In the darkness, darker than the middle of the night, with no stars, or whatsoever giving off even the faintest light... Er, probably except for a pair of lifeless orbs from a kneeling lady floating in this void. Time ticked by indiscriminately and a long while should have already passed. But the girl seemed to not care and was not even minding the passage of time. One hundred percent sure, she was not even aware that instead of getting thrown into purgatory, she got pulled into a void like space by a very questionable being called system.
An impatient voice suddenly rang beside the lifeless-eyed girl's ears to wake her up of her trance.
"You know that you just died, correct?"
The kneeling figure, which seemed to be a statue depicting the truest definition of hopelessness, didn't respond. It was ever silent, not even moving the slightest.
"Don't wanna answer? Aiya, this poor missy. But I can't blame you. You just experienced so much. Even I, a being made up of numbers and data couldn't help but pity you. I even wonder if you're so dead asleep when the Mighty Creator rained down some luck and fortune to the multiverse. You're so unlucky."
"Eh? Still no reply? Sad. Maybe all the breakups, treacheries and zombie-biting paralyzed you or even made you brain-dead. Really, really, sad. But hey! You actually don't have to worry anymore! Your luck and time to shine finally came! Listen up, poor missy! It's because the Mighty Creator finally noticed you and bound you to me!"
The thing babbling probably knew that its newly found host wouldn't reply so it went on with its explanation. This time, it considerately made an intangible hologram-like screen appear before the girl's lifeless eyes. Then with its still child-like voice, it began to explain.
"Host is now bound to me, so let me introduce myself as I will be your companion for your many years and missions to come. My name is 025, and my official system name is 'Crazy Villainess Saving System'! Just from the name itself, you can immediately infer that you will be saving every desperately in love crazy villainess out there in the whole multiverse! Host, isn't it amazing!? Aren't you excited?"
A sound of someone taking a very deep breath faintly echoed in the space. Followed by that was a soft, hate-filled voice replying to the system.
"... I, the unluckiest girl in my world, who has even failed to save myself, has to save someone else?"
The system energetically responded, "Yup! That's your goal as my host! Through my help and guidance, you will tunnel through worlds and take over the body of every villainess who died tragically insane and slave to love out there. As someone who experienced getting driven insane, you should be able to relate to their experiences. You will be able to, since, in a sense, you will be them and possess their memories of their past lives, thus learning why and how they went mad."
".... I will be able to relate to them? On how they went mad?"
As she uttered these words, the girl had to close her eyes at the sudden pain that devoured her inside out. The word 'mad' seemed to have triggered something within. Memories started to rush forth, they engulfed her, as if wanting to forever remind her of things she had just gone through.
Now, she remembered. The system was correct.
She died.
Emotionally.
After her father died due to an orchestrated accident set up by her uncle, her mother committed suicide as she couldn't accept the fact that her father was already dead. She became orphaned, buried in debts as her uncle sabotaged the company left by her father from within. The last blow was when the man who has been her boyfriend for three years suddenly broke up with her the day her family business was declared bankrupt.
Mentally.
After she learned that a few minutes after their breakup, her jerk of an ex-boyfriend immediately proposed marriage to her bitchy cousin, Jiang Ning, daughter of that same son-of-a-bitch uncle that destroyed her family and company. Now everything she and her family once possessed was thoroughly stolen by her uncle and his family. She, Jiang Li, felt like killing herself already as she was a failure of a human who let all these happened.
Ah, heavens, as she remembered how things ended up this way, Jiang Li couldn't help but die inside. It was all painful. Very. When the zombie apocalypse suddenly descended to the world, when she died physically after stupidly getting bitten by a zombified baby that fell from the fifteenth floor of a condo building, honestly, she didn't even feel the pain of her flesh being torn from her. She didn't even flinch at the pain of the virus slowly eating away at her sanity and humanity. She couldn't care more if she was one of the first few people who died at the start of the apocalypse. Why would the dead even care if the world has ended?
Now, here she was in a dark space she couldn't even name. A weird voice calling itself system was saying she was bound to it. And her task was to save somebody else preyed by fate and love?
Lights seemed to return to her eyes and gradually she raised her head. Not long after, a bout of crazed laughter reverberated in the space. It became louder as minutes passed. Louder. Crazier. The child-like voice of the system let out a fearful sound as if it got terrified by the host laughing without a stop at nowhere.
"H-host? Are you still sane?" It asked in a small, fidgeting voice.
The girl replied as she laughed, "Of course! I am sane! I am so sane that I know how crazy the world is. No, the universe is crazy. Some stupid thing here is making me save somebody else. Why? Just why? Who the heck do you think you are!?"
"It's your duty now! You are chosen. Because you're also almost crazy, the Mighty Creator knew you're the best person for the task."
"Because I can understand them?"
"Yup! And also, also..." The child-like voice seemed desperate to think of some reasons to justify why this person was made into a host. "Y-you already tasted despair, so for sure you can save them. And, and, actually, you don't have to feel so bad! I am a system and in my shop, there are many amazing things you can buy. Immortality, beauty enhancement, intelligence..." And the panicky thing listed out many delicious and nice-sounding offers that it could think of.
The girl went silent as she sunk into deep contemplation. The voice still kept on enumerating much stuff she only heard from legends and stupid fiction stories. As time passed that they were like that, the system's unease kept on growing and it was already thinking why it had to be the one assigned to this line of tasks. It thought that it was hard. Its host was clearly not that insane yet, but it was already so difficult.
Finally, the girl seemed to have thought it all out, and asked, "Is there a way for me to go back and turn back time, to when I am still way younger?"
A light bulb seemed to have lit up in the system's main brain. This could be its chance to convince it to accept it, and it hurriedly replied, "Yes! Definitely! Once you finished enough tasks and accumulated enough points, you may go back to your original world and steamroll through every bitches and betrayer in your past life! You can go back in time, as long as you have enough points!"
To the girl's ears, that revelation sounded like the greatest melody she had ever heard in her life. A wide and sinister smile appeared on her lips. Joy seeped out of her slightly red eyes and in her mind, she was already imagining how she would make those people's lives a greater hell than she experienced. Then in a bright and reenergized voice, she declared to her system. "Bring it on! I'm up to the tasks!"