In the **Grinn System** tasks, there were certain conditions that Albeko could not see.
For example, the Capture Target section that featured her name, as well as the hidden task conditions.
Otherwise, during their second meeting, Albeko would have been able to use those hidden conditions to determine that Green’s goal was to bathe in dragon blood. She wouldn’t have been so surprised if she had known.
Furthermore, obtaining the Side Leaf of the Ancestral Land and retrieving cursed items were not particularly difficult tasks.
Therefore, the most likely goal for Green’s main quest was for a Capture Target in the Suland region to reach a favorability level of **[Inexpressible]**.
With the targets restricted to the Suland region, it was impossible for Green to pursue Silbel since he had no foundation with her. Thus, the only possible Capture Target was Dolores.
This led to a single question.
Should Albeko actually help Dolores?
In a mere seven or eight hours, Dolores had shifted from the trusting posture she held at the university to now saying she hated Green and wanted to kill him.
It was far too much of a leap. Albeko could rack her brain and still fail to imagine what could have happened in the interim to create the current situation.
Albeko faintly hoped that Dolores had simply misspoke—that perhaps she didn’t mean it in the most literal, superficial sense.
Meaning, Dolores truly intended to kill Green.
That was neither logical nor consistent with her character design. Not to mention, Green had saved her, and Dolores wasn’t a truly evil person.
Albeko was the type to soften her heart easily, but before that, she needed to clarify if Dolores meant exactly what she thought.
Albeko asked her if it was a slip of the tongue, and the latter gave her a negative answer.
Then… what was the reason?
“Albeko, are you willing to believe me?” Dolores asked, like someone searching for a literal life-saving straw.
Logically, Albeko had no reason to refuse. This could bring her closer to Dolores.
Albeko nodded and replied, “I believe you, Dolores.”
Dolores instinctively hugged Albeko. The latter raised her hands, her lips twitching, with no intention of returning the embrace.
Her first reaction was a silent thought.
‘My clothes are inevitably going to be used as rags.’
Albeko had no interest in girls being affectionate with each other. It was obvious that Dolores was grabbing onto something to cry because she was miserable.
Returning the hug felt too intimate, while patting her shoulder and saying “there, there, don’t cry” gave off a strange loli-mother vibe. It felt too bizarre.
Even if she was technically Dolores’s ‘creator,’ and in some way similar to a mother.
Even with a beautiful woman like Dolores, Albeko sadly discovered she didn’t have a single suggestive thought. Perhaps certain preferences of hers had long since been altered.
She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
She sighed helplessly and waited until Dolores’s crying subsided and she stopped hugging her. Only then did Albeko take out a handkerchief to wipe her own clothes.
“Can you tell me now why you want to kill Green?”
Dolores felt a bit restless. She didn’t know why she felt such a sense of kinship with Albeko.
It was like they were brothers.
But if that were the case, she shouldn’t have hugged the other person and cried. Instead, she should have just kept her head down and wept while the other person patted her back.
Maybe Albeko would have patted her shoulder and said, ‘Brother, don’t cry…’
No… she shouldn’t have even cried. She should have gritted her teeth and restrained the tears.
Dolores herself might have been influenced by this body, resulting in subconscious actions and becoming more emotional in certain aspects.
Fortunately, this embarrassing display was seen by Albeko.
For Dolores, aside from Albeko, she had no other way to contend with the system.
Silbel’s growth was too far off. She could only be like Veserian and gamble on Albeko siding with her.
If the other girl chose Green over her, then Dolores would have no means of resistance left.
She had thought she still had some room to struggle, more time to maneuver under Green’s **[System]**.
But.
From [Familiarity] to [Trust], how long had Green taken…? Had it even been five days? At this rate, how much longer could her consciousness sustain itself?
How much longer could her heart of resistance last?
Facing Green, Dolores never had any trump cards or bargaining chips to begin with.
In fact, as time passed, she would be manipulated by the system to erase her will to resist, replacing it with love for Green.
If, and only if, someone else could help her.
Then it could only be Albeko, who was also a Capture Target. After all, in the original plot, Silbel could use dreams to kill Green. Albeko surely had similar means.
So, her only remaining problems were how to gain the other’s trust and gambling—gambling that she would choose her.
Dolores had no other options left.
“I’ve discovered that my consciousness is being tampered with. It’s driving me to like Green, regardless of my will… It’s all because of Green. I’m finally certain of it.”
“You should be able to understand me. You told me before…”
“Just because the past version of yourself liked him doesn’t mean the current version has to… Albeko, that’s what you told me. You should be able to understand…”
“You said you also hate destiny and prophecies… Green says he likes me, but right now, he’s using other means to interfere with my will and emotions.”
By now, the two had entered the room. Albeko was subconsciously backed against the wall by Dolores’s small movements. Albeko opened her mouth, her eyes darting away slightly.
“I… I…”
Albeko stuttered several times. She had indeed said those words to Dolores, but her story had been a fabrication, whereas Dolores’s feelings were genuine.
She felt a faint ache in her heart. Was it her conscience?
Gritting her teeth, Albeko tried her best not to show any anomaly as she echoed Dolores’s words, replying, “I can understand you…”
But what followed were even more heart-wrenching words from Dolores.
“I have a premonition that this manipulated emotion will completely replace me. If… if one day, the ‘me’ who has fallen in love with him looks back at this current rebellion as childish and mocks it with ridicule…”
“If my love for him hasn’t gone through life-and-death experiences, the passage of time, or romantic dramas… then for the current me, does this emotion, this ‘liking,’ belong to me?”
“Albeko, do you think if that happens, I count as being dead? Even if my flesh and soul are still alive, if my thoughts are not continuous… can I really say I haven’t died?”
Dolores wanted to find validation from Albeko; these were her innermost thoughts.
At the same time, this was her only method to evoke resonance in Albeko, to quickly bridge the gap in their relationship and obtain help.
After all, compared to the Dolores who once loved Green, the current Dolores was just a stranger who had met her a few times.
Even if they might have met in a previous life, Dolores didn’t think her weight in the other girl’s heart could surpass Green’s.
Yes, she knew that resisting Green would be extremely difficult, but she could only kidnap Albeko onto this path of resistance—a path Albeko originally wouldn’t have taken.
Even if this self-centered outpouring was too cruel and opportunistic for an incomplete-minded girl like Albeko, who had just started university.
But just as that most helpless, sorrowful phrase kept repeating:
I have no other choice…
The heavy emotions followed Dolores’s words and expressions, weighing down on Albeko.
She always treated this real world as a game, subconsciously labeling these real girls like Dolores and Silbel as “Capture Targets.”
In a game, revenge requires a motive; retaliation requires the other party to have harmed the protagonist first.
Even if the **[System]** in the game provided items starting from [Punishment] to make the Capture Targets remember the things they did to hurt the male lead.
Albeko didn’t want to be too much of a saint. In the plot she had personally written, Dolores’s philosophy was to encourage the male lead with the idea that “harm cannot be easily forgiven.”
The ideas she had once put to paper were too far removed from the reality that had evolved here.
Dolores’s current plight was a result of her own karma.
Albeko could choose not to care, to deceive herself, but only on the premise that she wasn’t here—that she hadn’t met, known, or established a connection with people like Dolores.
Only then could she ignore the fact that Dolores was a living, breathing person.
But Albeko had failed to do that.
Dolores had not remained oblivious to Green’s **[System]** as she did in the plot.
She realized that the murder of her will was taking place, and she was helplessly calling out to her for help.
Albeko couldn’t lie to herself. She agreed with Dolores’s words from the bottom of her heart, especially the part about forgetting the present being equal to [Death].
Dolores mistakenly thought she was the same kind of person. The background Albeko had fabricated had become her support and her final straw.
Albeko had used deception to become Dolores’s only reliance.
However, the consequences of resisting a protagonist who held the mandate of heaven were often unbearable.
Albeko was very afraid of dying, more so than a cat who had lost all eight of its lives.
She leaned against the wall. Dolores’s lowered face, streaked with tears, rested on her right shoulder.
A small, weak hand, carrying a weight as light as a feather, rested on Albeko’s left shoulder, looking as if a gust of wind could blow it away.
Low, trembling words whispered into Albeko’s ear:
“Help me… Albeko…”
“I don’t want to die…”
*Snap.*
Albeko felt the heartstrings of her conscience being pulled. The painful sensation made it difficult for her to breathe.
Her body trembled slightly, as if she too were about to lose her strength and collapse to the floor.
Veserian, who had long since awakened, stared at the ceiling. She had heard even the tiny murmur Dolores whispered into Albeko’s ear.
She closed her eyes and remained silent.
Veserian remembered the promise she had made to Dolores’s mother.
She had to protect her.
She had to protect… Dolores.