Chapter 1

The moment the words left my mouth, a vicious slap crashed across my face.

My father stood in front of me, yanking my hair as he snarled furiously, "Have you lost your mind? Since when did this horror game become your turf? I personally know several mid-level ghosts here, and none of them have ever mentioned someone like you!"

My brother and mother hurried to help Nicole to her feet before turning to glare at me in anger.

"We sent you into this horror game so you could learn your place and serve Nicole properly from now on! How dare you hit her!"

Clearly, I was the one related to them by blood. Yet the hatred in their eyes rivaled that of enemies who'd carried grudges for years.

A self-mocking smile tugged at my lips.

How stupid I'd been to believe they brought me home to make up for abandoning me… that they would cherish me twice as much afterward.

Covering my swollen cheek, I let out a cold laugh.

"Before you took me back, I grew up in this instance. The three bosses here are my family. So tell me—what's wrong with calling this my turf? And if someone orders me around in my own turf, shouldn't they get slapped?"

Laughter immediately erupted around us.

One veteran player even wiped tears from his eyes from laughing too hard.

"Little Missy, did your dad hit you so hard you went stupid? You actually dare say the three bosses of Happy Home are your family?"

Not a single person believed me. After all, the survival rate of this instance was terrifyingly low.

The red-clad female ghost had once slaughtered an entire room of players in three seconds, then hung their corpses upside down from tree branches with red silk, creating a forest of dangling bodies.

The Scissorhands monster had skewered more than a dozen people together, stirring their organs with his blades until they dissolved into a pile of flesh.

As for the warden, he locked each team inside separate rooms and released over a dozen ghosts among them, forcing them to betray one another in desperate attempts to survive.

In the end, every single one of the players was torn to pieces.

All the players knew was that the bosses' methods were monstrously cruel.

What they didn't know was that those people had ended up in such horrifying states simply because they'd flirted with me a couple of times.

My adoptive family's protectiveness toward me bordered on insanity. And precisely because of that, I had wanted to leave this place and return to the real world—to live like a normal person.

After hearing my words, not only did the other players refuse to believe me, but my biological brother became so enraged that he stood up and drove a brutal kick into my stomach.

"If Nicole hadn't insisted we bring you back, who knows what backwater village you'd be stuck in right now, married off to some eighty-year-old bachelor!"

Nicole started fake-crying softly beside him.

"Don't be too hard on Alison. She never got any love growing up, so now she just blurts out whatever comes to mind… She's even treating ghosts like family."

At the Bennett family's cue, the crowd turned to me with mocking looks.

"So she's just some clueless country bumpkin?"

"Even ghosts would probably throw up after eating someone like her."

"If she wants ghosts as family so badly, let's just throw her out there! Once she ends up in some ghost's stomach, she'll probably thank us for it."

Right then, the apartment complex administrator showed up to escort us into the residential district.

My father immediately kicked me toward him.

This administrator was one of the mid-level ghosts my father knew.

My father sent money to support the ghosts' families back in the real world, and in exchange, those mid-level ghosts kept them safe inside the game.

As long as they didn't provoke the final bosses, they could survive safely until the instance ended.

In my past life, they did the exact same thing—offering me up to the mid-level ghosts for entertainment in exchange for clearing the game.

Blood kept pouring from my wounds.

The administrator instantly started swallowing hard.

Nicole's vicious voice whispered right next to my ear.

"Mr. Administrator, this woman says she's related to the three bosses of your complex! Claims she's their precious princess."

The thick smell of blood flooded my nose.

The administrator looked down at me.

"What princess? How dare a human insect try to claim any connection to our bosses?"

Furious, he opened his enormous, blood-soaked jaws and lunged to swallow me whole.

I screamed at the top of my lungs and stopped him cold.

"I want to see your bosses! Right now!"