I treat the harem like a game, but the tyrant insists on winning my heart.
Top strategy game designer Su Wan works herself to death and wakes up as a doomed concubine in a palace-intrigue novel.
The System forces her to fight for favor, but assigns hellish tasks like [Throw mud at the Noble Consort] and [Make the tyrant cry].
Su Wan sneers. “This is right up my alley, huh?”
She tears up the script and treats the harem like an open-world game:
The concubines are NPCs, winning favor is a side quest, and the emperor is the final boss.
She uses project management to sort out relationships and data analysis to predict schemes,
keeping a low profile and leveling up until she becomes the top player, ready to claim her reward and leave in style once she clears the game.
But gradually, she realizes something is changing:
The young emperor, rumored to be cruel and suspicious, is looking at her in a very different way.
He lets her pull little tricks right under his nose,
allows her to team up with the concubines to reform the harem,
and even takes a sword in the back for her when rebels come after her.
On the night he is gravely wounded, he grips her hand and laughs softly:
“Wanwan, how far along is your progress bar, exactly?”
Su Wan looks at the System panel, where a blood-red warning has suddenly appeared: [Warning! The player is deeply immersed in the game!]
Only then does she realize:
From the very beginning, she hasn’t been the only one playing this game.
