Chapter 1

Story 1   Everything doesn’t go as planned.

“Young Lady, do you really want to meet that boy?”

The concerned prison guard peered at the small, young girl before him.

“Yup, yup.”

The eleven-year-old daughter of the Grand Duke, Kynemeia Lyonne, wore a smile on her angelic face as she nodded. As her soft, silky blonde hair fluttered about, the prison guard choked up and clutched at his thumping chest.

‘Cute…!’

The people of the Grand Duke’s residence always—almost habitually, actually—spoke about how they wanted a daughter like Lady Kynemeia. Her soft blonde hair shone with lustre, her eyes were large and round, and her plump, rosy cheeks compelled one to try and have a nibble at it once.

The Grand Duke’s daughter was a precious being the guard couldn’t lay his eyes on often, being stationed in the underground prison. But her request to allow her to meet the prisoner was as if a bombshell had been thrown at him. He glanced at her nanny and averted his eyes before saying,

“But he isn’t someone who can be allowed to meet you, Young Lady…”

The nanny heaved a small sigh of relief. Despite having served the young lady as her nanny since forever, she still couldn’t go against the girl’s stubborn streak.

“That boy’s a dangerous creature.”

A boy had trespassed the Grand Duke’s private hunting grounds before the full moon arose. The same boy that had inclined his head to the side while his body dripped with blood and put on a smile as he surveyed the 10 or so disconcerted knights before him, muttering,

“I thought I killed them all. Turns out there’re more still.”

Far from being scared in spite of being surrounded by the knights, he appeared rather relaxed. The ones who grew apprehensive were the knights instead. However, the boy collapsed immediately afterwards. 

The prison guard secretly thought it was only thanks to that that the boy ended up getting caught in the first place. Under the pretext of trying to unearth who the mysterious boy hurt to the extent that he’d been drenched in the blood of others, he was held captive in the underground prison.

Not minding the guard’s concern, Kynemeia asserted firmly,

“I know that, so just lead me inside, will you?”

Her determined gaze revealed that she wasn’t intent on backing down. The girl standing there wasn’t simply any eleven-year-old girl, but someone who would succeed to the title of the Grand Duke one day and become the master of the ducal castle.

Although the guard was worried, he was but an insignificant prison guard so he couldn’t disobey her command. He answered affirmatively and began to take the lead.

“Please mind your steps, Young Lady.”

“I’m fine.”

“There are rats about, you see. Only occasionally, though…”

Kynemeia, who’d confidently declared she was fine a moment ago, furtively grasped Nanny Vanessa’s hand. Holding on to the girl’s hand firmly, Vannessa looked at her with an expression that said, ‘This is why I asked why you felt the need to enter the underground prison.’

Kynemeia pretended to not take note of her and covertly turned her head.

‘I’m sorry, Nanny. But there’s a reason for all of this…’

Having to enter this damp, dark, dismal, rat-infested and horrid underground prison just for the sake of meeting a 12-year-old brat also didn’t make Kynemeia particularly happy. It wasn’t as if she came here because she thought along the lines of ‘I want to try out new things!’, ‘Alright, let’s venture to the underground prison!’ as Vanessa presumed she did due to her carefree nature as a Grand Duke’s daughter.

‘This is for my security and the house’s advancement, okay?

Though of course, this information was something only she possessed but inevitably couldn’t inform others about. Actually, Kynemeia held some secrets she couldn’t divulge to anyone else.

The first was that Kynemeia Lyonne has been reincarnated. Secondly, the realm she’d reincarnated into was a world within a webnovel she’d enjoyed reading in her former life, ‘Althium Chronicles’. Lastly, Kynemeia was doomed to die in the near future.

‘How should I explain, this is just…’

Kynemeia bit on her innocent lips and muttered,

‘I feel like I can’t even mention the ‘Al’ in ‘Althium Chronicles’ and ‘re’ in ‘reincarnation’ because it would make me cringe.’

She recollected her past life in the spring of her 10th year. It wasn’t a particularly special day. She didn’t undergo stuff like taking a blow to her head or being on the verge of dying after drowning. She simply woke up after a good night’s sleep just like any other day.

‘Ah, so that dream earlier was my previous life.’

Upon waking up, I realized that the dream I had the night before was that of my past life.

‘…Isn’t this ridiculous?’

Why didn’t it just appear suddenly accompanied by fancy effects like thunderbolts as if I was receiving divination…

To think that I would just wake up one day to discover I’ve experienced a dream of my previous life! How can I ever reveal this to anyone and convince them?!

But a bigger problem lay ahead since Kynemeia was born into the webnovel she read in her previous life. ‘Althium Chronicles’ was a mainstream novel with the following description: ‘A stranger who tumbled into another world encounters the limitless realm of fantasy!’.

‘It had been a flop…’

The main storyline had strayed from the original at some point, as the narrative ran the gamut from collecting herbs to conquering dungeons. It turned into a story of ‘a hero’s full-scale hard labour fantasy’. Kynemeia Lyonne was the antagonist with a very unfortunate fate of that very webnovel.

‘… Why did it have to be this sort of character!’

To expound on Kynemeia Lyonne’s dismal fate, we need to touch upon the topic of her family first. To start off, Kynemeia’s grandfather, Kenneth Lyonne, once acted as the regent for the then-sick late emperor and was known as the ‘righteous villain’.  It was the time when corruption was rife under the late emperor’s rule. Kenneth Lyonne, who lived according to justice and morality, couldn’t condone that…

“How daaaaare you talk back to me with that filthy mouth of yours?”

With his trademark harsh temperament,

“I’m the empire and the empire’s power is also my power!”

He declared such nonsense before proceeding to purge the nobles and make the vassals’ lives hell. And in his final moments?

He was poisoned.

The culprit was never discovered and it was unequivocally regarded as a ‘revenge killing’. With the sudden death of Kenneth Lyonne, the Grand Duchy of Lyonne was thrown into turmoil and a fierce feud ensued in laying claim to the Lyonne’s power. At the time, the one at the helm of Lyonne was Kynemeia’s mother, the former Grand Duchess, Irea Lyonne.

“Even though I don’t possess magical powers, the sword has always been my destiny.”

Although Irea Lyonne wasn’t born with magical powers, her extraordinary swordsmanship helped her in vanquishing the surrounding kingdoms, therefore, marking her a hero for advancing the empire. That was how the honour of Lyonne began to be restored. However, where there is light, there must be shadow. The empire’s hero was by the same token the defeated country’s foe.

Irea Lyonne was in the midst of a victory parade to celebrate another triumph when an arrow was shot straight into her heart and killed her. The man who was arrested on the suspicion of her murder turned out to be the third prince of the kingdom Irea had wiped out. The man yelled as he was facing the guillotine,

“The empire’s demon Irea Lyonne beheaded my parents and cut off my brothers’ legs! I have no regrets about having caught the evil incarnate with my own hands!”

It was unquestionably a ‘revenge killing’. That was how the Lyonnes were once again faced with a crisis.

The only redeeming quality Troy Lyonne—who became Grand Duke all thanks to his wife and lineage—had was the most beautiful face in the empire. The reason he could get married to Irea was 20% in part due to his ducal lineage and the majority in part due to his looks, after all. After the death of his capable wife, Troy who’d sunk into dejection—

“Daddy, don’t cry.”

made a resolution to get back on his feet for the sake of his young daughter.

“Mei—hic. Daddy—is fine. Hic—huwaaa.”

Troy Lyonne who kept on wailing, planned to make a comeback as the head of the family and earn an income by means of his beautiful face. 

“Excuse me, the Madam with a very beautiful hangnail. I have an excellent business plan, would you like to hear me out?”

Perhaps because he was quick on the uptake of the development of the blue ocean strategy1, although he wasn’t aware he had a knack for it, Troy Lyonne successfully made his business flourish through the capital he secured by making good use of his face. Hence, the Lyonnes once again began to elevate their status.

“Mei, Daddy brought home a lot of money! What did I say? Daddy’s fine.”

“Daddy’s amazing!”

But he didn’t manage to enjoy that rise for much longer since he died after getting stabbed with a knife. The assailant was a Countess who was involved in a love quadruple with Troy Lyonne. As the woman was brought into the underground prison, she cried out,

“What now, after having come this far! He never meant it? That it’s all right since he could earn money? Troy Lyonne plunged me into the depths of hell when he snatched away my entire heart!”

It was unquestionably a ‘revenge killing’.

[1]An idea/method that is out of the box/different from usual