Inheriting the Novel

Chapter 1 : Prologue

Prologue

My father was a madman.

No, to be exact, he went insane one day, all of a sudden.

It was about ten years ago, when my father suffered a riding accident.

He couldn't get out of bed for a while, and it wasn't until a month later that he finally opened his eyes.

But the father who awoke was no longer the father I knew.

I still remember it vividly.

The way he asked where he was, who he was, and what time it was.

And then, after a few more days passed, my father spoke with a look of despair.

"It's all over now."

It wasn't until years later that I understood what he meant by those words.

* * *

"Sir Clay Vanhart! Are you inside?"

I was about to take off my sweat-soaked clothes when I hastily straightened myself at the voice outside the tent and pulled aside the canvas flap.

A supply officer stood outside, holding a white letter in his hand.

"Please, come in."

"No, that's not necessary... Rather, listen carefully and don't be startled."

The strange look on his face made me feel uneasy.

What in the world is he hesitating to say like this?

"Count Vanhart has passed away."

"...... What?"

I couldn't immediately comprehend the meaning of the supply officer's words.

Only after a moment had passed did I barely open my mouth to ask.

"Is it true? That my father has passed away... Is it real?"

"Yes. I've just received this letter with the news."

He patted my shoulder and handed me the letter.

With the letter in my hand, I could only stand there in a daze for a while.

By the time I came to my senses, I was alone in the tent.

"... Father."

Looking down at the half-crumpled letter, I checked the sender and the recipient.

Surprisingly, the letter was from my father to me.

'That my father would send me a letter...'

To me, my father was a subject of both love and hatred.

It was because of him that the once mighty Vanhart family had collapsed.

After the riding accident, he became a completely different person and began acting bizarrely, such as trying to buy lands that were basically ruins or hoarding goods that nobody else wanted.

But none of those eccentric acts ever succeeded.

No family or merchant would trust a 'madman' with their money, and our already-fallen family had no money left to buy land or goods, anyway.

My father never believed in his failures, but the family was already ruined.

In the end, my father shut himself away in his room.

Because of that, I had to do something—anything—to revive the family, even for the people who still remained in House Vanhart.

'And this war was that opportunity.'

The war with the Kingdom of Kainzel, bordering the Kingdom of Talua.

This sudden war was a great chance to restore our ruined house.

I felt guilty leaving behind my father, now a shell of himself, but there was no help for it.

Who knew when another opportunity would come if I let this one slip by?

'Why would he leave a letter at the very end?'

After my father changed, we'd never had a real conversation.

But now, to think that he'd sent me a letter right before he died.

'Did he regain his senses at the very end?'

Carefully, I opened the envelope and read the first line of the letter.

Normally, that spot would be filled with simple greetings.

But what was written there was anything but that.

「I am the author of this novel and a transmigrator.」

I frowned and read the first line again and again.

There was no mistake—the handwriting was definitely my father's.

But what on earth did he mean by this nonsense?

"Author and transmigrator?"

No sane person would write such a thing.

I barely managed to restrain myself from throwing the letter straight in the trash.

At any rate, this was my father's last will to me.

"Hmm...?"

But the more I read, the more I found myself drawn into the letter's contents.

Summing up the letter, the story was this:

This world is a novel, and my father is the author who wrote it.

One day, my father suddenly possessed the body of an individual called Count Kaln Vanhart in this world and lived as him since then.

For reference, the time my father claims to have possessed him was ten years ago.

Back when my father fell from his horse and remained in a coma for a long time.

'... He really did change from that point.'

Thinking back, some of the things he tried to do back then turned out to be miraculous successes.

Other people attempted the absurd things my father had talked about, and they succeeded in everything.

Because of that, they gained unimaginable wealth and power, spreading their names throughout the kingdom.

If things had gone according to my father's ideas, it would have been the Vanhart family that gained wealth and power.

Whenever I think of that, my stomach flips.

'If he really knew the future...'

That would explain his actions back then.

「The character I possessed was Kaln Vanhart, head of House Vanhart and the protagonist's savior.」

The protagonist's savior?

That seemed to be the role my father was assigned in this world.

From here on in the letter, after lamenting his own fate, my father wrote only about the 'protagonist'.

How important the protagonist was to this world, and what he was supposed to do.

However.

「The protagonist is dead.」

With that sentence, all of it became meaningless.

「Kaln Vanhart's role was to accidentally save a dying boy named Fabian in an alley and accept him as a house attendant.」

Fabian.

That seemed to be the protagonist's name.

The problem was that, while my father was unconscious after his fall, Fabian died.

"... Wait."

Does that mean there is no protagonist in this world now?

No, that can't be. This is nothing but my father's delusion...

Yet, something gnawed at me.

'So that's what he meant all this time when he said it was all over...'

The words my father always muttered.

Only now did I understand what those words meant: he realized the protagonist was dead.

There weren't many lines left in the letter.

With a strangely uneasy feeling, I read on.

「I will soon die. It pains me to leave this world behind as a failed novel with a dead protagonist. Now that the protagonist is gone, this world will steadily march toward destruction, because this is not a novel, but reality.」

That was the end of the letter.

I thought of it as nothing more than the delusion of a crazy man, but I couldn't help the fear rising up in my chest.

Everything my father did.

Everything he said.

There was something eerily fitting about it, too much so to dismiss as simple madness.

I read the letter again and, on a whim, checked the back page. There, one final line was written.

Together with my name: Clay Vanhart.

「Clay, you treated someone like me as your father to the end. Even when I was called a madman. When I barely spoke to you, thinking of you as just a character in a story.」

It felt as if I could hear my father's calm tone in my ears.

「I couldn't give you a father's love, but at least, as the creator who gave you life, I want to offer you a gift. From now on, this novel is yours. Only you can change it.」

I stared at that sentence as if mesmerized.

「Clay, from now on, you are the author of this novel.」

Immediately after, his final sentence thundered in my head.

I couldn't keep my wits about me in the face of this incomprehensible phenomenon.

"Ugh?!"

My head spun, my vision darkened, and all the strength left my body.

I shook my head in confusion, but instead, something strange appeared before my eyes.

[The role of 'stand-in author' has been added.]

[The skill 'Setting Confirmation' has been added.]

[The skill 'Setting Addition' has been added.]

[The skill 'Synopsis' has been added.]

Was I seeing things?

I had no idea what these words floating in the air meant, or what kind of trick it was.

And I had no time to figure it out.

It became hard to breathe, and gradually my vision grew darker.

'No, father.'

What did you do to this letter?

That was the last thing I thought before losing consciousness.

-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=

Opp, this is new...

The author/transmigrator/possessor died, and the son of the person he possessed is the MC...

【ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌)】