As the time was still suspended, Layla had a tick mark on her head showing her anger and had questioning herself and possibly whatever god/ deity/ angel/ demon/ ROB/ cosmic-hole-in-reality that caused her reincarnation into the body of a villainess, or more precisely, why she ended up in the body of a villainess from a freaking eroge game.
"Damn, why did I get to deal with this?"
She massaged her forehead still gritting her teeth, then sighed as she looked towards the world around her. Her body instictually and slowly giving her signals that her magic power might run out at this rate.
She needs to stop her magic.
"Okay, calm down, calm down. You can have your angst and rage fest later when you leave this stupid party and find a secluded place, but now, just. Move the flow of time."
Taking a breath calming her nerves, she slowly moved to where she was before the world stopped moving, and then closed her eyes while focusing.
She had used magic by accident due to rage and maybe her magic being unstable due to her age (she will check books about magic later to make sure), so maybe calming down will stop her grip on the flow of time until she learns how to control it.
'Inhale, exhale, calm yourself. You should have more control over yourself.'
Her rage slowly being controlled, she felt the pull of her magic on time weakening, as the magical drain was slowing down.
Time started moving, just slowly, before it returned to it's original speed.
Layla contently sighed as she tried her best to act like nothing happened as she made sure to contain any annoyance she felt for now.
Not interested in stopping time or accidentally turning people into atoms or teleporting them or whatever that might happen.
After the whole party finally ended an hour or so later, she had naturally left with her family on their extravagant Royal carriage, her, her brother and her parents.
Accompanying their carriage were four others that contained guards, both knights and mages to, naturally protect them from any possible assassins.
She didn't find that being too much, as she now realized that it is better to be over-protected for now than under-protected and risk being killed.
As the carriage reached their castle, she went to her room, where she tried as best as she could to relax before deciding to search in her memories about that game she had played in her previous life and write down what she can recall, which was surprisingly a lot.
Better start now while the memories are still fresh, and she doesn't know if she might forget it in some way.
Telling the maids that she wants some alone time, she closed the door.
"Stupid, boring party, and stupid reincarnation. At least if my assumptions are right, then I can quickly find some way to protect myself."
Layla sighed, shaking her head at the sudden problem shoved at her, as she sat on her bed with an empty notebook and a pen in her hands.
She started writing the informations in Japanese just in case one of the maids or her family found out the book and raised questions about her knowing people and places before she visited them.
Last thing she needs is people thinking she is a "seer" or that she is possessed and mind-controlled or something, because that would be troublesome to deal with if it happened too soon, if at all.
A part of her mind, the still 'young' part told her that it won't be that bad, but the 'older' part didn't agree.
This should stay a secret from anyone, at least for now.
At least, if she wrote it in another language, she might be able to lie and say she wants to "make her own writen language", or maybe say she just is writing in whatever way she felt like it.
She still isn't confident about this method, but she will have to endure it for now.
"Okay now, let's start; the name of the game first: Let Me Fill Your Heart."
She whispered as her face looked focused on the task in hand.
Let Me Fill Your Heart, a game that she had played in her previous life a few month or so before she died.
It was, as the quite cringy and cliche name almost explicitly states, an otome game where the story, just like all otome games, involves a female player character is required to "Capture" the hearts of one or more male characters by finding the path to success as the player moves the character through events that end up with the couple completely falling in love with each other, marrying, and living Happily Ever After.
Or, if one really wanted a harem, the best result is the males in the reverse harem somehow don't murder each other at the finale and somehow marry the heroine.
Of course, things are not just as easy as picking "go to beach with Capture Target, get a kiss!" or "talk to 2 CTs gently about your feelings to both of them, they get to share you (you get to date both)!".
At least, the setting and genre of the game make that more difficult than people expect.
The game, while generally an otome, was not only constricted to only that genre. It was also an Eroge, and it had Ecchi/Hentai material almost as much (if not more) as the romance part, and it also had a fantasy setting with monsters and demon king (queen) to defeat, RPG style as both the main characters and monsters take turns to kill the opposite party.
And of course, the game naturally does have a Love Obstacle that is a female, (mostly) has the hots for one or more of the Capture Targets, and who will be fighting the heroine wether in some "feminine" competitions such as cooking and whatnot, or outright fighting the heroine.
The story of the game starts with the Heroine, named Himeko, basically infodumping to the audience that the world she lives in is a magical fantasy one, and few scenes showing her as a young kid where she was adopted by a baron due to her strong magic (also because she was his illegimte child that was given to the orphanage because politics, but it's barely touched upon in the game), as she states that her life was now way better and how she cares about her parents (that are almost not even shown in the game except for very few occasions, and even then, without a face.)
The game then cuts to what is roughly 10 or so years after Himeko got adopted and she says that she is at that time fifteen-sixteen years old, and that the day will be her first day at the kingdom's best school for nobles and talented people, as she was in the middle of preparing herself.
And you get a clear image of Himeko, as a beautiful young lady; a girl with beautiful blond hair and sea-deep blue eyes, and an "angel's face" (the game's words, not Layla).
And you also get why it's an eroge game, as it shows her as half-naked body, making sure that the player pays enough attention at the girl's giant D-cup bust and her "bubbly butt" as she was clad in white underwear. The next scene is her wearing the school uniform, which does, as expected from an eroge, show her bust's huge size and it barely covers her rear and almost shows her panties. Typical.
The next couple scene, the heroine is looking at the school from the outside then entering her clasroom, which are naturally filled mostly with faceless extras except few students and the teacher, which are naturally attractive.
Skip few pointless scenes, and the player gets to choose between four options concerning where Himeko should be having her lunch, which depending on the place, it will have her interact with one of the four Capture Targets and starting their "capture path".
Naturally, being what it is, the game has no problem throwing the Idiot Ball on the heroine a few times so that all first interactions start with her panties being seen by the male leads, and it gets to escalate from just that into full-blown nudity and groping her boobs, then eventually, sex scenes along with engagement.
This part of the game also has no reverse harem possibility, so the player is stuck with choosing only one guy to date/have sex with (for that part anyways).
Of course, there is also the fight between the love obstacles that is, depending on the male lead chosen, either engaged to him or his childhood's best friend, or his "friend with benefit".
And that is basically the first "arc" of the game, one can say.
Layla had to lampshade the fact that there weren't any scenes where the male gets humiliated by the heroine seeing him in embarassing underwears or anything similar to that as she wrote the summary of the first "arc".
The second "arc" to come was called by the fans of the game as the "Demon King (Queen) Supression" arc, as it has the defeat of said character as the prime goal:
The arc starts with Himeko and her fiancé, now a couple of years older and more mature (with empathis on her cup size to make sure) getting an invitation from the king, telling her that she was chosen to be sent to defeat the demon queen and the remaining monsters as the monsters started invading the kingdom's villages, and soon, will reach the capital and inner cities.
As there is no refuse option, the player has to accept, and the heroine and her fiancé, ALONG with the three other capture targets end up going in a typical RPG party and defeating monsters.
The player will find that the party will fight in at least 10 battles of increasing difficulty (and more optional battles to grind your levels), with few more being optional.
Once again, the player gets reminded of the game being an eroge made with people having too much time on their hands, as while the characters are well-animated and look like anime characters instad of a bunch of pixels looking like them, what Himeko has to deal with during the fights is both hilarious and ridiculous, even more if the player lost.
Every time her HP reaches certain thresholds, some of her clothes just get magically shredded, as her body gets even more exposed. And when her HP reaches the single digits, her character was barely covering her lower privates by a thread, and her chest exposed to the world. If the party actually lost a fight there, the monsters will have the males of the party killed while you get to see Himeko in a cutscene where she is naked and surrounded by monsters groping her and raping her for a few moments before the screen turns black.
The males on the other hand don't lose any clothing even if they were down to a single point of health. Layla is still unsure what their clothes are made of. And if anyone of the party 'died' in battle and the battle was won, they casually return to life to continue the journey.
Continue fighting until you reach the demon queen's castle, mowing down dozens of monsters now in a cutscene, getting to fight the Demon Queen, finally.
You lose, and Himeko and the party gets enslaved by the demon queen who is naturally, a sexy female who is apparently 200 years old.
Win the fight and Himeko somehow gains the unique powers of the Demon Queen, with one being mind-controlling people. Reverse Harem is practically guaranteed now, as the Heroine will be given no choice between either having one male lead as husband, or ALL male leads as husbands under her thrall. If she tries to only choose to have less than all male leads under her control, the not-mind-controlled ones will attack her, kidnap her, then violate her and finally murder her for playing with their feelings (because they apparently had feelings for her and couldn't handle living without her now that the threat is over). Turning into a yandere murder game quicker than one expect, that development.
Which now that Layla thinks of it, the male leads are really insecure and they need to man-up if they had to murder and rape the heroine if they did not get to marry her and the player chose not to brainwash them into unconditionally loving Himeko.
Talk about incel attitude united with yandere character traits.
Once more, Layla started to write in her book about the final arc, the Coup D'état arc.
A year passed after the defeat of the Demon Queen, and you see that Himeko had managed to successfully marry all people in her reverse harem as somehow, none of the cature target's families or love obstacles had no problem with her marrying multiple men right off the bat.
(A huge base of the fans speculated Himeko brainwashed them while offscreen as well. Layla was also one of those agreeing with this theory in her previous life.)
The plot kicks after a (mostly pointless) sex scene where the Heroine, going to the market, ends up being ambushed by a bunch of men in black trying to assassinate her with a dagger, and naturally failing as in just a second Himeko kicks their asses with magic, along with a shot of her ass and new black panties.
The men commit suicide before being apprehended by the guards, as the First Prince (who is Layla's brother) will be talking about some suspicious activities going on in secret, as he thought that some of the nobles were acting shady lately with the other CTs agreeing with him and telling the heroine that she might need to train herself more, and they go in a dungeon that is somewhere around the city to basically grind and level up. The characters also point out that there are like, a fifty or so dungeons in their kingdom or surrounding it.
And it sure had baffled Layla in her previous life that all the monsters in that dungeon are basically of a level either equaling the Demon Queen or higher than her (though stats are nowhere as high naturally until around level 85, while the Demon Queen is level 70), which makes one wonder why they didn't grind in there first THEN kick the ass of the demons easily, as even a 5~7 level difference and onward pretty much guarantees an almost 100% win rate for the higher-levelled party.
And then when they return from their grinding and reaching the max level, 99, they find their kingdom is dealing with rioters, both common and nobles.
Nobles were fed-up with her marrying multiple men, the king for allowing the travesty to occur (and strongly hinted they hated her since their daughters couldn't marry the Ultra Charming Capture Targets), while commoners were talking about freedom, equality, all the while as they were mowed down by the guards, who are also being murdered by the commoners as they try their best to dogpile on the nobles and murder them.
The party gets to separate to stop the rebellions in different areas, and the heroine finds herself alone and tries to help people by healing the injured and capturing the violent rebels, which might have given more impact if the cutscene didn't have Himeko's assets in focus while healing, and her behind when stopping the rebellion with magic.
And then, out of nowhere, the heroine gets thrown away crashing into a wall, and she gets to see the preparator, the sexy tan-skinned, white-haired, red-eyed Villainess of the game, Layla von Rothssey (although she only appeared in the last arc out of nowhere and no clues or foreshadowing).
The villainess will then show how scary she is by immediately ripping all of Himeko's clothing to shreds, uncluding underwears while at the same time seemingly teleporting her in the middle of the raging rebellion, much to Himeko's shock and mortification and embarrassment (because what could be expected?).
Then you get a quick (but apparently lazy) infodump from Layla for why she did that.
She was the first princess of the kingdom, but that didn't stop people from bullying her due to how different she looked compared to her family, as rumors about her being illegimate started spreading, her family became more distant and her brother Zain thought it was funny to steal her panties and peep on her when he was thirteen, and she got scolded for "causing a scene" whenever she tried to tell her parents and the servants were of no help.
In the end, she got engaged against her will to a wealthy noble who has a penchant for torturing females and treating them as slaves. By her own father, the king, no less. The whole thing supposedly happened just a few months before the story began.
It was portrayed as her fault that she didn't pamper the first prince and didn't humor his pervy attitude that extended to harm her, and she was called a "prude" by the female nobles because, it's eroge, and women need to gladly take a man's orders and satisfy him (unless the Heroine got to befriend them and stayed that way, then they get a guy the female can satisfy herself by using without caring about anything else) while she has all the right to be pissed at what happened to her.
She then tricked the noble into leaving the kingdom before murdering him and escaping, leveling up herself so her revenge can be fulfilled, but she seemingly got too deep into her hatred, and instead of just killing those who harmed her, she dragged the whole nation of innocent people as well.
Game!Layla then shows her powers, and tells Himeko her power is the ability to control space, time, matter, and life/death energies as easily as breathing, and the first battle begins with only her and the Heroine, and it shows pretty blatantly how overpowered Layla is, as the game explicitly says that the goal of the battle isn't dropping her HP to zero, but to instead SURVIVE. The player has to make sure that Himeko doesn't lose the battle for a set amount of turns, where Layla will use spells that drain HP (death), heal herself if taking damage (life), applying the Time and Space aspects in either making the player's attacks miss for the duration of one turn (time), or ignoring whatever buffs the player might have (space), and finishing with an attack that can basically cause Himeko to only have 1 HP if she survived it (matter).
Not that Himeko can actually defeat her even if the player somehow spammed all types of powerful attacks.
In fact, defeating the Game Boss Layla by having her HP reach 0, even using hacks, is such an impossibility that even the game maker purposely made a quick cutscene where Layla decides to stop playing around and stops time and disintegrates the body of the heroine on the spot, before doing the same to the male leads if she was ever defeated in that battle.
Of course, why she didn't kick everyone's ass before the end of the two first arcs can only be excused by plot, and even then, she could have just stopped time, and then murdered everyone who she hated by turning their bodies into a shapeless mass of atoms.
Surviving the battle, the player gets a cutscene where the rest of the male leads finally arrive, and the one in glasses (the smart Megane guy) tells her Himeko to use her mind-controlling/hypnosis/charm spell, and the heroine remembers it and after angsting for a few seconds, she casts the spell, and you get a furious declaration of utter annihilation from Game!Layla, and the final battle occurs.
Once more, it's pretty much useless to try to drop her HP to zero, and you need to survive for nearly twice the amount of turns you had to suffer from during the first battle with Game!Layla, as the mind-control spell is slowly taking hold on the villainess, and as the final turn of the boss had finished and your party (or at least one of them) survived, you get a mesage that Layla had been successfully enslaved by Himeko's magic.
Meanwhile, losing means that the party dies with Himeko's head stuck on a pole. Game!Layla took no prisoners when winning, and just murders her enemies when they are lacking. Which is why Game!Layla had fans who made their own fanfics about her just murdering those that wronged her, by the way, and why some of the fandom believed she could have been a dark fantay game heroine.
If the player won, then you get to the last portion of the story, where the party are thinking of wether she should be killed for her crimes, or to stay enslaved to the heroine, which is basically the only possible fates the villainess can have.
If the player chose keeping her as a slave, then Himeko will act as "Karma" Incarnate, and have Game!Layla work as her maid AND her mistress, and the guys also are allowed to use her body, because Himeko believes that they deserve someone else to satisfy them whenever she couldn't, and the player gets rewarded by an orgy cutscene involving all the male leads, the heroine, and the brainwashed villainess, along with a throw-away paragraph about Himeko using Game!Layla's life affinity to live forever along with her reverse harem.
Meanwhile, if the player chose to kill the villainess, then Himeko will somehow gain the powers and affinities of her dead opponent, and make herself immortal, along with being worshipped as a goddess, as she cured the ill and turned the other "hostile" countries, kingdoms and empires into ash and ruling over them for the sake of "Peace".
And thus ends the whole story.
"..."
Layla, the real one, stopped writing for a moment to just get her head around the absurdity of the whole thing, as she felt like punching someone.
"Yeah, I hate getting dragged into this. But at least I got reborn into an OP character, not a random person, or god forbid, those stupid love interests."
She had almost gagged at the thought while re-reading the plot of the game.
The fact that the final boss Layla was part of Zain's family was a part she still couldn't compehend, like, at all. In the game, there was no foreshadowing about it in any way. The villainess' brother didn't even mention her existence anywhere, even if the player chose his "capture path" and had a scene where they talked about family. The guy didn't even state he has a sister, which makes sense since Layla's character concept was created far later, and the game maker had to give her a relation to one of the male leads or heroine in some way, even if it was made out of thin air.
Now with the plot written on paper, Layla got back to writing as much as she can recall about the characters' descriptions and skills:
First capture target: Zain von Rothssey, the first prince, and the one who will be getting the throne of the king after his father's retirement or death. He is a handsome guy with a "princely" looks that naturally made him famous with the ladies. Personality-wise, he isn't the best person to stay with in a relationship, because he is an Ore-sama type guy with a huge penchant for perving on the females, looking at their panties and possibly getting a feel when he can. In fact, his introduction scene involves him in the middle of kissing and groping a half-naked girl on the roof of the school, where the Heroine will coincidentally see them, trip as she is about to leave from embarrasment, and ends up accidentally showing them her panties.
He then will see her face and immediately fall in love with her, and the rest of his route involves the Heroine basically showing more of her body to make him care about her after she falls in love with him due to him "apologizing" for his womanizing ways, but basically states it in all but name that it's only because the Heroine is the most attrctive person he had ever seen, and that it is HER job to allow him to do what he felt like it with her, and the fact that his route has more embarrassing incidents occuring to Himeko, most done by him in his "effort" to make her "more sexually liberal" with him.
Otherwise he would have ignored her and returned to sleeping with other women, Layla believed. What a brother she does (or will) have in this life.
Battle-wise, he can use swords very well and has water magic, which he uses to make the heroine "wet" a few times.
His route's love obstacle is his fiancée, Anna von Hoen, a fire-using hot-headed woman who has red hair and kinda flat-chested who is (justifiably) frustrated at her fiancé constantly cheating on her but because "love" she thinks it's either HER fault or the other girls' fault for him ignoring her. She tries to bully the heroine, which results in the end of the Heroine becoming "brave" in the near-climax and fighting her, and the heroine wins and gets to spank Anna's bare butt in front of the class, and the prince "suddenly" loses his cool and negates their engagement. Romance ensues, and Anna is never seen again.
Second target is Jack, a student who also works as the class president of his class, he is the "cold guy" archetype, who looks cold and uncaring, and has a dark past of loneliness, but the heroine will thaw the ice around his heart and via a string of coincidences, they get to find themselves basically together in many, MANY points, where the heroine will manage to tell him that it's fine to open himself, and that's basically it. He can use darkness magic, to... debuff/attack with them? Yep.
His Obstacle is his vice-president Misa who is naturally the "Hot Librarian Girl", using water magic. She tries to have the Heroine punished more strictly by the rules of the school, and ends up battling the heroine, and she folds when the heroine wins gives a "compassionate" speech to her about respecting people's choices. Gets one final moment with her crush, and kisses him and fondles his penis and stopping right before his climax, and leaving him very aroused and frustrated, before she leaves, telling the heroine to not hurt him or there will be hell to pay. Never seen again.
Third: Astrum von Ades, a duke's son, a shy rich boy who wants friends and apparently has no experience in dealing with attention, uses light magic, and his arc is basically the heroine and him bonding over the problem with the attention they are getting and that's it. There isn't a lot of erotic moments in this route except the ending where they have sex as their attempt to see where it will get them concerning their relationship. Basically, the "pure" version of love, or the closest to it since he isn't that naive about females.
His obstacles is his childhood friend Chloe, uses earth magic, and is basically jealous at first then after a cooking contest and a mock battle where she loses, she apologizes for her previous attitude towards the heroine and tells her that Astrum is hers to care about, and cheekily gives a smack to the heroine's butt and runs smugly at her prank leaving a frustrated and embarrassed Himeko. Actually mentioned in the second arc's finale where she had apparently accepted Himiko marrying four guys like no problem.
Fourth and last love interest: Haien, a rich glass-wearing boy, stoic, and is part of the megane archetype, uses wind magic. He was born a commoner, but was able to rapidly create a fortune via making bussines deals, making medicines, and founding an organization that is basically loaded with money. He thinks of everything in the way of "profit" and is declared as a genius. Himeko's job is to make him see humans (and her, especially) as more than a walking machine used for profit.
His love obstacle is Alice, his "friend with benefits" that finds his company relaxing, and naturally didn't like the Heroine hounding her partner. After a battle where the Heroine is victorious (naturally), she cries at the loss of her partner's love, and Himeko all but shoves her to date another "good" guy that didn't get any mention until that moment, and Alice decides to try her luck with this. Mentioned later that she became a mistress to the dude she dated, but stated she is treated warmly.
"Geez, what kind of characters are those?"
As Layla finished writing about the male love interests, she found certain ones of them leaving much to be desired, personality-wise.
'Now that this is real... I am sure I won't like them. One might like a pervert that steals underwears in cartoons and anime because it is made for entertainment, but no one will like them in real life. Unless they are incels and straw sexists, most likely.'
She doesn't really hope she will have to deal with their attitude, but she will prepare for the worst.
"Moving on, now, the Bosses and the Heroine..."
The heroine: As far as Layla was concerned, the snowflake and basically a mary sue. character depends on the route, but if there are traits that stuck with her on all four routes: Kind, compassionate, caring and especially attractive and sexy as the capture targets will tell you when they get to speak to her after the few first encounters, more focus on her assets just to be sure, except for Astrum, he apparently liked her smile more than anything, but still.
The only traits she has that seemed to change is how fast she can abandon her shyness and embarrassment and take off her clothes to innocently charm the male leads. And that shyness goes away very fast in Zain's route.
Layla almost rolled her eyes as she started writing Himeko's powers.
The heroine has, from the beginning, six elements under her command: fire, water, wind, earth, darkness and light. This, -the fact she has six affinities-, was why she was enrolled in the academy. Sounds ridiculous, but it's not the end; after the defeat of the demon queen, she gets the power of mind element, along with a soul controlling ability and a body manipulating one. Then, if that was not enough, killing Game!Layla gives her control over space, time, life/death energies along with atoms more or less, even though almost all the new elements are not shown in combat.
Next and finally, the Demon Queen: she is basically a Himejima Akeno look-alike wearing a BDSM outfit. Her personality can be summed as "I own you, no questions asked and your consent is not involved.".
Her power is mind-controlling one of the men in the player's party to backstab the party for one turn, and as her HP goes down, the period of the mind control gets longer, from one turn to two, and finally three. The player needs to defeat her quickly, preferably with some of their greater attacks while she was low on HP.
And, that's basically it.
Layla looked at the pages of info she wrote, sighing as she felt that she wrote more than she felt needed, but this is good as well.
She couldn't control the urge to have some sarcasm in her writing, but that's not a big deal.
Now, she needs to find a place to secure them, and...
'Hmm, I recall having a diary of sorts, one that can be locked by a key...'
Going to the desk in her room, she opened a drawer, and found the item she was looking for.
A normal pink diary book, secured also with a small key.
Hiding the pages inside of it then locking the diary and putting it back in the drawer (after rapidly rewriting the summary in other pages she hid in other places such as under the matress of her bed), she felt that might be fine for now. She will find better ways later to either not forget the info or to secure them better, maybe both.
But for now...
"I am hungry."
She wondered what she will eat now.
She has time before the destruction flags come to metaphorically punch her in the face.
She can enjoy things for a while even as her mind was thinking on how to get stronger.
The next few days or weeks, she will try magic, at least to get enough control over hers to not use it by accident.
And who knows, maybe go to a dungeon and raise her magic power afterwards.
Life seemed good enough for now.
So.... She's gonna kill the demon queen, right? Because, even if she doesn't get the mind affinity, I feel it's VERY important to keep the heroine from getting that.
Heh, maybe? Though I have already planned for a hypothecal battle in such scenario and I will tell you a little spoiler if you don't mind (if I wrote the battle):
It won't be just Layla stopping time then casually stabbing the Demon Queen with knives.
Yeah it’s very important the future goddess of chaos not be born
@Watchman Definitely.
@Glendios let me guess. It will involve casually immediately disintegrating her
@Nahmate who knows?