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Chapter 2
Until the news that her father would be returning from the battlefield after a full year, Lilia had been a child wrapped entirely in dreams. She had thought that now, the other cousins and relatives wouldn’t dare look down on her anymore.
“Lilia doesn’t even have a mom. Isn’t her dad not coming back now, too?” “That’s right. They say hardly anyone comes back alive from the northern monster subjugation.” “No. My dad said he’s strong, so he’s definitely coming back, you know?”
Confined to her room and writing a reflection essay as punishment for biting the arms of the collateral branch children, Lilia felt gloomy. She had always been teased about her mother running away, and it felt like she had become even more of an outcast after her father left for the monster subjugation.
When a month turned into two months, and then a year, a terrifying thought crossed her mind: if a really big accident happened, her father might never come back at all.
Her father’s status—whether he was alive or dead—was confirmed through communication reports from the departing subjugation force and letters that arrived once every two weeks. Whenever that happened, Lilia recalled her father’s final expression before he left.
“I’ll be back soon. Since Lilia is brave, you can wait, right? A month will pass by much faster than you think.”
The large hand that had thoroughly ruffled Lilia’s hair. Though he was a man of few words, his warmth and gaze had been so tender.
She couldn’t accept it. Why on earth did it have to be her father who went there?
“Father, can’t you just not go?” “I must go. I have to fulfill my responsibility as a mage.”
It was an imperial decree. An order to select skilled individuals from within each family to exterminate the monsters attempting to cross the border.
Even to young Lilia, it made no sense. It wasn’t as if Classid was the only mage in the family. Her uncles Osdell and Benjamin, and her aunt Velita, all managed to slip away behind the scenes. She had even heard that her grandfather had opposed it.
Classid was the most powerful mage in Robert after her grandfather. A genius who had manifested three elemental attributes: lightning, ice, and metal.
Was that all? He had even honed his swordsmanship with a brilliant intellect and a strong physique. His only flaw was that he was simply too perfection.
Because of this, some people whispered that Classid should be the next family head instead of the eldest son, Osdell.
However… with the report that the subjugation force had gone missing, the letters stopped.
Two months later, Classid returned miraculously, but he was in a coma. From eavesdropping on the family doctor, she learned that upon his return, he would no longer be able to use magic.
“His heart was heavily injured in the fight against the monsters.”
Watching her unconscious father, Lilia cried day and night. Even when her nanny Marit tried to comfort her, she refused her meals and pushed away her favorite fairy tale books and toys.
Waking up from a nightmare where the House of Robert perished, exhausted from crying, a flash of lightning struck her mind, and she realized this world was from a book.
It was The Otherworld Saint, a romance-fantasy novel she had enjoyed reading in her past life. She used to be Kang Ye-na, a poor high school student living in another world.
Lilia and Ye-na. The lives of the two were tangled up like a twisted skein of yarn, and it took about a month for their respective memories to settle into place. During that time, Lilia had been confined to her room because moving even a single step made her head ache and spin.
Once her mind was cleared, her body felt light, but Lilia grew desperately anxious.
Because…
The place she was living in now, the Duke of Robert’s estate, was a trashy villain family that would later lock up the male lead, who would awaken as the strongest being.
She thought it was absurd. That the House of Robert she belonged to was that villain family from the original work, and she was a minor villainous extra swept up in it and destined to die.
Moreover, in the original story Lilia remembered, her father, Classid, was already dead and gone.
The cause was an incurable disease.
The power in this world had many layers, but mages used mana. The mana heart, the heart of a mage, was where mana gathered. A hole had formed in Classid’s mana heart, an incurable disease that could not be treated in this world.
A sickness where all the mana remaining in the mana heart extinguished, causing the body to dry up and lead to death.
She had to prevent the terrible future ahead at all costs.
…I am the only one who has read the original work.
Lilia knew all the knowledge of the original book, the power and weapons the male lead would possess, his supporters, and even the major events.
On top of that, adding the seventeen years of experience she had living as Kang Ye-na in the modern era, she would have a slight edge over others, even if she was just a tiny baby.
The starting point of the original work was the winter of Imperial Year 1203, when the male lead Adrian is kidnapped. Right now, it was the spring of Imperial Year 1200. She had three years left.
That meant she had to make her moves before the original story began. To do that, she needed to carefully retrace the original work step by step and prepare for the future.
The Otherworld Saint was a common cliché story. It was a story where Tiana, the female lead who lived as a holy power battery for the Great Saint of the temple, finds her true family and heals the physical and emotional scars of the male lead Adrian with holy power and love.
Along the way, she monopolized the love of the sub-male leads as well: the empire’s youngest and finest knight commander, the underworld boss who owned an information guild, and the trade guild leader from a foreign land who boasted the largest scale on the continent.
Of course, the male lead was destined to be Adrian.
In that story, Robert was the place where the male lead Adrian spent his “miserable childhood,” a place no different from hell.
Osdell, the villain who tormented Adrian so mercilessly, appeared in the original work as the head and absolute master of Robert.
He committed a massive offense by kidnapping Adrian, who had been abandoned as an illegitimate child of the imperial family, and locking him away for nine years.
The reason was because Adrian was an awakener with a special power.
There were four types of powers that appeared in the original work: Magic, operated through mana. Swordsmanship, releasing aura built up through physical training. Holy power, manifested via faith and holy artifacts. And lastly, the awakener’s power, Eternal, which manifested through intense emotions.
For instance, the greater the hatred, the greater the destructive power.
An awakener’s heart was called an Eternal Heart, and they could only blossom by unlocking the seal placed at its center. And to unlock that seal, extreme and shocking emotional turmoil was necessary.
Sometimes, those who wanted to use awakeners would inflict pain on them to force them to blossom.
If they did that, even if the power blossomed, it was common for them to run amok or die. The male lead Adrian fell into this category; he went berserk, but survived by sheer luck.
Even so, forcing them to blossom was done to bind them with a slave’s seal that directly subordinated them to their master.
An awakener who naturally blossomed of their own accord was not only difficult to suppress, but the slave’s seal wouldn’t work on them. They essentially became an unstoppable supreme powerhouse.
In Osdell’s laboratory, besides Adrian, someone else was locked up, though their exact identity was impossible to know.
It seemed they had kept another awakener locked away just in case Adrian died.
Osdell kept Adrian locked up when he was young, then sent him to the laboratory at age fifteen. Only awakeners past puberty were capable of blossoming.
He was confined there to make him experience sorrow and pain. Because that was the easiest way to draw out emotions.
The first awakening took place during the experimentation process, and Osdell tormented him even more viciously.
A portal eye that swallowed everything. He was forced to commit countless crimes using the power Adrian possessed and cover them up.
Tormented by a life as a tool, Adrian finally went berserk during his second awakening. It was a rampage powerful enough to crumble the Duke of Robert’s castle and snap every single ring of the seals.
A tremendous blue light engulfed the ducal castle, and everything reflected in his portal eye was sucked in without exception.
From that moment on, Adrian resolved to kill everyone in the villainous family of Robert who had tormented him, destroy them, and begin his revenge.
If she just stood by, Lilia, the princess of Robert, was also guaranteed a death ending.
I can’t die like this.
To survive in this life, she must not do anything that would incur the resentment of the male lead Adrian. To prevent that, it was safest to stop Osdell from becoming the family head and completely remove him from Robert.
Above all, the most urgent thing is—
Lilia’s dimming greenish-yellow eyes landed on Classid, who was lying right before her.
