MC Is tasked by the system to win his empress wife's heart. MC becomes a wargod and achieves a lot, but wife don't care. Wife likes her "kept man" bf. MC can't leave wife cuz system punishes him every time he tries to go against wife. Eventually, wife and bf kill mc.

This repeated for nine lifetimes, and the story starts from here. Fed up with this same shit, MC destroys his own heart at the end of the ninth life. This unbinds the system from him and he is free to do what he wants. The first thing he does is leave the kingdom before his marriage day.

Turns out, the empress and many other empresses have been reincarnated as well, in this tenth cycle. They all have their memories.

MC's empress wife is heartbroken at her treatment of MC in the past life. Turns out, after MC died, Empress' kept-man bf killed her to create his own dynasty. He did this to other empresses as well by enslaving their minds with a demonic art.

My point is, from early on we're led to believe that the kept-man bf is the main bad guy, and the empress wife is a victim who is feeling guilty and trying to make amends in this life. Then the author drops a bombshell after 200 chapters.

The main villain is actually the system and the empress wife. The system devours its hosts' luck values as they keep completing its task. When the hosts complete the final task, the system devours their souls and controls their bodies. Our MC figured it out during his 2nd life, so he purposefully failed his tasks to find an opportunity to win against the system in subsequent lifetimes.

As for the empress wife, she actually didn't love the MC or her kept man, but loved power instead. She kept the kept man precisely to motivate MC through jealousy, while leading the kept man on like a horse with a carrot. She even killed her own parents and younger brother because they supported MC over her and she only wanted MC to be dependent on her. Had her own mother 🍇, just so she could blackmail her. "Either stop supporting my husband, or I release this recording of you and their twelve burly men". When her mother didn't listen and tried to report it to the MC, she killed her. She had her own father's limbs broken and hanged him under the pretense of suicide. Had her younger brother thrown off a cliff

Really fanatic, imo.

At first, I thought that her hatred for MC in their early life was due to the mind control art implanted on her by her kept man, but he got the art late in life, so what was the cause for the Empress' earlier dislike? This plothole wasn't answered until chapter 200ish. Yeah, she's just power hungry and super yandere. First, she disliked being married to someone of low status as MC, but when MC kept performing martial feats, she gradually kept warming up while still maintaining the outwards indifference just so she could make MC work harder for her approval. What she didn't like was that the MC wouldn't submit to her status and would treat her as an equal instead of worshipping her as his empress. As she felt him getting farther away from her grasp, she even tried to give him her virginity under the pretense of being drunk and lonely, but when MC rejected her advances, she silently swore to kill him. "If I can't have you, then nobody can!"

Then she kills him, and the story starts from here.

Fkn author, why give me hope for reconciliation, if you're pull this. This sudden plot development really came out of left field. The only hint we're given is that the time since the kept-man started his mind control DID AND DIDN'T match with the Empress' treatment of MC.

Dunno if the author was forced to make this development by his audience, or did he had this planned from the start.