Chapter 20
I shivered in the biting cold. At once, the Royal Guards holding my arms yanked me forward with brutal force.
Helplessly, I was dragged along by their strength.
Before long, we reached a gray, frost-covered iron gate. With a harsh, grating sound, the door swung open.
"Get in!"
Pushed by a shove from behind, I was thrown onto the floor.
The moment I looked up, the only thing I saw was the door slamming shut with a merciless thud. The guards didn't even spare me a glance; they slid the bolt into place and marched away.
Only the heavy, hollow echo of their footsteps remained in the empty corridor.
"Ugh, it’s freezing...!"
I scrambled to my feet.
The skin that had touched the floor was icy enough to sting. Wearing such thin clothes, I was no match for the cold seeping in from every direction.
I pulled my knees to my chest, curling into a ball, and watched my hot breath bloom into white mist in the air. I stared at it blankly before burying my face between my knees.
"I suppose I’ve done well enough to survive for now, haven't I?"
***
Two hours before being thrown into the Cold Palace.
I recalled the Royal Guards pointing their blades at me in the Royal Wardrobe and Hyun, who had glared at me as if he were ready to strike me down that very instant.
In the heavy silence, Hyun, who had been gauging my intentions, finally parted his lips.
"You intended to kill Me?"
"Yes."
"Then why the change of heart now?"
A change of heart.
At those words, I realized exactly how I must have appeared in his eyes.
Someone who would weave any lie and use any means necessary to escape a crisis.
That was all I was to him.
As expected, he wasn't someone who would be easily swayed. If that was the case, I had no choice but to prove it to him over and over again.
That the strange dream was, in fact, no dream at all.
"You remember, don't you? What we talked about in that dream."
"What...?"
"You know it, too. That this is no longer 'real'."
"……!!"
For a fleeting second, Hyun’s eyes wavered violently. I barely managed to suppress the corners of my mouth from curling upward.
It was a fairly successful reaction.
When I had retraced the reset timeline to persuade Hyun, the part that had bothered me the most was the negotiation I had struck with him.
My status was merely that of a concubine who had just entered the palace. Given that I had received a title immediately upon arrival, it was clear I came from a noble family, but this was a world where the King held absolute power.
I shouldn't have dared to argue with him.
However, in the previous timeline, this character—who had acted on her own after I logged out of the game—had attempted a bold negotiation with Hyun.
And the important thing was that the negotiation had ultimately succeeded.
At the time, there was only one thing Hyun wanted.
"I know the location of the real Royal Seal."
The location of the Royal Seal.
With that single promise, Hyun had even accepted absurd demands, such as "bring rain."
Perhaps his desperate insistence on holding the Rain-Praying Ritual had been due to that very negotiation with me.
If it was something he wanted that badly, I was certain it would work again now.
Judging by Hyun’s reaction, my prediction had been spot on.
"Ha."
Hyun, who had been staring at me, let out a breath as if he were dumbfounded. Then, he suddenly burst into laughter as if he had lost his mind.
"Hahahaha!"
The startled Royal Guards and Rang turned their gazes toward him in unison. Hyun’s manic laughter cut off as abruptly as it had begun.
He tightened his grip on his sword.
*Whoosh—*
With the sound of wind being sliced, the sharp, cold tip of his blade pointed toward me.
"It seems you thought Me a fool."
"I merely spoke the truth. Whether you believe it is up to you."
A heavy silence hung in the tense standoff. I met Hyun’s gaze without wavering.
"I cannot understand. Even if every word you say is true, the fact that you attempted to harm Me does not change. Do you truly think I will let you live?"
"Who knows? That depends on how badly you want to find 'it'."
For a moment, Hyun’s face twisted in a way that was satisfying to behold. I cheered inwardly.
If he remembered the past before the reset and believed it had truly happened, he could never forget the conversations we had shared.
The desire to reclaim the Royal Seal must be just as intense as the terror of the blade that had once sought to kill me.
So, the fact that Hyun remembered the reset was, quite literally, my lucky break.
"Move Sook-won to the Cold Palace."
"Your Majesty! But..."
Instead of answering, Hyun sheathed his sword and turned his back. He gave me one last look before walking out of the Royal Wardrobe without a shred of hesitation.
Rang hurriedly followed him, shouting at the Royal Guards.
"Bind Sook-won and move her to the Cold Palace at once!"
"Yes!"
I was seized by the rough hands of the guards surrounding me. It was only a short while ago that I had been thrown into the cold, barred prison of the Cold Palace.
I tugged slightly at the iron shackles binding my wrists. The cold metal dug into my skin, emitting a sharp, grating sound.
Still, this was fortunate. Regardless, I had survived that brush with death, so there had to be a way to survive going forward.
The problem was that I had absolutely no idea what that way was.
Above all, the most hopeless part was that I could not log out of this game.
I looked up at the status window still flickering above my head.
「Cannot terminate the game.」
The clear, etched letters stung my eyes.
Ever since I was killed by Hyun in the previous timeline, that message had never disappeared. As if it were sentencing me to never leave this world.
In truth, there was no guarantee that clearing all the quests would allow me to leave.
It was merely a vague assumption.
But I couldn't just sit here and remain trapped in this fake world forever without doing anything.
I thought back to the error windows that had proliferated infinitely, covering the screen.
If this current state was some kind of bug, perhaps forcing the game’s situation to progress and updating the data might trigger a change.
Of course, all I could do right now was struggle within the game.
But the existence of Hyun, who remembered the 'reset' in this already strange game, fueled further doubts.
I had played countless games, but I had never once seen an NPC who remembered the player’s past life.
NPCs were designed to be incapable of even perceiving that this world was fake. To them, the programmed worldview was the entirety of the universe.
Yet, Hyun clearly remembered the previous timeline. That was an extremely exceptional phenomenon, one that defied the game’s system.
A perspective that recognized this world as 'fake' rather than 'real' had seeped into him.
Even so, he wasn't a player like me who could see the status window or recognize this as a game.
Watching him stand precariously on that ambiguous boundary, I thought:
Perhaps the key to escaping this bizarre game lay with him.
"There’s definitely something about him. Maybe..."
I looked up at the status window. Above the warning, "Cannot terminate the game," a newly updated Main Quest window flickered ominously.
"Maybe the Main Quest to kill him isn't a coincidence, either."
That was when it happened.
From far beyond the corridor, I heard the sound of people whispering in secret.
Soon, heavy footsteps drew closer, and a long shadow fell before the bars.
When I looked up, I met the gaze of a man standing before me. His eyes, framed by his red official robes, widened in shock.
"Danbi!"
"Who..."
I almost answered, but I caught myself and clamped my mouth shut.
Since he called me by my name, he must be someone I knew. There was no need to act like a stranger and invite suspicion.
Fortunately, he didn't seem to hear me; he gripped the frost-covered bars, his eyes welling with tears.
"How did you end up in such a state... I, your father, have no face to look upon you."
Father? Did he just say father?
I studied him with a puzzled expression. Seeing him shed tears the moment he saw me, it seemed quite convincing.
So, is the setting that this man is my father in this game?
The man bowed his head, sobbing as if to press his forehead against the bars. The Royal Guard watching him turned away indifferently and moved on.
As the footsteps faded to the end of the hall, the man glanced at the direction the guard had disappeared, then snapped his head back toward me.
In a split second, the tears that had been welling in his eyes vanished as if they had been a lie. He gestured urgently for me to come closer.
Tilting my head, I approached slowly, and he leaned in, pressing his lips close to my ear to whisper.
"Did you find it?"
It? What on earth was he talking about?
When I just stared at him with a confused expression, he scanned the surroundings once more and lowered his voice to a whisper.
"The Royal Seal. I asked you if you found it!"
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