“W-What, what, what did you say?!”
The duke sprang to his feet in shock at the sudden bombshell.
The marquis and Yandel also looked thoroughly flustered.
“U-Um… Sera? Well… no matter how much you want to become friends with Young Master Verdin… you only met him today, and already…….”
“Come on~ It is fine, right, Dad~?”
“Urgh! B-But…!”
“Ah… is that not allowed?”
“What?! No, I mean… as long as Young Master Evan is all right with it…….”
Duke Luke looked extremely, extremely uncomfortable with his daughter showing interest in me.
However, he was clearly a hopelessly doting father. The moment Ainsera pleaded with him in a sweet voice, his resolve weakened, and he could not bring himself to refuse her.
All he could do was glare at me, the innocent bystander.
“Marquis~ Would that be all right?”
After winning over Duke Luke, she turned her sights on the marquis.
Good grief. This ten-year-old girl truly was no ordinary child.
“A-Ahem! Evan… are you all right with this?”
The question went around the table before ultimately coming back to me.
How am I supposed to say that I am not all right with it now without ruining the entire mood?
My answer had practically been decided for me.
A faint smile….
“Yes, Father. I shall escort the young lady and show her around the castle.”
“Hehehe~ Thank you, Young Master Evan!”
A weak smile, almost one of enlightenment, settled on my lips, while Ainsera wore a triumphant smile of victory.
After the meal.
She and I were the first to leave our seats.
* * *
They said that one could tell a great tree by its earliest shoots.
Ainsera was only ten years old, yet her beauty was already extraordinary.
Silver hair like the marquis’s.
Light green eyes one could lose oneself in.
With her fair skin and long eyelashes, this young lady would one day leave countless male students at Hebron Academy heartbroken.
However, I could not have cared less about any of that.
‘Damn it, who knows what sort of important conversation is taking place over there right now….’
Whether she knew of my troubled state of mind or not, Ainsera called out to me warmly.
“Young Master Evan~”
“…Please call me Young Master Verdin, Lady Luke.”
I tried to draw a line between us, but Ainsera crossed it in a single leap.
“We are the same age, so how about we speak casually and become friends?”
“…What?”
She had already started speaking casually, though?
SIGH―
How am I supposed to deal with this brazen little lady…?
I swept my bangs back in frustration.
SWISH―
“Oh my…….”
An exclamation slipped from Ainsera’s lips.
For a moment, she seemed to stare at me blankly without even realizing it….
Well, I understood exactly how she felt.
When I was still unaccustomed to this face, even I would occasionally marvel whenever I looked in a mirror.
“All right… No, fine.”
In the end, I accepted Ainsera’s proposal.
People like her always did things their own way, so breaking their stubbornness was rarely easy.
“Ooh― You accepted that surprisingly quickly.”
“Should I go back to using honorifics? My lady?”
“No~ It is fine.”
Even at my slightly sarcastic response, Ainsera giggled as though she found it amusing.
From that point onward, another barrage of questions began.
“You― I am only asking out of curiosity, so do not take it the wrong way, all right?”
“…….”
If you think I might take offense, could you not simply refrain from asking at all?
The words rose all the way to my throat, but I could not bring myself to voice them.
“You lived as a commoner until three months ago, right?”
“…What?”
Is this brat seriously trying to pick a fight with me over my status?
I was somewhat dumbfounded, but judging by what she said next, perhaps it was merely the curiosity of an immature young noble lady.
“Tell me, what was it like when you lived as a commoner? It must have been much~ freer and more comfortable than living as a noble, right? There would not have been any tiresome etiquette to follow, either.”
“…Hmm.”
How am I supposed to answer this?
It was complicated.
After all, I was not actually ‘Evan Verdin,’ and I had never lived such a life.
However, the questions that followed were even more difficult to answer.
What kind of woman had my mother been?
Did I know how my commoner mother had met my father?
Were the commoners of the Verdin Marquisate living reasonably well?
I had supposedly been caught in some sort of explosion, so what exactly had happened?
“…These do not seem like especially pleasant topics to discuss.”
“Really? I was genuinely curious. What a shame.”
“That is unfortunate.”
Just in case, I had reviewed the official records so that I would not attract unnecessary suspicion, but that alone was not enough to answer her questions properly.
There were also things I simply did not know, such as the story between the real Evan’s mother and the marquis.
“Hmm~ Then what about clove, was it? Anyway, what about the method of purifying monster corpses with that plant?”
She was less curious about the purification method itself than about the ‘circumstances’ through which I had learned it.
Therefore, I gave her the same explanation I had used during the Monster Subjugation Campaign.
The harsh and difficult lives of commoners.
How, forced to use even monster corpses just to scrape by, they had naturally discovered the method.
“Ooh― That is an interesting story.”
Ainsera’s eyes sparkled when she heard it.
However, somehow… I felt a strange sense of dissonance.
Her lips were smiling, but her eyes were not.
Her clear, light green eyes seemed to be straining to see straight through me.
It was almost as though she suspected the very existence of ‘Evan Verdin’…….
‘No way. Is this ten-year-old little lady really…?’
In the martial world, there was a saying that one must beware of three kinds of people.
The elderly, women. And children.
However, that only applied to people whose identities were unknown.
‘Why would the daughter of House Luke bother playing detective with me?’
No matter how much I thought about it, there was no reason.
We had no grudge against each other, nor did we have any conflicting interests.
Even if she discovered that I was not Marquis Verdin’s ‘true illegitimate son’….
‘House Luke has absolutely nothing to gain.’
At least, that was what I thought.
Ainsera, however, appeared to think otherwise.
* * *
Three months earlier.
Ainsera Luke opened her eyes in the ducal castle of the Luke Duchy.
CHIRP, CHIRP, CHIRP―
Birdsong drifted through the half-open arched window, and clear morning sunlight filtered through the gap.
It was a refreshing morning no different from any other.
“Ha! Damn it… I ended up dying again.”
Half-risen from the bed, she cursed with her face twisted into a deep scowl.
She had died again.
What did that mean?
「7:00 a.m., March 13, Year 711 of the Asron Imperial Calendar」
For nearly everyone, today would have been a day they were experiencing for the first time in their lives.
Naturally.
However….
For her, it was already the sixth time she had awakened to the same morning.
GRIND―
‘Lucas, that son of a bitch…!’
Ainsera ground her teeth as she remembered the man who had killed her the previous night.
She could still almost feel the chilling sensation of that cold blade being driven into her neck.
‘Just as I thought… that bastard must have been the true culprit.’
She could not calm herself easily.
Rage welled up within her chest.
Along with the helplessness and despair caused by her repeated failures.
‘Haa… what in the world went wrong?’
She was beginning to feel weary.
When she had first regressed, she had been filled with hope and confidence that she could prevent her family’s destruction….
Yet throughout all five of her subsequent lives, she had failed to save House Luke from ruin.
SLIDE.
‘Is this… my last chance?’
The pendant resting in her hand.
For something belonging to a young girl, it was excessively antique, and it was a Sacred Relic of House Luke.
A miracle that had appeared before her when the duke died and her family stood on the verge of destruction.
Thanks to it, she had repeatedly returned to this moment whenever she reached the point of death. However, the gem embedded at its center had now lost its brilliant golden light and become completely transparent.
CLENCH.
‘This time, I have to succeed…!’
Ainsera Luke began her sixth regression.
She first organized everything that had happened throughout her fifth life.
Then she planned her future course of action, but….
After only three months, a major problem arose.
“What? They found a way to purify monster corpses in the Verdin Marquisate… without using magic?!”
It was something that had never happened in any of her previous regressions.
‘What in the world… is going on?’
Of course, regression did not mean that the world would always unfold in precisely the same manner.
As she acted differently from how she had in her previous lives, the events that followed would also change.
‘But… I have not done anything yet???’
Ainsera was bewildered.
However, as befitted a veteran regressor, she soon calmed herself and began responding methodically.
“Wow~ That is incredible! How in the world do they do it?”
“Hahaha! You have been studying magic diligently lately, so it seems my daughter has taken an interest as well.”
“Yes. It is so~~ fascinating!”
First, she needed to determine exactly what had happened.
“They use a common plant called clove.”
“…Clove?”
She wondered whether it was merely a method that had remained unknown in her previous lives, but apparently that was not the case.
‘But clove is not supposed to become known for purifying monster corpses until five years from now…?’
More precisely, it would be after that ‘calamity’ erupted from the Behamag Mountains.
‘What is this? This strange sense of dissonance…….’
Was it because she herself had spent her regressions acting upon her knowledge of the future?
This incident made her feel as though someone else knew what was going to happen and had acted in advance.
“Then was Marquis Verdin the one who discovered it?”
“Ah, no. The marquis had an illegitimate son whom he secretly raised among commoners, and the boy told him about knowledge that the commoners already possessed.”
“Marquis Verdin’s… illegitimate son?”
What was that supposed to mean?
In the House Verdin she knew from her previous lives, there had never been any illegitimate third young master.
“Yes. His name was… Evan, I believe? He was formally acknowledged about three months ago, and he resembles the marquis so closely that anyone can tell at a glance that he is his biological son.”
The Marchioness had reportedly thrown a tremendous fit, but in the end, even she had been unable to prevent his formal recognition.
Even the ‘Bloodline Verification Magic’ performed using their blood had returned a result showing a probability of more than 99.9 percent that he was the marquis’s biological child.
‘An illegitimate son of House Verdin who appeared out of nowhere….’
No matter how she looked at it, he was suspicious.
Ainsera became convinced that the anomaly of this life had begun with that boy.
‘This is a major event that will reshape not only the empire’s internal affairs but the balance of power across the entire continent.’
Because of it, a substantial portion of her knowledge of the future was certain to become unreliable.
‘Haa… this is the worst.’
Now that she could no longer regress, controlling as many variables as possible would barely be enough.
In such a situation, this truly was a ‘calamity.’
‘Now that it has come to this… I have to uncover that illegitimate son’s true identity at any cost.’
Perhaps the success or failure of this regression rested in that boy’s hands.
“Hehe… Daaad!”
“Y-Yes…?”
Therefore, she pestered Duke Luke until he finally allowed her to accompany him to the Verdin Marquisate.
Before arriving, she had conducted an extensive investigation into Evan Verdin. Now, she was clinging to his side like a leech and sounding him out with one question after another―
‘What? He was supposedly a commoner until three months ago, yet he displays etiquette that is perfect?’
He possessed an air of refinement that made it seem as though he had been born into nobility.
Even his diction and conversational skills were beyond reproach.
Paradoxically, that itself was the problem.
‘The stories about his life outside the castle are suspicious, too.’
He skillfully evaded her questions, but far too many details were strangely vague for experiences that had supposedly happened to him personally.
It almost felt as though he were speaking about someone else’s life.
‘Most of all, the circumstances under which he claims to have learned of clove’s purifying effect….’
There was a high probability that it was a lie.
She had investigated the village where the boy was said to have lived, as well as the entire Verdin Marquisate, but not a single resident claimed to know that clove could purify monster corpses.
‘Evan Verdin….’
Who in the world are you?
Ainsera wanted to know the boy’s true identity.