Aurora woke up with cold sweat all over her body. Her breathing was heavy, and she reflexively touched her chest. However, she didn't feel any pain. There was no wound.

Was it just a dream?

She then noticed that something was wrong. Her hand felt smaller than she remembered. She stared at her hand in confusion.

"What happened...?" Aurora whispered.

She surprised even more. Even her voice sounded different. It was still Aurora voice, but it sounded more childish.

Aurora looked around the room. It was the same room she first woke up in this world, not her academy room.

She gulped.

An idea came to her mind, but she didn't want it to be true. She got up from her bed and looked in the mirror.

"No..." Aurora murmured.

In the mirror, she saw a little girl with blue hair. It was still Aurora, but she looked so much younger.

"No, no, no, no, this can't be happening!" she wailed.

The only explanation she could come up with was that she had died by Nova's hand and had now regressed to an earlier version of herself.

"All my progress..." Aurora said in pain. "I don't want to redo everything again..."

This was worse than accidentally deleting your save file. And it was one of a gamer's worst nightmares.

All the connections she had built with Ruby, Sera, and the others, everything she had worked hard for all this time, had now disappeared.

Aurora lost all her energy and ended up sitting on the floor.

"Why is this happening...?"

She let out a long sigh, trying to accept whatever was happening right now.

"Okay," Aurora thought to herself. "If this is how it is, then I will take it. Just think of the positive side. I get more time to prepare--"

Her thoughts were interrupted by an eerie feeling of how quiet the place was. There was no sound other than what she created. Why had she just noticed this now? In fact, outside the window was pitch black.

"Is it the middle of the night?" she wondered. Still, something felt off.

Aurora slowly opened her room door and went outside.

"Lyra, are you there?" she called out to her maid, but nobody answered.

"Weird," she thought. "Even if it's the middle of the night, this place should not be that quiet." She didn't see any maids, or anyone at all for that matter.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

She walked quietly around the corridors, feeling more and more uneasy. She then checked her father's office, but nobody was there.

"Maybe he's already asleep," she thought. So she went to the Viscount's bedroom, but again, nobody was there.

Aurora started to panic.

"Hello, anybody here?" she said, her voice wavering.

But there was no reply.

"Please answer me," Aurora said.

But nobody answered.

Things weren't as simple as she thought. She immediately checked all the rooms around her, but all she found were empty rooms.

Scared, she ran outside and then she just noticed that everything besides her home was pitch black.

"What is this?" Aurora said, barely above a whisper. "What happened to me...?"

And then the darkness engulfed her.

Aurora woke up with cold sweat covering her body, her breath uneven.

"A dream?" she said, looking at her hands, which were now normal size. Looking around, she realized she was back in her room at the magic academy. So all of that was just a dream? She couldn't be sure yet.

"Lyra," Aurora called out. "Lyra, are you there?"

"Yes, miss," a familiar voice could be heard behind her room door. "What's the matter? Do you need something?"

Aurora breathed a sigh of relief. "No, it's nothing," she said. "I just had a nightmare. Anyway, why don't you come in?"

"I can't," Lyra replied.

"Why?" Aurora asked.

"Have you forgotten?" Lyra said, her tone somehow ominous.

"Forgotten what...?" Aurora asked, but the maid didn't answer.

Aurora was confused; something was definitely wrong. She got out of bed and walked towards the door. She hesitated for a moment but then opened it. Aurora was shocked as she saw what was behind the door. A rotting corpse wearing Lyra's maid outfit fell towards her.

She reflexively caught the body but immediately regretted it and pushed it aside. The smell of rotting meat stabbed Aurora's nose, and a bunch of disgusting maggots were moving on it.

"Miss..." the corpse said in a distorted Lyra's voice.

Aurora woke up with cold sweat all over her body.

"What... again?" Aurora said.

The image of rotting Lyra still bothered her mind. After calming herself down, she looked around the room. This time, she was in her room before she had transmigrated, with familiar posters on the wall, novels and manga placed randomly on the bookshelf, her laptop on the table, and some anime figures.

"I'm back to my original world...?" Aurora said to herself. "No, this can't be real. Am I still dreaming?"

This whole thing feels like a never-ending nightmare.

And then something clicked in Aurora's head.

Never-ending nightmares? Of course! In the game Wicked Villainess of Ruin, you played as Nova. So the cheat code Aurora has been using all this time, the thing that allows her to use LightSpeed, Nova could use it too.

In the game, if you use the cheat code as Nova, it enables her to use a unique skill called Endless Nightmare. It's a skill that traps her enemy's mind in an endless, dark, twisted dream. The exact description of what happened to her right now.

How and why Nova could use cheats like her, Aurora didn't know. But she was sure about one thing, she wasn't dead yet. This was all just a long, continuous dream - a nightmare that Nova forced her to experience.

Aurora clenched her hand.

Nova really beat me this time, huh? she thought. That sucks.

But it's fine; she will get out of this prison sooner or later. She will make Nova pay.

***

The giant snail-like monster was rampaging and roaring in anger because Rita had successfully hurt it.

"Be careful!" the Adventurer girl said to her fellow teammate. "Don't get too close!"

"Are you ready yet?" the girl with the pink cloak asked as she jumped back, standing close to the tall girl with the white sword.

"On it," Rita said as she put more and more mana into the sword. She kept refining her wind magic on the edge of the sword, making it as sharp as possible.

They attacked with more magic, obviously failing to make any real damage towards the monster, but it was enough to distract it from Rita.

Then Rita started to run and jump, prepared to throw her best attack yet.

With a huge swing, Rita created wind so strong that everything around her was blown away, and she successfully cut the monster into two, killing it instantly.

Rita sheathed her sword and walked towards Ruby with a proud look on her face.

"Wow, that sword is really something, huh?" Ruby said, impressed.

"Miss... Please praise me, not the sword..." Rita said, disappointed.

"But isn't all this thanks to that legendary sword?" Ruby said.

Rita sighed. "That's true, but..."

"Ah," Ruby remembered about Aurora. "Forget about that! Hurry, follow me," Ruby said.

"Where?" Rita asked.

"Just follow me!" Ruby said.

Ruby forced Rita to follow her back to the small pond where Aurora and Nova were fighting, while the rest of the adventurer group took Prince Casper to safety - which the girl with the pink cloak happily agreed to.

"Please slow down, miss," Rita said as she saw how hurried Ruby was.

"No," Ruby said.

It was clear that she was hoping to be in time to help Aurora, but what she found was a weird scene where both Aurora and Nova were lying on the ground, unconscious.

Based on the wounds on their bodies, it was easy to assume that Aurora had won the fight. On Nova's body, they could see all kinds of cuts, both deep and shallow, while on Aurora, there were no wounds at all, just a few cuts on her clothes.

Ruby immediately picked up Aurora from the ground. She noticed that Aurora was breathing normally, which made her sigh in relief. However, when Aurora didn't react to her at all, it made Ruby anxious.

"Aurora, please wake up..." Ruby begged as she held Aurora, who was still unconscious in her arms. "Aurora, can you hear me?"

Yet, Aurora didn't wake up at all, no matter what Ruby tried.

"What happened to her, Rita?" Ruby asked her knight with a pitiful expression.

"I'm sorry, miss, I don't know either," Rita said, looking at Aurora more closely. "She doesn't look hurt, and her breathing is normal. Maybe she just got tired and lost consciousness?"

"Really?" Ruby said. "Is it really just that...?"

Looking at her master on the brink of tears, Rita hesitated. She didn't want to say something thoughtless.

"I... I'm not sure," Rita said. "For now, let's take her back and check on her."

"No," Ruby said, tears starting to fall down her cheeks. "What should I do if she never wakes up again...?"

***