The Exhausting Reality of Novel Transmigration

Chapter 1

Sponsored Content

What a sight.

A wagon that had rolled down the slope lay shattered, the luggage it once held strewn here and there.
A few steps away from the wreckage was a bleeding man.

Cassion Carter.

He was the male lead’s older brother.
He was also one of the novel’s villains.

Stepping over unkempt gravel, I came closer and intruded upon this tranquil yet raucous scene.
Cassion, who was covered entirely in blood, gasped loudly and laboriously raised his head as he sensed my presence.

“Please .
.
.
save .
.
.
me .
.
.”

Laced with overflowing emotion, his broken plea imparted an intense desperation that seemed to say: I want to live.
It’s unfair.
I’m not done yet.
I don’t want to die.

I leaned towards him to face him more squarely, and eyes that were as red as the blood that covered his body fluttered open to meet with mine.

“You want to live, huh?”

It seemed as if he had already expended all the strength left in him, so instead of answering with words, he communicated with just one slow blink.
I raised his chin carefully, and his blood immediately soaked my own hands as if I had been wounded as well.
I knelt beside him and placed his head on my lap.
His blood was as red as his pallor was ashen.

“If you want to live, you have to promise me one thing.”

As if he was a wild beast that had been hunted and left to die alone, he breathed with incredible difficulty.
Hot air permeated through my clothes and brushed against my thighs.
I reached toward his face and caressed his cheek in an attempt to comfort him, and what met my gesture was a gaze full of determination and resentment.

“If I save you .
.
.”

Lay down your own life to protect my sister.

My younger sister Alicia Valentine, who was also this wretched novel’s female lead.

This way, my sister and I won’t have to share the same fate.

* * *

It was a few days before I came across Cassion when I woke up as this world’s villainess, Rosetta Valentine.

Hwick!

Sponsored Content

There was a piercing sound that tore through the air, straight into my ears.
In a daze, I woke up in a foreign room where two strangers came in one after another.

‘.
.
.
What is this .
.
.’

Where am I?

As my gaze wandered, a woman who held a riding whip in her hand raised an arm in one large motion.
Before the woman stood a girl who looked about seventeen years old, trembling and blinking repeatedly as she stretched her arms forward.
Despite being faced with this pitiful sight, the whip rose up high and cleaved down through the air without remorse.

Hwick!

Even as the whip emitted a sharp sound that had surely caused immense pain, the girl did not make a sound and instead bit her lips.
She did not scream nor groan, did not betray even a hint of defiance.

‘What exactly is going on here?’

What a unique wake-up call.
Why was there someone getting beaten in front of me? Would there be more people who’d be beaten?

Surely .
.
.

‘I died.’

As my memories arose, I felt around my chest.
Strangely, my hand didn’t go in.
There was no trace—my clothes weren’t torn nor soaked in damp blood—but that can’t be true.
A knife that pierced through my chest should have been there accompanied by the pain of torn flesh, of something breaking, of a scorching liquid trickling down .
.
.
It was all too vivid.

‘No way .
.
.
Again?’

However, due to the immense pain that blocked my train of thought, my memories stopped there.
When my arm brushed against my clothes, electricity shot through my entire body.
I shifted my gaze from the two people, both of whom I didn’t know, and rolled up my sleeves to inspect my injury, slowly so they wouldn’t notice.

‘Injury .
.
.
?’

It’s fortunate that my clothes were loose, otherwise, I would have had to remove the entire top to check.
But as the sleeves rolled higher, countless red lines appeared from above the elbow to right below the shoulder, and old wounds broke open once more by more recent cuts.

Hwick!

As I inspected the wounds, the harsh sound permeated the air once more, and my eyes automatically followed.

‘That’s where this wound came from.’

I—or, I guess, the true owner of this body—was being stricken by a whip when I woke up in this world.
But, no, I must still be out of it.

“Ugh .
.
.”

Sponsored Content

The girl let out a small whimper as her knees gave out from under her.
At first glance, it seemed as if the woman had pulled her or gripped the girl tightly enough to have made the girl collapse, but in reality, the woman merely reached for the girl’s arm, the one that she had been fervently striking not too long ago.

“Ack!”

“Lady Alicia.”

A pained shriek coincided with a graceful voice.
It was a far cry from harmony.

The woman pulled her forward and bent down to look into the girl’s eyes, a golden hue that expressed fear and anxiety.

“It is not befitting of a lady to utter such a sound .
.
.
I believe I taught you well enough,” the woman said as her hand grazed over the girl’s wounds.

Upon seeing the bloody marks on the girl called Alicia, I unconsciously gripped my own wounded arms.
Mine looked more like scratches compared to hers, and sure enough, tears streamed down the girl’s face.
It looked as if she was trying to suppress the pain by pushing down the urge to utter a sound.

The woman moved a