“You know, Erina. Actually, the owner of the mana stone mine was not me, but you.”

Erina felt breathless at Rose’s words.

This moment felt too vivid to be a dream, though it seemed like one.

“I took everything you had. Honor, wealth, and even Peiron.”

Everything was too clear to be a dream.

The anguish tearing at her heart, the pain felt on Rose’s gripped face, and the anger towards Rose – all of it.

Erina felt like she was gradually becoming one with the situation she was facing.

Seeing Erina’s shocked face, Rose smiled brightly and tightened her grip on her face.

“It’s too unfair to possess the mana stones with just one measly pair of golden eyes, isn’t it?”

Golden eyes, Raharta had definitely said that gold was like a symbol of God.

Then could his words be true that she was really the owner of the mana stone mine?

Rose’s beautifully made-up face grotesquely distorted.

“Someone like you, being a child of God? You’re just a descendant of a fairy family abandoned by God, destined to have everything taken away and die miserably.”

Owner of the mana stone mine, golden eyes, child of God, descendant of a fairy family.

Erina was confused by Rose’s incomprehensible words.

Rose suddenly loosened the hand that was holding Erina’s face and pressed the end of her neatly trimmed nails under Erina’s eyes.

Erina’s eyes stung from the strong pressure.

“You know what, Erina? My mother’s family, the Risky family, is said to have descendants with an innate greed. My mother’s greed was to use me to bring down the remarkable child of God.”

Erina’s eyes widened at the story she was hearing for the first time.

Erina tried to recall the Risky family Rose mentioned, but nothing came to mind.

“My greed was you, Erina. Everything you had and everything you would have.”

“That…!”

Erina wanted to ask Rose what she meant by that.

She tried to forcibly squeeze out the words that wouldn’t come out, but she couldn’t due to Rose’s following action.

“Ugh!”

Rose grabbed Erina’s neck with one hand that wasn’t holding the necklace.

It was just one hand, but she used all her strength to make it so Erina couldn’t breathe.

“Do you know what the first thing I did to become the protagonist was?”

Erina tried to move her body to free the hand pressing on her neck as she was suffocating, but no strength would enter her body.

“Guh!”

Unable to even move a finger or struggle, Erina was on the verge of dying. Rose sneered and continued.

“It was to make you a villainess. A villainess endlessly hated by everyone, that no one would care about even if you died.”

Erina’s vision gradually began to blur.

Through her blurring vision, she saw Rose bringing the necklace she was holding up to her eyes.

“It’s time to end it all now.”

In an instant, a golden aura gathered into the necklace before Erina’s eyes.

And what found Erina was immense pain.

“Huff!”

Her whole body stiffened like a log, trembling from the pain of seemingly having her flesh torn off.

As the gathered aura slowly darkened, the dark red color of the necklace was dyed gold at some point.

“It’s fortunate it’s before the mana stones have completely lost their power. Hurry and give me everything you have and die, Erina.”

Erina’s entire body stiffened from the indescribable pain, and she gradually lost consciousness that she had barely been holding on to.

In her dimming vision, Rose’s face, cruelly smiling while strangling her neck, was strangely vivid.

Then, amidst her fading consciousness, she heard an unknown person’s voice.

‘You wish to return.’

With those words, both her vision and mind began to be dyed pitch black.

‘Drip-.’

With a strange sound, everything disappeared and a black world unfolded before her eyes.

It was a world where nothing existed.

Nothing could be seen or felt.

But then, a faint voice was heard from far away.

“…na!”

It was a voice she had heard from somewhere before.

The moment she thought it was a voice she had definitely heard, an urgent voice rang out loudly.

“Erina, snap out of it!”

It was Raharta’s voice.

At his voice, her scattering mind returned and her dying senses revived.

Then, the pain that she thought had disappeared in her fading consciousness rushed back in.

“Aaaah!”

It felt like insects were burrowing into her flesh and a blade was gutting her insides.

To escape the pain flowing through her entire body, Erina hugged herself with both arms and began clawing at her own body.

“Erina!”

“Ugh, urgh!”

“Calm down, Erina! Break free from the memory!”

At the word memory, Erina came to her senses.

Her eyes, which had been endlessly heavy, opened and her hazy vision gradually became clear, revealing what was in front of her.

Behind Raharta’s face, filled with worry as he looked down at her, the still golden-tinged goddess statue could be seen.

In an instant, the pain from when the golden aura had gathered into the necklace came to Erina’s mind, and nausea welled up.

“Urgh!”

Erina turned her body that had been lying down and got on all fours, dry heaving. Raharta quietly rubbed her back.

Tears welled up from constantly dry heaving, blurring her vision.

Afraid that the painful feeling would come to mind again with her blurred vision, Erina shook her head and blinked her eyes.

In her clear vision, she saw her own two hands on the spotless white marble.

The memory shown by the goddess’s spring water had been so vivid that her two hands were still trembling.

“Erina.”

“Ra, harta.”

Her deeply sunken voice became unpleasantly hoarse.

Erina raised her head, looked at Raharta, and asked.

“Is this my future?”

Raharta made an even more pained expression than Erina and couldn’t answer, only biting his lips.

“Or, or…”

Whether it was the end of the original story that she didn’t know about, or if not that, then…

“…For now, I will tell you once you have calmed down.”

Erina wanted to ask more about what had been shown to her, but her head was so dizzy that it was impossible to think.

“I want to rest for a bit.”

Raharta supported Erina and helped her up.

Erina wanted to push him away and run away from here.

Even with her back turned to the goddess statue, its presence was so palpable that it gave her goosebumps, making her want to bolt out immediately.

Raharta sat Erina down in a chair located on one side of the room.

Erina sighed and weakly gazed at the goddess statue facing her.

Raharta chose silence for her sake, but it wasn’t a particularly good choice for Erina.

Because in the quiet silence, the scene she had seen earlier came to mind.

Her own body dying alone, Rose’s attire that had looked like a new bride’s, the wedding music that had rung out in the Iols mansion.

According to Erina’s memory, the background was definitely similar to the ending of the original story.

However, the original story that Erina remembered ended with the original Erina taking her own life and Peiron and Rose having their wedding.

Then what in the world was it that she had seen through the goddess’s spring water?

An unchangeable future, or an ending to the original story that Erina didn’t know about?

Erina decided to recall the original story again, thinking she might have missed something.

But as she tried to recall the original story, something was strange.

She had thought this was a book she had read so impressively that she could remember the contents in such detail, but the title of the original story didn’t come to mind.

Chillingly, it wasn’t just the title.

The image of herself reading the book, her previous life that she had remembered even hazily – nothing came to mind.

It was seriously bizarre.

She clearly knew that she had possessed the Erina from the original story.

She’d had a previous life, and had become the character named Erina that she had seen in the book she read in that previous life.

But due to the memories of her previous life that had become a blank slate, she began to doubt the possession.

She couldn’t remember anything, but the original story came to mind clearly.

Why was that?

Was the original story she remembered really a book?

As her thoughts reached that point, Erina had a thought – could it be?

If the original story wasn’t actually a book but her own memories, then…

Due to the questions that kept coming one after another, Erina felt like she would go crazy from the confusion.

On top of the painful suffering, the answers to the questions that would shake her future were nowhere to be seen.

As Erina was lost in thought, the goddess’s spring water entered her gaze.

The stream of water starting from the urn held by the goddess statue, which had stopped, was flowing again with a trickle.

Amazingly, even the flowing stream was tinged with gold.

Erina followed the mysterious golden stream up to the urn, then looked at the goddess statue with its eyes covered by a blindfold.

She felt as if the unseen eyes were looking down at her.

‘You wish to return.’

The voice that had been heard between her fading consciousness rang in her ears as if whispered beside her.

Erina got up with a start from her seat.

“Erina?”

Raharta, startled by Erina who had suddenly gotten up, called out to her, but she couldn’t answer.

Because the voice was heard in her ears once more.

‘Child, do you want to go back?’

She was about to ask who in the world it was, when an unfamiliar answer rang out in Erina’s head.

[I want to, I want to go back. To before I met that woman, to before I loved Peiron.]

The trembling answer, sunk in endless agony, was a voice Erina knew well.

It was her own.

[Please give it back, everything of mine.]

At the same time as the trembling answer was heard, Erina felt as if she was drowning, unable to breathe.

“Ugh!”

Erina began to lose consciousness.

“Erina!”

Along with Raharta’s urgent voice, Erina fainted.

Translation complete. 100% of original text translated.