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Chapter 1
Kael covered his mouth.
Every time he breathed, the disgustingly fishy smell of monster blood pierced his nose.
Could Rosanna really still be alive in this hell?
Even though he had returned to hell to find Rosanna, he could not be certain that she had survived.
The ground, mixed with blood and rainwater, was nothing but mud. Every time he stepped forward, foul, bloody water splashed up around his feet. Meanwhile, the rain was growing heavier and heavier.
“Rosanna!”
Kael shouted her name in a sharp voice.
He did not even know what he was doing anymore.
It would have been right to leave the fallen members behind and move on. Besides, the commander leading the expedition should never have left the formation alone.
Even now, his rational mind was warning him that he needed to return to the expedition immediately.
The muscles in Kael’s jaw tightened.
“Answer me, Rosanna!”
What hope did he even have by continuing like this?
Even though he had seen a swarm of monsters rushing toward her beyond the collapsing bridge, he wanted to believe that she was alive.
Kael could not understand Rosanna.
Since when had she become so selfless?
The woman who threw herself into danger for the sake of others felt completely unfamiliar to him.
Kael cursed under his breath.
The rain was becoming so heavy that his vision was beginning to blur.
His clothes, soaked and clinging to his body, made every step feel even heavier.
“Rosanna!”
His voice was gradually being drowned out by the pounding rain.
It was time to give up.
He knew that.
And yet Kael took another step forward. He felt as though if he searched just a little longer, he would find Rosanna.
He felt as though Rosanna would greet him with her characteristically bright smile.
‘What? Why did you come back? To save me? Wow, if that’s really true, then I’ve successfully turned over a new leaf. You were worried about me too, weren’t you, Kael?’
He could almost hear her chattering away like that as she followed closely behind him.
‘There’s always an end to everything. Our expedition will succeed, and we’ll be able to go home. Just trust me. Or, if you can’t trust me, then trust your sword, Kael.’
Her voice, endlessly speaking of hope, kept coming back to him.
Her stubbornness and fierce vitality, which had never allowed her to despair even in this hell, had torn through his heart.
So there was no way someone like Rosanna could have been broken.
‘I’m absolutely not going to die. Want to hear about my life plans? I’m going to make a huge amount of money. Then I’ll use that money to become independent. Oh, and I need to date someone too. So Kael, hang in there! Let’s be happy together.’
Rosanna, who had talked like that, could never have left behind the things she had been so attached to.
Perhaps, without him even realizing it, even Kael’s cold rationality had been softened by Rosanna’s warmth.
The hope that she was alive ultimately kept his feet from stopping.
Kael wiped the rain from his face.
Just then, he spotted a cave.
Taking shelter from the rain for a while would be a good idea. He headed toward the cave.
Perhaps because it was quite far from the bridge, there were no monster corpses or signs of battle around the cave.
Kael placed a hand against the entrance and checked for any presence inside.
Then he suddenly stopped.
“Hic. It’s okay, Rosanna. You’ve done well until now. You can make it back alive. You just have to catch up with them.”
The moment he heard that voice, wet and exhausted, it felt as though all the strength left his body.
She was really alive.
Rosanna had managed to survive that hell.
Kael closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh of relief.
The nerves that had been stretched taut finally relaxed.
After shaking the rain from himself, Kael walked inside.
He saw Rosanna crouched on the ground, her head hanging low.
“……Lady Rosanna.”
Kael called out to her in a hoarse voice.
Rosanna lifted her head from between her knees.
Her blue eyes, revealed between strands of her wet black hair, trembled violently.
They were eyes he had once despised more than anything.
Moisture quickly gathered in those eyes, and they began to tremble.
“K-Kael……! It really is Kael…….”
Rosanna seemed not to even know what she was saying.
Her exhausted face was so dark with shadows beneath her eyes that she looked completely drained.
Kael gave a hollow laugh.
“You said you’d be fine. You said it was okay to leave because we could trust you.”
“……Of course. Look at me. I-I’m alive like this, aren’t I? See? I’m trustworthy, right?”
Even with her face deathly pale, she somehow kept talking.
Rosanna barely managed to stand. She put strength into her trembling legs and somehow managed to keep herself upright.
“What about Lilia? Is she okay? She didn’t get hurt badly, did she?”
She looked like that, and she was still asking about someone else.
Kael slowly looked over Rosanna’s appearance once more.
She was soaked and covered in dirt, looking completely miserable. Her normally clear face was smeared with tears and mucus.
The traces of how much she had cried and how terrified she had been were plain to see.
And yet her blue eyes were still filled with light.
“Ha.”
Perhaps he really had lost his mind to let things come this far.
Because even while watching her sniffle and wipe away her tears, the first thing he wanted to do was simply hold her.
I realized that I had possessed the world of Salvation Comes from the End only after I died and opened my eyes again.
“You will join the expedition as a representative of House Ardena. Be honored that you have been given the chance to represent Ardena.”
It was an old-fashioned room where heavy ebony furniture created an imposing atmosphere.
An overwhelming pressure weighed down on me so heavily that I could barely breathe.
A middle-aged man sat behind the desk, while several men stood in formation beside him.
Every single one of them was looking at me as if I were a monkey inside a cage.
Ardena.
Rosanna Ardena.
The original owner’s memories came crashing over me like waves, swallowing me whole.
Rosanna Ardena’s memories slowly settled into my mind.
Rosanna was the troublesome villainess character in Salvation Comes from the End.
A woman with a cursed mouth and the strange ability to bring danger upon herself. The story described countless innocent people dying because of her.
You know those characters you see in movies who act selfishly, get everyone else killed, and then whine about how they are the most miserable person of all?
That’s me.
Eventually, she became food for the monsters and met a miserable end.
No, it was already unfair enough that I had possessed the body of a troublesome villainess.
But the bigger problem was that I had ended up in the world of Salvation Comes from the End.
Are you kidding me?
Why, whenever someone possesses another person’s body, can’t it be a sweet, fluffy romantic comedy world?
Why did I have to wake up in an apocalypse story that was already making me cry from the beginning……?
And judging from these tattered and fragmented memories, there was a reason Rosanna had become a villainess.
Rosanna had simply been someone who had no choice but to live that way.
If she had been born as the daughter of the Duke of Ardena, she should have grown up surrounded by love.
But reality was different.
She had always been the unwanted one in the family, the first person to be pushed aside.
There was her promising older brother, the heir, and the affectionate youngest daughter.
And between the two of them, Rosanna was always the scapegoat.
Because she was prickly, sensitive, and rebellious by nature, she had been out of her father’s favor for a long time.
So no one ever tried to protect Rosanna.
Whenever something bad happened, Rosanna was always the one who took the blame.
The blame always fell on her.
The memories that the novel had never fully shown were slowly filling my mind.
In the end, even joining the expedition, where she would have to risk her life, became Rosanna’s responsibility.
This was insane……
The Duke of Ardena clearly valued his daughter’s life less than that of a fly.
According to the novel, Rosanna couldn’t even wield a sword.
No, could she even run properly?
There wasn’t a single muscle on this body.
It felt like the thin body wasn’t being held together by muscles at all, but by nothing more than spite and stubbornness.
And with this body, I was supposed to join an expedition that fought monsters and recovered sacred relics?
If that wasn’t telling me to go die, then what was?
