VSP | Chapter 001

Chapter 1

 

 

 

What a pitiful death.

The harsh sound of rain pelting my ears and the deafening roar of thunder echoing in the sky felt as if they were mocking my situation.

My body, thrown from the carriage, was a wreck. My broken limbs were grotesquely twisted, and a sharp, excruciating pain radiated from my abdomen, as if I had been stabbed by something.

‘This is my death?’

There was no trace of my usual self, adorned in splendid garments, surrounded by countless followers, and envied by all.

How pathetic and laughable I must look, crushed beneath the overturned, shattered carriage.

…Even as I lay dying, I’m still worrying about how others perceive me. How ridiculous.

“Haha! Ha, hahaha!”

But that lasted only a moment. Unable to endure the searing pain in my abdomen, I stopped and gasped harshly.

‘How did it come to this?’

With effort, I moved my eyes and saw the gem clutched in my hand.

‘The Holy Gem…’

Even amidst the gruesome scene, the transparent gem gleamed without losing its radiance.

People believed the gem, said to grant its owner’s wishes, was blessed by the divine.

As tales of fulfilled wishes grew, so did the number of people desiring the gem. However, those who had their wishes granted all met tragic ends.

The miner who first discovered the gem died of an incurable disease. The noble who owned the mine went mad.

A high-ranking noble who bought the gem at an auction was murdered by his own son. The head of a knightly family, never plagued by even a minor ailment, succumbed to a rare disease.

A merchant who lived extravagantly with endless wealth suddenly lost his business and died a vagrant on the streets.

Eventually, the gem passed through many hands and ended up with a young lady from a baronial family who became a saintess, earning the title of a cursed holy relic.

When I first heard of it, I thought the relic had nothing to do with me.

I had no need for a wish-granting gem. I lacked for nothing.

But at a banquet I attended with my eldest brother, Saint, I saw it.

‘Look over there, Grace. They say the owner of the holy relic is that tacky young lady. Displaying it so proudly like that—how vulgar.’

An object I might never have seen in my lifetime.

‘It feels like you’d be a better fit as its owner, don’t you think?’

The moment I laid eyes on the holy relic by chance, a powerful desire surged within me, making my previous thoughts seem foolish.

‘I want that gem.’

Befitting its name as a cursed holy relic, after the saintess took possession of it, her parents vanished, and I approached her as she suffered under the onslaught of people swarming her like hyenas.

I became a friend who could comfort her in her loneliness, doing things unlike my usual self.

All for the sake of obtaining the holy relic. For that sole goal, I was capable of anything.

When the saintess was driven to the edge of despair, burdened with her parents’ enormous debts, I demanded the holy relic in exchange for showing her mercy.

The moment she realized I had watched her misfortune unfold without intervening, she fell into despair.

‘How could you do this to me, Lady Grace?’

Her tears, filled with sorrow and resentment, brimmed with betrayal.

‘I thought you, of all people, were my true friend…!’

The saintess wept mournfully.

‘The moment you take the holy relic, a curse will fall upon you.’

She tried to persuade me.

‘Even if you regret it later, the curse won’t lift, and you’ll live in torment!’

But to me, her desperate cries were just another part of the game to obtain the holy relic.

‘Calm yourself, Saintess.’

There was only one thing that could have made it perfect—if I hadn’t visited the temple to retrieve the holy relic and encountered someone who wouldn’t have otherwise crossed my path.

‘Duchess, the holy relic is under the temple’s jurisdiction. Even you cannot be allowed to act so coercively.’

‘If you can’t allow it, does that mean the noble Holy Knight Leandros will pay her debts in her stead?’

Of course, even that obstacle could say nothing more and had to step aside.

The saintess’s worried heart turned to resentment, and that resentment became a curse.

‘I hope you suffer the same torment as I have, Lady Grace. No, I hope you go mad!’

I gave a faint smile at her words, filled with hatred and malice.

‘Losing your reason in grief. How foolish.’

At my mockery, the holy knight grew angry.

‘How long do you plan to live like this? Please, stop acting so unlike yourself, Duchess!’

He tried to stop me until the very end, but he couldn’t keep up with the carriage, and I left the temple in high spirits, reveling in the satisfaction of obtaining what I desired.

‘And now?’

The coachman and the escort knight following behind had died instantly upon crashing into a massive boulder. The maid who had been in the carriage with me was nowhere to be seen.

‘Is the curse real?’

If so, my end would be recorded as a laughable one.

‘If I had made a wish, maybe I wouldn’t feel so wronged.’

To think that my life, spent striving to avoid becoming a mere spectacle for others, would end so absurdly. It was unjust, but what could I do?

And so, I closed my eyes…

…

…The sensation of my clogged breath suddenly clearing jolted my eyes open.

“Gasp!”

As my blurry vision cleared and the familiar ceiling came into view, I couldn’t help but feel bewildered.

“My room?”

Struggling to rise from the bed, I walked to the mirror and saw myself drenched in sweat.

In the mirror, I looked younger than I had before my death, staring back with a confused expression.

“What’s going on…?”

In my disoriented gaze, I noticed a box neatly placed on the vanity.

‘That’s…’

With a faint hope, I tore open the gift box and saw the golden music box my parents had given me for my eighteenth birthday.

‘I’m eighteen? That can’t be. I was definitely twenty.’

Why had I suddenly become younger? Wasn’t I dead?

‘Did I… come back to life? Looking this young?’

I pinched my cheek, and it hurt.

This wasn’t a dream.

I had truly been granted a new life.

A smile spread across my previously confused face.

“Yes, that’s right.”

There was no way that I, the sole duchess of the illustrious Aperdita Duchy, would meet such a pitiful death.

“A curse? Nonsense.”

I erased the shameful memories of my moments before death from my mind.

Then, a small spark of anger flared within me.

‘To think a mere holy relic could kill me?’

Whether it was an object blessed by the divine or a precious treasure protected by the temple, it didn’t matter.

If it brought me misery, I would return the favor in kind.

That was how I, the so-called villainess, lived.

‘Eighteen, huh. Around this time, wasn’t Cardinal Jenom embroiled in a scandal with a loan shark?’

I issued an order to the maid who had just entered the room.

“Hey, summon a reporter from the Letport Press. Tell them I have an exclusive scoop about the temple and to come to the ducal estate immediately.”

At that moment, I was filled with hopeful dreams, buoyed by the new opportunity I had been given.

* * *

“Gasp, gasp.”

Clutching my bleeding side to evade an assassin, I ran with all my might, but my injured body reached its limit and I collapsed.

“Ugh.”

With effort, I raised my head and saw the pitch-black night sky and a round full moon. Staring at the faint moonlight, I swallowed the curses that threatened to spill out.

‘Damn it, damn it, damn it.’

In the life I returned to after my first death, I lived as if I were the master of the world.

After tarnishing the temple’s reputation, I ignored the holy relic, but on my twentieth birthday, I died in a mysterious assassination, and a new life began.

My eighteenth birthday, just like the first regression.

The life that began in fear was no different.

When my twentieth birthday arrived, I met another sudden death and woke up again on my eighteenth birthday.

As death and regression repeated, my life fell into chaos.

‘I deliberately came to a rural estate instead of the capital! I did nothing and stayed in my room, yet I’m dying again?’

This time, to survive, I left the capital before turning twenty and lived in seclusion.

Catching my breath in despair, I saw the statue of a praying goddess, the temple’s symbol, emerge under the moonlight.

‘Why do I have to go through this?’

I had banished it to a corner of the garden because I couldn’t stand the sight of it, yet here it was, confronting me at such a moment. How absurd.

‘The moment you take the holy relic, a curse will fall upon you.’

‘Even if you regret it later, the curse won’t lift, and you’ll live in torment!’

‘I hope you suffer the same torment as I have, Lady Grace. No, I hope you go mad!’

I could no longer deny that my life was cursed.

“You’re here. I told you there’s no point in running.”

The assassin—no, the maid who had been assigned to me—sneered at my disheveled state and raised her sword.

Behind the gleaming blade stained with blood, my eyes met the statue of the goddess.

“Serving a villainess like you was truly exhausting.”

I had avoided looking at the temple all this time, resentful of the god who cursed me, but the endless cycle of death fueled my rage.

‘If a god truly exists, tell me how I can escape this curse.’

“I hope you don’t rest in peace.”

I’ll do anything.

With an expression devoid of her usual smile, she swung her sword.

Please!

At the moment of my tenth death, my vision flashed white.

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