A tiny figure floated in midair. A little girl in a cleric’s white robe pulled low over her head—the “Holy Witch”—was looking down at me while swinging her cross staff through the air.
Could that little thing really be of any help? Honestly, I wasn’t sure. For one insane instant, the mad impulse to reroll a few more times until I got some destructive wide-area skill or cheat ability flashed through my mind.
But I slowly lowered my hand. For now, I decided to stop here.
Thirty-six self-destructions. No matter how numb I had become to pain, my mind had already reached its limit. If I rerolled one more time here and hit hundreds of “duds” in a row, my brain might really melt down and leave me trapped forever in this ash-gray world.
At least it was SSR. Since it was the highest grade of Gift in name, I should be able to make use of it. I sank to the floor, gasping for breath, and began thinking.
If the activation condition of this goddamn system was “emotion,” then couldn’t I artificially control this rage and despair and pull the gacha indefinitely?
I forced my breathing under control and once again shoved the scene of Scarlet’s death into my head, wringing out killing intent. But neither the gray world nor the slot machine reacted anymore. No matter how hard I ground my teeth and unleashed my anger, the void only remained coldly silent.
Clutching my throbbing temples, I ran several experiments and managed to sort out a few rules of this damned system.
First, I only obtain a gacha ticket when my emotions reach an extreme and explode as a perfect emotion.
Second, “duds” exist in the slot machine. However, even a dud grants one chance to use an ability I previously pulled.
Third, emotions of the same pattern are invalid. Rage or despair of a kind I have already spent cannot grant another gacha ticket.
Fourth, fake emotions that are forced or acted out are ignored.
In other words, sloppy loopholes or mechanical repetition wouldn’t work. It was a rotten, perverse setting that would only feed on raw, vivid dopamine, the kind that made it feel as if my soul were being shattered.
I roughly rubbed my face dry and calmed my breathing.
What mattered was the hand right in front of me.
I cleared away all distracting thoughts and stared straight at the Holy Witch drifting through the gray void.
“Hey. Miracle SSR.”
I braced a hand on the floor and slowly stood up, twisting my bloodied lips into a grin.
“Let’s see just what kind of insane performance that miracle of yours has.”
The Holy Witch floating in midair merely swung her cross staff with a blank expression despite my murderous smile, giving no answer at all.
“……Is she set up so she can’t talk?”
At my mutter, the Holy Witch nodded her head violently up and down. Ah. So she could only communicate with yes or no. Nursing a headache, I asked another question.
“Like the Bomb Witch from before, do you happen to have any wide-area skills or attack skills related to divine power?”
The witch firmly shook her head.
“Then can you use abilities other than attacks?”
She nodded.
“What, are you some kind of healing type or healer?”
She nodded again. I rubbed my face dry.
“Hah…… Should I just fuck up another reroll? I’m screwed.”
I had pulled an SSR, and of all things, it was a healer. It wasn’t as if I was going on a raid with a party right now. A pure healer was the worst possible hand when I lacked damage.
I felt like I wouldn’t be satisfied until I confirmed its performance with my own eyes. I grabbed the bowl of water on the table and hurled it violently to the floor. Crash! With a sharp, clamorous shattering, shards of porcelain scattered everywhere. Without hesitation, I picked up one of the sharp fragments and slashed a long line across the back of my left hand.
“Ugh……”
Blood gushed out. I might have grown used to pain, but tearing living flesh was always a shitty sensation. When I held out the back of my hand, blood dripping from it, the Holy Witch extended her cross staff toward me.
A warm golden light gently enveloped the wound. And in the blink of an eye, the split flesh sealed perfectly as though a zipper had been pulled shut. Smooth skin remained, without even a scab.
But what drew my gaze was not the healed wound. Right beside the cut I had just made had been a scar the original owner of this body had received while attending to Cassian. Even that had vanished without a trace.
“……Wait. This isn’t simple healing.”
It wasn’t cellular regeneration. It was returning the target’s condition to a point in the past when it had been intact. This wasn’t recovery; it was closer to perfect restoration. With gleaming eyes, I looked down at the back of my hand, now clean and pale.
#
Several days passed. Experiments to determine the range, usage limits, and penalties of the ability were carried out in the solitary cell with the utmost secrecy and caution. After all, the previous rounds had already proven, with tears of blood, that Cassian had placed surveillance on my room.
According to the tests, this ability was indeed perfect “restoration,” but it had one fatal restriction. There was a fixed number of times it could be used per day. Once she reached her limit, the Holy Witch would yawn languidly as if tired, then slip back into the book on her own.
With a cold head, I recalculated the situation.
‘Stay calm. To be blunt, just because I got one healer with no combat ability doesn’t mean I can take Cassian’s head right away.’
Of course, the body of this Iliana I had possessed originally belonged to Rodri, the barbarian mercenary who had drenched the eastern front in blood. Though it had now become a girl’s body, it was still trained enough to snap the necks of three or four armed adult men with bare hands.
But this was the very heart of the imperial palace, defended like an iron fortress, and my opponent was the true monster reigning at its apex: Cassian. No matter how outstanding my martial strength was, and no matter that I had obtained the miraculous Gift called the “Holy Witch,” breaking through the imperial palace head-on alone, with thousands of elite knights layered throughout it, was no different from suicide.
Someday, I wanted to take that bastard Cassian’s head and hang it in the plaza, but that was for later. My immediate first objective was “escape”—to slip completely out of Cassian’s grasp.
I gathered the original novel’s settings in my head and devised a new escape route. Once I got out of the imperial palace, my second objective would be to meet an information broker in the capital’s back alleys first. After laundering my identity and route there, I intended to leave the royal capital entirely and head straight down to the southern region.
‘The Saintess from the original story was in the south. And the Holy Empire is holding firm there.’
I had the Holy Witch, who could perform perfect miracles. If I disguised this ability as holy power and placed myself under the protection of the Holy Empire? A place full of blind fanatics like that would surely worship me as a new Saintess, or perhaps a messenger of god. It would become a perfect and sturdy shield, one that even Cassian’s power could not carelessly reach. Once the plan took shape, my bloodshot vision became considerably clearer.
It was then.
Clack. The firmly closed door of the solitary cell opened, and a familiar face drenched in tears rushed into the room.
“Sister!”
It was Scarlet. The moment she saw me, she ran over and threw herself into my arms. The memory of that day, repeated countless times in past lives, overlapped with the present.
Right. It had been like that in the first round. That moment when I, who had been single all my life, felt my heart flutter as I embraced a woman for the first time. The pleasant scent that tickled the tip of my nose. And even how I had teased this child with sly jokes. It had certainly not been long ago, but perhaps because I had experienced countless deaths, it felt like something from the distant past.
I raised a trembling hand and slowly hugged Scarlet’s small back in return. In the life just before this one, I had even burrowed into those arms and whined like someone suffering from dependency. But this time was different.
I erased the helplessness of my last life completely and, once again putting on my old playful voice, opened my mouth.
“Scarlet…… Were you scared because you couldn’t see me?”
Instead of answering, Scarlet nuzzled her face into my embrace and sobbed. On the outside, it looked like nothing more than an affectionate hug between reunited sisters, but the gaze in my eyes as I held her was colder and more composed than ever.
As though soothing her, I brought my lips close to her ear. Then I let out a secret, chilling metallic whisper that could reach only the curve of her ear.
“Scarlet. Listen carefully to what I’m about to say. Don’t let it show.”
“……!”
I felt the small shoulders in my arms stiffen instantly.
“Someone, somewhere, is listening in on our conversation. Pretend nothing is wrong. Act like you usually do.”
Scarlet was a clever child. Instantly realizing the weight of my warning, she suppressed the trembling in her body and began acting, clinging to me and whining like a child.
“Waaah, Sister…… Do you know how worried I was?”
I gently patted her back and whispered into her ear once more.
“Help me escape. Secretly make contact with Elise, the knight who patrols at night. And once I get out of the imperial palace, clear a path so I can immediately connect with the information broker I tell you about. I’m going south.”
I would not hide helplessly behind this child and beg for my life like in the previous rounds. I would set the board in this life myself.
With her face buried in my arms, Scarlet nodded ever so slightly.
Time flowed suffocatingly fast. Scarlet and Elise’s skill, once they began moving beneath the surface, far exceeded my expectations. A few days later, Scarlet informed me through a note hidden at the bottom of a laundry basket of the existence of an old “secret passage” leading to the outskirts of the imperial palace.
Inside the dark solitary cell, immediately after confirming the contents of the note, I stuffed the paper into my mouth, chewed it, and swallowed it so it would leave no trace. The bitter taste of paper spread through my mouth, but I smiled coldly in the heavy darkness.
I had to take advantage of the quietest gap before the storm came crashing in. I decided to move the execution date up drastically. It would be tonight.