Ch.193193. Strange Omens

Returning to Ian, Fresia couldn’t hide her disappointment as she watched him doting on her excessively. Despite Ian usually being good at taking care of himself, he had completely let himself go during the short period she was absent.

It was obvious that Ian hadn’t been maintaining basic routines like eating, sleeping, and washing, as his appearance was visibly poor.

The neat appearance that once made women swoon had been replaced by a disheveled look with patchy facial hair. His under-eyes were dark from lack of sleep, and his eyeballs were bloodshot.

By any measure, his condition was far from normal and more than enough to disappoint Fresia.

Is the difference really this stark?

She couldn’t stop wondering how Gilbert would have handled the situation.

That impossibly rigid man would never have fallen apart like this under the same circumstances. He would have either continued his daily life as if nothing had happened or done whatever it took to find her.

Though Fresia had spent only a brief time with Gilbert, she had come to understand him fairly well.

To be precise, he was of the same kind as her. Their personalities and values might differ, but they were both stubborn individuals who would use any means necessary to achieve their goals.

Fresia fundamentally liked such stubborn people. There’s a saying that people dislike those similar to themselves, but she had always preferred those of her own kind.

After telling Ian she would return to him, she thought she would need some time before making her final decision.

No matter how much she prided herself on her cold rationality as a magical engineer, she wasn’t one to easily reverse a decision once made.

As both a magical engineer and a former imperial princess, her words carried weight, and considering her contract with Ian, she couldn’t simply abandon him immediately.

Watching Ian hurriedly leave to freshen up, she made her decision. Beyond Ian’s disappointing state, she had become captivated by Gilbert’s abilities.

She couldn’t forget the sense of unity and heightened sensations she’d experienced when operating the giant golem with him.

His exceptional piloting skills, cold judgment, and that mysterious yet violent ability to grip the depths of her heart and control it…

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Fresia Luna Eldorado had fallen completely for Gilbert Lion Hart.

“Gilbert…”

Thinking of Gilbert, she unconsciously transformed her body into the form she had when with him, crossing her legs on the desk as she recalled their bickering conversations.

She found it amusing how he would counter every single one of her remarks without backing down, despite his stoic expression.

Looking back, despite their constant clashes, she never felt offended. She had enjoyed those moments, thinking only of how to win against him.

Even for Fresia, who had lived for many years, he was a type of person she had never encountered before. It was almost disconcerting how familiar he felt, as if they had known each other for a long time.

Not that she disliked it.

Rather, she thought it was good precisely because it was a new experience she had never had before.

Humming unconsciously as she thought of Gilbert, Fresia solidified her decision to return to him.

“Huh? Fresia…?”

“Ah…”

Snapped back to reality by Ian’s call, Fresia froze in her seated position on the desk.

Perhaps because she had been thinking about Gilbert, she had transformed into her human form as she had been with him, which was now a problem.

Meanwhile, Ian, wearing a bathrobe, stared intently at Fresia sitting on the desk with wavering eyes.

Indeed, as she always boasted, her beauty was enough to make one’s eyes widen in amazement. In his honest opinion, she could rival even the beautiful Princess Seraphina.

“W-what happened?”

“I’ve simply returned to my original body.”

She intentionally omitted that it was thanks to Gilbert. Though she hadn’t expected to break her promise to him so easily, she intended to keep the exact details secret until the end.

“That was possible?”

“With a bit of luck, yes, it was.”

Fresia spoke nonchalantly while inwardly laughing.

She had never once thought this would actually be possible. She had often joked to Ian about how surprised he would be if she returned to her original form, but it had always been just that—a joke.

So as she told Ian, this was truly a stroke of divine luck.

Even Gilbert, who was responsible for her transformation, couldn’t have predicted this.

“Uh, I’ll go put some clothes on real quick.”

With a flushed face, Ian grabbed his clothes and went outside. He had seemed more comfortable before seeing her true form, but now that she had returned to her original appearance, he apparently couldn’t maintain that ease.

Watching Ian leave, Fresia immediately returned to her artificial spirit core form, showing her lack of interest.

After a few minutes, Ian returned to the room cautiously, having changed his clothes.

“Fresia? Aren’t you going to stay in your original form?”

[I can’t maintain it for long yet.]

Though it wasn’t true, Fresia made up an excuse. She thought Ian would be annoying if he knew there was no time limit on maintaining her appearance.

“That’s a shame…”

[More importantly, did anything happen while I was gone?]

Fresia asked about Ian’s recent situation not for any particular reason, but simply to naturally change the subject and divert attention from her ability to transform.

“Now that you mention it, there was contact from the First Prince’s side.”

[From the First Prince?]

“Yes, I didn’t respond yet because I wanted to discuss it with you first…”

Fresia listened attentively to Ian’s words.

She couldn’t help thinking this would make a good gift when she went to find Gilbert.

***

After finishing his date with Briana, Gilbert returned and soaked in hot water. The fatigue from sparring with the now-improved Briana melted away in the water.

Regardless of how well he had adapted to this place, Gilbert still retained the sensibilities of Kang Do-jun from Korea, finding comfort in soaking in a bath on exhausting days like today.

As his physical fatigue eased, the worries he had pushed aside began to creep back into his mind.

When he had visited Briana, he recalled a thought filled with discomfort.

It seemed forced that Seraphina, who valued the Empire and its people above all else, would reach a destructive ending that could ruin the Empire, even if it was a penalty for failing a sub-scenario.

Similarly, it made no sense that Briana, a person willing to risk her life for her students, would end up in a total annihilation ending over a single man, just like Seraphina.

Of course, he didn’t deny that most of what he knew about them was based on the settings from Tactical Combat.

He was fully aware that now that it had become the real world, there would be subtle differences, and these accumulated differences might mean that Seraphina and Briana were not exactly as he had thought.

But after experiencing them since his possession in this world, he realized they weren’t much different from what he knew.

Seraphina still prioritized the Empire above all else, and Briana still deeply cared for her students.

It was unexpected that both showed interest in Gilbert himself, but he knew well that they weren’t the type to go berserk if their feelings weren’t reciprocated.

Naturally brushing his dripping hair back, he opened the sub-scenario.

At the top of the sub-scenario window, information about the “Seekers of Twisted Possession” and their distortion values flashed, providing information.

Perhaps the system itself was the problem.

Gilbert’s sharp eyes flashed.

Instability and doubt about the system itself.

That was exactly the uncomfortable thought he had been having.

The system had certainly been helpful when he first possessed this world based on Tactical Combat. Following the system’s guidance, he had been able to prepare for the predetermined main scenarios and overcome situations that would otherwise have required great sacrifice.

However, seeing the sub-scenario and Briana’s reaction, he concluded that he couldn’t blindly trust the system.

Just before Gilbert asked Briana out on a date, her distortion value had started rising madly. Her once-intelligent eyes had become clouded, and a sticky energy began to flow.

This was an anomaly that even Gilbert hadn’t noticed until now. With Seraphina, he had been too preoccupied with the rapidly rising distortion index to observe his surroundings.

Looking back, he realized that the eerie energy flowing around Briana was the same as what he had felt when Seraphina offered to make him her consort.

Gilbert rose from the gradually cooling bath. As soon as he left the lukewarm water, he felt a chill due to the increasingly cold weather. After roughly drying himself with a prepared towel, he put on a robe and left the bathroom.

Tousling his wet hair with the towel, Gilbert formed a hypothesis based on the conclusion he had reached in the bath.

What if the system wasn’t necessarily guiding him in the right direction, but rather the opposite—moving to cloud his judgment?

What if the main and sub-scenarios shown by the system weren’t just informing him of the current situation but forcing those situations to occur?

Gilbert felt his hair stand on end as his vision turned black. This wasn’t a figure of speech—literally everything around him was enveloped in thick darkness.

Despite being plunged into this dark space, his eyes could still see the sub-scenario window floating before him.

As if commanding him to look only at this, the system window glowed against the black background, hovering in midair.

What on earth is this…!

He couldn’t adapt to the sudden change in circumstances.

A sense of helplessness overwhelmed him as he realized he could do nothing but view the status window.

He couldn’t even tell if he still had a body. As his anxiety grew, text appeared in the middle of the system window.

[System error dete…]

[Have I been found out?]

No sooner had the notification about a system problem appeared than these words in red text emerged, creating a truly spine-chilling moment.