WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Mordor

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈

Chapter 11: Became the Romance Fantasy Heroine's Friend

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If anyone asked what my hobby was, I would have answered web novels, since I read them that often.

It had all started with webtoons.

I worked the night shift at a convenience store, and perhaps because it was in the countryside, there were hardly any customers.

A friend recommended a webtoon to me while I was watching YouTube like I had all the time in the world.

-This will make time disappear.

They said it was a popular webtoon these days, so good that time would practically vanish while reading it. They told me to trust them and give it a try.

“Is it really that good?”

So I did, and it was more fun than I had expected. I got hooked in no time.

Before I knew it, I had caught up to the latest episode.

“Free if you wait, huh.”

It was the latest episode, but that did not mean there was no more story.

I would have to wait a week for the next episode, but I could pay to read ahead.

“It will come out if I wait anyway.”

I only read it to pass the time during my shift. Did I really need to spend money?

“Tch.”

Still, I wanted to know what happened next. Renting an episode only cost 200 won.

“I’ll just read this one...”

So I paid and read the advance chapters.

Then, after I finished them all, it told me to wait another week.

“I should’ve just waited.”

I was sad that I could not read more even if I paid, but the comments under the latest episode tempted me.

-The webtoon is at original novel chapter 78! Chapter 83 is the real masterpiece!

“...Ah, but I hate reading.”

I was not particularly fond of reading.

But they said it was legendary.

One webtoon episode covered around one to three web novel chapters.

That meant I would have to wait at least two weeks, possibly almost four, to see what came next.

So...

“I’ll stop right there.”

They said it was legendary. I would read just that part, then wait for the webtoon.

That was what I had thought.

And it was the wrong choice.

“Yeeun, good work tonight.”

“Ah, yes.”

When I came to my senses, it was morning.

After changing shifts with the manager, I arrived at my apartment in a daze and let out an exclamation without realizing it.

“This is good...”

I had thought I would read just four chapters.

By the time I snapped out of it, I had binge-read the entire completed novel.

I even heard that the webtoon had skipped parts, so I went back and read every chapter from 1 through 78 that I had already seen in the webtoon.

Annoyingly... it was as good as the webtoon.

No, it was even better.

Turns out I was better at reading than I thought.

Once I got over that first hurdle, I started reading novels as often as webtoons whenever I had free time.

“This one’s good too.”

Late at night, alone in the convenience store, I read webtoons and web novels.

Male-oriented fantasy, martial arts, alternate history, and more. I read nearly every genre except for a few obscure ones, but perhaps because I started with romance fantasy, roughly half the series I read were romance fantasies.

As I kept reading one novel after another...

“Ha.”

I eventually came across a work I both loved and hated.

Its title was Like a Flower Blooming in a Parched Land.

“Fuck.”

It had begun brightly as an academy story.

Then the plot suddenly swerved into misery porn.

After the characters graduated from the academy, maybe it was just my imagination, but it started having even more battle scenes than male-oriented novels.

Still, I could endure it.

That fucking author could really write.

And unlike most romance fantasies that ended quickly, the series was becoming absurdly long.

It pissed me off every time I read it, but I could not drop it because it had this maddening pull that made me read the next chapter anyway.

“You fucking bastard of an author!”

But when Part Four, the Demon Realm Arc, began, I could not take it anymore.

“Ha, hahaha. Seriously. This is insane. Marriage by abduction? Are you out of your mind?”

It was only a novel, yet I laughed hollowly, half out of my mind.

The academy guys had only barely kissed the heroine once after over a hundred chapters.

Fuck, some of those useless bastards had not even kissed her before leaving the academy!

Yet the bastard called the king of the demons, who appeared in Part Four, kidnapped the heroine and fucked her within thirty chapters of his introduction.

Then he openly declared her to be his wife.

“Fuck!”

Maybe because the novel was not rated adult-only.

Or maybe the author intended to make excuses later, saying, “No, I only made it seem that way. They haven’t actually done it yet.”

There was no scene showing them actually having sex, but there was that sort of conversation when they woke up the next morning.

“I was uneasy from the moment that Demon King bastard looked so damn good on the Part Four cover.”

I had supported Prince Essid from the beginning, but I would not have been this furious if she had ended up with another male lead.

But fuck, this was not it.

It was like flipping off everyone who had supported a pairing for over four hundred chapters.

It was already ridiculous that the final boss, who had suddenly appeared in Part Four, showed up claiming to be a male lead candidate.

The other male leads had spent over four hundred chapters acting like impotent fools, and this guy slept with the heroine within a single volume of appearing?

Fuck. I could not let this slide.

Five thousand seven hundred characters? Not even close. Even twice that, 11,400 characters, would not be enough to express all my rage.

If you are going to send me into the novel, then send me already.

Burning with rage, I began setting the comment section ablaze.

“These assholes?”

Then I saw people who had judged solely from the cover and were happy that the handsome Demon King had slept with the heroine.

Had these people even read the same novel as me?

They had watched all that academy nonsense, and they liked a plot where a handsome final boss suddenly appeared and forced himself on the heroine?

People said you had to respect tastes, but I could not respect this.

I immediately picked fights with every pro-Demon King comment.

I had no regrets.

I had to vent this shitty feeling somehow.

Until my shift ended.

No, until I got home and was about to fall asleep.

With the heart of a loyal subject offering blunt advice, I left long comments for the author.

With the heart of a loyalist striking down traitors, I fought flame wars with the Demon King faction’s readers.

And when I woke up...

“Fuck, what is this?”

I had become a supporting character in the romance fantasy novel whose comment section I had cursed, something I had only heard about in legends.

* * *

Since it was the typical beginning of an extra-in-a-novel story, I followed the typical route exactly.

“Hi!”

I became childhood friends with the golden capybara, who unconsciously seduced countless men, including an imperial prince, through her demonic charm.

“The world’s dangerous. You should at least learn some defensive magic in case something happens.”

“Is that so?”

I could not bear to watch Daisy become the Saintess and still fail to protect herself, only to be kidnapped by the Demon King. So I worked from childhood to draw out her magical talent.

“This one and this one are fun.”

“B-but Mom said I shouldn’t read things like that!”

The male and female leads were taking forever to make progress, so I also fed Daisy romance novels in the hope that they might help even a little.

I was convinced it would be faster to make Daisy more aware of sex than to wait for those hopeless male leads to make a move.

“I got into the academy!”

“Me too.”

Then, thanks to abilities improved beyond the original story, we enrolled in the academy without any trouble.

Now it begins.

My heart pounding, I thought about how to deal with all the awful events to come.

Then, on the first day of class, a rumor spread quickly.

“They say the Little Sword Emperor from the Swordsmanship Department lost?”

The original story had finally begun.

That was what I thought!

“They say it was Adam Smith.”

“...What?”

Without realizing it, I grabbed the person spreading the rumor and asked again.

“W-who did you say?”

“They said Adam Smith.”

They looked startled because I had suddenly grabbed them, but I was far more shocked.

Why was the invisible hand suddenly popping out and taking down the Little Sword Emperor?

The one meant to defeat the Little Sword Emperor was Ellen, the prince of Leon and a supporting male lead just like him!

The strongest swordsman in the setting, someone who could even carve up the Demon King, that bastard male lead from Part Four, if they fought with swords alone.

One of the academy arc’s key moments was Daisy comforting the Little Sword Emperor after he was crushed by despair before that enormous wall.

That was why Prince Ellen initially came across as slightly villainous, while the Little Sword Emperor Asran was pushed as a strong male lead candidate alongside Prince Essid.

And that had been shattered from the very beginning.

“What is this?”

I wondered whether some variable had appeared and Prince Ellen had never enrolled at the academy, but that was not it.

Prince Ellen was the one who beat Adam Smith in the end.

“What the hell is going on?”

I was suspicious.

But I could not be sure yet.

So I stayed around Daisy and watched to see whether events unfolded as they had in the original story.

“Would you like to join the Flower Arrangement Club?”

She smiled and invited the imperial prince, whom no one approached, to club activities.

“What are you doing over there?”

She coaxed the Little Sword Emperor, who was crouched awkwardly in a corner, nursing the sorrow of defeat.

“Do you know a lot about flowers too?”

She went to buy flowers for the club and reeled in another person.

Watching the male leads fall for her one by one, I thought the original story was still holding together.

“I think this should work.”

“Ah, I see.”

Or so I thought, but Prince Ellen became a problem again.

What the fuck?

Why was only his story getting mangled?

What sort of person was Prince Ellen?

Along with Gerard, the second son of House Rias, the family that guarded the Demon Realm, he filled the role of a romance fantasy northern duke.

Cold, strong, and warm only to his woman.

Of course, that only happened in the later parts.

At this early point in the story, he was supposed to linger around the heroine, unable to open his heart but still drawn to her.

Gerard was doing exactly that.

But Prince Ellen was different.

Where had he thrown away that icy northern-duke style?

He was smiling beside Daisy as he learned flower arranging.

“...”

No, you are not supposed to be like that.

You spent the whole academy arc orbiting her, practically reeking of supporting male lead energy, then graduated without doing anything.

The part where Gerard and Ellen turned into cheetahs and started running came in Part Three, after they graduated from the academy.

Gerard was staying still as he had in the original story, but Prince Ellen was already running.

“That bastard is definitely the culprit.”

Finding the culprit was easy.

There was someone who had not existed in the original story beside Ellen, the only one who had changed.

Adam Smith might have gone unmentioned because he was an extra, but there was no way he was an extra after taking down the Little Sword Emperor.

There was only one problem.

“What if he’s a regressor?”

Regression, possession, reincarnation, the essential elements of web novels.

Possession like mine was one thing, but if Adam Smith had regressed, meddling for no reason could be pointless.

“Considering how completely the story got wrecked, regression would make sense.”

A few lunatics supported the Demon King as a male lead, but any sane reader had to admit that the plot had gone completely off the rails.

The heroine’s first time, which the story had dragged out for so long, was suddenly taken by a newly introduced character through kidnapping and confinement.

To change that utterly wrecked plot, someone would have to regress.

It made no sense for it to be a new character rather than one of the male leads.

“...Then again, did the Demon King suddenly barging in make sense?”

Considering how unhinged that author was, it would not have been strange if the world ended around Part Five and a new male lead candidate regressed.

I could not dismiss the possibility that Adam Smith was a regressor.

“Ah, whatever.”

But when I thought of the events ahead, I needed to quickly confirm whether Adam Smith was an ally.

So I asked the unusually cheerful Prince Ellen to deliver a letter, then summoned Adam Smith to the rooftop of the old school building, where no one would be after club activities ended.

But what was I supposed to say?

Regression, possession, reincarnation?

No. I had to phrase it indirectly.

“D-doyouknow Like a Flower Blooming in a Parched Land?”

Fuck.

I could not help but panic at the question that came out of nowhere.

I had meant to subtly signal him with the novel’s title.

Why did “doyouknow” suddenly slip out?

“D-doyouknow kimchi?”

Fuck.

Maybe because he knew the original novel’s title, or maybe because he was staring at a crazy bitch blurting out nonsense like “doyouknow,” he looked somewhat confused.

I tried to say a password only someone from Korea, from my old world, would know.

But that damned “doyouknow” slipped out again. This time, though, there was a clear reaction.

“Doyouknow Ko... Ah, fuck. You’re from South Korea, aren’t you?”

This time, I cut off the “doyouknow” before it could come out and just charged straight in.

“...Yeah.”

I had unexpectedly met someone from the same country in my previous life.

Footnotes:

“Doyouknow” preserves the deliberately run-together Konglish catchphrase in the original.

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