“Was this the reason why we needed the hallucinogen?”
“We don’t need to kill her.”
Yuria, sitting in the chair, showed no signs of movement.
It was the outcome of the hallucination created by Arwen and magic, but honestly, it didn’t look half bad at all.
Her eyes, unfocused and dazed, were staring into the void.
When her name was called with no response, Arwen glanced around and started speaking.
“She’ll probably wake up in a day. No matter how powerful it is, the hallucinogen can only affect reality for so long.”
“That’s more than enough. She’ll be in her mind for years anyway.”
“That seems likely. I hope it works well.”
Arwen stole a glance at me. I also hoped that this drug would completely ruin Yuria.
If possible, wouldn’t it be best for her to lose all her memories and live like a vegetable?
Killing her was not a good option for many reasons.
The crimes Yuria had committed wouldn’t just vanish easily, and many people knew we had come here together, as I mentioned before.
It was better to show that I was different from the previous head of the family.
Instead of carelessly killing someone out of necessity, I would spare even a competitor.
Only by showing a complete turnaround would the nobles feel reassured and follow me.
Arwen might not know, but part of my magic was contained within this hallucinogen.
After dying a hundred times through the Moon Stone and living my 101st life, I realized this life was nearing some kind of singularity.
The people around me were recalling memories from previous cycles.
I couldn’t be sure if this method would work. It was one of the speculations I made after seeing Teresa recall her memories, but if it does work…
It might just be possible for Yuria to recall some of my memories through this method.
Only Yuria herself would truly know about that.
Would she accept it as just a hallucination, or would she realize it’s reality and crumble?
In that fantasy, I would always appear in the guise of the head of the family or Lady of the House.
What kind of reaction would Yuria have when she sees everything she built collapsing and finds me sitting in her place?
I was curious, but right now, there was no time to worry about that.
First, since Yuria was in this state, I definitely had to sort out the head of the family position.
Before Yuria woke up, I was surely thinking of succeeding the position.
The problem was what my father would do.
But Yuria was the bigger issue. I didn’t think about it too much for now.
After briefly looking at Yuria, I turned to Arwen and asked her to keep watch.
I wondered what memories Yuria was looking at.
Would she be able to distinguish if it was a fantasy or a memory? I chuckled softly and then shook my head.
I didn’t want to imagine it too much.
If my guess was right, Yuria would be experiencing my death in its entirety.
I didn’t know if the mental state of someone who felt 300 years in a single day would hold up.
So I was sure of one thing. By the time the sun rises tomorrow, Yuria probably wouldn’t show her old self anymore.
#
At some point, I stopped counting how many times I had died.
I must have counted until I could spread all my fingers. As a small smile formed, I coughed up blood from the sword that pierced my chest.
New pain bent my waist, and my consciousness blurred from the shattered vertebrae.
Just as my consciousness started to fade away, upon waking again, I see my damned room once more. Yuria wiped her face and let out a breath.
“Ugh, heh heh.”
Once? Twice? How many times have I seen this room?
I’ve been trapped in this hallucination for several years now. I’ve already forgotten how many years it has been.
Counting the years would lead to dying again, bringing forth a new few years, which, upon dying once more, would lead to another new period.
At the end of it all was her painful death, as Yuria began pulling at her hair while touching the spot where she had just been stabbed in the chest.
Thud thud.
Blood flowed from the roughly torn hair, but the hands didn’t stop.
The once cold eyes had long lost their clarity. The thoughts that once judged so cunningly had frozen.
I had to escape this hallucination as quickly as possible.
Outside this illusion, many things must have already happened. How long must I remain trapped in here?
“I’ll kill you.”
Once I get out, once I break free, I will tear your heart out.
There once was a woman burning with a desire for revenge. Where has that woman gone?
Yuria’s lips twisted at the thought that seemed ridiculous even to herself. Yes, if she gets out, she would kill.
Filled with thoughts of killing painfully more than anyone else, I still couldn’t find a way out.
As time passed, I realized that this was not merely a hallucination.
This was my memory, and Robert’s memory.
My death had already been experienced by Robert once, and I was merely reliving it with the circumstances reversed.
Thus, I had some idea of how I would die next.
Would I burn to death this time? With that ridiculous charge of treason, my ultimate fate was to be used as a discarded pawn.
Isn’t it funny?
Being discarded as if it was a planned deal all along.
Even if I thought of it from the opposite perspective, it was a natural choice, making it even more absurd.
I had discarded Robert. And Robert had discarded me.
There was little difference between that and this situation; no matter how much I struggled, nothing would change.
When I realized that, what I felt was despair.
Surely that was the case, but Yuria grit her teeth and stared into space.
I wasn’t sure if someone was watching this vision.
However, if they were watching, they intended to instill fear in me.
Somehow, I would escape this hallucination unscathed.
If I tried countless times, I would surely break free from this death.
Robert couldn’t do it, but that was because he was Robert.
I could do it. Yuria, who got up from the bed, quietly looked into the mirror.
She brushed away the blood-stained hair and carefully exhaled.
This was the 20th, before facing the 80th death.
As my memories revived, my own death became clearer.
Understanding that I shouldn’t go further twisted my actions, but the more twisted seemed to lead to a gruesome end.
As I burned to death, I thought, ‘Next time, I will definitely succeed.’
“This time will be different.”
Saying that, Yuria was stabbed by her attendant and died.
As she died, she thought, ‘Next time, let’s take care of the attendants first.’
However, this time it wasn’t the attendant but rather a noble she completely trusted who assassinated her, leading her to resolve that she would only trust those she could be absolutely sure of next time.
The duke personally ordered Yuria to be killed.
Yuria was imprisoned in the basement and starved to death, and that was her twenty-third death.
She thought it was okay. Compared to all the deaths she had experienced so far, this much was bearable.
If she came back to life, there were still plenty of methods left to try.
This time, she completely turned towards the North.
Heading north, Yuria aimed to become Adele’s lieutenant but was caught sowing discord among the lieutenants and was executed by Adele herself.
Since then, she never headed north again.
“Damn you.”
Twenty-ninth time, thirtieth time.
Worn out to the point of taking her own life, she eventually realized that she could not escape this dream.
Only a few more deaths had occurred.
In the end, was it not just a matter of escaping this illusion before Robert did?
She hardened her resolve a little. Even though it didn’t take even three years for that resolution to expire.
“…I was wrong. Robert, I’m sorry.”
She had been imprisoned in the basement for about a month and endured torture enough not to die.
“I received it.”
Every hour was so painful that I repeatedly thought I wished to die.
I mutter into the empty void. My deeply sunken eyes emitted only a hollow light.
In the murky darkness, the woman who was swaying eventually collapsed, kneeling down and begging.
She spread out her hands to plead. She pressed her face against the ground until her knees were grazed and bled, and her forehead cracked to reveal bone.
Naturally, no answer came. Robert was already far away from Yuria.
Only the screams that wouldn’t receive a reply echoed uselessly.
“If I become the Head of the Family, I won’t kill you. So please, let me out of this illusion. Thirty deaths should be enough… Right? Don’t you think so, Robert?”
Muttering such words, she was overwhelmed by madness and died.
That was the fiftieth death, and from some point onwards, Yuria lived having let go of her own consciousness.
If someone killed her, she died; if they spared her, she lived.
Sometimes she was treated like a prostitute by the homeless, and sometimes she recalled being captured by the immigrant tribe and living a life of pain.
Her confidence that she could do better than Robert had long since faded.
Since she had died when she made up her mind and moved forward. Nothing changed no matter what she did.
No matter how much she struggled, the Crown Prince tried to kill her, and no matter how many forces she gathered, Robert and her father turned a blind eye to her.
The irony was that it was the path she had visibly tread in her memories.
“…Help me.”
Thunk.
Saying those words, she died. Eventually, she even begged to be killed but couldn’t die.
This wretched illusion made her feel the pain of death fully before bringing her back to life in the room.
By the time she had died more than seventy times, Yuria’s appearance was no longer human.
In the beginning, even the attendants who merely ignored her started to avoid her.
They certainly wouldn’t like a woman who was alone in her room, pleading like a madman.
The Duke frowned, and those who thought of her as intelligent for a moment turned their backs.
Robert said it was time for her to find a way out, as she was no longer useful.
So when she turned her steps toward the Order, Berod, who guarded it, deemed Yuria a heretic and killed her with a mace.
Having no resistance at all, Yuria became a mush and welcomed her eighty-fifth life.
“Aha ha.”
When she was hanging and dying, she thought,
“Wouldn’t everything be easier if I just gave up the position of Head of the Family?”
It was all a denial of the reasons she had lived up to that point,
but Yuria felt she would do anything to escape this pain.
Should I give up everything?
After contemplating for a long time, when the beginning of her ninetieth life came, she opened the mouth that had long been closed.
All her hair was gone, and a thin voice leaked through her sunken cheeks and chewed lips.
It had been long since her voice turned into a scream, but Yuria cautiously spoke toward the void.
“…I give up, Robert.”
She had worried for so long. A hundred years? Two hundred years? Perhaps even longer than that.
She had believed she could do better than Robert, but this world was moving too unfavorably for her.
No matter what she did, it was completely blocked, and there was no choice but to die; so how could she survive?
She couldn’t endure this continuous tragedy. No person could endure it.
These thoughts that arose like memories were probably manipulated.
How could a person die a hundred times and still endure? It was only natural to become a cripple like herself. Yes… that was only natural.
So, she had no choice but to give up.
In the end, if she wanted to survive, she had to say something; kneeling down, Yuria slowly continued.
“You will become the Head of the Family. You will become the Head of the Family, and I will retreat to the outskirts and just live quietly. You take everything. I built it all up, but I’m giving it to you.”
Silence again. Still no answer came, and Yuria yelled in frustration.
He shouted loudly.
“Help me! Robert, please save me! I don’t want to die… I didn’t know it would hurt this much. I’m really sorry. Please, get me out of here.”
“……”
“Please… ugh, please. I’m begging you. Lord Robert, please. I… did wrong…”
As Yuria begged until her hands and feet bled, she began to sense that this death would not be the end.
The guillotine approached.
Even when she found herself on that sharp chopping block, reaching out for death’s grasp towards her neck, she could only laugh madly.
“……”
At some point, Yuria stopped speaking.
Everyone who defended her was dead at Robert’s hands, and the person she loved was gone too.
Her broken mind couldn’t even spare the energy to utter words.
Amidst the arrival of death once more, Yuria, holding a poisoned vial, finally realized this would be her last death.
“Why do you stare at me like that?”
“…This is the last… the hundredth.”
Robert’s last memory of dying was from consuming poison.
As he opened his mouth, Robert standing before her smirked.
She couldn’t discern what that smile meant, but it was true that she wished for death like never before.
Without being prompted, she spat the poison from her mouth.
Even as she coughed up blood and felt herself dying, Yuria smiled.
Because this was the last time. If she could endure this death, she would surely awaken from the fantasy.
As she tightly closed her eyes, she felt her consciousness fade. What would she do if she left this space?
Amidst the blossoming hope, Yuria recalled her initial vow to obtain the head of the family position.
No matter how much she begged, she had not been heard, so this time she would make sure to die painfully.
Her hazy consciousness did not return to clarity like before.
It was a refreshing sensation, like waking from a dream, and with certainty that she wouldn’t revive, Yuria slowly opened her eyes.
The hallucination was over now. The cold touch against her skin was more familiar than anything.
Realizing that she was tied to a chair in the basement, Yuria cautiously opened her eyes.
“You’re awake.”
“…Haha.”
Yuria’s eyes filled with venom once more. Robert before her had only changed his clothes.
While she suffered, he had waited for her alone.
Now, she was confident that no matter what torture she faced, her spirit would not break.
“I’m thinking of releasing you now, but how… I’m curious if your thoughts have changed a bit? Do you understand your sins somewhat?”
“…I was wrong. Now, I think I realize that I was wrong.”
It was all a lie. If the bonds were released here, she intended to strangle that thin neck right there.
Suppressing her own emotions as much as possible, Yuria quietly replied.
Then Robert slowly approached, seeming to prepare to untie the rope.
He boldly showed the neck he intended to strangle, having become utterly defenseless.
“Well then, I can feel reassured. I was a bit worried. If you hadn’t repented, I would have had to keep you bound for life.”
“Right… that’s true.”
Soon, the rope would be loosened.
As she held her breath thinking of that, Robert smiled quietly.
“Well then, I must reintroduce myself. Since the rope is loosened now, let me introduce myself a bit.”
Though his words felt out of place, Yuria swallowed hard as she realized something she saw before her.
Her eyes narrowed. What was on Robert’s chest. So if this was real…
“Robert Taylor, though I was just a member before, I will now lead the Taylor family from today onwards.”
The family crest. It didn’t take long for Yuria’s eyes to grow dim again.
As the hope she had briefly nurtured crumbled, the despair she felt then was greater than anything.
Yuria wished this was just an illusion.
“From now on, I hope you will call me Duke, Yuria.”
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