Sin System: I Transmigrated Into The Villain’s Body

"Lu Chen deserved a slower death."

Lucian Walter muttered the words as he scrolled through the final chapter of The Empire's Fall. His eyes burned from eight hours of staring at the monitor, and the empty caffeine pills on his desk offered no comfort. On the screen, the villain of the story a man with his same first name was currently being beheaded by the Holy Hero.

"He had the wealth of a kingdom and the magic of a progenitor, yet he used it all to harass a girl? What a waste," Lucian hissed, leaning back until his cheap office chair groaned.

His own reflection in the darkened window was pathetic. He was a failed writer with messy hair, living in a room that smelled like rotten ramen and stew. He looked back at the novel's comment section.

User449: Lu Chen was such a coward. Glad he's gone.

"If I had his power," Lucien whispered, his eyelids growing heavy, "I would have turned that empire into a playground. I wouldn't have died like a dog."

he grumbled, pushing himself up from his desk.

He walked over to the small, humming fridge to take water only to see that it was empty. In the center of the room, a plastic bucket sat beneath a steady drip, drip, drip from the ceiling. He looked at the water collecting in the bottom and let out a dry, mirthless laugh.

"At least I get free water without paying."

He aimed a half-hearted kick at a stray beer can that had been rolling around the floor since his neighbor's birthday party three weeks ago. It clattered into the corner. He collapsed onto his bed, staring up at the water-stained ceiling while the rain outside intensified, turning the sky into a bruised purple. Lightning flashed, casting sharp, jagged white light across his peeling wallpaper.

"When will all this be over?"

He turned to face the wall, clutching his stomach. The loud, hollow growl of hunger was the only sound that could compete with the storm. His eyelids felt like lead. He blinked once, then twice, and as the thunder shook the glass in the window frames, he finally drifted off.

KRA-AAAAA.

A violent crack of thunder jolted him upright. His heart hammered against his ribs.

"Oh, it's just the weather," he whispered, his voice thick with sleep. "I thought it was my stomach."

He moved to lay back down, but the surface beneath him felt different. It wasn't the thin, lumpy mattress he'd grown used to. It was soft impossibly soft.

"Young master Lu, young master Lu."

A hand was on his shoulder, shaking him with persistent urgency. He groaned, swatting the hand away without opening his eyes.

"Lu? Since when did my name change from Lucien to Lu? What type of dream is this?"

"Young master Lu, have you forgotten to attend to the guest who has been waiting for you since rooster hour?" The voice grew louder, more insistent. "The lady from the Yan family has been waiting while on her knees."

"What's all this noise about?"

Lucien snapped his eyes open and sat up. Instead of his water-damaged ceiling, he saw high, vaulted beams of dark wood. Standing over him was a bald man with a strange tuft of hair right in the middle of his scalp. He looked like a Shifu character straight out of a martial arts film.

"Who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my room?"

Lucien scrambled back, pulling his legs to his chest and cocking a fist, ready to swing.

The old man blinked, looking entirely baffled. "Fuck? What does that mean? I only came here to remind you, young master Lu Chen."

The man immediately bowed his head low.

Lucien froze. "Lu Chen? That's the character from my book. Why am I being addressed as that? And why is this man here? Why is"