The Villainess Falls to the Very Bottom
Mina Yukishiro was growing impatient.
I need to find Vina Lirifal and get rid of her… If I don’t, this is definitely going to end in a bad ending.
To her, Vina was the strongest and most detestable enemy imaginable.
The one woman she absolutely had to eliminate if she wanted to win this life simulation game.
The villainess, Vina Lirifal.
Everything had been going perfectly. I won Prince Arnight over and got him to break off the engagement… so why did things end up like this? I never expected someone to interfere. What’s going on? I have to corner her while my protagonist bonus is still working.
Originally, Vina should have been condemned and executed during that engagement annulment ceremony.
But somehow, someone had stepped in and disrupted everything.
Yua Rafaris.
Prince Arnight’s younger sister.
That had never happened in the story.
It was a complete anomaly.
Could she be like me? No… it’s possible. If I was able to be born into this world, it wouldn’t be strange if there were others. Why didn’t I consider that possibility sooner?
Mina Yukishiro was not originally a person of this world.
She had once been an ordinary girl named Mina Yukishiro, born in a country called Japan.
How she ended up here, however, was something even she didn’t fully understand.
One moment she had been playing a game called Eternal Magic in her room.
The next, she had awakened inside its world.
At first she thought it was a dream.
It wasn’t.
Shortly after being born into this world, she had heard a mysterious heavenly voice claiming to be the “Author Angel.”
That voice had granted her a special trait known as the Protagonist Bonus.
Just as the name implied, it was an ability that allowed her to overcome any hardship that stood in her way.
And so she lived her life relying on that gift.
According to the Author Angel, how she chose to live was entirely up to her.
She could follow the story and pursue happiness alongside the prince.
Or she could ignore the plot and live however she wished.
However, if she strayed from the story, the Protagonist Bonus would lose its meaning.
Naturally, she chose to follow the story.
After all, she believed that would guarantee her happiness.
That said, Eternal Magic was a game where a bad ending was always lurking just around the corner.
The final boss of Eternal Magic was the villainess, Vina Lirifal.
She had to be dealt with before the story reached its conclusion.
Otherwise, the game would end in tragedy.
That was why Mina was so desperate.
At this rate, a bad ending seemed inevitable.
To avoid that fate, she needed to do something about Vina as quickly as possible.
As long as Vina was eliminated, Mina would reach her happy ending and live happily ever after with the prince.
Of that, she was certain.
Maybe I should’ve been more forceful and finished her off during the engagement annulment. Back then I had Prince Arnight, Glen, and plenty of allies on my side. No matter how strong Vina is, we should’ve been able to defeat her.
Actually, why is she so ridiculously strong in the first place? I even challenged her to a mock duel once and tried to kill her, but even with my Protagonist Bonus, I couldn’t beat her on my own…
Well, she was the final boss of Eternal Magic.
Considering that, her strength was hardly surprising.
For now, I guess I’ll focus on gathering enough evidence that she won’t be able to talk her way out of her crimes.
Suppressing a sigh, Mina continued advancing through what she believed was the story of her life.
But she never realized that she had already left the rails of that story behind.
Unaware, she continued charging forward.
◆ ◆ ◆
As for me, Vina Lirifal—
I had fallen from my former position among the highest ranks of nobility to a status even lower than that of a commoner.
A person without any status at all.
In other words, someone at the very bottom.
I still used the name my parents had given me, but there was nothing left to prove who I was.
Oddly enough, I didn’t find that inconvenient.
If anything, I felt a strange sense of fulfillment.
Drawing upon everything I had learned as a member of House Lirifal, I earned money by hunting monsters.
And for now, at least, I wasn’t struggling with starvation or any other life-or-death problems.
“Yua, I’m back.”
After slaying a boar-like monster with magic, I dragged the carcass home to the small house where we currently lived.
The moment I stepped inside, Yua greeted me while wearing an apron.
“Welcome back, Lady Vina! You hunted a boar!”
“Something similar to one, yes, though not exactly. Do you think you can butcher it?”
“Hehe. Leave it to me. Easy.”
Yua puffed out her modest chest and flashed a smug grin.
For royalty—
No, even among nobles as a whole—
she was unusually skilled at household chores.
For some reason, she’d been taught cooking, cleaning, and all the other work normally handled by servants.
As a result, our life together had gotten off to a remarkably smooth start.
“Then I’ll leave it to you. I’ll go sell the monster’s tusks.”
Pouring magic into my arm, I strengthened my physical abilities and grabbed one of the creature’s tusks.
With a sharp crack, it snapped off as easily as breaking a twig.
Of course, the tusk wasn’t actually that soft.
In fact, it was hard enough that a young girl like me should never have been able to break it.
But that assumption only applied to ordinary physical strength.
I—
Or rather, most nobles—
could use magic.
And among the many spells available to us, this was probably the simplest and most universally learned of all:
magic that enhanced one’s physical capabilities through mana.
“Okay!”
Yua effortlessly hoisted the giant boar-like monster onto her shoulder.
That, too, was the result of physical enhancement magic.
