“Oh no, I’ve become the stand-in!”
“Your meaning is, let me transmigrate into the sickly young lady from an abuse novel, and as long as I complete the plot roleplay tasks, I can stay alive?”
“Yes.”
“No other choices? This role looks kind of… useless.”
“None.”
The System was concise, its voice carrying an icy coldness that brooked no refusal. This made Xiliya sigh helplessly.
She had won the truck-kun reincarnation grand prize package, gaining a chance to transmigrate and live again after death. She should have felt grateful, but looking at the role the System had assigned her, Xiliya was a hundred percent unwilling.
In the pitch-black reincarnation space, a mirror floating in mid-air reflected a frail young girl.
The girl had a head of smooth silver-white long hair, pale blue eyes lacking vitality, and pallid skin. She looked every bit the pitiful, sickly invalid.
The sickly young lady Xiliya from the novel—that was the role she had to become. Just looking at her appearance, this young lady was quite pitiable and endearing.
But Xiliya couldn’t accept this young lady’s experiences: chronically ill, mother died early, squeezed out by her stepmother and driven from home, wandering outside and hunted down… ultimately dying miserably in a foreign land.
Meow meow meow, she wasn’t some masochist. Making her play this role was worse than dying… screw that, better to cling to life poorly than die well!
“Fine, I don’t have much choice anyway.”
“Understood. Binding the corresponding role to the host now. Please wait…”
Accompanied by the System’s mechanical voice, everything before her eyes was gradually enveloped in blinding white light. When she opened her eyes again, Xiliya already stood at the door of a room at the end of a corridor.
She looked down at herself: a frail body, pale hands with prominent knuckles. It was indeed that sickly young lady.
So, this was the opening plot of the book?
【Please complete the newbie task: “Suffer an assassin attack and get rescued (Incomplete)” to advance the plot. Friendly reminder: Task failure will trigger corresponding punishment.】
The System’s mechanical voice rang in her mind, and the relevant plot automatically entered her brain. Xiliya took a deep breath, preparing to push open the door.
Xiliya’s father had passed away unexpectedly a month ago. Normally, as the eldest daughter, she should have inherited this mansion. But her scheming stepmother wanted to claim all the family property, hence this scheme.
That assassin had used high-level disguise magic to impersonate Xiliya, fooling everyone in the mansion and sneaking into her room. That meant as soon as she pushed open the door, she would be attacked by the assassin.
But that assassin was a cannon fodder minor villain who bit the dust right at the start. Her assassination naturally failed. When Xiliya was nearly choked unconscious, the mansion’s head maid would notice something wrong and rush to save her. The assassin was quickly dealt with on the spot by the guards who arrived after hearing the news.
“Whatever, if it’s a disaster, it can’t be avoided. Charge!”
Xiliya took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and yanked the door open fiercely… but nothing happened?
The anticipated attack didn’t come. Xiliya stood foolishly at the doorway, peering into the pitch-black room. She saw nothing.
Originally, after she opened the door, a pair of hands should have reached out from behind it, choking her neck and dragging her inside. But now, the dark room was utterly quiet. Xiliya even closed the door and checked behind it—no assassin, the room was completely empty!
“Are you sure your plot didn’t glitch?”
Xiliya checked behind the door repeatedly, but still found nothing.
“No error. Current plot node: ‘Suffer an assassin attack and get rescued (Incomplete)’. The other party will hide behind the door for a sneak attack, right at the position you’re standing in now…”
Before the System finished speaking, the room door was suddenly yanked open from the outside. A slender hand precisely located her throat, choking it tightly and shoving her down onto the bed.
“See, I told you there was no error.”
The pain of neck compression and suffocation hit instantly. Xiliya struggled uncontrollably. By the faint moonlight, she saw a face identical to hers, with a cold smirk at the corners of its mouth.
Was this the disguised assassin who came to kill her?
No good, being choked like this felt so… painful…
Xiliya’s struggles gradually weakened, but at that moment, the assassin deliberately eased her grip a bit, giving her a chance to breathe.
“How nostalgic. Just like in my last life, hiding behind the door waiting to ambush me, huh, Miss Assassin.”
The assassin’s voice was gritted with hatred. “You didn’t expect me to guess you’d be behind the door, did you? I didn’t expect to be reborn either. Finally, I have a chance to make you feel this pain too—how does it feel to have your neck choked?”
Xiliya was stunned. Hearing words like “reborn” and “last life,” and seeing the anger and satisfaction in the other’s eyes, a guess bubbled up in her mind.
This person in front of her—wasn’t the disguised assassin, but the real sickly young lady Xiliya? And the second-round reborn kind at that?
If this one was the real Xiliya, then who was she?
…Oh, shit.
Xiliya finally realized what was happening. At that moment, the other freed up a hand and roughly groped over Xiliya’s body. She quickly zeroed in on the necklace around Xiliya’s neck, yanking it off violently—roughly enough to tug it down to her chest, making Xiliya’s little lightning bolt hurt.
Once the necklace was snatched away, Xiliya felt a daze before her eyes, and a strange sensation spread through her body. She instinctively turned to look at the full-length mirror in the room. The figure pinned on the bed was no longer the sickly young lady Xiliya, but a completely unfamiliar face!
Crap, she had become the assassin!
At this point, how could Xiliya not understand? This damn System hadn’t only bound the wrong identity—it had made her transmigrate into a cannon fodder villain who was doomed from the start!
“System!” Xiliya shouted anxiously in her mind. “Help a teammate out, what the hell is this?!”
【Please hurry and complete the newbie task: Try calling for help to attract others’ attention.】
Call for help? As if—a thief crying thief? If she really called, the one who’d get done in would definitely be her, the little assassin!
Xiliya tried to explain: “You’ve got it wrong. I’ve transmigrated into the assassin’s body now. Don’t you have any bad save reload after-sales service?”
【Checking… Check complete. Host Xiliya, identity: Sickly young lady, age seventeen this year…】
Xiliya: “?”
Xiliya was dumbfounded, unsure if she was crazy or the System was. Her true face had been exposed by the real deal, and it was still hung up on that crappy sickly young lady role?
“No, just look at the situation now…”
Xiliya tried to explain further, but this time, the real one in front of her spoke coldly, interrupting Xiliya who was frantically calling the System in her mind.
“Looks like Miss Assassin has some backbone, huh? Not even begging for mercy after all this time.”
“No no no, that’s not what I meant…”
Xiliya realized too late that mental conversations didn’t pause time like in anime. Before she could beg, the other clamped down on her neck again.
And right then, that machine-like icy System voice rang out once more.
【Deviation in plot detected. Newbie task “Suffer an assassin attack and get rescued” has failed. Host will now receive failure penalty.】
…Huh? What the meow did you say?
If you want me dead, just say it—no need to torment me like this!
Xiliya’s eyes rolled back, and she passed out completely. She didn’t know if it was from the choking or from being pissed off by the System.
