Chapter 110

Ding!

Why on earth did only such polite options pop up this time?

‘When I actually need them, there are only bizarre options.’

No. Let’s calm down.

‘Technically, this is how it should be.’

Cooling down my head during the given five seconds, I casually selected option three.

Erasing the notification of the affection increase—which didn’t make me happy in the slightest—the moment it popped up, I stormed out of the room.

Now, the place I had to go was……

‘Sigh.’

There was only one room to return to.

That’s right. The headquarters of the communal living space from my days as a maid, where not a single shred of privacy was respected.

Regrettably, having been downgraded in status once again, I was no longer using a private room.

“Lita! What on earth happened~!”

The moment I pushed the door open, pink hair fluttered hither and thither just below my line of sight.

Lowering my head, a familiar face was there.

The woman who suddenly burst out and began to chatter amiably was Io.

“Are you okay?”

The woman sending me a subtly worried glance while pretending not to care was Isabella.

They were none other than my roommates, whom I hadn’t seen in a truly long time.

‘Though I didn’t exactly want to see them again.’

I fell into a profound, complicated mood of being glad yet not quite glad at the same time……

Although they said I had changed clothes, it felt deeply unpleasant since I hadn’t been able to wash up despite being drenched in blood.

Right as I was rummaging through the wardrobe to pack some bath supplies, my roommates stuck close behind my back with faces full of immense curiosity.

“What happened? They said Lord Robert collapsed!”

“You have to call him the Duke now, Io.”

“Oh dear, my bad! The word just hasn’t fully stuck to my tongue yet!”

“Fix it quickly. Anyway, they said you were the first one to discover the injured Duke?”

So the only thing that had been made public was that he collapsed.

Recalling Robert’s bidding, I spoke in a tone that treated it like it was no big deal.

“Yeah. He seemed to be quite exhausted.”

“Ah, it’s only natural that he’d be exhausted.”

“True! The Duke is practically married to his work, after all!”

“Saying such things is disrespectful to the Duchess.”

“Oops, you’re right. At any rate, I need to watch my mouth. Especially since it’s him of all people.”

Io made a display of repeatedly slapping her own mouth. Isabella looked at Io with a look of pure exasperation. The two of them were exactly the same as always.

“Ah, right! Lita. The Head Maid said you are excused from work today! In light of your merit in saving Lord Robert!”

“Good for you. This entire room is all yours today.”

Oh, that’s great.

“Geez~ You’re thrilled, aren’t you? Well, we shall head out to work now!”

Concluding with those words, my roommates set out on their way to work, and instead of washing up immediately, I leaned against the wardrobe and slid straight down onto the floor.

Ever since entering Round 2, the Omniscient Viewer Perspective had remained entirely quiet as well.

It truly was an environment that couldn’t be any more perfect for quiet contemplation.

‘I did find out a few things from the conversation earlier.’

The fact that Robert was trying not to specify a culprit.

Despite the fact that he had clearly almost died, a rock-solid determination to sweep the incident under the rug was felt from him.

‘Don’t tell me even Robert didn’t see who the culprit was?’

Even so, it didn’t make sense.

You can’t just let it go when you’ve been stabbed with a knife.

Is it that he doesn’t realize he almost died?

Or is it that he doesn’t want to turn it into a massive issue?

‘Or, he knows who the culprit is but is trying to shield them…’

If that were the case, the probability was high that the culprit was someone close to him.
A person he could forgive even if they tried to murder him. For instance, family… Out of the people present at the mansion that day, the ones Robert might shield were the Duchess, the protagonist, Jeffrey, Carlo, and Oscar.

‘Come to think of it, he didn’t show a single reaction even when I blatantly suspected Sera.’

Was it because Robert already knew about the backing behind Sera?

Jeffrey Rubel, that is. If so, it would mean he was willing to overlook it because he was his younger brother, even if he tried to kill him…

‘No, wait a minute.’

On the surface, Sera is supposed to be the maid of Robert’s wife, Rachel.

No matter if it was Robert, it was difficult to assume he knew about a spy Jeffrey had deliberately hidden away.

Of course, it wasn’t as if such a possibility was entirely non-existent, but a different hypothesis crossed my mind.

‘Don’t tell me… could it be that Lady Rachel was the one who stabbed him?’

Jeffrey Rubel had asserted that he wasn’t the one who murdered Robert.

Back then, I had let it pass without a second thought, but would a person really lie after their execution had already been decided, having reached the absolute final end?

‘I doubt he would.’

Jeffrey might have actually confessed the absolute truth.

What the protagonist mentioned in the past crossed my mind.

To my question asking if his relationship with his parents was good…

“Yes… Well, they did with me.”

‘That could mean things were only good with him, and the relationship between his two parents was actually terrible.’

If Robert shared a terrible relationship with his wife, the credibility of my hypothesis would skyrocket exponentially.

If that’s the case, then what on earth was Oscar’s confession about?

Oscar had clearly mentioned that he overheard Jeffrey and Carlo conversing about disposing of Robert to drag him down from his position.

…Nothing is absolutely certain.

Judging by the way things are flowing, I can deduce that the mansion will be in a temporary lull for the time being.

For now, the best course of action would be to place the Duchess into Suspect Candidate 2 and look into it later. Let’s act wisely while observing how the situation plays out.

‘Now then, as for what’s next…’

I brought the notification window, which I had cast aside for a moment, back right in front of me.

Reactivated, huh. Meaning I have to do this quest all over again.

‘Fuck…’

The reason the quest failed was explicitly stated as an incorrect character selection.

In other words, my judgment in seeing the ending with the protagonist was completely wrong.

Recalling the exact moment that failure notification window popped up made me grind my teeth.

Honestly, even thinking back on it now, I felt so wronged. I strictly followed the objective to become the Mistress of the Rubel Ducal House, so for it to be a failure!

What an utterly nonsensical and unfair reason to fail!

Do you have any idea what it feels like to lose a reward you thought you had securely grasped right in front of your eyes?

It’s dog-ish.

It’s so completely dog-ish that I just want to throw everything away! For the time being, I just feel like living my life recklessly!

I huffed and puffed like that for a long time.

Now, it’s time to slowly calm down… Calm down, my ass!

In a state of deep, boiling rage, I repeatedly banged my head against the wardrobe.

As I did, out of the dizzyingly passing notification windows in my spinning field of vision, one particular notice caught my eye.

‘Ah, right. There was this.’

Because so many things had happened at once, I had been putting off checking it.
Setting aside the detailed thoughts for later, should I at least check this out now?

‘Twenty-two… I’ve become one year younger.’

Staring at the status window, the reality that I had truly returned to the very beginning finally hit home.

There was a new stat as well. Come to think of it, it felt like there had been a notification mentioning that the Synchronization Rate would be displayed from now on.

‘What on earth is the Synchronization Rate anyway?’

I had no idea what it was, but it felt ominous. The most predictable guess would be the synchronization rate between my soul and this world…

‘Then what happens once this hits 100?’

Does it mean I won’t be able to escape from this world ever again?

‘That is way too horrifying.’

I’ll have to act carefully to ensure it doesn’t rise as much as possible.

Letting out a sigh, I clicked on “I’m a Fan!”.

…?

What?

“Ah~ What game am I even supposed to play today…? Should I just grab some recommendations?”

With barely a couple of hours left until his scheduled broadcast time.

Munching aggressively on a triangle kimbap, Mo Je-won sat down in front of his computer and turned on Neotube.

“Guess I should go explore some other streams for a bit.”

But then…

Katalk!

At the sudden chime of a message notification, he unlocked his phone, only to find a rather bizarre chat room had been created.

“Seo So-shin? I don’t know anyone by that name. Who is this?”

It was right at the exact moment Mo Je-won was about to politely reply that they had the wrong number.

A newly uploaded wall of text appeared in the chat.

“Is this guy a lunatic?”

At a single glance, it was a text that didn’t even seem worth the time to read.
Hating a waste of time with an absolute passion, Mo Je-won immediately blocked the sender and exited the chat room.

Katalk!

“Ah, seriously, again? This guy is a straight-up cyberstalker, huh?”

Looking at his phone once more as the notification chimed again, a message from the exact same person had arrived.

Ultimately, choosing the alternative measure of switching his phone to silent mode, Mo Je-won refocused on his monitor.

Katalk!

“What the. I turned it off?”

He double-checked his phone settings, but it was definitely on silent mode.

It wasn’t as if the phone was broken either.

Because any notifications for messages entering after that were completely silent.

Except strictly for the messages coming from the person named Seo So-shin!

No matter how many times he left the chat room or blocked the user, the messages continuously flew in.

Katalk! Katalk! Katalk! Katalk! Katalk!

What the, holy crap. This is creepy!

Getting goosebumps, Mo Je-won threw his phone right underneath his pillow.
And then, he covered his ears with both hands.

By now, he truly shouldn’t be able to hear a thing…

Katalk!

Th-That ought to be the case.

So how on earth was that sound still vividly echoing directly inside his ears!

“Yeah, obviously you wouldn’t believe me.”

I wouldn’t believe it either if I were in his shoes. I’d assume some crazy bastard was pulling a prank on me.

Even so, grasping at straws, I had sent those messages.

Granted, an actual reply had never come back from Mo Je-won up until now.

Ding!

……?

Just in case, I immediately shifted the notification window right to the center of my field of vision.

To my absolute amazement, a reply had actually arrived from Mo Je-won!

Dear me. It seemed the mysterious, supernatural power of the system was capable of manipulating reality itself.

While it was a regrettable situation for Mo Je-won, I was grateful to the hard-working system.

‘No, actually I’m not grateful. I mean, there are times I am, but I am absolutely, definitively not grateful.’

Let’s never forget the fact that the one who dropped me into this place was the system.

Setting that aside, though, I had only sent around a few hundred messages just now, yet a whole week had passed on the other side.

‘No wonder he’s about to lose his mind.’

Feeling just a tiny bit guilty, I explained the situation once again to a mentally fragile Mo Je-won.

Stop sending them? Mo Je-won questioned back, seemingly intrigued.

When I confirmed it, a reply came back telling me to go ahead and keep talking, then.
I explained my journey up until now, summarizing it compactly.

How I was suddenly trapped inside the game while playing it, and how the moment I was trapped, I received a quest to save Belita.

And how the next quest was to become the Mistress of the Rubel Ducal House.

This time, after a brief moment of silence, a reply arrived.

When I told him it was because I pretended to be the Saintess, Mo Je-won scoffed, saying that it was certainly a plausible story.

My thoughts exactly!

…Phew. Pouring out my worries—which I couldn’t share anywhere else—to Mo Je-won, I felt as if the resentment I had harbored all this time was eased, even if just a little bit.

Of course, I couldn’t be absolutely certain if that truly was the real Mo Je-won, but…

At any rate, having regained my composure, I shared something I had been curious about with Mo Je-won as well.

Obviously?