Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 165: Rose’s thorns

On one spring evening when I was eight years old, I, Erica, Duke of Aurelia’s daughter, realized something.

Huh, I have reincarnated into a fantasy world, haven’t I?

Moreover, it was the romance-fantasy girl game that had the reputation of being bloody, 『Liber Monstrorum ~Phantom Beasts and the Winter Princess~』

The face reflected in the mirror was that of the villainess character of that game.

After repeatedly harassing many characters, including the heroine, she would die without exception, signaling the beginning of an event called the bizarre incident. She was a villain who deserved to get the consequences!

—I absolutely don’t want a destiny like that, though?

No, for me who has remembered the memory of my previous life, there would be no such thing.

In my previous life, I was harassed immensely by an irrationally angry yandere man who proclaimed ‘She is absolutely in love with me.’

My cause of death, too, was from being stabbed by another yandere man who I only had talked with a few times……

Now that I have become the haughty villainess Erica, I shouldn’t encounter more misunderstandings like with the previous life’s yandere men anymore, right……?

In that case, it will be fine as long as I deal with the death flags that I may have raised myself.

All right! First of all, before the bizarre incident begins at the Magic Academy, I will strike down the death flags accordingly!!

—Or so I thought, but it seems that I am about to die.

Eeh, how did this happen—!?

Avery Asteria was far from having anyone's dream job. Family circumstances had him drop out of school and flying around the expanse of space looking for treasure among the discarded trash in an old ship his father had been restoring. It was far from glamorous work, but it was all he could do to earn the money he needed.He was not the only one looking for fortune among the stars, though. One day a score that looked too good to be true led to a run in with a band of pirates. With some quick wits and a bit of luck, Avery managed to escape the worst, but he ended up missing out on collecting the valuable salvage he had his sights on.Having lost a large chunk of his gear in his flight from the pirates, Avery seemed to be truly at the end of his rope. However, a twist of fate led him to discovering an experimental vessel that had been lost to the far reaches of space.With this new ship in his possession, his prospects were looking up. It had everything and more than what any spacefarer could want. And Avery was going to use it to become the leader of the greatest band of mercenaries in the galaxy.

Jiang Li traveled through time and found himself without any cheat tools, so he could only rely on diligent cultivation. After five hundred years, he became the strongest person in the Nine Provinces.Suddenly, a system appeared, claiming to be able to help him go from being a Qi Refining cultivator to becoming the number one person in the Nine Provinces.Jiang Li looked at the first task and fell into deep thought.“Please defeat your cousin, who is at the sixth level of Qi Refining.”“Your system has quite a delay,” he said.

Frida, a first-year medical student, has always been focused on academics, with no time for relationships or intimacy. Though her friends tease her for being a prude, they don’t know about the wild fantasies she keeps locked away, wondering if anyone would ever see her for who she truly is.Laziel her ex-best friend turned enemy, a tech genius and adrenaline-fueled F1 racer who’s every girl’s dream but her personal nightmare. Their shared past is full of unresolved tension and high school scandals she’d rather forget.When Frida starts receiving mysterious red sticky notes promising to bring her most forbidden fantasies to life, she’s intrigued and terrified. But as the anonymous promises heat up, her imagination betrays her, and the faceless lover in her fantasies starts to look a lot like Laz.What happens when desire crosses the line into obsession? And what if her enemy is the one person who knows exactly how to make her wildest dreams come true?