Chapter 9

Catarina sniffled, threw away the onion in her hand and then picked up another one.

Meanwhile, I was just confused and flustered by this new information. Adrian personally ordered Hilda for that task? Why? Were the two of them close? I didn’t see any explanation of that in the game.

“It’s time for you to bring him the medicine. Hurry up and go. If you get there late again, they’ll come looking for you.”

While wiping her nose, she looked towards the exit as a signal. I stood there motionless and out of sorts, and as I always did, I left the kitchen somewhat depressed while holding a tray with a light breakfast and some medicine.

I messed up. If Adrian asked for me himself, there’s going to be no way out of this for me unless he dismisses me from the job. I can’t even personally say that I won’t do it anymore.

“If I run into him like this, will I die?”

I trudged up the stairs with a gloomy cloud over my head. And when I reached the fourth floor and saw that the door was still tightly shut, I felt a little relieved again. If I just left the tray there and went back, I wouldn’t encounter Adrian.

Nothing happened after I’d been doing this for about three or four days, so there shouldn’t be any trouble in the future.

There’s no law that a person would really, absolutely die, right?

“Young Master, are you there?”

As I did for the past few days, I whispered with a small voice, far away from the door.

“You’re not here today, too, right? Or are you still sleeping? I’ll just leave your medicine and breakfast here by the door and leave.”

It was quiet inside, not one peep of an answer. The sound of the wind blowing from this side of the door was louder than my voice, so of course it couldn’t be heard.

Yeah, let’s not think about this negatively. I just have to live quietly like this every day. Leaning down, I barely suppressed my heart from pounding out of my chest from all this tension.

Tak. A very small sound came out when I set the tray down on the floor.

But right then, a clear voice suddenly called out to me from the front.

“Hilda.”

“……”

“Did you call me?”

It was such a soft, gentle voice, as though it would melt into my ears. As I looked up reflexively, my gaze met Adrian’s eyes. My body reacted belatedly with my mouth hanging open and my heart plummeting to the ground.

Atop Adrian’s appearance, the devil I had seen in the game’s intro, overlapped.

“Ahh… AACK!”

Clatter! CRASH!

I was so taken aback that I plopped on my but and threw the tray, which was now upside down. The glass bowl that was on the tray now lay scattered in pieces on the marble floor, and the liquid inside had oozed out along with six pills that scattered on the floor and rolled away. It was a mess.

“I-I apologize, Young Master. I-I was just so surprised.”

“Hilda, are you alright?”

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

I hurried over and began to pick up the scattered pieces of glass and put them back on the tray.

Adrian… It’s really Adrian. Oh my god, oh my goodness, how in the world did you know I was here…

My jaw was trembling so hard that my teeth started to chatter. I was so shocked that my vision started to spin. What kind of gaze, what kind of expression did he have while looking down from above? To him, I could only look like prey, right?

Unfortunately, there was no one else in the hallway right now. What he needed to regain his powers as a devil was to murder people. There was a condition to the murders he needed to commit, and that was to not be caught.

In other words, right here, where there was no other witness, it was the perfect chance to kill this servant who could disappear easily without any consequences.

Am I really going to die here? Seriously? Without even finding a clue about how to return to the real world?

With such overwhelming fear and trepidation, I wanted to cling onto his leg and beg. I don’t care about anything else, just please don’t kill me! I’ll disappear quietly. I’m not a game character, I’m just a poor player who’s trapped here after buying an A-Comms game!

“Hilda, calm down.”

“I’m sor… I’m sorry. I’m…”

Please. Please spare me.

* * *

“Hilda, it’s fine. Were you surprised to see me all of a sudden? I’m sorry.”

It was such an uncannily soft, calm voice. He even went down on his knees and gave me a light pat on the back. And as we were like this, I’m sure that he could see the tremors passing through my body and hear how short of breath I was.

But at that moment— familiar white letters popped up in front of me.

「 Gained 1000 EXP for the first conversation with Adrian. 」

My dismal EXP bar suddenly shot up before I could read all the notification windows. 3, 4, 5… As the bar filled up rapidly, it stopped just a little over level 5.

「 Skill unlocked! You can now use the skill ‘Perception’. – Passive 」

What the, what is this?

Even amidst the chaos of meeting Adrian, who just appeared so suddenly, the fact that I shot up to level 5 just made me so terribly depressed. A simple exchange of a few words with Adrian was equivalent to 1,000 EXP, in other words, 1,000 weeds.

It’s been a while since the smoke had disappeared, but the moment I recalled my hard-earned imaginary furnace that took me to level 4, I cried.

All the weeds I pulled…

“Hilda?”

“I-It’s nothing. Please… give me a moment.”

At the stinging memory of hard labor that suddenly came to mind, I pressed the inside of my eyes hard.

“You’re crying?”

“I’m nwot. It’s just, I peeled some onions before…”

“Right. The pills smell like onions.”

“I had to pick them up with my hands, I’m s-sorry.”

I got so frustrated at rising 3 levels at once that I forgot, but right now, the one in front of me was an outstanding murderer. I quickly went back to picking up the pieces of glass to appear busy.

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