Catherine

If Greg were in this room right now, he would certainly have recognized the blonde girl's identity immediately.

Catherine Roman.

She was the fourth romanceable heroine of the original game, and the daughter of the president of the Roman Chamber of Commerce—the kingdom's largest and wealthiest commercial organization.

It was a title that sounded glamorous enough to make countless people envious.

Yet only a select few knew that Catherine's true position within the chamber was far from as stable or grand as it appeared on the surface.

She was merely an illegitimate daughter.

Her mother had quietly passed away from illness during years now blurred in her memory.

And her high-and-mighty father, the president of the Roman Chamber of Commerce, had never given her any paternal attention beyond bestowing the surname “Roman.” Everything she currently possessed had been won by her own hands.

Standing ahead of her were several legitimate brothers and sisters.

Whether born of his lawful wife or of more favored mistresses, they had operated within the chamber for years, building deep foundations.

Barring any unforeseen accidents, the position of heir would never fall to an almost forgotten illegitimate daughter like her.

However, for Catherine, this was not merely about fame, profit, and status; it was about fundamental survival.

She knew better than anyone that within the vast and icy profit machine of the Roman Chamber of Commerce, familial affection was as thin as winter ice.

Once an elder brother or sister eventually seized the title of heir, given their widespread contempt and latent hostility toward her, her end was almost guaranteed to be grim.

At best, she would be stripped of everything and exiled to the border.

More likely, she would quietly disappear, and her assets—modest, yet enough to make certain people envious—would naturally be swallowed up.

Thus, competing for the succession was not driven by ambition for her, but by the instinct for survival.

It was to live—to live with dignity and safety.

Through her ruthless struggle to survive, Catherine had long since seen through the icy core of human relationships in this world: profit.

Pure, naked profit, unmixed with a single drop of warmth.

She had seen far too much of it.

For a lucrative contract, long-standing partners could turn on each other in an instant, trading verbal blows across the negotiation table like bitter enemies.

To secure the mining rights for an ore vein, blood brothers would covertly sabotage each other, spread rumors, or even orchestrate “accidents.”

Her high-and-mighty father—had he not also stepped on the shoulders of his own brothers and uncles in his youth, perhaps even stained with the blood of his closest kin, to secure his seat as president?

Given sufficient gain, a dutiful son and loving father could turn into deadly enemies overnight, and lovers bound by solemn oaths would betray each other in the blink of an eye.

Warmth, morality, loyalty?

Those were merely pretty curtains masking exchanges of self-interest, or invisible shackles meant to bind the weak.

True power players cared only for bargaining chips and results.

To secure her own chips for survival, Catherine had done many things.

Some of them, if scrutinized in broad daylight, would easily be branded vile or even ruthless.

Yet to her, they were simply necessary survival tactics—a rational game played within the set rules.

She had never actively harmed the innocent. All she did was offer choices, set prices, and wait for others to willingly step onto her chessboard.

Take the matter her maid had just reported.

Through special channels, she had secretly funded a small magic workshop to develop a new type of wide-area dispersal magic conduit whose effects were yet unproven.

In theory, it could repel or deter monsters below a certain level, but its stability, range, and duration were total unknowns, potentially even harboring unforeseen risks.

Catherine needed experimental data; she needed people to test it in a real dungeon environment.

However, she could not use the chamber's resources or her own overt forces, as doing so would expose her research project prematurely and invite sabotage from her siblings.

So, she carefully selected her targets: three upperclassmen from fallen noble families who possessed mediocre talent and urgently needed vast sums of money to maintain their superficial dignity or repay family debts.

Through an intermediary, she contacted them under the name of a fictitious exploration gear testing company and offered an exceptionally lucrative testing commission.

The contract described the magic conduit as “potentially effective at repelling monsters below LV25.” At the same time, however, tucked away in obscure secondary clauses, it clearly stated in calm, objective technical language that unknown risks existed, including but not limited to conduit failure, backfiring, or attracting stronger monsters, which could result in severe injury or death to the testers.

She had not lied.

She had offered high compensation and clearly flagged the risks.

Those three had read the contract thoroughly; they were fully aware of the dangers involved.

Yet when faced with immense wealth and a desperate urge to break free from their plight, they chose to sign. They chose to carry that prototype into the deep area of the first layer, a place where few ever set foot.

It was a transaction; it was a choice.

They risked potential danger in exchange for guaranteed money that could alter their circumstances.

Thus, even if they met with disaster in the dungeon, Catherine would not feel the slightest superfluous emotion known as guilt.

They had chosen their own path; she had never held a blade to their throats.

The only thing she felt a minor regret for was the loss of the experimental data.

A complete loss of contact meant not a single person had successfully brought back any useful information, whether positive or negative.

This forced her to find a new group of testers and start over, squandering more time and money. Troublesome, but not unacceptable.

In fact, a complex, pragmatic, and somewhat cold character design like Catherine's was one of the main reasons Greg had replayed the original game so many times back then.

Compared to conventional Galgames on the market, where heroines were either innocent and kind or tsundere and cute, the female characters in this game had remarkably distinct and... dangerous personalities and backgrounds.

Apart from Silvia, the Secondary Heroine, who still retained a relatively normal level of kindness and a bit of timidness, the other heroines—once their romance routes unlocked and you delved deep into their character arcs—would reveal a chillingly unique danger.

For instance, the Third Heroine, Lilith Kahn, appeared on the surface to be a proud, fiery princess. But once her affection reached a certain threshold while she sensed another heroine's affection surpassing hers, her hidden, near-obsessive possessiveness would explode.

The game screen would abruptly turn eerie, and the background music would turn unsettlingly weird.

Lilith would smile and invite the player character to special training in the dungeon, only to accidentally trigger an incident that trapped them both in a sealed area. Then, with her crimson eyes burning with dangerous flames, she would whisper softly:

“This way, no one will come to disturb us ever again.”