Disastrous Romance - Chapter 3
Chapter 3
“Oh my God.”
Leah reread the notification messages floating before her, unable to believe the situation. She reached out, but her hand passed right through the letters, feeling nothing.
She desperately wanted to post on the community app right now.
The happy ending route is here!
It was invaluable information that even a Deus player would pay millions for. This was a jackpot.
Despite her bewilderment, her heart pounded. Her eyes sparkled with anticipation as she continued to scan the white glowing letters. Then, she noticed something strange.
[Success: Happy Ending
Failure: Death]
It wasn’t “death ending” but simply “death.” Death? Come to think of it, how did she get here?
A sudden chill ran down Leah’s spine, and she cautiously opened her mouth.
“…Log out.”
Ding!
[Notice: Log out is unavailable during special events. Please try again after achieving the final goal.]
“…Damn, I’m screwed.”
This wasn’t the time to be happy about a happy ending. Deus was a fantastic and entertaining game, but she never wanted to experience what happened within it firsthand.
The main setting that made Deus popular was the fact that the protagonist character was a knight. It was an unusual setting for a dating simulation game, a story where the character, as a hero who saves the continent, goes on adventures and meets peerless men.
And Deus was rated for ages 18 and up. Naturally, the content was extremely explicit, and s*xual relations with the peerless men were crucial to the game’s progression.
This meant she had to wield a sword and fight monsters herself, and she had to engage in intimate acts with the peerless men.
The excitement she felt momentarily vanished, replaced by an unknown fear. She felt lost.
Leah, or rather, Elijah, knew all the routes in Deus, except for the mage ending, but even that knowledge blurred with bewilderment. The routes she knew involved seducing only one man from the start. If she accidentally made the wrong choice, the route would be set, and she would likely fail. She had no idea how to get all four of them.
“Why is my character a newbie now?”
Her character was originally level 250, a top player ranked within the top three on the server.
Deus, with its unique knight character setting, offered more than just romance. High stats were important in that regard, and they also helped with romance strategies. But the status window before her showed that only the nickname remained; all the stats she had painstakingly built up over time were gone.
She had spent so much money and items leveling up her character to the max level. Elijah felt her leather backpack, which shouldn’t have felt heavy, feel even lighter with the ominous thoughts that followed.
‘Could it be…?’
She reached into the backpack, and the items inside appeared as images in her mind. The backpack, which used subspace, allowed her to know the contents without physically touching them. There was no need to examine it further. It contained the basic continent map and a pouch for coins…
“My items are all gone!”
The legendary items, weapons, and treasures she had collected over five years had vanished without a trace. She didn’t even have a basic iron sword. Even the bag she was carrying was the cheap kind you started with in the game. It was like she was starting with nothing. The trials she had to go through to reach the ending with a character who was practically nak*d were by no means easy. Just thinking about the major events that came to mind made her dizzy.
“Let me at least pay to play…”
Elijah tugged at her hair, unable to move from where she stood. Her hair felt unnecessarily soft against her hand, making her want to cry. The notification messages had disappeared into the air, leaving her vision clear.
Then, a new notification appeared.
Ding!
[Quest: ‘Slave Trade’
Meet the first peerless man captured as a slave.
Location: Noami Slave Market]
This time, the notification that appeared before her was a welcome sight, even bringing tears to her eyes. Slaves in Deus were originally those with exceptional combat abilities, playing a crucial role in the early stages when the character had no skills. It was directly linked to the route, so in the original story, it was natural to go there without a separate quest.
But since it was a special event, the system seemed to be giving her a hint about the direction to take.
Fortunately, she knew the location.
As she crossed the village and reached the end, she saw an entrance leading underground beneath a rough stone wall. As she stepped into the entrance, faint letters appeared in the corner of her vision.
[Notification: Entering ‘Noami Slave Market’]
Elijah walked confidently into the dark interior. Although in a different form, she had been here before to pursue the first peerless man. But the moment she saw the scene inside, her legs froze.
“Oh my god.”
There was a huge difference between the ‘slave market’ she saw on her monitor and what she saw in reality.
Nak*d people were huddled together between iron bars that lined the dark cave walls. In the center, several people were collapsing under whips, and blood was splattered everywhere.
Most of the people seemed to be adults, but men and women were indistinguishable, tangled together like beasts in cages. They couldn’t even scream, only groaning sounds echoed from various places. The air in the unventilated cave was thick with the stench of blood and the foul odor of filth.
It was a very raw space, completely different from the formal market format she had seen in the game. What she saw with her own eyes was cruel and primitive.
Ding!
[Notification: There is a capture target nearby.]
The cheerful notification sound once again jolted her back to reality. It wasn’t surprising, as it was an expected notification. The first peerless man in Deus was a slave.
She looked around the horrific slave market. But everyone was in such bad shape that she couldn’t tell who was it.
