I Became the Female Lead Ruined by Others - Chapter 10

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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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Episode 10

Inside the second envelope was a bundle of papers bound together with rough twine.
The cover was blank—nothing written on it—but despite its thin pages, it felt oddly heavy in my hands.

‘Is this an organized list of who sent those letters?’

I turned the cover of the bundle slowly.
At the very top of the first page was a date.
It was from roughly eleven months ago.

“Don’t tell me it’s a diary……”

But the moment my eyes fell on the scrawled handwriting below, my heart sank.
I couldn’t even finish the sentence—my breath caught in my throat.

• Second son running illegal Gambling Den / evidence secured
└ Got a statement from the second son and his fiancée too lol

• Affair with the Grand Duke’s wife. Evidence and witnesses both secured.
└ The Grand Duke’s maid was sick so I paid her hospital bills and bought her off—easy profit
• The Grand Duke’s youngest son is actually his kid… ugh;

• Illegal slave trafficking / evidence secured
└ Agreed to pay 20% of future profits kthx

My grip on the paper tightened until the edges began to crumple.

“This is……”

Blackmail material.
Judging by the varying pressure of each line and the traces of content added piecemeal throughout, it seemed this had been an ongoing operation for quite some time.
I turned the pages with ragged breathing.
One page after another.
My fingertips trembled, and the muscles around my eyes grew rigid as if my eyeballs might pop out at any moment.

“This is insane. This is absolutely insane!”

Page after page, densely filled with the ugly secrets of nobility.
The records—complete with evidence and progress notes—were suffocating just to read.
It was then, as I pressed my hand over my heaving chest and tried to steady my breathing, that something struck me.

‘Wait. This….’

It’s familiar.

“No, it can’t be……”

I covered my mouth with a trembling hand.
The secrets written here—I knew them. All of them.
More precisely, they were pieces of information I had given to the Possessor.

“Wait, you said this was a dating simulation game. Are they Conquest Targets too?”

He sat only when my urging forced him to bring his legs together, then pointed at the servants standing at a distance.
The blatant rudeness of the gesture didn’t surprise me in the slightest.
I caught his hand and lowered it, whispering.

“He’s not a conquest target, but getting involved with him won’t do you any good. The man standing on the right is the Duke’s second son—he’s running an illegal gambling den.”
“Still? Since when? Where?”
“I don’t know the details, but it’s been going on for a while.”
“Then what about that one next to him?”

The rascal with the lovely face had asked exactly that.
At the time, I’d thought nothing of the smile that bloomed at his lips.

It was only meant to help him adjust.
Given his headstrong nature and the heroine’s prescribed role, I couldn’t afford to make him an enemy.
For my own safety, I had to help him adapt.

‘But he’s been using all of that in this way?’

I let out a hollow laugh as I stared down at the bundle of papers.
The further back I flipped, the more facts I found—things I myself hadn’t known.
He was dead serious about this plan.

“One would have to be mad not to see it.”

He was no mere possessor.
Completely different from me, who was content to twist the narrative for the sake of immediate peace.
He was reigning as a blackmailer, constructing his own world in his own way.
And I—
I had become a heroine ruined by another.

* * *

During my bath, even when I plunged my face into the water, the servants didn’t scream or interrogate me. They simply went pale and trembled endlessly.

“I’ve become a heroine ruined by another…”

I muttered the sentence that summed up my situation, then threw myself onto the bed.

‘Did that madman blackmail Baron and my brother too?’

A scene I’d forgotten in the rush of events came back to me.
The beautiful Duke’s Residence, and the family who’d called me their treasure, along with a dear friend.

‘Now that I think about it, I didn’t see Father at the funeral. …Or should I call him the Duke now?’

I exhaled deeply and slowly closed my eyes.
Yes, what good would it do to think like this alone?
I knew from experience that losing my mind and denying reality right after possession helped nothing.

‘Let me sleep on it and think tomorrow. Maybe a good idea will come to me.’

I was curling up to comfort myself when it happened.
Whisper.

‘What’s that?’

Tap.
The sound came from the direction of the large window that opened onto the Balcony.
When I turned my head, I saw the curtain hanging from the window fluttering and swaying in the breeze.

‘Is the window open?’

I’d watched the servant who’d brought my bedding perform a final check.
But in that moment, a dark shadow moved from behind the curtain, seeping into the darkness like smoke.

“……What?”

My heart plummeted.
The cool night breeze billowed the curtain, and the shadow’s silhouette sharpened into clarity.
The Intruder entered silently through the window, draped in a black coat, and my blood turned to ice.
The moment I saw the gleaming blade in his hand, my mind went white.

“Roselina Mesh?”

The Intruder’s strange voice carried a sinister weight, and he didn’t hesitate.
It happened in a heartbeat.
Whoosh!
The sharp Dagger sliced through the air with a flash.
There was no time to think. My body moved faster. I rolled instinctively to the side and tumbled beneath the bed.
The Dagger missed me and pierced the Pillow instead.
Where the blade had torn through, the Pillow split open, spilling goose down across the floor.

‘I almost died!’

I gripped the cold marble floor with trembling hands and pushed myself backward on my haunches.
Then my fingertips brushed against something solid and cold.
The metal Candlestick from the side table must have fallen when I hit the floor, and now it rolled across the ground.

“I’ve sabotaged the Garden, so don’t expect anyone to come help you.”

There was no time to hesitate.
I seized the Candlestick with my clammy hands and pulled myself up.

“Stay still, and I’ll make it quick.”

He took another step forward, closing the distance.
Watching him intently, I swung the Candlestick wildly in any direction I could.

“Don’t come any closer! Who are you?!”

But he kept advancing, one step, then another, relentless.
There was no hesitation in his approach, only mockery.

“Why should I tell you? You’re going to die at my hands today anyway.”

I was backing away without thinking when I felt it.
Thud.
My back pressed against the cold wall.
There was nowhere left to retreat.

‘This is a joke, right? I’m dying like this? I only just transmigrated today?’

Before I could even make sense of the chaos in my head, I was being killed by some unknown assailant.
My grip on the metal Candlestick tightened until my knuckles went white.

‘Even if I’m going to die, I’ll land at least one blow.’

Going quietly wasn’t in my nature.

“Well, how entertaining.”

The Intruder, smirking at my defiance, raised the Dagger in his hand high.

“Farewell.”

The blade of the Dagger, glinting in moonlight, and the Intruder’s face split wide with a grin.
I swung the metal Candlestick to meet that slow, dreamlike motion.
But I couldn’t suppress the reflex—my eyes clamped shut.
Terror seized me.

‘If I die here, what happens then?’

The moment flashed back—the car striking me down before I transmitted into this body.
That hadn’t hurt.

‘Will it hurt this time? Will it burn?’

Five years of grinding hardship spun past like lantern slides.

‘Next time, I’d rather transmigrate into a pebble on the roadside!’

And then, complete darkness.
But then.
Silence.
No cold bite of steel, no blood rising hot, not even the sharp whistle of the blade cleaving air.
Nothing reached me.

“……?”

I opened my eyes carefully.
The Intruder still stood before me. But his arm—the one gripping the Dagger—hung suspended in the air.
Or rather, it was being held.
Moonlight poured through the window into the room, drowning the night in silver.
And in the edge of that light stood a man, his arm raised high, gripping the Intruder’s wrist from behind.

“I’m not entirely certain, but…”

Eyes as clear and luminous as glass—as if a deep blue lake had been pressed and polished to transparency—fixed upon me.

“Is it an Empire custom for an unmarried young lady to conduct Martial Training with an assassin in the dead of night?”

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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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