1 It Really Is That Banal

You read about those crazy transmigration experiences in fantasy novels all the time - some sad, lonely, poor, or overworked girl dies tragically in a traffic accident, or due to extreme exhaustion at work, there is no unexpected twist to it, it really is that banal.

So nobody should be that surprised if something similar happened to our heroine as well, right?

***

The yellow sunlight was way too bright for her to be able to open her eyes wide at once. The girl kept slowly rolling on the bed, desperately trying to soak in both the warm rays of the sun gently caressing her face, and the softness of the cool silk bed sheets that felt strangely cool but still undeniably pleasant on her fatigued body.

This girl is Rosalie Ashter, a twenty-one-year-old daughter of Marquess Ian Ashter, or, as she better knows herself, - Wang Meiling, a twenty-five-year-old office worker who woke up in the body of a minor villainess in an R-rated novel she finished reading just a day before her transmigration.

It has been already a week since she realized that she had possessed Rosalie's body and yet, she still could not believe it actually happened to her. The circumstance was trivial, but the probability of that was definitely nonexistent, especially since she had absolutely no idea whether she died in her previous life, or was in a coma and was doomed to be dreaming this bizarre dream forever or until the sweet release of death would finally find her.

'Let's think rationally.'

Rosalie took a seat behind the small wooden table with a large ornamented vanity mirror placed on it and took a good look at herself. Long, wavy, brown locks, falling all the way down past her lower back, beaming with dark golden strands every time the sun touched them with its burning light; deep grey eyes with a slight hint of sky-blue in them, framed with a thick layer of dark, long lashes; pink, plump, sensual lips that looked like two petals of a wild rose flower; and smooth, porcelain complexion with a slight pinkish hue tapped on her cheeks - enviable, almost irresistible beauty, praised by many, and wasted on a broken spirit of a character.

That was the exact description of Rosalie Ashter, and that was exactly how the girl, looking back at Meiling from the gleaming surface of the mirror, looked.

It had been long enough. There was no use denying it. She transmigrated into an adult novel, and she was now Rosalie Ashter, the tragic, yet almost irrelevant villainess who was doomed to die the most gruesome death Meiling could ever imagine.

The girl opened the small drawer of the wooden table and retrieved a red leather-covered notebook with the name "Rosalie" written on it in beautiful golden cursive letters. When Meiling first found herself in this world, she was holding this exact same notebook in her hands, however, when she opened it, it was completely empty, with only three sentences written in unbelievably small letters at the bottom of the last page - "Exhausted. Throbbing. My heart is as bruised as my body."

'I cannot even pretend to be surprised. Rosalie, you poor soul, it looks like you were desperate to get out of this place.'

She slid her thin, elegant fingers across the tiny black letters and let out a long and somewhat pitiful sigh. In the R-rated novel titled "Acme Fever", Rosalie Ashter was but a minor character who was added to the characters list simply to help the male lead, Duke Damien Dio, with his story and character development, while also adding a bit of drama and tragedy to the overall dark setting.

The story itself was not bad at all - Damien Dio was a young Duke with a tragic past who had not only lost his parents at a very young age but was also kidnapped and used in a sacrificial ritual by the remnants of the dark pagan cult, and although the ritual failed and the pagans were captured and killed, Damien ended up being cursed with something that the Temple later gave the name of "Acme Fever".

In the novel, Acme was known to be an attribute of demonic power - it was said that Asmodeus, the powerful Demon Prince of Lust, was the sole possessor of Acme and used it to seduce humans and trick them to sell their souls to him, feeding on their dark or suppressed and unsatisfied desires.

Due to Damien's high social status and the Temple's inability to cure it, Damien's Acme Fever was kept secret from the rest of the nobility, while the High Priest Alexander Saro was secretly treating him using his innate Holy Power.

With that unorthodox premise, and also because it was an R-rated novel, the only way for Damien to relieve the pain and suffering from Acme Fever, was to have "intimate relationships" with a woman who either had the flow of Acme and could help him renew the levels of Acme in his body or the flow of Nadir - a rare kind of "Holy Power" that was meant to break through Demonic Curses of all types and strength.

It sounded almost too good to be true, however, nobody knew how to recognize either the Acme holder or the power of Nadir, until one day, the lost daughter of Baron Tobias Aelon, Evangelina Aelon, also known as the story's female protagonist, returned to the Capital and was recognized as the powerful Priestess able to break Damien's curse by nullifying his Acme.

"And they will be living happily ever after, having satisfactory intercourse ten times a day..."

Rosalie mumbled those words under her breath and closed the notebook rather harshly.

She did not really care about the main characters' love story, it was cliche, inherent to the genre. What she did care about, however, was the fate of Rosalie, whose body she was now possessing because that girl was not just a minor character, she was someone who was meant to meet a tragic ending while being severely abused both physically and sexually.

And the worst part of it all was... That the person who had been torturing poor Rosalie her whole life was none other than Raphael Ashter, Rosalie's one and only older brother.

"Luckily, I know that Rosalie Ashter has already gained an important cheat that might help me escape her horrible demise. I simply... Need to wait for the right time to use it."

The girl looked at her right palm which was distorted by a long, rather thick pink scar, and put on a subtle, cunning smile - the original Rosalie was too desperate and she blew her chance at freedom. The current Rosalie did not have the luxury of making mistakes.