Mushoku Tensei - Volume 23 Chapter 10 — Disappearance

What’s worse than finding out you’re that Louis XIV when you’re a baby?

Of course there is, for example, it’s still a magic version.

- Description from novelbuddy

The world was consumed by a vile corruption brought from beyond – the sun dimmed, and life as we know it was almost extinguished.And yet it was not the end but merely the beginning.Long after the disaster, a lone survivor awakens with a newfound power to wield the divine flames and many questions about the past. He embarks on a long journey to burn the rot away, discover what's left of the old world and maybe, just maybe, ascend to divinity.

Humanity has endured for millions of years, but recorded history only spans a mere four thousand years. During that unrecorded deep-sea age, what exactly were we doing?Countless indescribable beings ruled the universe, and our powerful ancestors preserved the fire of human civilization under their threat.Then they disappeared, and we rose.Now, they are coming back, mysterious psychic powers are awakening, the flame of human civilization is slowly extinguishing, and no kings are in sight...Chen Ke opens his eyes to see a world full of ruins and himself on the brink of death.The moment his heart was pierced by the Blasphemous Dagger, he became a dying man without a heart.Able to survive only 2 hours...

[Mature Content]I was born a bastard to the Archduke of Beloria, scorned because of my odd-looking hair and sickly body, maltreated by my stepmother and sister.And my father? He never looked my way. I was the reminder of a mistake he could never accept.My entire life should've been trying to live through my days as a labeled whores daughter and the taint to the noble house but everything changed when my marriage to the Lycan Monarch was announced.Lycans are apex predators, superior beings, beastmen, and originators of those horror stories your parents told you about to make you behave. My father saw fit to throw me to the beasts as a means to reclaim the lost lands.I was the bargain for a better future for the last human kingdom, but I felt more cursed than blessed. Forced into training to please a beast and ensure I was fit to be his wife.I dreaded the day I'd wed the Monarch and be treated no less than human meat. I've heard stories about him, and they are far worse than any combined. They call him a mindless beast, merciless, the ultimate feared being in the entire realm, and the terror that bested the vampires in war and ended it under his rule.My future was bleak.But when the day arrived and I set my gaze on the beast I'm meant to marry... I realized Drevon Balthar was unlike the rumors; they didn't tell the whole story.