“Gasp!”
I woke up from the dream and hurriedly looked around.
A bedroom filled with bright sunlight, a soft bed, and a peaceful estate visible outside the window—it was all the reality I knew.
Even so, my shaking did not stop.
This was because I appeared in the novel I saw in my dream.
‘No. That can’t be. It’s just a dream…’
I tried hard to shake off the anxiety, but it did not work.
As soon as that former slave became a duke, the very first person he captured and raped was me.
Because I was his first master and the first person to rape him, he chose me as his first target for revenge.
‘A dream… it must be a dream. Right? No way.’
To deny it, I tried to recall the details of the novel from my dream, and the memories came back clearly.
A small object I looked into while sitting with many people inside a place that looked like a giant carriage. The story of this world was written inside it.
A man with black hair, blue eyes, and the name “Hyacinth,” which did not match his cold impression.
Count Hyacinth Pation of the Florence Empire was me.
‘He laughed at how a dark guy like me could be named Hyacinth, and then he…’
The protagonist who kidnapped and raped me in that future was Lucas Licht.
He was the protagonist described as having platinum blonde hair, red eyes, and a fine body.
It would be a relief if he only stopped at raping me. He repaid everything exactly the way he suffered when he was a slave.
He said he would only chop off my neck and kill me after he did absolutely everything back to me.
“My Lord, are you awake?”
The servant asked from outside the door.
I was startled and answered quickly.
“Uh, yeah. Come in.”
I need to wash up first. I should wash up and then think about this dream.
As I had my meal like any other day and headed to my office to work, the details of the dream gradually faded. The more I thought about it, the more absurd the whole thing felt.
‘Right. There’s no way that’s real. Me, inside a novel?’
Granted, this country actually was at war just like the novel in my dream, and I did hear a rumor a few days ago about a rebellion in the neighboring kingdom, but still…
‘Even if there was a rebellion in the neighboring kingdom, it’s so far away that the news I heard was from a month ago.’
The empire was massive. Our estate, in particular, was located in the south, and even within the south, it was in a secluded countryside. The Kingdom of Fotia, where the rebellion allegedly took place, was located in the northeastern part of the empire, so it was only natural that I didn’t know much about it.
‘Besides, why on earth would I suddenly buy a slave?’
There were no slaves in my mansion. Forget Lucas Licht, the protagonist of that novel—there wasn’t a single person of slave status here.
While slavery was legal, it was much better to pay wages and hire the estate’s residents rather than buying slaves and managing them separately.
The money paid to the residents would ultimately be spent within our estate and find its way back to me anyway. Plus, hiring the residents helped build their loyalty toward me.
There was absolutely no reason to buy slaves just to save a bit of money and make people uncomfortable.
And a guy like me would suddenly bring a slave from somewhere, abuse him, and rape him?
It was impossible.
‘I must be under a lot of stress lately.’
I had undoubtedly taken fragments of things I heard somewhere, pieced them together, and dreamt about it.
Look at this, I had so much work to do right now, and I had a ton of work in the dream too. It was just a pipe dream. Deciding not to care about the dream any longer, I reviewed the documents.
They were sent from the imperial family, demanding supplies for the front lines.
‘It feels like it hasn’t been that long since the last time they sent one.’
At this point, it was extortion. Furthermore, the amount they demanded was exorbitant.
The residents of the estate had already been squeezed enough; what more did they want me to send?
This time, it seemed I would have to sell some household goods to meet the demand.
It wasn’t because I was kind-hearted, but because I feared a riot might break out if I squeezed the residents any further.
It was better for me to become a little poorer. I could always collect taxes again later.
After instructing my staff to look into items in the house that could be sold, I reviewed the next document.
The dream seemed to be slowly forgotten like that.
I stared down at the man who was kneeling on the floor, bound in shackles and handcuffs.
“What did you say this is?”
The servant sent from the imperial family spoke.
“It is a gift bestowed upon Count Pation by His Majesty.”
A gift…
As if the word itself was a humiliation, the man held his head high and gritted his teeth. At that, a knight from the imperial family stepped on the man’s head, forcing it down against the floor.
The servant laughed awkwardly.
“He hasn’t been a slave for very long, so he doesn’t know his place yet. If Count Pation tames him splendidly, His Majesty will be very pleased.”
Even with his head pressed against the floor, the man glared at me as if refusing to back down.
Red eyes and brilliant platinum blonde hair.
A sturdy body built of solid muscle.
A handsome man who drew one’s gaze despite being a complete wreck.
He looked exactly like the description of Lucas Licht, the slave in the novel from my dream.
The circumstances behind me receiving a gift from the Emperor were as follows: Nobles who, like me, found the supply demands overwhelming had submitted a joint petition. Upon receiving the petition, the Emperor wondered why the amount of supplies arriving at the imperial court was steadily decreasing, and ordered an investigation…
As a result, a large number of officials who were bold enough to embezzle goods along the way were captured.
Those fools had diligently recorded the embezzled amounts in a ledger.
Upon seeing the ledger, the Emperor was deeply moved by nobles like me who had quietly offered such vast amounts of wealth as supplies without a single complaint, and thus bestowed a gift upon us.
That gift was a slave the Emperor had received from the neighboring country.
Of course, that wasn’t how I saw it.
‘They probably received this slave from the rebel faction of the neighboring country as a gift.
Keeping him in the palace as a slave felt uncomfortable, but they couldn’t execute him since he was a diplomatic gift, so they used this opportunity to dump him on me.’
And the slave I received was the one who started the rebellion… Whew…
‘They could have explained it, but they didn’t say a single thing and just handed him over as a slave? Is this why he was treated so recklessly in the dream novel?’
I did think that he was treated far too recklessly without any regard for future consequences. The servant explained nothing other than the fact that he was a gift.
If I hadn’t had that dream, I would never have known that he was a duke of another country who had been framed.
There was no way a countryside noble like me would recognize the face of a duke from a distant, neighboring kingdom.
Even his name was something I only learned for the first time through the dream.
‘It’s not entirely because this place is the countryside… but let’s move past that.’
In any case, that novel was real.
