Chapter 01
“Damn it! Wake up…! Are you still… not coming to your senses…? Hey!”
The sensation of someone grabbing and shaking my body gradually pulled my drifting consciousness back from sleep.
At the same time, a terrible headache surged through me, making my head spin. A groan escaped my lips before I could stop it.
“Ugh…”
As my blurry consciousness became clearer, I struggled to open my unfocused eyes. But before I could fully do so, a rough hand grabbed my collar and forcefully pulled me forward.
“Damn it! I really thought you were dead!”
The rough touch showed not even a hint of consideration. A tight grip clamped down on the back of my neck, making it hard to breathe.
I tried to move, but my arms and legs felt trapped, as if they were caught on something.
‘W-what…? Where am I?’
For a moment, it felt like my train of thought had come to a halt. The man in front of me—I could swear on my life—I had never seen him before.
Besides, his appearance was far too crude for someone who would be allowed in my home.
“Uh… I… Who…?”
“The hell? Did you get hit too hard? Damn it. It’ll be a problem if you’re broken.”
“W-who are you…?”
“Well, as long as you’re alive, I guess it doesn’t really matter. I almost lost a high-grade product.”
Words I couldn’t understand spilled rapidly from the man’s mouth.
What is he talking about?
I tried to steady my blurry vision, but suddenly, I heard a click—something was locked around my neck.
“Urgh…”
It suddenly felt like all the air had been cut off. I struggled to breathe, my throat tightening rapidly.
Even as I gasped for air, I focused on figuring out who this person was.
“Ah, who… are you… and why…”
“Hey! This one’s ready. Take them now!”
The man completely ignored my words and instead called out to someone behind him, as if his work was done.
Ah, damn it.
“No, who—”
“This one’s really normal this time, right? If it’s defective again, we’re in trouble. Last time, we took a defective one and it caused problems.”
“Ah, ah~ No need to worry. No injuries, and they’re a foreign slave, so there’s no risk of backlash. Just pay the right price.”
Foreign? Slave?
The words made no sense, but I saw unfamiliar people approaching.
As they drew closer, I mentally repeated the word patience three times, forcing myself to stay calm.
I opened my mouth again, keeping my voice steady.
“Who… are you?”
“Now, don’t make a fuss and just come quietly.”
Hey. Answer me.
˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗
The world is unfair.
Perhaps that was only natural.
‘Of all things, I get reincarnated into a fantasy novel, and my status is… a slave?’
When I first opened my eyes, I was forcibly dragged to this place by men who treated me like I was nothing. It was a slave shop—one where human beings were bought and sold as mere products.
From listening to their conversation, I managed to piece together the situation. This place was an elite slave shop, the most prestigious in the empire. It specialized in raising slaves from childhood through rigorous obedience training, ensuring they would submit absolutely to their noble masters before being sold at an exorbitant price.
‘No. Shouldn’t it have been something like waking up as a noble lady or something?’
I thought every reincarnation story started with something better than the previous life, like “Wow, this life is amazing. I think I’ll stay here forever.” But instead, I opened my eyes and found myself in a slave shop. What kind of misfortune was this? And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they even implanted a bomb in my neck to prevent me from escaping.
To make matters worse, I wasn’t the only one here. There were four other children in the same room, all appearing to be between six and eight years old. Despite their young age, they sat silently in their places, their eyes devoid of life, as if they had already seen the depths of hell.
Among them, a girl who had arrived with me today was curled up in the corner, as if trying to make herself as small as possible. I cautiously approached her and spoke.
“Hi. What’s your name?”
The youngest-looking girl in the room had bright yellow hair, like forsythia flowers, and light golden eyes that were almost pale in color.
As I sat down beside her with a bright smile, she flinched, her eyes widening in surprise. She hesitated, her lips trembling slightly, before finally opening her mouth in a small voice.
“…Lizzie.”
Lizzie?
Oh my god. Even her name was adorable.
She was hugging a worn-out stuffed rabbit tightly to her chest, occasionally stealing nervous glances at me. I smiled and asked another question.
“What’s your rabbit’s name?”
“Moony…”
“Moony? Why Moony?”
“B-because it… lives on the moon…”
Her plump little cheeks flushed slightly as she buried her face behind the stuffed rabbit, whispering the words as if she were embarrassed.
Wait, did she name it Moony because rabbits live on the moon…?
‘Is it even legal for something this cute to exist?’
Lizzie radiated pure, unfiltered adorableness. My lips curled into an uncontrollable smile. If she had been born in modern times, she would’ve definitely become a child star with her looks alone. And on top of that, she actually believed that rabbits lived on the moon. I didn’t know why such a precious girl ended up in a slave shop, but my heart ached for her.
‘Wait… Lizzie? Why does it sound familiar?’
I glanced at her stuffed rabbit with its little pink ribbon. For some reason, both the toy and her name felt eerily familiar.
Then, it hit me.
I had read about a girl named Lizzie in a novel before my reincarnation. A Step Away from Hell.
She looked exactly like the protagonist of that story. Same name, same appearance.
And even her tragic past in the slave shop…
‘….No way. Don’t tell me I’ve been reincarnated into the world of that novel?’
I would’ve laughed at how cliché this was—if only it weren’t for the fact that I had ended up in the worst possible place.
The novel’s protagonists, after growing up in this hellish slave shop, would later rebel against the noble society that had oppressed them. And their abilities? Each and every one of them was on the level of a natural disaster.
Among them, Lizzie was a necromancer who could control an army of the dead. She had a brilliant mind and eventually became a strategist as well.
‘And… didn’t she put her own heart inside that stuffed rabbit with the pink ribbon?’
Necromancers had the ability to separate their hearts from their bodies and hide them in secret places. Lizzie had chosen to keep hers inside her beloved stuffed rabbit.
So, the adorable little girl in front of me was carrying around her own heart inside that toy.
“Um… I… want to know… your name too.”
“Huh?”
Lizzie’s small voice interrupted my thoughts. She was trembling slightly, as if asking my name required an enormous amount of courage.
I smiled instinctively and was about to answer when I hesitated.
Wait.
What was my name?
No matter how hard I tried to recall it, I couldn’t remember.
Should I just make one up?
“My name is Mary.”
“Ma… ry…”
Lizzie repeated my name softly, as if rolling the unfamiliar syllables on her tongue.
As she did, I turned my gaze to the other children in the room.
Now that I was paying attention, I could see their distinct features.
One by one, their appearances matched the characters from the novel.
There was no doubt about it.
The four children gathered here were the future rebels—the disasters that would one day bring down the empire.
‘…You’re telling me these adorable kids are supposed to become world-ending threats?’
I looked at them in disbelief, then lowered my gaze to myself.
‘….Wait a second. There were supposed to be five disasters.’
But there were only four kids here.
So what about me?
Could it be… that I was also one of them?
The novel clearly mentioned five disasters.
But no matter how I looked at it, I didn’t recognize my own face from the story.
What? Then am I just a passing ‘Extra #1’…?
‘Should I be happy that I wasn’t one of the world’s disasters? Or should I be sad that I was just an extra?’
And to make matters worse, I knew how the novel ended.
The disasters, having lost faith in changing the world, ultimately decided to destroy it instead.
In other words, this world was doomed to collapse.
‘So, I got reincarnated, ended up as a slave, and now I’m just some background character in a world that’s going to end soon?’
Why did my life start on hard mode…?
˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗
Thank you for reading! ♡
