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“But I just can’t believe that it’s going to be like this…”
As she woke up from reminiscing while watching the full red moon that was soaring right above her head, Julia cautiously rose from her bed.
She slightly groaned from all that vertigo before rolling up the sheets abruptly and looked downwards to her arms and legs. They were still quite brittle and pale, but fortunately, no visible wounds could be found.
She had thrown herself into the boiling pit of sulfur blaze. To be precise, she was mercilessly shoved by those spears.
The feeling of being hurled from a high place, the sound of wind gusting in her ears and the blistering heat that had swallowed her whole body were still extremely vivid.
She somehow knew that she would end up being fine inside her head as it had been the same way to how Estelle herself had travelled to the underworld within the game, but when she had truly awakened, she could do nothing other than trembling in fear while losing her mind.
When she looked over her body, she began to feel curious about her current situation. As she peered around carefully, the first thing she could see was a stone wall—cold and gray.
‘A familiar background……’
It was the background that she had seen in a CG within that game. Although the size of the room was rather spacious, it had an unenclosed atmosphere without any sense of brimming life—just as if only the necessities were left behind. The floor was all covered with hides of an unknown creature and the air that brushed against her lungs was just cold and terrifying.
There was a thick chain hanging by the bedside, which she decided instantly not to think about its purpose at all.
‘I’ve really arrived at the Demon Realm. Originally, this is where Estelle should be brought to, but now, I’m the one who’s here.’
The first thing that she had thought about was what to do if she were to be found out and whether the fact that she would be killed right away. What the demons had demanded was ‘the noblest human being’, but she was not even a noble person—merely a useless human who had been living her whole life by getting fingers pointed at her.
Her anxious eyes slowly turned to the dark night sky beyond the terrace window. A large, bloody full moon was dyeing the entire Demon Realm in red. Amidst the gloomy atmosphere that was completely different from the perpetually gleaming Vestra Imperial Palace, a chilling energy instantly ran up her spine.
“I don’t want to die like this. What do I do now?”
Julia lowered her eyelids helplessly while burying her head into her raised knees. Her heart prickled, but she only bit her lower lip quietly in patience—all alone.
‘Do I have to pretend to be Estelle in order to live or ……’
Even her corpse would never be left intact when they found out that it was not her at all. Even Estelle, the real key to the Magic Stone, had suffered all kinds of horrific things from those demons before she finally broke down.
When she was merely sighing softly due to her bleak future, the surroundings eventually became noisy for some reason. A number of footsteps began getting closer and closer while an extremely light voice could be heard intermittently.
“You already got the key that you’ve been waiting for after so long, so why don’t you just send it over to the tower right away? We need to unseal the Magic Stone as soon as possible!”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Does the door even open by itself just by looking at it? Anyway, Brother’s frustration is just too much.”
“If you happen to fail, you will instantly lose the Magic Stone and the key as well. So, will your Master be very pleased with that?”
A cold voice suddenly stopped right in front of the door. As soon as Julia took a breath while she had been listening without realizing it, the door slammed open.
The gazes of those two demons who were standing side by side had met hers directly, while she was desperately clutching the bedsheets like a lifeline. Julia lowered her gaze, but she saw that the men had entered even faster.
‘Really. It really is a demon……’
With long slit pupils like a cat, extremely sharp fangs, a pair of black wings on their backs and above all, those familiar faces—even though she was seeing them for the first time, Julia had immediately recognized their identities.
The slurred voice and the slightly droopy corners of the eyes were evidently similar to the appearance of the demon, ‘Lerazier’ within the game. Although he looked just like a beautiful young man, he was actually the 14th highest demon in the Demon Realm as he ruled over love and pleasure.
The other one was his twin brother, the 8th highest demon in the demon world, ‘Barbatos’. At a first glance, it was easy to see him as a mere scholar, but his hands were actually quite cruel and brutal as he was in charge of despair, cruelty and ruthlessness.
‘It’s exactly the same as the game’s prologue.’
In the original story, they had dragged Estelle directly in front of the Demon God’s Crystal Ball in the tower. But perhaps things wouldn’t be just as fun if they had been going well from the beginning, so she collapsed under the mighty power of the Magic Stone before wandering through death for a very long time.
‘Estelle, the main character, had suffered the same exact way, but I, who was never in the original, would definitely die.’
There was no interest towards the peace of the human world or anything like which Emperor Ingrem V had spoken of before. She just wanted to live. Even if it was just once, no, she terribly wanted only one day, for her to live a normal life just like everyone else.
Her hands trembled as she grabbed onto the unfamiliar sheets.
“Does the key look strange?”
“She must have been scared. Humans are weak after all.”
“Still, are they usually this frail? It’s even smaller than the wolf I raise.”
“There is no other human being that could be bigger than that. Stop being stupid.”
Julia carefully looked up at the two of them who were casually having a conversation.
In the original story, Estelle was very proud of herself. So, when she first met the two of them, she acted bravely and vainly right until the very end. Her appearance was already enough to pique the demons’ twisted interest.
But Julia simply didn’t have such audacity. She had just turned to stone in fear of when they would actually kill her. In fact, she had no idea what to do at all.
Then, her eyes met with Lerazier’s all of a sudden.
“…!”
As she bowed her head in surprise, there was an abrupt popping sound over her head as the wind gusted.
“What, she’s actually cuter than I thought? Since she’s such a great princess, I was really looking forward to how we would break her spirit.”
Lerazier strode along before grabbing the sheet that she had been holding onto like a lifeline with one of her hands and lifted it away. Julia tried her best to not let it get taken away, but she just could not win against the power of a demon. In fact, her slender and fragile body wouldn’t have been able to withstand the power of anyone, not to mention a demon as well.