It has already been two days since Presepe arrived at Fenrir's mansion.
There wasn't a single thing that was inconvenient. On the contrary, Fenrir and Hannah took such excessive care of her and were so considerate that, if anything, she felt a bit embarrassed.
The fatigue and hysteria, which had been molded like fossils by hundreds of regressions and excessively long, exhausting times, had subsided a little.
However, it was time to move.
She could not simply rest comfortably, or rather, pleasantly, here forever.
Presepe tried to extract as much information as she could remember and organize it slowly.
"Never mind those losers..."
Since the goal was to find the real male protagonist, there was absolutely no need for those people.
What Presepe organized were their backgrounds, people related to them, or people connected to her mother.
Even so, considering he is the real male protagonist, she couldn't imagine that he would be a character completely unrelated to her.
But there was a problem.
"There must have been more detailed information..."
She remembered the general things little by little, but the details didn't come to mind well.
For example, things like the small pieces of information gained when pursuing each character.
However, it was inevitable. Since Dietrich's celebration, she had died and returned hundreds of times, and it was not as if she had endured it all with a sound mind and good health. It was literally a time of mental breakdown, a period of enduring while reaching the height of devastation.
Now, she can't even get help from the system. Because she has completely left the Tower.
Furthermore, in the worst-case scenario, even if she meets the real male protagonist, the option might not appear.
Of course, she might be able to see the favorability window, but there was no way to shake off the anxiety.
"Damn it, if only I had that Book of Memories or whatever it is, I could have verified it. Since they said the real male protagonist's name is 'Cipher,' I could have at least tried matching it to someone we suspected."
Presepe grumbled.
And the biggest problem was that the time available to conduct such an investigation was not long.
There was a set date in Presepe in the Cage.
To put it simply, the Day of Choice at the end of the game.
For example, if you were targeting Dietrich, you just need to select Dietrich.
No matter who the other person is, the user can never reach 100 affection points until the Day of Choice. That is only possible on the Day of Choice itself. It was only possible by spending the last day with the male character they chose and selecting the correct option.
Even if you manage to score 96 points, if you choose the wrong last option and fail to reach 100, it is just a bad ending.
However, since she hasn't even properly identified the opponent she needs to target yet, it is bound to be a big problem.
"Come to think of it, there must have been a lot of information available even during the tutorial stage..."
Presepe, who had been muttering to herself, paused briefly.
"You never know. It may have been nothing to you, Lady Presepe, and you quickly forgot about it, but for someone else, it might have held such great significance that it would be remembered for a long time to come."
It was because of Fenrir's words, which he muttered in passing.
Broadly speaking, the game's story was divided into two parts.
First of all, there is the story, a fixed value that does not change regardless of who you target, and the fixed events that serve as the main focus of the entire narrative.
Presepe's past, Dietrich's celebration, and being imprisoned in an ice prison were part of that story.
And the other one was a story involving male characters.
As those stories progress, Presepe cannot move or speak of her own accord. She can only move according to fixed values and choices.
However, the gap before moving on to the next event.
So, to give an example from this episode, those few days from the time Dietrich's celebration was held until the Ice Prison event took place.
That gap was a void where no events occurred. Since there was no skip function, Presepe had no choice but to silently endure that time.
Instead, during that time, she could move and speak freely.
Of course, this is not possible for the male characters who are the targets of romance, and applies only to NPCs who have absolutely no influence on game progression.
However, the same was true for Presepe, who could not have any influence. For instance, even if Ella, the culprit, were killed before the Ice Prison event occurred, nothing would change.
When the Ice Prison event proceeds, Ella returns to her original position and is only able to exit the game after paying the set value assigned to her.
"In the Imperial Palace, I was trapped only in the tower even in that gap... Never mind."
The problem was the tutorial.
To put it simply, the tutorial was a stage that informed the player about Presepe's background and past, as well as how to use the system.
Since you might get confused as you learn how to use it while playing the game, it feels like it helps you learn how to use it while explaining the background.
The tutorial covered the years from when Presepe was still a Princess at the age of 10 until she was stripped of her status and expelled at the age of 15.
Unlike the main story, which cannot be skipped at all, the tutorial proceeded quickly, focusing on the age range in which important events occurred for Presepe.
And that was only once, right after possessing the game.
It was impossible to count the number of times she had returned since the celebratory banquet; in terms of time, it was at most a few years ago, but Presepe felt it was a completely different story.
So her memories are bound to be blurry.
"Could it be that, as Grand Duke Fenrir mentioned, there was something in the tutorial that I don't remember...?"
And if the real male protagonist was someone completely unrelated to the Imperial Palace and could have avoided appearing until now, the most appropriate time to lay the groundwork for foreshadowing was the tutorial where the past unfolds.
"..."
Presepe needlessly tossed her hair as she began organizing the years on the paper Hannah had brought for her.
However, since her memories were merely sporadic, Presepe recalled the most significant thread she hadn't forgotten.
"The end of the tutorial was... Mother being executed and me being driven out... So that was when I was 15."
It took two years from then until Dietrich ascended the throne, but perhaps the game developers thought that was irrelevant to the plot. That gap didn't appear even in the tutorial.
"Didn't I... meet Mother right before she was executed?"
It seemed to vaguely come to mind. That very brief final moment before her head was severed.
"Presepe. Listen carefully to my words. You..."
Her mother's cracked voice, muttering something while holding her tightly in her arms
"...She says. So..."
"What is it?"
Presepe muttered, scowling deeply.
"It seemed like something important to say."
However, Presepe couldn't remember a single word that came before or after that.
She couldn't tell. Back then, she hadn't imagined there would be a real male protagonist, so she considered it meaningless and forgot about it, or...
Is this even due to a bug?
However, she couldn't afford to waste time on a single word from her mother that didn't even come to mind right away. Presepe sighed and continued to retrace her memories.
"And before that, before that, it must have been during my time as an imperial Princess..."
What happened back then?
If there was truly useful information or if she had experienced something special, it was clearly during her time as an imperial Princess.
Not only was she not confined during her time as a Princess, but that was also a time when the background of Presepe was being revealed in detail.
However, in terms of time, it was much earlier than when Presepe's mother was executed.
So it became very blurry.
...But even so, is it really possible to forget this so poorly?"
"..."
Presepe bit her lip tightly as she retraced her memories.
And it was that moment.
The sound of a polite knock was heard
"Lady Presepe, may I come in?"
The person who knocked was Fenrir. Only then did Presepe come to her senses and hurriedly tidied up the paper she had been writing on, retracing her memories.
She hadn't done anything wrong, but there is a saying that 'stirring up trouble' is a bad idea. Showing something unnecessary could lead to trouble, and to make matters worse, the language written on the paper wasn't even Hangul. It was the language of Ateloia.
It has always been like this since she was possessed. No matter how much she wrote in Hangul, they changed their appearance as if to mock her.
As if Presepe could not allow herself to keep a secret to herself like this.
So it was better not to get caught.
"Yes. Grand Duke, please come in... Oh dear."
As soon as the answer was finished, the door opened, and Presepe, who was about to get up from her chair, dropped the teacup Hannah had given her.
“Are you okay?”
"Oh, yes. I'm fine. But the carpet is a mess."
Presepe bent her legs and looked perplexed as she picked up the broken teacup.
So she didn't realize it. That the red gaze directed at her had lingered for a moment on the stack of papers neatly arranged in the corner of the table.
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