at me was mine, but not mine. It had the same general shape and dark hair, although the hair was shorter and badly cut. The eyes were brown instead of mine, and there was a fresh bruise on the left cheekbone.
My eyes widened. I knew this face. I knew it because I’d written it into the third Chapter of A Streamer’s Guide to Surviving Haremdale. It was a face I’d spent less than ten minutes describing in a single paragraph, and even then, only because I needed an extra for the tavern scene.
His name was Joseph. He showed up a Chapter before the hero met Clara Dale, got drunk, picked a fight, and got thrown through a window. That was his entire purpose. Die in Chapter 4 so the hero could look good doing it. I hadn’t even given him a last name.
I was Joseph now. How? I had no idea.
Lucky me.
I pressed my hands flat against the bar counter and counted the bottles. There were twelve, four were unlabeled, and one was cracked in exactly the way I’d written it. Then the voice came back, calm and genderless, speaking from inside my skull.
An Extra’s Guide to a Harem System has been initialized. Welcome, host. Your synchronization with the vessel Joseph is complete.
A translucent window popped up in my vision, floating in the air like a HUD in a video game.
[An Extra’s Guide to a Harem System]
Host: Joseph
Status: Alive (Temporary)
Luck: F
Level: 1
System Function: ENABLED
I’d just received a system. Now that was a plot twist. I’d transmigrated into my own novel, and I wasn’t even the main character. Worse, the System had classified my status as temporary, and it wasn’t being subtle about what that meant.
"Temporary," I muttered. It tasted bad.
Your vessel is fated to die in the original narrative.
Current estimated time of death: 6 hours.
I had six hours to live. The tavern scene, the fight with the hero, and my second death were all scheduled to happen within that time. I’d written the scene to take place on the same evening the hero arrived in town, and if the story was still following the script, he’d walk through that front door sometime in the next few hours. I looked towards the entrance. Sunlight was still coming through the gaps, so I had some time. Not much, but some.
"What are my options?" I asked the air, feeling stupid.
The people in the tavern were giving me strange looks, but I didn’t care. Having died once, it was surprisingly easy not to give a damn about anything other than preserving the life I’d somehow been given back. Another window appeared, listing the System’s available functions.
[System Functions Available]
Quest Log: Active quests and objectives
Companion Registry: Bonded companions and their stats
Skill Tree: Available and locked skills
Author’s Archive: Meta knowledge repository
Luck Meter: Current luck rating and modifiers
I quickly realised that I was the only one who could see the interface. Good. At least I wouldn’t have to explain why I was staring at floating windows in the middle of a tavern.
I pulled up the Quest Log first.
[Active Quest]
Primary Objective: Survive.
Description: Your vessel is fated to die in Chapter 4. Change your fate.
Reward: Survival. System Level Up. Luck modifier increase.
Failure: Death. Permanent.
Difficulty: S
What the hell were these stats? F-rank luck, Level 1, and an S-rank difficulty quest. I laughed, although it came out more like a cough. Of course my first quest in a world I’d created was a suicide mission.
The Author’s Archive was more interesting. If the System was tied to my novel, perhaps I still had access to what I’d written. I opened it, and another window appeared.
[Author’s Archive]
Status: Partial Access Available: Chapters 1 through 418 (Drafted)
Locked: Chapters 419 onward (Undrafted)
Accuracy Warning: Meta knowledge accuracy degrades as narrative divergence increases.
Current Divergence: 0%
Four hundred and eighteen Chapters. I’d written that many before I quit, all of Arcs 1 through 5 and most of Arc 6. Every character, every major event, every twist I’d planned, all sitting in my head and now confirmed by the System. The locked Chapters, from 419 onward, contained the ending I’d never finished. I’d barely started Lilith the Red’s arc, introducing her in Chapter 415 before writing another three Chapters and abandoning the novel at Chapter 418. Three Chapters for a character I’d intended to be the ultimate villainess, and that was it.
The accuracy warning was the catch, though. Zero per cent divergence meant the story was still on script, but the moment I started changing things, my knowledge of what came next would become less reliable. A deviation in Chapter 4 could make Chapter 200 wrong. A deviation in Chapter 100 could make Chapter 400 useless. My knowledge of the story was a resource, and I had no way of knowing how quickly I could lose it.
One problem at a time. I pulled up Chapter 4, the Chapter where Joseph died, and the details surfaced in my mind as though I were reading my own manuscript. The hero arrives at the tavern in the evening. Joseph is drunk and insults him. The hero initially ignores him, but Joseph throws the first punch. The hero catches it and hurls him through the front window. Joseph hits the cobblestones outside and breaks his neck. The hero doesn’t even check on him because I’d written him not to care about extras.
I had written that scene in twenty minutes and never thought about it again. Now that rushed scene was going to be my death, unless I could stop it.
From where I stood, I had two options. Option one: leave before the hero arrived. Walk out the back door, disappear into town, and avoid the tavern until the scene had passed. The problem was that the script might pull me back. I’d already felt it. Option two: stay and survive the scene. Not by fighting the hero, because Joseph couldn’t fight, and not by running, because the script might force me back or the hero might catch me. I had to survive by changing how the scene played out.
I looked at the front door, then at the back door. The script said Joseph stayed, got drunk, picked a fight, and died. But the script was a blueprint, not a law. Not yet. My divergence was still at zero, which meant the original narrative hadn’t been altered. The scene was still waiting to happen exactly as I’d written it.
I just had to figure out how to change it before the hero walked through that door.