There Is No Place For Fakes [EN]: Chapter 123

* * *

In front of the Starlight Shop.

“Ugh, let go of me!”

“Hold still!”

The two entangled figures were locked in a fierce struggle.

Ellencia was desperately trying to pry off Philomell’s hands, which were gripping her arms.

At first, she thought it would be easy.

She had once dragged Philomell before the Emperor. Based on what she felt then, Philomell’s strength was nothing compared to her own.

But now, even with every ounce of strength she could muster, Philomell wouldn’t budge.

‘Ugh, why is she so strong? Did she take a Strength Potion or something?’

A Strength Potion was a product that increased the user’s strength. If Philomell had really taken a Strength Potion, Ellencia’s slightly stronger body wouldn’t stand a chance.

‘I need to pick up the scroll!’

She glanced at the teleport scroll that had fallen to the ground during their earlier struggle.

‘If I could just use my arms……!’

Just as Ellencia opened her mouth to bite Philomell’s arm,

Fwoosh! Fwoosh! Fwoosh!

“Aaaagh!”

Intense sparks flew, and a sharp pain engulfed her entire body.

Philomell’s automatic protection magic had been activated.

While Ellencia’s mind was reeling from the shock, Philomell managed to restrain both of her arms with one hand. And with the other hand, she took out a cracked marble from her bag.

The desire to confirm the truth reached its peak at this moment.

Ellencia, seeing the Eye of Truth, cried out.

“No! Don’t look!”

The feeling of someone peeking into her memories was unbearably unpleasant. It felt like even her most secret thoughts were being exposed.

Philomell held the Eye of Truth high.

“I will!”

Ellencia desperately tried to squeeze out what little divine power she had left and barely managed to deploy a shield. However, the thin shield shattered when Philomell lightly struck it with her elbow.

No more divine power would come out.

“Why are you doing this!”

Philomell said to Ellencia, who was on the verge of tears.

“You broke the oath you made on your middle name and killed the nanny.”

“What?”

Ellencia’s expression clouded over.

Middle name. Hearing that word, a faint memory surfaced.

“Father, I will take responsibility for the nanny! So please, give her one more chance!”

She remembered pleading with the Emperor, intending to use the nanny for her own purposes. The Emperor had been unwilling to listen, so she invoked her middle name, a practice that held significant weight.

She had been quite impressed by how Ellencia had asserted her will in the game.

Afterward, she heard from Count Polan that there was a penalty for breaking an oath made on one’s middle name.

‘Come to think of it, there was some trivial setting like that,’ Ellencia thought, dismissing it.

Until then, she had sincerely intended to take good care of the nanny. Also, she thought that even if she broke that little oath, nothing much would happen to her.

Because Ellencia was repeatedly mentioned in the game as being loved by God.

She thought she would be fine.

“You reap what you sow.”

Philomell mercilessly struck Ellencia’s head with the marble.

The light emanating from the marble engulfed both of their consciousnesses.

* * *

Philomell found herself in her room.

No, it wasn’t Philomell’s room.

A strange place filled with unfamiliar objects. But it was also familiar. She knew it instinctively, without anyone needing to tell her.

‘This is that person’s room.’

That person’s thoughts and feelings were conveyed more vividly than before, and for a moment, she was confused about her own identity.

The intruder’s information flowed into her head. The intruder’s real name was ●●●, usually called ●●.

And that ●● was furiously working in front of the computer.

“Ah, why! Why! Why does it have to be such a terrible ending!”

She slammed the keyboard in frustration, clearly dissatisfied with the game she had been playing so diligently recently.

, often shortened to Return of the Princess. Its main draw was the beautiful illustrations, but its downfall was everything else.

It was managed by an operating team only interested in squeezing money from the users, and the game system was riddled with errors. She had found the story somewhat bland, but the ending completely ruined it.

●● glared at the text that appeared on the game screen.

It was a scene where Philomell, one of the villains in the game, was not properly punished and simply exited the stage.

Philomell, who had been hindering Ellencia at every turn throughout the game, repented and regretted her actions in the latter half, and the naive Ellencia forgave her.

Even the Emperor agreed with his daughter, saying that Philomell’s twisted behavior was partly his fault.

That alone was frustrating, but then, a secret about Philomell’s birth was suddenly revealed.

Philomell was actually the daughter of the Master of the Magic Tower, who appears in the Jeremiah route!

Thus, Philomell left the Imperial Palace in the ending and headed to the Magic Tower to meet her biological father.

The Nasar route, which she had been most looking forward to and had therefore postponed until the end, had betrayed her in this way.

●● spat out annoyedly.

“That’s why I hate mediocre villains like Philomell.”

In fact, objectively speaking, Philomell had not committed a crime worthy of death.

At worst, she was an impudent maid to the princess, ruined Ellencia’s dress, or clung to Nasar. [Nasar is likely a character in the game.]

That’s why she hated it even more.

‘I wish she would at least die at the end if she were a truly heinous villain.’

Philomell suffered a little, was forgiven, and even gained a Magic Tower Master as a father. There was a limit to how anticlimactic it could be, but this was simply frustrating.

According to the setup, Philomell also had an unfortunate past, which supposedly made her personality so awful…

“I don’t care about that! Turns out, the villain had this tragic backstory, blah blah blah.”

It was the cliché she hated most in the world.

●● wondered what went through the mind of the person who wrote this kind of story. So, she accessed the blog run by the scenario writer of ‘Stone Imperial Palace’.

Coincidentally, the latest post about ‘Stone Imperial Palace’ had just been uploaded.

[…In fact, Philomell is a character that leaves much to be desired. Since the main character is Ellencia, I don’t think I was able to fully explore Philomell’s story.]

[So, it’s just my wish, but if a sequel to ‘Stone Imperial Palace’ is ever produced, I would like to make Philomell the main character.]

[It would be nice to see Philomell at the Magic Tower, being loved by her dad and brothers.]

●● tore at her hair.

“Are you kidding me? What, Philomell as the main character of the sequel? Bullshit!”

It wouldn’t be enough to cover Ellencia’s backstory, but the villain is the main character of the sequel? That’s ridiculous!

Users would hardly empathize with the villain from the previous work.

●● lay down on the bed and kicked the blanket.

“Philomell! I really hate you!”

A villain should just end as a villain! They can commit all sorts of evil deeds and then meet a miserable end!

“Do you think I spent cash to see Philomell or something!”

If she had written the story, she would never have done it so terribly…

Then something flashed through her mind.

“Wait, there’s no law that says I can’t write it, is there?”

●● jumped up and sat back in front of the computer.

Once upon a time, she had sat at her desk to write a novel, but she soon gave up.

But now she felt like she could do it. She could use the game story as the basic framework and just add flesh to it.

After a few minutes of deliberation, the first line was finally born.

Princess Ellencia. That was the title of the novel she would write from now on.

was serialized in the ‘Stone Imperial Palace’ fan cafe. In the novel, Philomell was an irredeemable villain, unlike in the game.

●● exaggerated the minor misdeeds that Philomell had committed in the past and added new ones.

Still, she showed some kindness and let Philomell meet her Magic Tower Master father, whom she had not met in the game.

“Of course, that father will accept you once and then abandon you.”

There was no hope left for Philomell.

And the grand finale.

“Have I, have I ever been a daughter to you? Have you ever thought of me as a daughter, even a little bit?”

Philomell’s execution scene was staged very miserably, so that even the last remaining expectation would be betrayed.

The greater Philomell’s despair, the deeper ●●’s smile became. A cruel pleasure spread.

“This is the end of a proper villain!”

While she was at it, she also modified other characters to her liking.

The Emperor was a daughter-obsessed fool who couldn’t think straight when he saw his daughter. Nasar was a romantic lover.

In particular, she put all her effort into the romance part with Nasar.

“Nasar, I’ll make you the best male lead.”

●●’s favorite character, Nasar, was the least popular of the three male leads. There were various reasons.

[Does Nasar really love Ellencia? The subtle politeness makes it feel like he’s just being nice because she’s a princess.]

[I was annoyed by how sympathetic he was to Philomell.]

[Nasar’s route is just boring. A collection of typical clichés.]

[Ellencia and Nasar are both blonde, so their chemistry doesn’t stand out.]

[Compared to our tsundere [cold and aloof] nobleman, the rest are just extras.]

●● was furious when she saw those comments in the fan cafe.

‘The male lead should be a duke, of course! What’s with the wizard or the hero!’

Above all, Nasar’s character design was most to her taste.

●● put a lot of effort into Nasar’s description, while roughly filling in the word count when the other male leads appeared.

When she vaguely lumped together complex characters like Jeremiah, she was criticized for character destruction.

Nevertheless, became the most popular fanfic of ‘Stone Imperial Palace’.

●● was not the only one who felt frustrated with the original ending.

[Wow! Refreshing!]

[Philomell got what she deserved.]

Of course, there were not only positive reactions.

[But am I the only one who feels sorry for Philomell? Did she really need to be punished this much…?]

[It’s too contrary to the original theme of ‘There is no perfect villain’.]

But even those people admitted that was more stimulating and satisfying than the original.

Then one day, she received a call from the game’s management team. They proposed to release as the official novel of ‘Stone Imperial Palace’.

●● was overjoyed and accepted the offer.

When the news was released, most people congratulated her, but there were also many negative opinions.

[Crazy. Even so, they’re going to release a fanfic as an official novel? Whose idea was this?]

[They promised to release a novel, but they must have thought it was too expensive to hire a professional writer.]

[What are they going to do with the scenario writer?]

[The academic consensus is that they were fired from the company due to poor game sales.]

●● snorted.

“No matter what you guys say, I was chosen by the management team.”

Why else would they entrust the official novel to her, not the scenario writer?

‘It means that , which I wrote, is a story more suitable for the original than the original!’

After all, the game’s ending was wrong, and her idea was right.

And that belief became even stronger when ●● was possessed by Ellencia.

The reason she was chosen among so many people was clear. Some omnipotent being, whether God or something else, had given her a chance.

‘To lead this world in the right direction!’

And that right direction was, of course, .