This whole matter is truly strange.
It took me several years to figure it out—after my death, I had transmigrated into a fantasy novel I’d once read in my previous life.
Ah, transmigration—surely everyone knows of it, right? Being sent into a fantastical otherworld, becoming a brave warrior, a hero, a mage, embarking on resplendent adventures—that sort of thing.
Of course, what I call “strange” isn’t the transmigration itself. I had read more than enough transmigration novels. After being immersed in all sorts of tropes for decades, my common sense had long since been twisted to the point where, upon seeing a large truck rumbling by, I would half-expect it to be “sending someone off to another world.” In my head I would often indulge in absurd fantasies: “With the amount of isekai tropes I’ve absorbed, if I really do transmigrate someday, surely I’ll be able to carve my way through the world in unmatched fashion and live an easy life.”
So, when I opened my eyes again, seeing a pointed, medieval-style window and an old man in priestly robes, white-bearded, chanting incomprehensible scripture while green light—like a healing spell from an RPG—glowed in his hands, all I could think was: “Ah, so it really has come, after all.”
That’s right. Simply transmigrating was no longer enough to surprise me. In fact, the very moment I realized what had happened, I was already laying out plans in my head for a brilliant new life:
Would I become a warrior, gather companions, and set out on a grand adventure?
Would I become a mage, delve into mysteries, and unearth the secrets of arcane power?
Or would I become a lord, building power, ruling my own domain, using modern knowledge to spark waves of revolution in this otherworld?
But as I was indulging in these bright visions, a faint, sharp cry suddenly slipped out from somewhere.
Ah—no, not “somewhere.” That cry, at first feeble but growing louder, was actually coming from my own mouth.
Even if I had been reborn as a baby, I hadn’t intended to cry. That was too humiliating.
Could it be some instinctive reflex of infants? Like a knee-jerk reaction, entirely beyond the brain’s control?
So there I was, crying while also steeped in confusion. Not long after, though, that confusion was answered.
****
“Young Miss, it is time for your painting lesson.”
An elderly maid in a black-and-white apron dress, her gaze strict and precise, looked at the silent ten-year-old girl before her. The girl’s silver-gray hair was tightly braided back, exposing a smooth forehead.
Clytia Erandel. Daughter of the Duke of Erandel, she had lived a life filled with study since the age of six, when her earliest memories began.
“Yes.”
The girl, having just finished her etiquette lesson and rested for only half an hour, obediently rose and followed the old maid toward the painting classroom.
As they passed the corridor, she glanced out the window without changing her expression. Two elder brothers were bare-chested in the snow-covered courtyard, swinging their practice swords.
“Young Miss, when walking, you must keep your focus,” the maid chided, frowning. At her words, Clytia quickly pulled her gaze back.
Inside the painting classroom stood a refined, curly-haired man from the royal capital, once a court painter. Now, summoned to this frozen northern province as a tutor, he was living proof that the duke spared no effort for his daughter’s education.
“Young Miss, let us begin,” the painting instructor said with a gentle smile. The maid silently withdrew, closing the door behind her.
Clytia sat wordlessly on the tall stool before the easel. The lesson began, but her eyelids soon began to droop.
“Sixty years ago, Master Salayon of Roland County was the first to systematically propose the rules of perspective, and in the murals of the Glorious Cathedral, he fully demonstrated this principle. Thereafter, the rules of perspective became…”
Noticing the girl’s increasingly unfocused eyes, the instructor paused and sighed with a helpless smile.
“Lady Erandel, you seem tired. Do you require a break?”
“I’m sorry… I will pay attention.”
Clytia lifted her head to face the instructor. And because of that, I too saw his face clearly.
“Yes… it’s him. Ross, the black sorcerer of the Cult of the Night.” I recognized him instantly.
This world was the very same one I had once read about. And this man was no harmless art teacher—he was a cultist of an evil god. His true purpose in Erandel was to seek out a vessel, and to plant within them the seed of corruption.
I knew all of this. But I could do nothing. Because I was merely a wandering soul attached to Clytia.
I could hear what she heard, see what she saw, feel what she felt—but I could not control her body. It was like being stuck in a spectator’s view in an FPS game.
At first, there had been novelty in it. Experiencing a young girl’s growth through her own eyes—whether embarrassing or touching—was, in its way, rare. But soon, it became nothing more than torment: the agony of having no freedom, of being unable to act upon my own will.
And now? There was no novelty, no torment—only boundless boredom.
My sight followed hers as she feigned attention, but I knew she was drifting off. It wasn’t her fault. For a ten-year-old child, lesson after lesson from dawn till dusk was too much for her spirit to endure.
Yet she had no choice. Her fate had been decided from the very beginning.
I knew the future of this world because it came from a novel I had read in my past life. And in that story, Clytia was a villainess.
The duke’s endless lessons for her had only one purpose: to mold her into a noble lady fit for a political marriage.
In his design, once she turned fourteen, she would be sent to the capital to study, to shine in social circles, to forge connections among the great and powerful, and ultimately to secure the duchy a powerful ally through her marriage.
For a duke with private military strength, such painstaking scheming might seem unusual. But this was precisely the dilemma Erandel faced.
Though he bore the title of duke, the House of Erandel had only become a vassal of the Empire eighty years ago. Their lands lay in the frigid north, bordering the realm of monsters.
The majority of Erandel’s people were the Veylins. A century ago, the Veylins were still considered outsiders by the Empire. Only under mounting pressure from monster incursions did they submit to imperial rule. The ducal title had been a mere appeasement. Thus, the Duke of Erandel desperately sought alliances with “true” imperial nobility.
His solution was to send his daughter into the capital’s salons. Having witnessed the grace and eloquence of the ladies there, he resolved to shape Clytia into one of them.
“The duke’s plan was misguided from the very start. No wonder Clytia turned into such a twisted villainess in the original story.” I thought, fighting the drowsiness pressing down on me together with her.
The Veylins were a warrior people. And so, the duke applied their warrior training to his daughter—replacing sword drills, sparring, and weight-lifting with “artistic refinement” and “ladylike manners.”
In my old world, you’d call it a “Spartan education.”
But in truth, the results were the exact opposite of his hopes.
After more than a decade of preparation, Clytia entered the capital only to find herself out of step with noble society. Whenever she tried to fit in with the true imperial aristocrats, she was rebuffed. At the slightest provocation, she lost her composure and was ridiculed. The carefully crafted veneer of “elegance” crumbled in an instant.
From there, she began to spiral. Away from her father’s oversight, she unleashed her anger and humiliation upon commoners and lesser nobles, wielding her title like a whip. She discovered the intoxicating taste of power over the weak—until, inevitably, she crossed the wrong person.
The protagonist.
And thus came the classic “villainess humiliation” arc. She offended the protagonist—low-born, yet proud and unyielding. Enmity grew, clashes escalated, and her downfall served as fuel for his rise. Eventually, her father the duke discovered her misdeeds and ordered her back to Erandel to be punished.
But Clytia, addicted to the capital’s pleasures and terrified of returning to her prison-like homeland, desperately sought escape. It was then she encountered Ross again—the old tutor from her childhood, secretly a cultist of the evil god.
Ross offered her a ritual. He claimed it would change how others perceived her, make her beloved, and destroy all who scorned her.
Clytia believed him. She performed the ritual.
But what she did not know was that her very body had, since birth, been an ideal vessel for corruption. Long ago, in her childhood, the tutor had secretly planted the seed of an evil god within her. Over the years, it had grown with her resentment and despair. The ritual provided the final key.
The evil god descended. The capital fell into an abyss. Clytia herself became its vessel, her body twisted into a monstrous abomination, bereft of reason, haunting the ruined city until many chapters later, when the protagonist and his companions—having grown strong—returned and slew her. Only then did the girl find peace.
Was it the author’s cruel sense of humor? In its way, I suppose it was a “reversal of reputation.”
Recalling the story, I realized: the beginning of Clytia’s tragic fate was about to unfold before my very eyes.