Launch!
2: First Simulation!
Launch!
[Before the official simulation begins, please select your personal Keywords, which will anchor your in-simulation origins and facilitate the simulation process.] [Based on the Host’s current situation, the following Keywords have been generated.
You may choose three from the five nodes below.] [Note: The talents provided by the Keywords are innate talents.
During the simulation, additional talents may be acquired according to the character’s life trajectory.
All talents will be settled together when calculating the final reward.] [Node One: Gendered Life—Perhaps you could try a different way of living, temporarily experiencing life as a boy, and then revert to being a girl at a certain future node.
It would be amusing, wouldn’t it?] [Node Two: Fallen Noble—You will be born as the daughter of a fallen noble house.
This will provide you with substantial wealth, a useless title, and a full set of high society etiquette.
However, certain risks will accompany it.] [Node Three: Arts Master—Your talent for Originium Arts will be fully realized in your life.
You are a born master; your Arts will be developed to the extreme, but Oripathy will also shadow your every step.] [Node Four: Chimera—Your race is a complex mix…
Hmm, this will bring certain advantages, but no one knows what those advantages might be.] [Node Five: Seven Faces of the Heart—You are born understanding the ugliness of human nature, deeply aware of how to present perfection in all kinds of circumstances.
You know how to hide your fangs, to turn yourself into a venomous snake lurking in the shadows, bringing disaster upon your enemies, ensuring no one can ever discern your true face or intentions.
However, such a nature also means you are destined not to possess a good personality.] [Please select your nodes as your innate talents for this simulation.] … Lying on her soft, large bed, Ecaros looked at the five nodes on the virtual text panel before her, inexplicably feeling as if she were playing the roguelike mode of some four-character game from her past life.
But the system’s descriptions were way better than any roguelike.
Essentially, the pros and cons of each choice were laid out clearly, allowing Ecaros to make the best decision after weighing them.
Therefore, after a brief moment of thought, Ecaros unhesitatingly chose Nodes Two, Three, and Five as her talents for this simulation.
Although these talents seemed unrelated at first glance, a closer look revealed that, when interconnected, they were quite terrifying.
After all, having money and power at once—though perhaps not political authority—combined with the Seven Faces of the Heart talent, she would be well protected from being schemed against in the simulation.
Thus, Ecaros ultimately made this choice.
[Host’s chosen talents confirmed.
Simulation commencing.] [Time: Terran Calendar Year 860.] [Location: Victoria.] [Simulation officially begins.] … [You were born, into an ancient ducal family in Victoria.] [Your family once entered the pass alongside the Draco royalty, establishing the Kingdom of Victoria.
As founding heroes, your family was granted vast lands and wealth by Victoria’s first ruler.] [Your family thus swore eternal loyalty to the Draco royal line, becoming a member of the original Knights of the Round Table.] [And due to certain reasons, your family remained deeply favored by the royal family for generations.
Successive political marriages kept your relations close, and the family’s excellent internal education system and inheritance traditions ensured that over centuries, you kept pace with the Draco’s footsteps.] [At one point, your family was even hailed as ‘the most precious jewel under the Red Dragon’s rule.’] [But alas, good times did not last.] [With the waning of the Draco bloodline, the incompetence of several Victorian kings, and the intensifying conflicts between the Draco and the Aslan…] [In the year 800 of the Terran Calendar, the Aslan drove out the Draco for the first time, seizing the crown that rightfully belonged to the Red Dragon.] [And your family, as loyal supporters of the Red Dragon, upon receiving this news and considering multiple factors, naturally dispatched troops at once, pushing into the capital Londinium under the banner of ‘Honor the Sovereign, Punish the Traitors.’ However, just as the coup was about to succeed, your family was met with a united backstab by all the other nobles of Victoria.] [From then on, your family plummeted just like the exiled Draco, losing the industries they had managed for centuries, their lands, and their vital status and power.] [From the pinnacle of Victoria’s top ducal houses, they became a marginalized family possessing nothing but the empty title of Duke.] [And this state of affairs continued for a full 80 years.] [During this period, your family’s once-Victoria-wide influence and members were steadily purged.] [To this day, only a single cadet branch—the one you belong to, entrenched in Londinium—barely clings to survival.] [The Aslan royal family likely saw that your family was utterly beyond recovery, and with the great dukes beginning their covert power struggles in recent years, they decided not to annihilate you completely.
They spared this cadet branch of yours to showcase the Crown’s benevolence and serve as a warning to the existing grand dukes.] [It is within such circumstances that you were born into this ducal family, which exists in name only.] [Though your family has fallen, and its wealth swallowed by the Aslan Crown and other dukes, the sheer volume of wealth your family accumulated in the past means that the scraps left behind after the feast are still enough for you to squander a lifetime.
And as a Duke’s scion, you still stand at the apex of Victoria’s pyramid by birth.] [Despite the decline, you remain noble by birth.] A tolerable start, more or less.
Lying on her bed and looking at the text descriptions on the virtual system panel, Ecaros thought as much, then continued reading further.
[In addition to vast wealth and the title of a ducal house’s young lady, your parents both deeply loved you, treating you like a little princess.] [You had a happy childhood.
Despite knowing from birth that you were different from other children, feeling the love of your parents, you also pretended to be just like them, spending a wonderful childhood together with your mother and father.] [You greatly enjoyed such a life, and you sincerely wished for it to continue.] [But unfortunately, even though your family had declined to such an extent that the Aslan Crown no longer intended to continue the purges, there were still some narrow-minded fools harboring ill intentions toward you.] [Thus, on the day your parents were preparing your birthday banquet, an Originium bomb detonated in your home, taking the lives of your parents, making the young you witness the deaths of the people who loved you most in this world.] [And inflicting upon you the terminal illness known as Oripathy.] [Amidst the ruins after the explosion, you looked at the corpse of your mother, who held you tightly, and the charred remains of your father, who had died protecting you and your mother.] [You didn’t cry, nor did you show any panic.] [You merely observed everything with a calm, empty gaze.
You looked at the black crystalline shards sprouting on your thigh beneath your torn dress, and remained silent for a very, very long time.] [Afterwards, before the police and knights arrived, you left your home, changed into a clean dress, and acted as if you had just returned from outside, displaying everything a child who had lost her family ought to display.] [In the aftermath, a great many ‘relatives’ you didn’t know began quarreling, each vying to adopt you.] [They acted as amiably as possible in your presence, but fought like street dogs over custody rights right outside your door.] [Ha, you knew exactly what kind of scum they were.
Your parents weren’t even buried yet, and these wild dogs, having caught the scent of blood, were already at your door, wanting to take away the final inheritance your parents had left for you.] [This extinguished the last flicker of hope in your heart.
Utterly disillusioned with so-called goodness, a cold, unnoticed sneer tugged at the corner of your lips.] [No one knew that on this day, the world had lost a child and gained a demon.] [But it didn’t matter…
Soon enough, some people would come to realize this.] Tsk, alright, I take back what I said earlier.
My sim-self’s start doesn’t seem that great after all.
Looking at the panel display of her sim-self’s swift transformation into an orphan and her subsequent change, Ecaros felt that her simulated self was a bit pitiful.
After all, in reality, she had been parentless from the start; naturally, she wouldn’t experience the pain of losing parents…
… Okay, actually, that sort of makes me feel like the real me is even more pitiful.
Might as well keep watching the simulation.
The plot from here on should start getting exciting, right?
Pursing her lips, Ecaros gazed at the system panel and couldn’t help but start feeling a little anticipation.
And sure enough, what the simulated Ecaros did next did not disappoint.