A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 80

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 80.
When she opened her eyes, darkness surrounded her.
Caroline lay in her room.
‘My head aches.’
As she pulled herself up unsteadily, the situation began to make sense. She’d fallen into the water at teatime by accident, the water had been brutally cold, and she’d barely escaped with Aiden’s help—
And now time had simply passed.
‘It’s already evening.’
She checked the window; the sun had set. Through eyes still clouded with confusion, she glimpsed the clock: just past eight o’clock.
Caroline sniffled and wrapped her arms around herself. Having been plunged into that cold water, her condition wasn’t good. Her body trembled with chills, and her mind felt hollow, oddly vacant.
Yet even in such a state, one thought clung to her relentlessly: she had nearly died.
If she were a Player, she would never have fallen into water in the first place, and even if she had within a Quest, it would have cost her only a Heart.
But Hearts were merely currency spent on events within the game; they bore no relation to her life. Caroline had only one life.
And only now did she understand Aiden’s warning from three in the morning. She felt regret at how confidently she’d responded then, insisting she would handle it.
“How many more times will something like this happen?”
It seemed as though with the Quest now altered, dangers would seek her out far more often.
Would Caroline survive each of them?
‘Something feels wrong.’
When she’d first started the game, Caroline had been alight with passion, curious about the Mansion as an unknown world. But now she found herself weary of the narrow human relations within it, and gripped by fear and worry—because her own life was at stake.
It wasn’t simply that her thoughts had changed.
Fundamentally, the System had never told her before starting the game that she could die. She hadn’t known the game would unfold in such a way.
That losing Hearts was possible if the Character Role’s emotions became excessive during synchronization. That she could feel fear there too.
She’d only learned that quitting the game was an option after meeting Aiden at three in the morning.
‘As though… someone wanted this.’
Why hadn’t it told her?
Aiden had suggested that when Caroline became a Player, something twisted in how the System provided information.
“Hmm…”
But Caroline, knowing little of games and systems, didn’t think it likely.
Wouldn’t it simply give her the information? Couldn’t it just mention the danger of death before she started?
‘Then I definitely might have said no.’
Ah.
If it had deliberately prevented that?
What if the System had withheld information because it wanted her to participate in the game unconditionally?
‘Though I can’t fathom why.’
During the first Stage, it seemed it wanted her to participate in complete ignorance of danger.
And then, after meeting the three-in-the-morning Aiden and before advancing to the second Stage, it had given her exactly one chance to quit the game.
‘No, actually I could have told the System I wanted to quit anytime, but that was only possible before the guidance transferred to the three-in-the-morning Aiden, and I found out right before that threshold was crossed?’
It felt almost as though the three-in-the-morning Aiden was testing Caroline before his own eyes.
As though curious to see how she would react.
‘Did he want me to quit back then, in his presence?’
“Because it is all the more necessary for you, Caroline. I wish to propose once more that you consider quitting the game.”
The three-in-the-morning Aiden had advocated strongly for her to quit. By having her helper—someone she trusted to care for her wellbeing—speak those words, it seemed designed to persuade her easily.
‘Why?’
If they’d wanted her to quit the game, they wouldn’t have let her start it in the first place.
‘Then again, it’s a senseless thought.’
Caroline shook her head vigorously.
What intention could lie behind her feeling this way? She had simply had her heart change, that was all, and grown anxious.
Compared to how confidently she’d sworn to protect Aiden Darvel, Caroline now felt shame and guilt at how concern for her own life and worries about survival had begun to creep in.
‘So I want to blame someone else.’
Wasn’t today’s fall into the water her own fault? If only she hadn’t failed to set down the teacup when Aiden tilted the boat.
Then it happened.
Knock, knock.
“Miss Caroline, have you woken?”
A voice reached her, its volume adjusted not to wake someone sleeping. It must have been a servant.
“I see you’re awake. I’ve prepared a simple chicken soup. Would you care for some?”
“Thank you.”
She’d missed dinner.
‘This must be because I’m a Player. If I were just a Player, I could steadily gather hints. It seems the limits that come from being me keep appearing.’
The tenth day was closing like this.
Still, having spent the daytime hours asleep, she could now stay awake at night. Caroline ate the chicken soup quickly and rose from her seat.
Only two servants appear in the Doll’s House. The servant on night patrol.
Before midnight, when other servants would also be passing through, Caroline waited for a moment when no one was ascending the stairs. Then she opened the Secret Passage she had already grown familiar with from her earlier visit with James.
The instant a servant’s footsteps reached the staircase, Caroline’s head vanished beneath the carpet.
She descended the connected rope ladder carefully until a passage came into view. Holding a lantern, Caroline began walking down a path that felt desolate and frightening when traversed alone.
And the moment she tilted the lantern casually to the left—
“Ah!”
Caroline cried out and froze.
No passage opened there, but something seemed to exist at the side. What the lantern revealed was an Underground Dungeon fitted with iron bars and chains.
So several basement cells were arranged in succession along the left side of the linear passage.
‘What happened in this Mansion?’
In an instant, her entire body felt cold. She was shuddering and about to turn the corner to hurry away when—
[Settings Bar]
“Oh!”
The Settings Bar window that she and James had failed to check as they exited the Basement hastily suddenly came to mind.
As Caroline approached quickly, she discovered that the last Underground Dungeon cell was functioning as a Settings Bar totem.
‘At the Academy it was a statue, but here it’s a space.’
When she carefully stepped into the Underground Dungeon cell, a window appeared.
[Settings Bar]
[Background Music Setting — OFF/
ON
Triangle Indicator — ON/
OFF
Exclamation Mark Indicator — ON/
OFF
Aiden Tracking Permission – Disabled/
Enabled
Character Role Personality Intimacy Display – Disabled/
Enabled
Aiden’s Point of View — Locked
System AI Version Settings – Locked]
It was the window she had seen at the Academy. Reading slowly through what felt familiar from that single prior viewing, she noticed something new.
‘Character Role Personality Intimacy?’
“This doesn’t seem to have been here last time.”
Wondering what this was, Caroline pressed down on the relevant text. A small tooltip then appeared at the side.
[Character Role Personality Intimacy Display]
[Displays the intimacy level that the Character Role holds for the Player in a five-stage bar format. This differs from affection toward the opposing Character Role, and reveals how familiar the Character Role regards the Player as being.]
“Hmm?”
Caroline paused to consider.
Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to display it? If she enabled it, she could approach the Diary and Key by taking into account the intimacy level the opposing Character Role held toward her.
“Let me enable it.”
When she pressed ‘Enabled’ where the strikethrough line had been, the center bar slid across and the word ‘Enabled’ moved forward into place.
“Now, and……”
As Caroline was about to leave the Settings Bar Underground Dungeon, she stopped. Then she reached out and set another option to ‘ON’.
“I’ll turn it off when I leave.”
Background Music for Caroline began to play throughout the dim, drab Basement.
“That’s better.”
With that, she turned the corner again and began moving deeper inside.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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