A World Where You All Are The Villains - Chapter 158

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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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158.

I didn’t need to see to know.
How could I not recognize my own body, my own breathing—the rhythm I’d lived with my entire life?
‘I’m not dead.’
Yet I couldn’t find comfort in that knowledge either.
My breathing was….
Shallow and irregular, as though it might stop at any moment.
Like someone slowly dying.
‘Where in the world am I?’
I held the crystal sphere directly before my eyes, scrutinizing every detail.
Yet all I could see was darkness—impenetrable, extending beyond even an inch ahead.
‘Am I trapped inside the Magi? Or within a Gate?’
Ruellin crossing into this world meant a double Gate had opened, just as it had when I possessed her body.
Back then, Ruellin’s consciousness remained intact, so I was rescued as though by divine providence—but now my body was nothing but an empty shell.
Even if I were trapped somewhere at the Gate Site, I couldn’t call for help or do anything at all.
And those people I refused to call family would never search for me, so I would simply die like this.
I would die.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
‘I have to meet Sephiroth immediately.’
I had to return to my body before it perished.
‘But how?’
How could I possibly find that elusive charlatan cult leader, and where would I even begin?
‘Caspian Gorge.’
In that moment, the words I’d overheard outside Ruellin’s Room came back to me.
That was where Sephiroth’s base was located.
‘Should I go there right now?’
But that place was a forbidden zone—far too dangerous because of the Gate Wave.
Besides, I had no idea where it was or how to get there.
‘I need help.’
But from whom?
In this cursed world, there was no one who would help me.
At best, there was Eston and Nancy….

― From the moment I was falsely accused and pushed into the Gate Wave.

It was then.
A whisper cut through my mind like lightning.
There was someone who could help me in this situation….
Surprisingly, there was.
The one who had found the Book of Prophecy for me without asking anything in return to kill Sephiroth.
“Young Lady, we’re approaching the Capital Gate soon.”
It was Nancy’s voice that pulled me back to reality.
“Due to the recent disturbances at the Imperial Palace, they may conduct a brief inspection of luggage at the checkpoint….”
“Turn the carriage around.”
“Pardon? Ah, where to….”
“To the Belnac Grand Duke’s Residence.”
I had no idea if that madman would help me.
Yet he was the only one I could cling to right now.

***

The Grand Duke’s Residence fell into chaos at my unannounced arrival.
Norman stammered as he led me to the Reception Room.
“M-Young Lady. The Grand Duke is currently away….”
“I’ll wait.”
“I did send word, but I cannot say when he will return.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about me and go about your duties.”
I gave a casual reply and brazenly settled into a seat in the Reception Room.
The Butler and Servants standing behind me, at a loss, eventually withdrew quietly.
Even a foreign guest who arrived suddenly and caused a stir was treated as a visitor—warm tea and refreshments were offered.
Cookies, macarons, and cake slices were arranged beautifully on the plate, but I had no appetite for them.
It was because of the breathing that echoed constantly in my ears.
Yu Sol’s labored, fading breath that I had heard through the crystal orb.
Tick.
The ticking of the clock’s second hand sounded like a death timer announcing how little time remained.
I suppressed the urge to rush to the crystal orb I had left with Nancy to check if she was still alive, multiple times.
‘…What if she doesn’t come back.’
If Yu Sol’s body dies and remains trapped in this cursed world, in this body forever.
Though I tried to ignore it, the quiet silence kept forcing me to imagine the worst.
‘What do I do then?’
No thoughts came to me.
When I first possessed this body, I remember making all sorts of plans for how to survive here.
But now, my mind was completely blank.
Was it because I had tasted the hope of returning home, even for a moment?
Or was it because of the Duke’s apology yesterday?
Everything terrified me, and I felt overwhelmed by it all.
I no longer had the strength to keep mimicking Edith Blake, to endure these fools and their endless drivel every time we met.
I was exhausted by playing the role of The Purifier, exhausted by the constant vigilance against the Ruellin Followers.
Without even the hope of returning, what was I clinging to?
‘What am I supposed to hold onto to survive in this place?’
Tick, tick.
Anxiety and dread gnawed at me with each passing moment.
After hours of agonizing waiting, as the sun began to set.
Finally, that damned Serge Belnak crawled back into his own residence.
I was just rising from my seat at the sound of commotion outside.
The door burst open—
A broad-shouldered man stepped into the reception room.
“Well, well, who do we have here? Isn’t it the busy Blake Princess?”
Serge was no different than this morning.
His glossy face was plastered with mocking derision.
Despite what had transpired between him and Vincent earlier, he didn’t appear particularly displeased.
For me, that was a relief.
“Have you decided to stop caring about the scandal between us? How bold of you to waltz into another man’s home without fear….”
“Your Highness.”
I rushed toward him in a single stride.
And I grasped his hand desperately.
I felt Serge stiffen momentarily, but I didn’t care.
“Please, help me.”
I was desperate.
I was terrified.
So much so that clinging to this hand—which I had found so abhorrent—felt like nothing at all.
“I need to go to Caspian Gorge immediately. Please, take me there.”
At my words, Serge, who had been frozen in bewilderment, furrowed his brow.
“…Where?”
“Caspian Gorge.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
He let out a laugh as if he’d heard something absurd.
It was natural that it would sound mad to him.
To ask someone who had barely survived that place to return there.
The Serge from the beginning would have strangled me with his psychic power without hesitation.
Yet I had no choice but to plead with him.
“There’s no time. If we don’t go now…!”
“Sit down.”
“….”
“Calm yourself and sit. I can see your eyes are wild.”
He abruptly cut off my words and pointed behind me.
As always, his crude behavior made me instinctively furrow my brow.
Yet paradoxically, that very rudeness snapped me back to clarity.
I realized just how absurdly I was behaving.
I hastily tried to release the hand I’d been gripping him with.
But then.
“…!”
My hand wouldn’t come free.
Instead, a powerful grip pulled me toward the table.
I yielded to that touch and settled into the chair.
Only then did Serge release my hand and sit across from me.
The hand he’d held felt as if it had brushed against flame, tingling with sensation.
“You haven’t touched anything.”
He glanced at the refreshments the servants had brought, arranged neatly and untouched, with obvious displeasure.
“Tell me. Why are you trying to go to Caspian Gorge?”
“Because that’s… supposedly Sephirot’s base.”
I opened my mouth hesitantly.
“I need to meet Sephirot immediately.”
“Why.”
“….”
“Won’t you tell me?”
It wasn’t that I was deliberately refusing—I simply couldn’t figure out where to begin or where to end.
From the burning sensation in my hand to my muddled thoughts.
Everything had been chaos since I saw the crystal sphere.
“Remarkable. You’d gamble with someone else’s life without even explaining why?”
“….”
“You truly are a villainess through and through. Can a person really be this wicked?”
As I remained silent, Serge clicked his tongue repeatedly.
“It’s highly likely that Caspian Gorge being a base is a lie, Princess. There’s nothing there but an infinite Gate.”
“Ruellin testified to it. Still, just in case….”
“Say you went just in case. But what if it’s not there?”
“….”
“Have you thought about what comes next?”
His voice turned cold, unlike before.
“Think rationally, Princess. If you go based on uncertain information and get caught in a Gate Wave.”
“….”
“Do you have confidence you’ll survive?”
Every word he spoke was painfully accurate.
In a situation where I couldn’t even manage the other body, if this one fell into danger too, there would truly be no way out.
And yet, the anxiety wouldn’t fade.
How on earth could you think so coldly?
I’m dying right now.
My place to return to is disappearing.
“My body….”
My nose stung sharply. I whimpered, my voice trembling and unsteady.
“My body is dying.”
“What? What body?”
“My body. My real body.”
There was no time to think it through carefully as I had before.
All the anxiety and dread that had accumulated while waiting for him came pouring out uncontrollably.
“I made a deal with Sephiroth. He said he would send me back to where I originally belonged. But….”
“….”
“Ruellin just abandoned my body carelessly, and I don’t even know where it is. There’s no one to rescue me, and if I die like this, I, I….”
“….”
“What do I do now?”
It was then.
Scrape—
With the sudden sound of a chair sliding, I felt a warm touch near my eyes.
As a large thumb swept hotly across my eyes, my blurred vision cleared.
“Why are you crying? What does that matter?”
Only after the man who had somehow rounded the table and crouched before me spoke so bluntly did I realize I was crying.
“Just live here with me.”
And only then did I realize he was wiping away my tears with his hand.

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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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