Heiress of Horror

When the owner of the horror game world summoned me home to reunite with my family, I was busy scolding the horrors in my dungeon.

After spending years as a dungeon boss, I finally learned that I was the heiress of the Swans in the real world.

The moment I stepped through the front door, carrying the gifts my horrors gave me on my back, the fake heiress shoved me hard to the ground.

"Don't even think you can come back and take my place! Mom and Dad will never love you!"

My birth parents treated me with indifference, made me sleep in the storage room, and used me to make their fake daughter look good.

At a banquet, my fiancé splashed red wine on me before acting intimate with the fake heiress right in front of my face.

It wasn't until the fake heiress was chosen to participate in 'Call of the Sea', a horror scenario, that they remembered my value.

Without any hesitation, they bound me to enter the game with her, gently reassuring her, "Don't worry, Anna, we'll make sure you're safe no matter what!"

"Don't be afraid, alright? Sylvia will die in your place!"

None of them noticed the mocking smile on my lips.

Silently, I spoke in my heart, 'Welcome to my dungeon! Now, none of you will leave alive!'

When I woke up again, it was to the scent of salty sea air and the feeling of damp, sticky sand on my palms.

Meanwhile, my biological parents and my fiancé were comforting Anna somewhere nearby.

When they saw me wake up, however, their faces immediately darkened coldly.

"It's all your fault! You bring around so much misfortune with you that you got Anna caught up in this mess!"

"If it weren't because you weren't willing to kneel and lick Anna's shoes, the scenario wouldn't have been activated in the first place!"

Hah!

Anna was the one who was completely insistent on summoning the horror scenario, but now they somehow pushed all the responsibility onto me.

There were ten people who were summoned in total. Only the five of us knew each other, while the rest were all strangers.

When these strangers heard that even my family was blaming me, they quickly joined in as well, thinking their words to be the truth.

"Are you mad? If you have a death wish, go do it yourself! Don't drag us all into it!"

Some of them even gestured to attack me.

Just then, however, a robotic voice came out of nowhere.

[Welcome to the horror scenario, Call of the Sea. Please head towards Sea Village, find the village chief, and obtain the Villager's Code of Conduct.]

At that moment, a man with an afro, who shall hereby be called Afro, who seemed very experienced with scenarios, breathed a sigh of relief.

"Whoof, at least this is just an A-ranked mythological scenario. As long as we follow the rules, no one's going to die."

Oh?

I looked towards the endless expanse of sea, the blood-red vapor wafting off of it making me curl my lip in satisfaction.

Much earlier before I returned to the real world and found my birth family, I had already long been dissatisfied with how bosses from other dungeons looked down on us, so I'd spent quite some time lecturing the horrors under my supervision.

Looking around now, I noticed that many parts of the scenario had been altered.

Which meant I was very curious to see what kind of surprises they had prepared for me.

At first, we all decided on following the system's guidance to Sea Village, but no one was willing to be the vanguard even though the difficulty of the scenario was low.

Afro saw that the five of us knew each other, and so quickly banded together with the other five to go against us.

"You're the ones who activated this dungeon, so one of you needs to take the lead!"

He had barely finished speaking when my parents shoved me from behind, almost making me stumble to the ground.

"What are you looking at? Are you expecting Anna to take the lead? She's our precious little girl, who we've raised with care since she was little! Not some useless mongrel who's spent their time running around in the dirt outside!"

I only wanted to raise my head, but my fiancé stepped forward and slapped me hard.

"Don't glare at Anna like that, you'll scare her!"

Hiding behind them, Anna sniffled pitifully.

"Don't be so mean to me, Sylvia. If it weren't because you couldn't let go of your pride, we wouldn't have gotten caught in this mess anyway!"

I was so angry I actually started trembling.

When Anna told me to kneel and lick her shoes in public, I obviously refused.

In retaliation, she summoned a horror scenario to threaten me, and now this was somehow all my fault?

As my emotions raged in turmoil, even space itself in the dungeon started to shift unnaturally.

Forcing myself to calm down, I smiled softly, agreeing to their request for me to lead the way.

This was my dungeon, after all. Who was going to attack me on my own turf?

If they did, they'd face retaliation from the dungeon itself!

The entire way there, no one saw a single soul, and we only started seeing signs of life when we came closer to the village.

When we saw the villagers, however, Anna couldn't help but screech, "These aren't villagers, they're all monsters!"

In the past, the villagers in my dungeon did look like humans through and through. However, as a result, they didn't seem scary at all, and didn't feel comfortable with human skin, either.

Therefore, I told them to just show up as they were, and now they truly were a sight to behold.

Each of them had the head of an aquatic animal, and the body of a human being.

When they heard Anna, all of their gazes converged upon our party.