Chapter 1: 01. Waking Up In A Noble’s Mansion.

"What kind of company am I even working for?" These were the words that came out of a tired, thirty-year-old man.

Right now he was walking alone on a quiet road in the middle of the night, and his name was Austin.

Currently, Austin was so tired and exhausted.

To be honest, his exhaustion wasn’t the simple kind of tiredness that could be easily erased with a simple goodnight sleep, because these tired bones of his had been exhausted for months now.

And why, one may wonder?

The answer to that question was quite simple, and that was nothing more than his current job.

His current job had been the reason for his exhausted body right now.

Austin currently worked at a game company, which happened to be a really big company.

The company he worked in had partnered with two other major companies from different nations, and together they had been working on something that had never been done before.

They were going to create a game where players would take the role of one of three princes in a kingdom.

The goal and objective of the game was simple, and that was to build a harem, have children, and grow stronger.

In other words, the more wives and children you have, the more powerful you’ll get.

This was a game idea that got every man on the team excited about it.

And what made it even more fun to create was the fact that the game had a clean, SFW version and an adult-styled NSFW version planned as well.

The hype in the office became so real that people stayed late without being asked to do so.

Everyone worked really hard and meticulously like never before, and for the first time in a long time, Austin couldn’t deny how fun it was to actually come to work every day.

But then, to his utter surprise, the game production got cancelled.

Just like that, the higher ups had decided they wanted a sci-fi game instead and told everyone to scrap what they had built and start over.

The excitement, upon hearing this, died instantly overnight.

But everyone returned back to work.

They kept working and they tried hard to meet the boss’s designated time.

However, Austin’s body had started to show warning signals that he simply ignored and overlooked.

Now, he had grown lean and thin over the months.

Even now that he walked home in the cold, Austin could barely drag himself forward as he let out a long sigh and muttered to himself. "Ahh.. I just wish I was dead."

And just as the words escaped his lips, Austin suddenly heard the roar of an engine storming toward him.

"Huh?" He turned his head and noticed a truck moving fast with its headlights aimed straight at him.

"Oh shit! I was joking. I didn’t mean what I..."

He tried uttering out, but it was already too late and the truck ran him over.

The next thing he knew, he was already dead.

Or better yet, he thought he was dead, but to his surprise, Austin opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was a ceiling made of dark coloured wood.

His nose twitched a bit when he smelled the perfume in the air and tasted the bit of blood on his tongue.

Austin groaned as he felt like his whole body had been stepped on repeatedly before now, but the more he tried to move, the harder he found out it would be impossible to do so.

And it was then that Austin discovered something very important.

There were actually three voices in the room with him, with all three men standing a few steps away from him while laughing.

The tallest man was a broad-shouldered man with a thick neck and a scar along his left cheek.

He was laughing the hardest and loudest, and next to him was a leaner man with a smug look on his face, while the third man looked older with a short beard and rings on most of his fingers.

These men were family members of the Chan Household, and Austin’s eyes widened at the thought of how he had known this when he was just now knowing about them.

This was because, upon his arrival in this world, the previous host’s memories began to flood into his own head, and this allowed him to know a lot about his current self.

First of all, his current name was Austin Rin, unlike his previous world name, Austin Riverdale.

Moreover, in this world, he was twenty-six years old, and his parents here were skilled potion makers who had died a decade ago.

They had been killed by magical beasts during a supply transport to a nearby town.

After their death, the previous host had fallen apart. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

He had tried following his late father’s old potion recipe to keep the family business going a little longer, but no matter what he did, he failed every time in replicating that recipe.

The previous host wasn’t really that close with his parents due to one reason or another, so he had never watched how his parents used their secret ingredients to make potions.

But the moment they died, he tried rummaging through his parents’ stuff to replicate the potions.

In the end, he was unsuccessful in doing so.

But with little to no money left, he had to make a living somehow.

And so, the previous host began to gamble away the little money they had left him, only to lose every bet he made.

He even began drinking a lot before sending away the household staffs.

Then he ultimately sold the furniture of his parents’ mansion before selling the mansion itself.

In other words, everything around him turned worse.

And now, tonight, the previous host had visited this mansion to make the most ridiculous proposition Austin had ever heard before.

The previous host had walked into the home of the Chan Household Apothecary with a proposition that he would hand over his family’s secret stamina-enhancing potion recipe in exchange for their daughter’s hand in marriage.