Is it you or me?

What should I do?

Many thoughts raced through my mind. I was not an Olympic runner. There is no way that I could escape this valley of the dead without having them witness me. I didn't have any special cloak either that would help me turn invisible. Damn! Why didn't I transmigrate into that wizard novel? Why did it have to be this trashy novel?

I wanted to go back home.

Sound of footsteps was drawing closer. I inhaled and exhaled.

"Alright, " I muttered under my breath, "Savina, we must make little sacrifices to make big gains.

I, Savina Cox, would survive this.

I lied down on my stomach. The flimsy rags on my body were already wet with blood. I had no idea how much of it belonged to my body. I was surrounded by corpses. The man next to me had something oozing out of his broken skull with blood. The picture was rather highly graphical. It was hard to believe that it was a fictional world.

At that time, I found myself asking many questions that were unnecessary at the moment.

Why did the author write such fine details? Did he/she know how much therapy costs these days? Was the author going to pay for my therapy?

It was unlikely so. All I wanted was to get out of this horrible book.

"Ugh… the bodies." I heard a soldier make a disgusted groan. "The smell."

Well, what did he know? I was lying with corpses. It was no rosy scent. The smell had my stomach churning too. But I needed to survive.

"I can't believe that they all jumped to their death. Why wouldn't they just accept the prince's offer?"

"They held strong pride in their lands."

"Pride led to their deaths."

My eyes were closed. But I wanted to roll my eyes at them. If this tribe wanted to protect their land to the extent that they would die for it, it was probably not about pride.

Anyway, if I was a little less proud, I might not have gotten killed by that evil emperor.

"Look for survivors." The Commander was gruff as usual. "Bring them to me."

Damn it!

The soldiers started to look around. I silently prayed that they would ignore me.

The footsteps came closer.

'No, no, please. Go away. I am dead.' I chanted mentally. 'I am dead as a mule. I am super dead. I can't be more dead than I am at the moment.'

The soldiers stepped back quickly and gasped. "Commander, this corpse curled her toes."

Fuck!

My bad habit was curling my toes when I was anxious.

Why? I didn't move again. I stayed still. Maybe they would go away.

I was done. There was no way now.

"She looks dead though." It was another soldier. "Who could survive after falling from that height?"

I wanted to give a thumbs up to that soldier.

"What if it's an undead?" The first soldier asked with a trembling voice. "The undead city isn't far from here."

Undead city? There was no such mention in the novel. Then again, the novel focussed too much on the female lead's love life.

"Don't say such things." The other soldier scolded him, "It's too far from here and only a necromancer can raise a dead. Do you see any here? It's day time."

I stopped questioning. It was a fictional world. Anything was possible.

"Turn her over once," The Commander's voice interrupted them. "Check if she's breathing."

Shitty Commander! I hated him.

The soldier inched closer to me hesitantly. I could sense that he was extremely reluctant. Just when he grabbed my soldier, I held my breath. It was a matter of death and life.

He turned me on my back and placed his finger under my nose briefly. Then, he pulled away. My body was already cold and he was damned scared.

"Dead," The soldier announced. "Commander, the chasm is deep. I don't think that anyone can survive."

"Fine." The Commander voices gruffly, "Let's take a look around and return to the camp."

When they walked away from me, I released my breath. The man's dead eyes were fixated on me. If I didn't know that I was a fictional world, I might have died from a heart attack. Well, I didn't have a heart problem. I was an active woman. But my head was already on a high dose of adrenaline. I was fucking killed once.

I raised my head a little and peeked. The soldiers were nowhere to be seen. I wanted to be sure that they were gone. So, I waited for what felt like two hours lying among the dead.

The dusk slowly fell. The stench was getting worse. I couldn't bear it anymore. I stood up slowly while trying hard not to squish any limbs of the deceased. "My apologies."

I looked up at the narrow sky and wondered if it was how frogs felt like when they looked up from the bottom of the well.

"Why does my brain always find a way to think of random things at the most serious moment?" I asked myself. Did it matter how frogs felt? I wasn't feeling well for sure. I walked in the opposite direction of the direction where I walked with the soldiers in my first life in this world. I wanted to go as far as possible. There was no way that I wanted to see the sick emperor as a survivor of this mass suicide.

Even though I knew that these weren't real bodies, my stomach churned at the grotesque sight. I guessed that I was distracted by the letter and the soldiers previous time. None of the dead had their bodies intact.

A woman was lying in the way. She was holding a child in her arms. The child should be around seven or eight. His body was limped, arms twisted in awkward shapes, face buried in blood. The woman's arm was around the child's waist.

Nausea clogged my throat. I held my stomach and bent my waist. Nothing but saliva came out of my mouth. My stomach was probably empty. Was it because I started from zero? I didn't like this. Would I be able to live sanely after seeing this?

I placed my hand on the rough wall and continued walking, ignoring every sensation that I was receiving from stepping on the dead. I didn't want to know what I was stepping on. My brain still came up with answers. I wanted to be numb.

"It wasn't real," I told myself, "It was fictional."

"What isn't real?" His voice was sepulchrally deep and resonant, carrying an underlying grim tone. "Is it you or me?"

My eyes snapped open. The man before me was none other than Dante Scheledrus Wyrm, the future villainous emperor, himself. The sword that he used to kill me last time was hanging on his waist. He was watching me with his same emotionless dark eyes.

Why? Just why? Why was he here?