According to the System, her first task after completing the prologue was to ’escape completely from CEO Husband’.

Yes. Forget about the reward, she still needed to figure out how to completely disentangle herself from Arzhen’s influence.

A billionaire in this world was surely not merely wealthy. It was an incomprehensible amount of money, so he was surely extremely influential.

But for such money to pool in the pocket of one person...

It was a quantity so vast that it must have distorted the very economy around him, bending politicians and corporations and entire industries to his will.

And if Arzhen was not the only person with that kind of money... if there were other billionaires, other titans of industry and other dragons hoarding gold in their glass-walled towers, then the economic condition of this world was, by definition, in shambles.

Wealth that concentrated in the hands of a few meant scarcity for the many. People would side with Arzhen simply because of the money he controlled, the jobs he provided, and the favors he could call in. Whether it was even possible to escape his reach was a question in itself, let alone—

The second task. Take revenge on the CEO Husband.

Cecilia looked around the apartment. Her husbands, well, not yet her husbands in this world, but hers all the same, were just regular workers.

Arkai was a plumber, whatever that meant. Eastiel was a welder, albeit an underwater one. Oathran flipped burgers and worked mysterious second jobs in the middle of the night.

They cooked their own meals, meal-prepped for the week, and shared a four-bedroom apartment.

In the real world, any one of them could have crushed Arzhen Vasiliev like a bug. Arkai was the Black Wolf King, terror of the north. Oathran was the Dragon Lord, divine and ancient and utterly beyond mere beast power. Eastiel was the Golden Lion King, ruler of a southern territory.

Here, they were working men with callused hands. They would help her, but... it would be much more difficult.

Or at least, against the law.

The third task was stranger still. ’Make the CEO Husband chase you and beg you to come back.’

Cecilia frowned at the glowing screen.

Now, why would that be part of the tasks? As far as she knew, Arzhen Vasiliev hated her to the depths of his soul. His disgust had been obvious in the hospital, and she knew he had never wanted her to be his wife.

It would be impossible for him to beg for her return.

And knowing the baby inside her was not his own? Wouldn’t that make it even more impossible? Wouldn’t that cement his hatred into something permanent and unchangeable?

Well. Fine. Fine. Let’s say it was possible in this world, because this world’s scenario operated under completely different rules from the real world.

But what the fuck was ’Get viral on the internet’?

This was, without question, the strangest task on the list. She didn’t even understand what it meant.

The last two tasks, at least, made sense. Enter and close a Rift.

She had seen the rifts on the hospital television. They were dark, jagged gates tearing open in the fabric of reality, spilling monsters coated in black filth into the world. She didn’t know how to close one, but she knew she wanted to learn.

Making Love Interests remember their lives outside of this scenario too, was just as expected, since this was the same task she needed to do like in the previous scenario world.

So, perhaps let’s walk toward that goal for now.

First stop was—

The Library.

A library must exist, right?

A public library in this world, a place where anyone could walk in and access the accumulated knowledge of humanity, freely and without restriction. This, like any other world, must have one, right?

"But..." She sighed. "Okay. Where even is the library...? And how do I get there?"

DING!

{Searching: The nearest library.}

DI-DING!

{Opening Google Maps.}

Cecilia blinked. Her phone’s screen shifted, displaying a map of the surrounding area with a blue line tracing a route from her current location to a small icon of a book.

"System? That was not you?" she asked.

[No, Cecilia. It was not us.]

Wait. The System’s voice was strange... Almost terse? Was that... was that jealousy she detected?

DI-DING!

{Nearest library: Twenty minutes walking distance.}

{Would you like to start?}

"Ooooh," Cecilia picked up her phone, turning it over in her hands in wonder. "You can speak, too?"

DI-DING!

{Good morning, Cecilia. How would you like for me to help today?}

The voice was pleasant and helpful.

[Cecilia!]

Her System’s voice cut through her thoughts, and there it was, the sulking.

[We can also help you. Ask us!]

Cecilia tried very hard to hide her smile.

"I don’t know," she said, deliberately casual, her eyes fixed on the phone screen. "Maybe this phone thing is more helpful after all."

[That is not true! We are more helpful, Cecilia! We will get you into a library in no time!]

"Library... library..." Cecilia muttered, ignoring the indignant sputtering in her mind. She tapped the word into her phone’s search bar, her fingers still clumsy on the keypad, still learning the rhythm of this world’s alphabet, and pressed enter.

The screen filled with results. Not just one or two, dozens. Links and summaries and images, a cascade of information that seemed to stretch on forever, each entry promising answers to questions she had not even thought to ask.

"Huh?" Cecilia blinked, scrolling with her finger, watching the text fly past. "This..."

She tapped one of the results, a blue, underlined line of text with the word Wikipedia beneath it. The screen shifted. An article appeared.

And Cecilia’s jaw dropped.

"HUH?!"

Information. Information!

Paragraph after paragraph of it, organized into sections, hyperlinked to other articles, footnoted with sources and references and further reading. All of it accessible from this tiny, glowing rectangle in her hand. All of it free.

So—this device was not merely a tool for communication and entertainment?! It was a repository of knowledge too?!

"Oh, my god!"

A library in her pocket?! A direct line to the accumulated wisdom of an entire civilization, available at the tap of a finger?!

"Wow!" Cecilia was breathless now, almost as if she had just witnessed a miracle. "This is so cool!"

[Cecilia, we are also cool!]

"Sssshhh, shut up, shut up." Cecilia waved her hand dismissively at the empty air, her eyes never leaving the screen. "I’m going to read."