The Reincarnated Villainess Whose Romantic Trauma From Her Past Life Is Too Strong Is Sweetly and Painfully Doted On by the Prince of the Neighboring Country - Chapter 23

“Oh, no, no. I’m not anyone worth naming.”

The shopkeeper laughed heartily, but Lily did not lower her guard.

(…What’s going on? Is he an NPC from the management side? …But certainly, the fact that I didn’t find this shop randomly in town, but was warped here directly from the status screen, means he’s definitely someone from the system side.)

“Do you know why I was reincarnated into this world?”

“Reincarnated? My, whatever could you mean? I’m just a humble shopkeeper tending my store.”

—I see.

The way the shopkeeper feigned ignorance made it clear he had no intention of answering honestly.

—Fine then.

It wasn’t as if Lily actually cared about the reason she was brought here. What she needed right now, as the shopkeeper himself had pointed out, was a way to somehow reach the True Ending.

“Do you know how I can get to the True Ending from this state?”

Lily’s tone toward the shopkeeper had shifted. It was no longer respectful; it was the casual, impatient tone one might use when talking to a game system.

“Well now… under normal circumstances, if you don’t miss a single correct choice from here on out, I think you could just barely reach the goal.”

—Under normal circumstances.

—If you don’t miss a single correct choice.

On the surface, his words sounded like they offered a glimmer of hope, but to Lily, they sounded like a situation riddled with risk.

(In other words, if I mess up even one choice, the True End is gone. And since things are already veering away from ‘normal,’ I don’t know how much I can trust that anyway.)

In Normal Mode, Salute would never appear during Cherie’s condemnation scene. His presence alone was proof enough that things were no longer “normal.”

“…Don’t you have, like, a Strategy Guide or something?”

“We don’t carry that sort of thing here, I’m afraid.”

—I mean, strictly speaking, there are no strategy guides for life, right? Ahahaha!

The shopkeeper laughed mockingly. Lily’s face contorted into a look of pure malice, a far cry from the expression of a typical heroine, as her anger boiled over. However, the shopkeeper’s expression shifted again, and with a wicked glint in his eye, he spoke.

“But I might be able to introduce you to a few items that could be useful to you, dear customer.”

—He said.

Lily blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, she was back in front of the Stone Tablet in the Grand Sanctuary of Flower-Sowing.

(—It looks like I made it back safely.)

To Lily, it felt as though she had been gone for quite a while, but the people around her didn’t seem suspicious at all. This was only natural. To an outside observer, while Lily was in the “shop,” she simply looked as though she were standing still, touching the status screen.

However, inside the pocket of Lily’s dress sat the items she had purchased. This was undeniable proof that she had completed her transaction in that brief span of seconds.

Checking the contents of her pocket, Lily felt a surge of satisfaction at having achieved her goal. She closed the status window on the tablet and left the Sanctuary to begin her journey home.