[ Chapter 12 ]
I lifted my eyelids in a comfortable floating position, and as I focused on the darkened view, something dropped on my cheek. It was like human sweat.
Regaining my consciousness, I saw Deon, who had climbed up to me, frowning with cold sweat dripping down his face. When I met his slightly excited red pupils, a red flash came to mind.
He was covered in cold sweat like a sick person, not just on his forehead but also at the back of his neck.
“…..you.”
Looking at me, who was frozen and dazed, he gave a wry smile as if he found it absurd. I was the one who had apparently collapsed, yet it was Deon who was breathing heavily with apparent pain.
I tried to move my body, but my wrist wouldn’t budge. The strong grip that held onto my wrist on my raised arm was so intense that it felt like my wrist was about to break. Of course, I could only feel the strength of the grip, but no accompanying pain. It was a really strange feeling.
I was in a dazed state for a moment, but then all my memories came flooding back.
Even my command for Deon to kill me, and my decision to die. But I didn’t die.
I must have used magic to give the order, so Deon wouldn’t have been able to resist it.
That’s when it happened. The red pupils that met my gaze suddenly sharpened and struck at my throat. A choked whimper that had been trapped in my mouth burst out.
Haaa.
Deon seemed to have decided to provide me with something other than pain, knowing that I was painless.
As a hot and moist lump swept down my neck, my half-closed eyelids flickered open, and my toes curled up as if searching for a place to breathe in response to the strange sensation.
Haaa. Ahhh.
In the quiet stillness, the heavy breathing of the two people spread out. Perhaps the taste of the nape of the neck was better than expected, as he continued to kiss and lick it stubbornly.
His moist lips wrapped around the thin and delicate nape of the neck, swirling his tongue as if he were sucking it in.
I tried to block it as much as possible by biting my lower lip, but strange sounds kept escaping through the gaps. It was such an odd feeling, but I couldn’t deny that it was also somewhat pleasurable.
“Fuck.”
The problem was that it only stimulated Deon even more.
“…Deon, what the hell…”
Eventually, he put his teeth on my nape and squeezed my wrist even harder. I didn’t feel any pain, only the sensation of something cold and sharp digging into my skin.
I writhed under him like a deer caught by a predator. I couldn’t understand why he suddenly turned like this, not to mention that my commands didn’t seem to work on him.
He was always the man who looked at me with contempt and waited quietly for his chance. Something was off. Surely the change in his body was due to the liquid he had drunk earlier.
“Deon!”
As I clenched my fists until they turned white and shouted his name, I felt his wide back, like that of a bear, lightly twitching. He must have gathered his remaining self-control and, with a great effort, took a deep breath and tightly gripped my wrist as if he were going to break it.
“….Officer.”
The hot breath was so thick that it melted into my ears. A faint yet dizzying shiver stabbed my brain, causing my shoulders to shake. There was a deep anger in the low, two-parted tone.
“You can never die on your own will, Lemony.”
Finally, he released my nape and opened his lips. The creepy obsession was felt from his revealed red eyes, and my whole body froze.
The command magic didn’t work on Deon.
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Afterward, Deon twisted his face in agony and bolted out of the room. The shackles were already broken. Maybe he had cut them off when I passed out. But even after Deon left, I couldn’t easily get up.
The corpses scattered around me created a sinister tomb.
It took a while for me to realize that I wasn’t dead.
I also realized that I wasn’t in pain. And at the moment when he tried to kill me, I struggled to live.
“You can never die on your own will, Lemony.”
A bitter laugh escaped my lips at his words, which spread like a curse. What this man wanted was not the death of Lemony, but just to see Lemony resist and struggle.
And I wanted to see that too.
Swallowing my saliva, I turned my head and saw my hand shaking like a dead branch. This was no longer a situation in a novel. The original story had changed, and I too, had become unable to predict the flow of events.
Because I possessed Lemony. My soul has entered Lemony’s body.
Then where is the real Lemony?
The sudden question overwhelmed me with a strange sense of guilt. I slowly opened my mouth, which had been quiet until then.
Why have I never questioned it before?
In typical ropan novels, the character I possess either gets reincarnated as me in the real world or their soul goes somewhere. So maybe Lemony’s soul is still alive.
Where could the real Lemony’s soul be? Does she know that I’m suffering in her place?
As the world that I thought was a novel approached reality, I suddenly felt rage toward the character named Lemony. I was so angry that curse words almost spilled out of my mouth.
I struggled to sit up and felt something hot and thick on my neck. It was blood. After biting and sucking for a while, it was clear that I had bitten marks on my neck.
Like taking a shower in the morning, I naturally rummaged through the drawers in the control room and tightly wrapped my neck and shoulders with bandages. Would this help stop the bleeding?
Since I couldn’t feel any pain, I wasn’t sure about the condition of my body.
Amidst the gruesome corpses, I noticed a notebook.
I hesitated to read it, but figured there was nothing to lose. With determination, I clenched my teeth and reached for the notebook, offering a silent prayer for the deceased.
It wasn’t easy to unfold the blood-soaked notebook, but it had to be done.
August 7th, Imperial Year 102.
There are 351 days left to leave this place. It’s exactly 14 days short of a year. If I save enough money from working as a prison officer, I can move down south with my family and live a simple life in a small house. I hope the remaining time passes quietly, day by day.
It seemed like the diary of a deceased prison officer.
It would have been nice if there had been some useful information.
The content was so personal that it felt disrespectful to read. For the sake of the deceased, I decided that I shouldn’t read any further. As I was about to put the notebook back into the deceased’s pocket, I stumbled upon a familiar name mentioned in the following pages.
August 12th, Imperial Year 102.
Lemony, the well-known noble-born prison officer, seems to have a thorn in her mouth unless he causes an incident in a day. I expected that. It would be nice if the remaining year passed quietly, but it seems that Building B is the problem after all. Lemony, who infiltrated Building C using noble-born prisoners, was caught in the control room looking for a berserk potion. When asked why she was looking for the potion, she had no answer. However, Lemony’s face was oddly pale, not matching her nickname, “crazy bitch”. What the hell going on?
I furrowed my brow slowly as I read the writing. It was about the strange behavior of an unnoticed extra in the novel.
August 31st, Imperial Year 102.
Lemony, a prison officer in Building B, has been acting strange lately. She was always a strange person, but perhaps it’s because she’s suffering from a painless condition. For the past few days, Lemony has been protesting, demanding to be given a vial of berserk potion, but when the prison refused to comply, she escaped.
What?
The place where she was caught was a deserted cave. When she was discovered, she was sitting inside a magic circle drawn in white chalk. When I met her shining violet eyes peeping through her tangled hair, I couldn’t help but think of the witch who is now said to be gone. She was being pulled weakly toward the center of the magic circle and kept muttering something until she arrived at the prison. She said, “I have to run away.”…..
Thud. The dull sound of the notebook being quickly covered filled the silence. After staring at the crimson notebook for a while, I pretended not to notice my trembling hands and hastily put the notebook into the deceased’s pocket.
Something has gone wrong.
It seems that in the original work, Lemony was only portrayed as a perverted psycho extra who enjoyed immoral behavior until the system of Dreys Prison collapsed. However, looking at Lemony’s description in this notebook, she seems more like a beast being dragged to the slaughterhouse than a pervert.
Why is it different from the original work? What has changed?
The hypothesis that just came to mind is that the perspective of the world I am currently in is not from the perspective in the “original” work, but rather that the dead Lemony has returned to life after reincarnation and noticed something. Otherwise, I couldn’t explain her changed behavior.
Berserk potion. Berserk potion….
Did it mention that Lemony was searching for the berserk potion in the control room? I quickly stepped back in search of the potion, but accidentally collided with the arm of the corpse. However, it was no longer particularly frightening.
When people have a goal, their vision becomes narrower with a strong impulse. That is why my blurry pupils, which had previously been aimlessly attempting to escape from Deon, were now focused on a specific spot.
As I opened the drawer in front of me, all sorts of things spilled out, including a pen, notebook, and even a leftover chocolate bar from working overtime. I searched through every drawer in the reception room, but nothing came out, and I was sweating profusely. But as I naturally took a step back, something caught on my heel.
It was an empty glass bottle. Inside the glass, there was a thick, bright green liquid that seemed to vaporize as soon as you took about five sips. At the time, I was too distracted to pay much attention, but now that I think about it, it seemed like something Deon had been drinking.
As I turned the glass bottle around, I noticed the familiar warning label. It depicted a wolf-like beast with its mouth wide open, and a strong, red X was drawn over it.
It was just like how it was described in the original. This was the berserk potion.
Perhaps Deon discovered the berserk potion while looking for a way to ignore the command magic to kill me. But when he drank the potion, he must have commanded himself to kill me and then hastily disappeared.
Whatever his intention was, there were only two options now.
Either attempt death again or survive.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. The anxious sound of the clock was the only thing filling the silence.
It was 12:01.
I don’t know if 24 hours had passed, but maybe the command magic had become possible.
When people have a goal, they become blindly focused. I will find the real Lemony. I will find the cause of the twisted original. And I will return to the original world. I looked at the clock and blew the whistle with all my might.
“…Come back right now, Deon”
I have to get out of this damn prison.
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Thank you for reading!
