A World Where You All Are The Villains - Chapter 2.2
Of all the various abilities the Awakened had revealed so far, there had never been anything like ‘purification’.
Even Awakened known to be less affected by the black mist would eventually lose their minds and die if exposed for too long.
This was called an Awakened Rampage, and the scope of the damage was nearly as great as a Gate outbreak itself.
That was why countries around the world were desperate to find a way to eliminate the black mist.
I was someone who had achieved meaningful results in that fierce competition.
And yet, out of all possible abilities, the female lead’s was purification?
“This is a little suspicious.”
Currently, I was receiving a fair amount of checks and threats from various factions.
There were countless cases of people sneaking in to steal samples or following me to dig into my background.
I’d even been threatened by some weird cultists to immediately halt my research.
Especially when that article came out claiming cure-1 was a complete fraud and I was a scammer just out for investment money, I really went through a rough time.
“Well, if this is just a provocation meant to say everything I’m doing is no different from a novel…… that’d be too paranoid, right?”
No way. The military sent it, after all.
I glanced at the book with suspicion, but decided to keep reading anyway.
At any rate, the female lead, having awakened as a Purifier, purified Gate-affected regions and saved the world.
She even cleansed the miasma from the male leads’ bodies, love blossomed, and—
For good measure, she became the Emperor’s adopted daughter and climbed the social ladder.
“……So predictable.”
As a reader, the protagonist’s success story was something to be happy about.
Yet, for some reason, I felt displeasure rather than joy.
Because the foundation of the female lead’s success and love was the death of the villainess.
Lady Edith Blake was a cliché, typical villainess.
She was the only daughter of a ducal family that had produced Awakened for generations, yet she alone did not awaken and was left neglected.
Growing up starved for affection, she couldn’t stand all the attention the newly arrived Llewellyn was getting.
She bullied the female lead in every way she could, committed all sorts of evil, and in the end, was shunned by everyone and died miserably.
The male leads, who had been close to Lady Edith since childhood, each felt their own shock and guilt at her death.
And the female lead comforted those men, soothing their weary hearts and deepening their bonds.
The villainess’s death was certainly a comeuppance.
But even so, I couldn’t feel any satisfaction……
“As I thought, someone’s definitely behind this. Where is it? Myung-ha Pharmaceuticals? Donggang Research Institute? Those bastards, snooping into people’s pasts?”
No matter how I thought about it, it wasn’t just paranoia.
The villainess’s background was just too similar to mine!
I glared at the book, mentally listing the places that could pull something like this.
It was obvious. Someone must have dug up my past as the Supreme Commander’s daughter, cast out for failing to awaken, and set this whole thing up.
If they were trying to sow distrust about me in the government and military, it was a highly original and nasty tactic.
“This is too much. Is it a crime not to be an ability-user? Why kill someone for being unlucky?”
Just because an attention-hungry kid acted out a little, they turned her into a villainess and killed her off.
On top of that, the Duke stripped her of her succession rights because she had no ability, and adopted the son of a deceased vassal.
He was also one of the male lead candidates.
“This is so similar it pisses me off. Who’s the author? How lazy do you have to be to not even put your name on it, damn.”
In an instant, I found myself empathizing with Edith’s position and feeling wronged.
‘Why does the story only focus on the villainess from the female lead’s perspective? Write it from the villainess’s perspective too……!’
If Edith was the villainess to the female lead, then the Duke and those male leads were the villains to Edith, weren’t they?
Likewise, the villains in my life were my biological father and those bastards he put on the family register.
Not only did they dump all kinds of crap on my life, the moment I finally achieved some results, they shamelessly contacted me to blabber about “family” this and that.
If Edith—or Egypt or whoever—had cut ties early on and built a name for herself like I had, she would’ve been sick to death of all that unwanted attention.
In that sense, dying after begging for affection until the end made her seem truly pathetic and pitiful.
‘What’s so great about those abilities, anyway.’
Family that doesn’t love you, or other people around you. Who cares about any of that?
If I were a Ducal Lady of her status, I could’ve done just fine on my own.
By the time I started thinking I’d spit in the face of anyone who abandoned a civilian in a crisis, I snapped back to my senses.
“This is insane. It’s already four in the morning!”
Even if I was known as the research institute’s resident ghost, I was still human enough to sleep comfortably in bed when I wasn’t busy.
Realizing the time, I closed the book and hurriedly packed my things.
As soon as I got back to my dorm, I quickly washed up and lay down.
‘I’m exhausted……’
Maybe it was the absurd novel dredging up old traumas out of nowhere.
Or maybe it was because I’d pretended to be an ordinary person for so long to avoid my father’s notice, I couldn’t help but identify.
As I drifted into a deep sleep, I completely overlooked the most important thing about the book’s unsettling points.
Purifier.
The card I’d kept hidden all this time to get back at my father.
The ability I awakened to after leaving that house, which, of all things, was exactly the same as the female lead’s.
And I had no idea what kind of hell that would soon bring down on me.
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