Side Character

Tetsuko Haruki could not remember how he died, but he knew he’d been reborn into another world as soon as he opened his eyes.

The first clue was his new mother.

A tall, beautiful blonde woman with emerald eyes was cradling him, and she was glowing with a strange light.

The second clue was the cloaked man next to the bed.

He had yellow energy surrounding him and it passed from his hands into his new mother.

Magic. Haruki reckoned.

The third clue was the language.

As someone who had studied and become near fluent in English in his past life, Haruki was very upset to learn he couldn’t understand a single word anyone was saying.

Even the sounds they made with their mouths sounded like nothing on Earth.

Really? An Isekai development?

His mental age might have been 17, but Haruki wasn’t even 17 minutes old.

It hurt his fragile mind too much to think, and so he drifted to sleep.

That was often how Haruki spent his first few years in the new world.

He would wake up, try to gather himself and surroundings, fall asleep, and otherwise live a normal baby’s life.

Gradually, he started learning the words those around him said, but the first two he learnt was ‘Mom’ and his new name - Arc.

“I see now why most Isekai skip the growing up part,” he mumbled on the morning of his 7th birthday.

It had taken a very long time for him to reach the point where he could walk, talk and properly think, gathering whatever scattered thoughts and old memories he still had from his past life.

He knew his old name.

He knew he was Japanese.

And he knew he’d been reborn into a series of game’s he’d played in his past life: The Tale of Heroes.

It was a franchise of RPGs, Visual Novels, manga, light novels and even an Otome Game spin-off, which were interconnected by an overarching story. There were several main instalments, main protagonists and minor antagonists but, at the background of everything, there was the main villains: the Silent Sect.

A fanatical cult of super powerful beings that were hell-bent on achieving an unknown goal, one that required the world to suffer greatly for.

All the mainline games took place in a single decade from 1241 to 1250.

However.

It’s the year 1230. Arc lamented.

He’d have to wait 10 years for the main game’s storyline to start.

“It’s a rare development in Isekai, but I guess it happens. Well.” He chuckled. “It’s happened to me.”

Haruki had never been a big otaku, but he played a lot of games. His friends had lent him some Isekai light novels, and he’d enjoyed what he’d read, but he wasn’t a massive fan of them. It was interesting to see that a lot of them got very powerful abilities, others got nothing and had to struggle to survive, and some got reborn as villains in games from their past lives. But then a lot of them felt too similar to one another, so he quickly got bored.

Arc, however, had hit the very uncommon circumstance of being reborn as a minor character in a game he’d played before.

Arc Luminous - a character with no speaking lines and one most players didn’t know the name or face off.

He existed at the Imperial Royal Academy, the main setting of The Tales of Heroes: Days of Iron games, but you would only know he existed if you went up to interact with him.

No quest, no voice lines, no unique loot. Hell, he doesn’t even appear in any cutscenes, not even when the Silent Sect take over the school and hold students hostage.

The only reason Haruki knew about Arc was because he was a mega-fan of The Tales of Heroes franchise and had replayed Days of Iron multiple times, talking to every NPC and achieving a 100% complete save three times.

I was mocked for doing it, but I’m so glad I did now!

He watched streamers and content creators play and react to the games, including his personal favourite, Rhodanthe.

While Haruki might not have been able to remember everything from his past life, he recalled in excellent detail lots and lots about The Tales of Heroes.

For starters, he knew who Arc was, and he also knew that Arc would grow up to be quite a handsome person which he was grateful for.

He also knew everything that would happen in the story, so he knew what he had to prepare for and how to defeat it.

If I was the protagonist at least.

Since the time he could walk properly, Arc had been secretly exercising and trying to develop his muscles. His parents caught him a few times, confused at what he was doing, but when he was old enough to speak, Arc explained that he wanted to get stronger and smarter to make them proud.

“No matter what you do, we’ll always be proud of you, our boy,” his father had said like any good father should.

That wasn’t what Arc had wanted to hear, so he begged his mother to get him instructors which she had agreed to do so once he was 5.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that preparation is key for any of these Isekai stories. If I’ve been given a decade to wait around for the main story to start, then I might as well prepare as best I can.

I’ll train my body, learn magic, study languages and everything I can think of. I’ll become someone whose strength could rival that of the protagonist’s!

Or so Arc had hoped.

5 years into his training routine, Arc quickly realised he had talent for some things, but not others.

He was intellectually gifted and knew 3 languages fluently, and his physical training was going quite well. However, he had very little talent for magic and, worse, his strength wasn’t that of a ‘Cheat Protagonist’ as his friends called them.

He was, by all measures, above average at best.

“It’s better than nothing,” Arc grumbled as he finished his workout routine.

He had a toned body, but he wasn’t muscular.

He ate a balance diet, and he still kept pushing himself to become stronger and stronger, but it was clear he wasn’t growing as much as he’d have liked.

“5 more years.” Arc looked longingly out of his bedroom window and sighed. “I really wish I had a fast-forward button, or the game’s Turbo mode.”

It wasn’t that Arc wasn’t enjoying his life, but the dread and anticipation of knowing what was coming plagued his soul.

At first, Arc had just been solely focused on getting stronger for when the story started, but he’d grown to like his new life.

His mother and father were very sweet and kind, he had friends, servants that he was close with, and he’d grown quite fond of talking with his instructors. He ate delicious food, had plenty of time to read, study and play, and he was genuinely happy to attend school unlike his past life.

But no matter how much he enjoyed his life, fear lingered on in his mind.

The Silent Sect…will I actually be able to do anything to help the protagonists?

While not all the 13 members of the sect had been formally introduced into the games yet, he ran through the 4 most dangerous ones he could remember.

The Gluttonous Giant, Halbert. A beast of a man who stood nearly fifteen-feet tall, with arms just as big to match that he could swing quickly through the air with unbelievable force. How, Arc never knew; he always chalked it up to game logic and didn’t think too hard about it.

Then, there was Harmony the Chaotic. A former priestess corrupted by black magic who would ‘punish’ sinners with the most vicious and sadistic of punishments. Apparently, there was a cut scene in the first Days of Iron game where Harmony would torture the protagonist, Reiss’s, love interest but it was cut for being inappropriate and in bad taste.

Next was Claudia Madhouse. Despite her name, Claudia was one of the more reasonable members of the Silent Sect and would sometimes offer her aid to the protagonists of the different franchises. She was a master swordswoman who liked using two zweihanders to fight with; it was a very cool visual, but yet another one that would be impossible in reality.

As scary as it’d be to see some of them in real life, I kind of wish I could.

The last one was the leader of the Silent Sect - the Silent Sister.

She, much like Harmony, used to be a member of the church, but the Silent Sister was once the Saint of the Church. She hadn’t been corrupted by dark magic but rather deemed the Church and its clergy as corrupt and unclean. At first, the Silent Sect had been created to remove the imperfections from the Church, but it had changed into something much more wide reaching.

In her words, the Silent Sect were a group designed to wipe out impurities from the world - however, at some point, she and the Sect had lost their way. The Silent Sister did try her best to keep to her original goal, but it was clear to the players that she hadn’t realised she’d become the very thing she wished to destroy.

She has enough strength to wipe out an entire legion of soldiers and tanks with a single attack.

A badass cutscene, but a terrifying reality I might have to confront one day.

Arc had hoped he’d be able to get strong enough to rival the Silent Sister, but it was clear that was impossible for him.

Maybe it’d be best then that I don’t try getting involved with the main story unless it’s absolutely necessary? Arc wondered. I can look after myself well enough and I can put up a good fight, but I don’t think I’d ever be strong enough to actually help the protagonist’s battle the Silent Sect.

Maybe the Blue Banners or some other minor antagonists, but not the main antagonists.

Arc pondered between those thoughts for the next few weeks before he reached a conclusion.

I won’t interfere with the main scenario unless it’s completely necessary.

As long as Arc didn’t do anything major to impact the storyline, nothing would change.

The world would suffer for a bit, some people would get hurt or killed, but the world would be saved, the Silent Sect would be defeated, and Arc would be able to live a long, happy life.

As long as nothing changes and... He frowned. As long as no one else was reborn like me.

That was Arc’s greatest fear.

If someone else had been reborn into this world and started trying to change things, then that could make things very complicated for him. Worse, it could potentially stop the scenario for playing out as it was supposed to and it could mean the Silent Sect might win in the end.

There were a few things that stood out to Arc in the past 5 years that raised an eyebrow and made him wonder if it was possible, but the details on what exactly happened before Year 1241 were a little sketchy at best.

They weren’t super detailed like in A Song of Ice of Fire or The Lord of the Rings; they were general summaries, very light on details.

Still, Arc would be able to tell for definite once the main story started at the Imperial Royal Academy.

Nevertheless, Arc continued with his training and studying, and he continued gathering more and more information about world events, all in the hopes of finding more definitive proof to say one way or another if someone else had been reborn into this world too.

And then, it came, the start of the game.

Arc was 17 years old and, like the protagonists of Days of Iron and other students, he’d be attending the Imperial Royal Academy for the next 3 years of his life, and the world would experience a great deal of things because of the Silent Sect.

“Now then.” Arc hid among a crowd of other students and watched, waiting for the arrival of the protagonist, Reiss, and, more importantly, his first interaction with the game’s main heroine, Angela.

In the game, Reiss and Angela are both walking near each other but are distracted by the cherry blossom trees and end up bumping into one another. Somehow, by the logic of it being a JRPG, they fall in a way that allows Reiss an up close and personal view of the heroine’s panties.

If that doesn’t happen. Arc’s eyes narrowed. Then it means he’s also been reincarnated.

So, Arc waited and watched.

He saw Angela, he saw Reiss; they were both distracted by the cherry blossoms and then they collided and-

Reiss didn’t fall. Neither did Angela.

He caught her, held her and she went bright red in embarrassment.

They started talking and walked to the entrance ceremony together.

“That confirms it. There’s another reincarnated here besides me.”

Arc went to the entrance ceremony in the main hall, keeping a safe, inconspicuous amount of distance from Angela and Reiss, watching and observing to see if Reiss would do anything else to mess with the original scenario.

He didn’t, but Arc spotted two things that didn’t make sense.

The first was a teacher he didn’t recognise. She had definitely never existed in the original Days of Iron, or any of the other Tales of Heroes stories.

The second was the Star Student, the one who gave the New Student’s Welcome speech to the new first years.

It wasn’t Rikard Pennington.

“That’s impossible!”

Arc heard Reiss’s quiet shout, but no one else had.

So, Reiss is definitely a reincarnator, but what about those two?

The Star Student who usurped the old one and the teacher that never existed.

Or.

Arc stared at the panicked Reiss.

Did you do something to make this happen?

I know I didn’t, so it had to be you.

After a few days at school, Arc made his move.

“The envy of all Japanese boys,” he said in perfect Japanese.

“Huh?” They made eye contact. “What did-?”

“Find me this evening, protagonist, on the roof. But don’t ruin your relationships.”

If he doesn’t show, then that’s cause for concern.

If he does show and try something, I don’t know if I’d be able to stop him.

But nonetheless, Arc waited on the rooftop with his phone in his pocket, recording audio, and he had his weapon on him, but he didn’t expect Reiss would try anything.

It was just for insurance.

There’s just too much that’s changed for me to ignore.

The Silent Sect didn’t attack the 59th Founding Ball like in the game.

The Special Economic State of Jerthe is still thriving and not in decline.

Tartarus, the maximum-security prison, had been destroyed and it was reported that all inside had perished.

If true, the 3rd and 7th seats of the Silent Sect would be gone from this world.

Too much has changed, and it cannot be because of me. I have done nothing other than live a normal life and train for my future here at the Imperial Royal Academy.

If anyone has any motivation to try and change these things, it’d be you, Reiss Sunderland.

Ria’s family are from Jerthe.

The 3rd seat of the Silent Sect is Angela’s long-lost aunt.

The prison break at Tartarus in the game in a year’s time would see Kara’s family wounded, and her father crippled.

Everything else, like the Star Student, has to be because of you.

It must be you.

The door to the roof opened.

Reiss, trying to look calm and collected, came through, though he was clearly quite nervous and shaking a little.

I wonder - are you scared because you didn’t expect to see another reincarnator here, or is it because you’re scared I’ve caught you changing the original scenario.

What will it be, Reiss Sunderland?