The Villain Hides His Pregnancy

It was a law of nature: every runaway hit inevitably dragged a horde of fanworks in its wake. It started with locking two perfectly handsome male characters in a "room you can't leave without having sex," and escalated all the way to shoving them into outlandish settings like the omegaverse—a word dizzying enough on its own.

Even The 13th Prince Has Returned, the mega-hit fantasy novel that had recorded hundreds of millions of views, was no exception to that law. Before long, omegaverse fanworks based on it began springing up like weeds after rain!

'What even is an omegaverse?'

He had been nothing more than an ordinary male reader—Reader No. 1, if you will—and he had clicked on one such work exactly once, purely out of curiosity.

A fanwork with over a thousand views. Wasn't it only natural to be curious?

But human curiosity, as it has since the dawn of time, always ends in calamity.

And he looked. At that.

'Fuck!'

This was blasphemy against the original! Setting aside how every line of dialogue and every moan was unbearably cringe, the real problem was that the original's imposing, commanding Cesare was rolling around uttering such vulgar filth!

'The original…!'

The original The 13th Prince Has Returned was not about any of this!

The 13th Prince Has Returned.

To sum up the original's plot simply: the 13th Prince, Leoneld, a genius whose extraordinary talent drew his siblings' jealousy until they poisoned him into a miserable end, regresses and completes a bloody revenge against the people who drove him to his death.

At a glance it looked like any number of male-oriented regression revenge stories, but there was a reason this particular work had exploded in popularity among female readers.

It was the dynamic between the protagonist, Leoneld, and the villain, Cesare.

"I'm telling you I love you?"

"Don't make me laugh."

With in-story dialogue like that, there was no way the fans could stay quiet.

Cesare von Valois. The main villain of The 13th Prince Has Returned, and an ambition-mad schemer drunk on power. His goal was simple: to swallow the empire whole.

To that end he had taken the crown prince's leash in hand, intending to wield him exactly as he pleased—until a colossal variable appeared in his path.

The 13th Prince, Leoneld.

By the original plan, the man should have been wiped from the family tree long ago. Instead he began displaying overwhelming talent—swordsmanship, magic, not a single field excluded—and set his sights on the throne, to a degree that made it impossible to believe he had ever been a bottom-rung prince.

In the end, only two choices remained to Cesare: eliminate Leoneld, or seat him as his new puppet.

Cesare chose the latter.

"Things would be so much easier if you simply became my puppet. Why insist on walking a road of thorns?"

"…Ha. Do you truly think I would docilely become your dog?"

"Of course not. The illustrious 13th Prince would never do anything so tame."

Cesare smiled, his eyes sunk in a chill, and added:

"But that is precisely why I look forward to it. Gently bending things has never been to my taste—I prefer to snap them, miserably, in two."

That was the kind of man Cesare was. Insufferably arrogant, and elegant to the point of making your skin crawl. The most perfect villain of them all.

Fans waged furious debates over why on earth he would leave Leoneld alive to grow stronger rather than simply kill him.

And when that cutthroat debate finally ran its course, disaster struck: a fanfiction bearing the following title began appearing.

And now, he was paying the full price of his curiosity.

'Fuck… unspoiled brain… buying an unspoiled brain….'

Somehow, he had to erase it from his memory—or so he thought, as he drove his forehead down into the desk. With a resounding bang, his vision flooded black.

And thus, blackout….

"…Your Grace? Your Grace, are you awake?"

When he opened his eyes at the unfamiliar voice, he thought his breath would stop. An enormous chandelier hung from the ceiling, amid decorations of unimaginable splendor.

"…!"

Startled by the unfamiliar luxury, he tried to raise himself—only to find his body oddly heavy and languid.

"Your Grace, please don't strain yourself. You have a slight fever."

A middle-aged man was addressing him, head bowed in courtesy. The moment his eyes caught the crest of a sharp sword and rose embroidered on the man's left breast, a word flashed through his mind.

'The House of Valois…?'

Half hoping he was wrong, he practically sprinted to the full-length mirror. Where his own forgettable face should have been, the mirror held a young man so beautiful it was almost chilling—jet-black hair like melted night sky, and eyes tilted in arrogant lines that looked as though no one else's feelings had ever mattered.

The main villain of The 13th Prince Has Returned.

It was Cesare von Valois.

'Possession…? So this is… transmigration?'

His heart pounded like mad. Bewilderment, fear—or perhaps some euphoria he couldn't name. A strange exhilaration swept through his entire body.

'Something that only happens in novels… is happening to me….'

This was an original he had read and reread dozens of times. No one alive knew this novel better than he did. Perhaps… not even the author.

After all, it was far from the first time he had dug up a continuity error that even the author had failed to notice.

'In other words….'

He knew every single development in this novel. At what point Leoneld regressed, what great fortunes he would obtain along the way, and even the mistake Cesare would commit that would drag him to his ruin.

'Not bad… right? …Right?'

A slanted smile curled across the lips of the Cesare in the mirror.

Stories about transmigrating into a villain and living high on the hog were a dime a dozen. No—for someone who knew the original's every twist like the palm of his own hand, this was an opportunity.

The sensation of magic gathering at his fingertips was vivid. The original Cesare had also been the empire's greatest archmage. With this overwhelming power and the ducal house's immense authority behind him, there was nothing to fear.

'From here on, I keep my distance from Leoneld and manage my faction well—and forget the execution ending, I could have the entire empire in the palm of my hand.'

Cesare calmly turned his head toward the butler and asked, in as imperious and elegant a voice as he could manage:

"Any recent intelligence to bring me?"

Information was the most important thing right now. To work out at which point of the original he had arrived, he needed to dig up whatever he could.

'Asking this out of nowhere won't look strange, will it?'

After all, the original Cesare, too, had regularly ordered his close aides to fetch him reports.

"Yes, Your Grace. Nothing of particular import has occurred, but…"

The butler continued with a respectful bow of his head.

"Rumors have been circulating at court that the 13th Prince has lost his mind."

"Lost his mind, you say?"

"Yes. He has repeatedly demanded reassurance that it is truly Imperial Year 977… by all accounts, his conduct has been deeply strange."

The corner of Cesare's mouth curled up ever so slightly.

"I see."

He could deduce at once where in the original's timeline he stood.

'The very beginning.'

This was the point at which the story of Leoneld, freshly returned to the past, began.

'Perfect.'

For someone with the original's timeline memorized cold, it was nothing short of a golden age. Leoneld had not yet fully reclaimed his strength, while Cesare stood at the very pinnacle of power, free to knead the empire in his grip.

All he had to do was never repeat the fatal 'mistake' the original Cesare had made.

'…Yes.'

Cesare gracefully accepted the teacup the butler offered. The lukewarm warmth against his fingertips was as sweet as the taste of power itself.

I will become the master of this empire. No—even if I never become its master, at the very least I can dodge that damned 'execution ending.'

But as he sat there smiling, the butler at his side spoke up, his expression noticeably relieved.

"It is a blessing to see your strength returned, Your Grace. Yesterday you were in such poor condition… we were quite worried."

"Yesterday? Ah. I must have overdrawn my magic."

In the original, Cesare had often taken to his bed after researching forbidden magic. Cesare answered as if it were nothing and took a sip of his tea.

But the butler's expression was odd. Relieved, yes—and yet somewhere in those eyes lurked something pitiful and careful.

"If it were only your magic, that would be a relief indeed. We assumed you were deeply troubled because your cycle had come early. It seems Your Grace's 'pheromones' have been rather unusual of late."

Pffft—!

He came within a hair of spraying out the tea he had been sipping with such refinement. Cesare wiped his damp lips and stared at the butler.

"…What? Cycle? Pheromones?"

"Yes, Your Grace. Did you not suffer for hours only yesterday, when the suppressant failed to take effect?"

Wait. Something was wrong here. An ominous premonition flickered across his mind.

The original novel The 13th Prince Has Returned did not contain so much as a single line about 'pheromones' or 'suppressants' or any such nonsense. It was a pure fantasy novel.

There was only one place such words appeared: that thing he had read earlier, cursing all the while—

"Your Grace, it is time for your medicine."

The butler held out a small glass bottle set on a tray. The bottle of clear liquid bore a label written in immaculate hand:

Goosebumps erupted across the back of his hand. Cesare picked up the medicine with hands that trembled as if in spasm.

He couldn't remember precisely what a suppressant was supposed to do, but he knew what an omega was.

"Don't tell me…"

Cesare looked up at the butler with wavering eyes.

"Am I… an omega?"

The butler tilted his head as though the question were absurd, and answered:

"…? Yes, of course. Are you not one of the precious few Dominant Omegas in all the empire?"

It felt as though the world were caving in.

Right. So that was it.

He hadn't fallen into the original novel at all. He had tumbled straight into the R19 omegaverse fanwork—the very one he had cursed out for costing him his unspoiled brain.

And of all possible roles, as omega Cesare—the one pinned beneath the 13th Prince, moaning night after night!