She sank down to the bathroom floor, staring at the glowing screen that spelled out her potential second death in cheerful script.
She had died once already in the most humiliating way possible.
Now she was in a dead woman's body, in a world of werewolves, hated by everyone, with abilities she couldn't access, and someone out there would still want her dead the moment they realised she was still alive.
"This is fine," she said slowly, trying to placate herself. "This is totally fine. Everything is completely under control."
[Host is demonstrating early signs of hysteria. This is normal]
[Please proceed with the day at your earliest convenience]
"Stop it," she hissed, glaring up at the screen and the quest timer already counting down.
The screen then faded, leaving her alone with the cooling tiles beneath her and the weight of her situation pressing down on her chest.
Aya took a shaky breath and forced herself to stand.
Sitting on the floor feeling sorry for herself wasn't going to keep her alive. She needed to move and think.
And she also needed information.
The System could only tell her so much, and most of what it did say came wrapped in sarcasm and emojis that made her want to scream and hit her head against the wall until she got a concussion. If she was going to survive in this world and silly situation, she needed to understand it. At the very least, she could undo to a degree the chaos this girl had caused.
She dried off and pulled on a flowing blue dress, which was simpler than the horrendous dresses she had glimpsed in the wardrobe, before deciding to leave the room.
[ - ]
The hallway outside was empty.
And massive.
The corridor stretched in both directions, easily wide enough for four people to walk side-by-side. The floors were carpeted a plush red colour and the white walls had intricate golden patterns and designs worked into them.
The swirling designs might have been decorative or might have been some kind of werewolf symbolism, she had no idea. Beautiful glowing light fixtures were fixed to the ceiling at intervals.
The door to her room clicked shut behind her with a finality that made her stomach clench.
Ding!
She jumped, spinning around to see the screen materialize in front of her again.
"What do you even want, this time?!" she asked it, annoyed.
While in the room, she had discovered she could communicate with the system without having to speak out loud.
Just in case someone might overhear her and think she had gone deranged by talking to the air.
[New Quest Available!]
[Explore your estate]
[Objective: Familiarize yourself with your new home]
[Reward: 50 points]
[Penalty: None]
[This quest is optional]
[Accept? Y/N]
Aya stared at the screen, reading the quest details twice. "Wait. This one doesn't have a penalty?"
[Some quests are simply educational]
[This system is not completely merciless]
"Right." She mentally selected 'Yes' on the quest prompt, and the screen shifted.
[Quest Accepted!]
[Explore The Estate]
[Objective: Discover key locations within the Luna Estate]
[Progress: 0/5 locations found]
[Good luck, Host!]
[Try not to get lost]
"Hey—"
The screen vanished right after.
Aya grumbled.
Great. Her life was officially a video game now.
A video game where she could actually die.
Again.
The system had given her a rundown of the world she was in. It consisted of other beast races, with individual packs or tribes ruled by the leader of that nation. And she just coincidentally ruled a nation of werewolves.
Aya currently had no family. Her mother had passed while giving birth to her and her father who had refused to get another wife had spoiled her rotten only for him to die off three years ago. And due to how foolish the original Aya had been, the ones who actually ruled the nation were the elder council.
Aya found it convenient just how much information the system had on her fingertips, but nothing about who killed her. It quickly notified her that it worked just like an internet would back in her world, expect it derived information from what was already common knowledge and not things carried out or planned in secrecy, which was what the murder attempt was.
'Her death aside, the most pressing issue now is how vulnerable I am,' she thought.
The council had especially kept her as the nation's figurehead because she was too powerful for them to get rid of blatantly. And now for some very stupid reason, the system locked those Luna abilities.
As for the five husbands and that curse…
Aya grumbled with a frown.
She looked left, then right, trying to decide which direction to go. Both hallways looked identical and she just decided to pick a route randomly.
She passed several closed doors, and opened every one of them to find various lavish rooms. Some of them were empty, and others looked like a drawing room and art room.
With each room she entered, she awaited the notification from the system that she had found a key location, but she got nothing.
It didn't take long for her to start noticing that despite how long she had walked and the places she had been to, she did not come across any omega servants.
Especially those two she had seen earlier.
Aya pushed open the next door, half-expecting another useless room.
Instead, she found a library.
The room was as large as her bedroom, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves appearing in the room at spaced intervals. Hundreds, maybe thousands of leather-bound books packed the shelves in neat rows. Sunlight streamed through tall windows on the far wall, illuminating the soft glow of the walls and the almost golden hues of the wooden bookshelves and other furniture.
[Quest Update: Location Discovered!]
[Estate's Private Library]
[Contains historical records and knowledge]
[Progress: 1/5]
The screen vanished and Aya stepped inside, letting the door close softly behind her.
A library. The original Luna had a private library full of books and knowledge, and she had never even bothered to use it?!
She went from shelf to shelf, trying to dig around for information, and she was so absorbed in her spiralling thoughts that she didn't sense the presence moving through the library.
Neither did she notice she wasn't alone until a deep voice cut through the silence behind her.
"What are you doing in here?"