A Doll Without a Self
“Interesting. An arrangement by the Transcendents? I thought those fellows were just stuck in the Spiritual Realm, doing nothing but peeping.”
“There are circumstances that leave them little choice, you know? Haha...”
The voices were not sharp, as if ringing from far away, yet someone was definitely speaking.
It felt like slowly rising from deep water.
My entire body was heavy; my limbs refused to move, as if turned to stone.
Mason?
A voice that seemed familiar from somewhere made my consciousness a little clearer.
My eyelids hung heavy, but I forced them open with what strength I could muster.
“Yes, that must be it. Still doesn’t change the fact that they’re filthy incompetent bastards.”
The moment my eyes cracked open, a fierce light flooded my vision and I instinctively squeezed them shut again.
A distant dizziness washed over me, yet when I opened my eyes once more the white ceiling lights came into view.
I’m certain the monsters tore my limbs off...
Barely managing to look around, I found my body far more intact than expected.
“Ugh!!”
Instead a nauseating sensation surged up, and a sudden dry heave tore from my throat.
“Annie...”
The image of her dying with her chest pierced rose before me.
Blood-soaked maids, collapsing knights—the memory of having to flee helplessly while leaving them behind crashed over my mind.
“No...! Cough... cough...”
Even trying to breathe felt like my throat was blocked; my chest constricted.
“My Lady!”
“Hic... heuk...”
In that instant an immense pleasure engulfed my entire body.
My mind went blank; I could think of nothing at all.
The illusions that had been swirling before me were instantly driven back by the pleasure and vanished into the depths of memory.
“Heuk... haat... haa...”
“This place is safe, My Lady. You need not worry. The monsters can no longer harm you.”
Mason seemed to believe I was having a panic attack from fear.
Well, that had been true at first.
But now...
This fucking ability...
Thanks to it I could regain my senses, yet I felt no particular gratitude.
“Finally awake, are you?”
“Huet...?”
I looked at the unfamiliar man standing beside Mason, suppressing my moans as best I could.
“So you can’t even recognize your father’s face properly now.”
Father...? Could it be...
I snapped fully awake and instinctively sat up.
My mind went pure white.
Wait... what am I supposed to call him?
On the surface Yeon Bennet was the adoptive daughter the Duke himself had brought home.
I honestly had no idea what her private relationship with Isaac Bennet had been like.
While I was flustered and rolling my eyes, he spoke first.
“We were never particularly close to begin with. Call me whatever is comfortable for you.”
What...?
My heart nearly stopped at those words.
The things he had said just before I lost consciousness, and his attitude now.
This man clearly knew.
That I was not “Yeon Bennet,” but someone else.
“No need to get close to a doll without a self, after all. Unlike the current you.”
A doll without a self? Yeon Bennet? What does that mean...
A setting that had never appeared in the game.
I was confused.
“So who sent you?”
“Huh? What do you mean...”
“Don’t tell me you know nothing? Which of the Transcendents put you inside her?”
A Transcendent put me here?
If...
If those words were truly fact.
There was only one.
When the world I had only ever seen inside a game became reality, there had been one being I suspected.
Tales of Eteraisha (TOE)
And the name of the game company that made it was also...
“Eteraisha?”
The Dreamer, Eteraisha.
One of the six monsters who had reached Level 11 among gods and Transcendents.
One of the Six Heavens, the Six Skies.
The one evaluated as the strongest even among them.
Because she had influenced even the company name and the game title, rumors had circulated among players that she was the chairman’s self-insert character.
“Kuhahaha. Yes! If it’s her, of course it’s possible!”
As I blankly uttered her name, the Duke burst into mad laughter and began staring at me with eyes full of longing.
“So what should we do now?”
“Huh?”
The Duke stared at me for a long moment, then narrowed his eyes.
“There must be a reason she sent you here.”
His voice mixed expectation with suspicion.
I hid my sense of absurdity and thought only to myself.
I’d like to know that myself.
I slowly shook my head and briefly explained my circumstances.
The Duke’s expression twisted slightly.
Disappointed at not receiving the answer he had hoped for, he closed his eyes and sank into deep thought.
“So... you know nothing, is that it.”
He looked at me in silence for a while.
Eyes narrowed as if lost in thought, he lightly stroked his chin with one finger.
Then he laughed lowly and spoke again.
“Then, don’t you want revenge?”
“Revenge……?”
“I heard you got along fairly well with the dead ones...”
The Duke continued, glancing toward Mason before turning back to me.
“Those fucking monster bastards. There’s a way to wipe them all out. If you help, that is.”
I nodded blankly.
I had anticipated that the game company would give justification to Yeon Bennet’s past actions for her release, yet the hidden truth about her that I learned in the subsequent conversation with the Duke was more shocking than expected.
The Contamination currently encroaching upon Tera was only a tiny fraction of the Evil God’s power.
Originally, with the authority of a Level 11 conceptual god, humanity should have been annihilated in an instant and then some.
Yet why could humanity still resist the Evil God and fight his minions?
Why was the Evil God’s power weakened to this extent?
The Bennet Ducal House had continued investigations for hundreds of years across generations to find the answer to that question.
Time piled up; clues gathered.
And eventually...
They...
Found a girl named “Yeon.”
The doll sealing the Evil God’s authority.
Swaaaah—
A sudden downpour thoroughly soaked my entire body in an instant.
Normally the stickiness and clammy feel of wet clothes would have been unpleasant,
but today was different.
As the cold raindrops seeped from head to toe,
they gradually washed away the remnants of the horrific nightmare filling my head.
When everything around was getting wet, only the Bennet Princess Safety Manual remained fluffy and dry thanks to preservation magic.
Srrrk—
The soft sound of turning pages in a space thick with humidity.
Having lived two years in a world where magic actually existed, even though I had no talent and could not use a single spell, it no longer felt particularly wondrous.
1. Do not trust the Bennet Princess under any circumstances.
The first rule that had come as quite a shock when I first saw it.
On the first page where it had been written, completely different words were now inscribed.
Please take good care of our kind princess.
On the following pages, instead of ghost-story-like survival rules, overall information about my life was densely written: my favorite foods, the water temperature I preferred when bathing, my bedtime, and more.
Perhaps because of the rain, my vision was blurry and I could not read the letters properly.
There was no one around.
It was truly fortunate that it was raining.
Someone who sealed the Evil God’s authority had done so in the most effective yet vicious way possible.
Namely, by creating a false Evil God in the world.
A being recognized as evil by the world.
A god who received malice, contempt, disdain, and fear from people.
To live as a false Evil God, she... had to be recognized as a villain by people and receive a resource called Faith of Malice.
A doll without a self, programmed for the purpose of gathering Faith of Malice.
That was the true identity of Yeon Bennet.
I did not know what the being who possessed me here had been thinking...
but unnecessarily, my existence had possessed her.
And a situation occurred in which the seal momentarily shook.
Because I tried to change Yeon Bennet’s reputation.
Because I approached the maids and escort knights.
Because I tried to change the story flowing in the game.
Because I greedily wanted to get along with people.
I had ruined everything.
I...
I......
I was the one who killed them.
“That’s right.”
Haa...
Here we go again.
“You killed them!”
“Because of you, you stupid bitch!”
The graveyard that had been empty until moments ago.
Beside me now stood the servants I had been close to, the escort knights who had said they would protect me.
In forms completely different from when they were alive,
with faces twisted by resentment and hatred, they began pouring it out at me.
“My Lady.”
Drawn by the familiar voice, I turned my head.
There stood Annie, looking at me with eyes full of hatred, a hole through her chest.
“Annie... haat!!”
Fucking hell.
This disgusting ability that felt pleasure even from the hatred of someone I had thought close.
At times like this the unique ability was so repulsive it was hard to endure.
Thud.
She firmly grasped my hand with her bloodstained one.
“I shouldn’t have trusted someone like you.”
“Yeah, like an idiot...”
With my free other hand I picked up a fist-sized stone nearby.
“Sorry. I can’t do as you want right now. I have a lot to do.”
Crunch.
“Heeuuk.”
As I crushed the hand Annie was holding, mana infused, a tingling pleasure from the wrist began riding deep into my brain.
The illusions tormenting me were no longer visible.
“My end will be far more miserable than yours. So don’t feel too wronged.”
To atone even a little to you.
And for this world’s happy ending.
The villainess in the game marches toward her doom.
I had only left for about thirty minutes for the paperwork required for the release procedures.
And she disappears without waiting even that long.
“Haa... annoying bitch.”
Bella felt a question on one hand.
Even if the magic and restraints had been released, to silently break through the security of the notorious Bastille Prison?
Yeon Bennet.
The villainess famous for the incident in which, simply because the servants and escort knights had ignored her, she touched Contamination to summon monsters and ultimately survived alone.
The affair had nearly been covered up by high nobles, yet fortunately a righteous newspaper risked danger to publish an article exposing it to the world.
Everyone strongly demanded her punishment, but the United Parliament deferred it on the grounds that she was a high noble and still young, drawing considerable opposition.
As a result, disgracefully, Yeon became the most infamous person in Tera, surpassing even the Cultists of Contamination.
Even afterward she failed to come to her senses and repeated similar acts several times.
After causing havoc to those around her, she committed the same deed at the Academy and was arrested.
Most people, including Bella, had believed they could finally punish her this time.
Yet absurdly, the United Parliament ordered her pardon once more.
Bella could not bring herself to be angry at the parliament, however.
She had heard the full story from her father, who held a seat there.
Isaac Bennet, head of the Bennet Ducal House.
Despite the family’s opposition he had mobilized every resource to block the punishment that would have befallen her.
For the sake of some unimportant adoptive daughter.
Thanks to that, filthy rumors that would rot one’s ears just hearing them also began to circulate, and the prestige of the Bennet Ducal House was considerably diminished.
“Around here, I think.”
Though the rain had erased many traces, for someone who had rolled across battlefields this level of tracking was child’s play.
Following the trail, she arrived at a well-maintained graveyard.
Is this perhaps...?
Seeing the burned remains of the mansion behind it, she was certain.
The exact place that had appeared in the articles about her.
There, Yeon Bennet stood blankly staring at the graveyard, clutching her bloodied hands.