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Prologue
One morning, I awoke from a terrible dream to find that I had become someone else entirely. And that I was in a strange, unfamiliar world – not the world I knew. To be precise, I had entered the very novel that I had written.
“Is that me?” I murmured, gazing at the enormous portrait that adorned one wall.
The portrait’s subject, Maximilian von Karayan, was a figure of great renown in the pages of my book. With his striking good looks, he had become a professor at the most prestigious university in the land at just twenty-three years of age. He had led a civil revolution that overthrew a tyrannical monarchy, and contributed greatly to the establishment of a republic. And he had even removed the first enemy of that republic, ascending to become its second enemy himself.
A charming, brilliant, ambitious man, he was everything one could hope for in a protagonist. Yet, in the end, he had become a dictator – ruling with an iron fist and leaving in his wake a cruel and oppressive regime. And his reign had ended only with his death, a death that was truly tragic.
Now, I have become that very same person. The villain of my own novel. The one whom the hero must vanquish. And so, a miserable end surely awaits me.
Ah, a life where one is intimately acquainted with death. There can be no greater tragedy. But, if I look at it from a different angle, perhaps it is not so bad after all. No, it might even become a pleasant life, if I can avoid becoming a tyrant.
“If I just don’t let power go to my head, everything should be fine,” I said, and a faint smile formed in my lips.
Yes, if I can just live moderately and enjoy life without being consumed by ambition, then I shall be Karayan – a man who fears nothing in this world.
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