How to Survive as the Horror Game Villain’s Fake Fiancée - Chapter 156

※ This book contains depictions of coercive/dubcon/noncon acts, violence, and gore. Reader discretion is advised.

Sia checked the homepage through the link that was sent to her a little while later.

The scale was small, but it seemed like a pretty solid business. The annual salary that CEO Kang offered wasn’t bad for an entry-level position.

It was a startup that was just taking its first steps, so there would surely be a lot of hardships ahead, but it was definitely going to be better than working at a convenience store.

“……”

All she had to do was live her own reality like this.

She knew that, yet Sia hesitated to send a reply saying she would accept. Even if this was not a game but the real world, it still wasn’t her world.

Segleninde, Melissa, all of them were villains who had killed her before, and they weren’t even human.

So it was time to make a wise decision. She knew all of that, knew it all, and yet…

“Ha……”

Sia grabbed her head in her hands and buried her face in her palms.

It was at that moment.

Ding—

A sound came from the screen.

When she turned around, the screen, which had just been filled with floating text, faded to pure white and then flickered into darkness.

And a new video began to play.

* * *

Within the mental world entered through the heart jewel of the teddy bear, Segleninde had been watching Sia the whole time through the laptop screen, filled with regret.

It hurt him to see her suffering and in agony. He was someone who had never known compassion or sympathy before, but ever since learning about love, it felt as if his heart would tear every time she was in pain.

But he could not reach her.

He could only watch his beloved suffer, unable to comfort her or hold her close. It was as if he had fallen into the hell that humans spoke of.

Having stopped consuming even the life force of humans, Segleninde was growing weaker by the day.

Even so, as a being that transcended the very concept of death, he could not die. Sia had dragged down even such an existence, making him just like any ordinary human.

But things were different for those inside the mansion, whose state depended on him.

Some withered and rotted away like decayed wood, and even the stronger creatures became so feeble that they couldn’t move at all. Even Melissa was barely able to breathe.

The entire mansion was withering, its once-grand and resplendent scenery disappearing and turning into an ancient ruin.

It wasn’t as if Segleninde himself was completely unaffected.

Unable to consume any more sustenance, he could neither sleep nor die. He had to suffer, slowly withering away alive.

He had long since lost the ability to maintain a human form.

He had returned to his true form—a massive, pure-white tree, its trunk rising from the basement to the fourth floor’s Sky Garden, with tentacle vines spreading haphazardly throughout the mansion. Even those vines were drying up from their roots. The red, gem-like eyes embedded in his trunk had also lost their light.

Compared to the sins he had committed against Sia, this was nothing.

If only he could experience death and then come back to life, how much better would that be?

[…Ah, that’s right.]

[It’s not that there isn’t a way.]

He could not be forgiven. He would never be able to meet Sia again.

So, he decided to atone alone.

He hoped that, at the very least, if Sia saw this scene, even if she could never forgive him, it would bring her some sense of relief as he endured his pain. And so, for the last time, he connected her world and his own world of consciousness.

And Segleninde fell into hell.

* * *

Segleninde opened his eyes in human form.

The place reeked of a ghastly stench of blood, like formless mist. It was the Wincastle Manor from the time when Sia first transmigrated. He stood in the main hall on the first floor, the ballroom filled with people screaming and fleeing.

Stab, stab, stab.

Spikes rose from the floor of the hall, skewering people as they ran. Those who were unlucky enough to only be grazed could not even die instantly, writhing in agony as they rolled on the ground. Segleninde stood silently in the midst of that scene.

And even beneath his own feet, a spike sprang up.

Stab—

“……”

Segleninde’s body was pierced by the spike and lifted high into the air.

Listlessly bleeding, he became just another part of the forest of corpses along with the other humans. After a while, once all those who couldn’t escape from the hall had been impaled, only silence remained inside.

It was the very same way Sia had died for the first time. At that time, she had been unable to recall the content of the game and met her end in a moment of confusion and futility.