The Villainess That Was Once A VRMMO player-Chapter 16，Part1

Life in the Royal Capital [Part 1]

“You will be moving to a villa in the Royal Capital with Dirk. You understand? Don’t cause trouble for Dirk!”

“…Hah?”

It was not my fault that I unintentionally reacted that way.

At that moment, Father’s face turned bright red, and blue streaks appeared on his forehead, like a real instantaneous water heater.

But this was the hall right after the entrance. Father, who didn’t want me to step a foot inside the castle, realized that many servants were watching around him, and he had just barely restrained himself from outright yelling at me.

I felt like he was going to break a blood vessel.

Had your blood pressure got too high from overeating?

“…Anyway, this is decided. Understood?!”

“Yes.”

When I replied with a flat face and voice without tension, father peeled his eyes away from me. 𝒃𝙚𝒅𝒏𝙤𝙫𝒆𝒍．𝙘𝒐𝙢

“Now get the heck out of here!!”

I would not stay long, even if he didn’t tell me to. In the end, he yelled at me.

The beautiful maids that Father interviewed and hired after I left the castle, whom only he knew him as a gentleman, looked very surprised, didn’t they?

Two years had passed since the Wyvern Incident, and I, Carol, had now turned five years old.

Still, two years, already two years had passed by. It would be ten more years until the biggest death flag to occur. However, I am somehow living with the dilemma of not being able to be independent if I don’t grow up, and the stress of detailed death flags makes me wonder how I could have grown up even in this Otome Game setting.

The most significant cause of stress to me was Dirk, but I can’t kill an innocent child, so I’m waiting for him to commit a crime deserving death punishment.

It was probably my fault that Father’s blood pressure, the Count of Arceides rose.

Even in a frontier town that had little connection to the social circles of the royal capital, I had to appear at the castle at least once a year. Every time I did, father would say to me, “Because of you, the blood of the abominable child is mixed in the family”, and the amount of alcohol he consumed would also increase.

And after repeatedly getting involved with the adventurer [Rose Witch], the intelligence unit of the family was nearly annihilated, and later on, the wyvern’s concealed blunder case came to light, making him vulnerable to his political opponents as well. It was a tough time.

But I did not sympathize with him because he blamed me, his daughter, for every little thing.

“…Haah.”

“Carol Ojou-sama, are you alright…”

Maia, the maid, approached me with concern as I sighed.

She also became my personal maid at the age of 12, and she would accompany me when I went out for visits to the castle and so on. I didn’t have anyone else in the Arceides family who wanted to be my personal maid.

At any rate, let’s quickly return to the remote mansion before Dirk finds us. But still, how did it come to this?

The reason why I endured Dirk’s excessive and sexually harassing skinship to the point of almost blowing up the entire castle with [Combat Skill] was that I knew for a fact that in two years, when Dirk turned ten years old, he would leave for the Royal Capital to enroll in the Academy of Magic.

If events turned up the way they should, I would undoubtedly have had fewer opportunities to be in contact with Dirk during the six years until he graduated, and I would have been able to push forward with my preparations to be independent.

So, you were working behind the scenes to get into Father’s good graces, Big Brother.

Before the Wyvern subjugation incident, even though he was an arrogant nobleman’s child, he had a certain amount of smarts, and I could not hate him. Still, he developed a ‘toughness’ that was typical of a nobleman for some reason.

Perhaps this was because he had been educated by me too intensely. Seeing his aristocratic face, I realized that Dirk was one of the [Capture Targets] in the Otome-game.

Am I slowly edging closer and closer to becoming the Otome-game ‘in-game’ me instead of the real me?

If what I know of the events that occurred in the Otome-game was the “future” and not the “past”, then I didn’t become Carol, but rather, it should be that Carol was me, to begin with, am I right?

For example, instead of a game villainess recalling memories of her previous life and changing her fate in the game world, as depicted in most spin-off novels, I might transform into a proper villainess just by living ‘as I am’.

My life is an absolute heck of a game.

I need to stop sighing. Happiness was escaping me. About 20 milligrams of happiness were dispersed each time I heave a sigh.

Maia and I held hands, and it took 40 minutes to get back to the forest mansion on foot. There was no way my father would provide a carriage service for me.

There was not a single wolf left in the area anymore. Ever since I kept testing my abilities, this area had become known as an area where a powerful individual ruled.

Currently, my basic physical abilities have improved a lot, too, being at five years old. Now, I could probably stay in ‘adult form’ for a whole day, give and take a few hours.

When I arrived back at the house, Meiya welcomed me, who could now focus on the housekeeping since Maia had become my personal maid.

“Welcome home, Miss Carol…”

“Yes.”

“Um…”

“Carol, you’re late! I brought you some rare fruit today, but you need this brother of yours by your side.”

“…”

Thanks for reading.