IEGM 01

“No, if you were going to kill her off, you shouldn’t have written such a tragic backstory in the first place!”

I furiously pressed the home button and exited the novel.
Even that wasn’t enough to calm me down, so I opened my e-book purchase list and long-pressed the novel I had just been reading.

「Would you like to delete this file?」

Without hesitation, I hit delete.

<The Duke’s Youngest Daughter Is a Great Mage!>

A friend had recommended it to me when I was stuck in a reading slump.
It was a reincarnation childcare fantasy about a female protagonist who had once been a great mage a thousand years ago and was reborn into a ducal family famous for swordsmanship. The story had been full of satisfying moments with barely any frustrating developments.

I’d only sampled the first volume preview, but I’d discovered a new favorite character for the first time in ages, so I immediately bought all twelve volumes without hesitation.

I kept reading excitedly, wondering when my favorite character and the heroine would finally become friends…

But then, out of nowhere, my favorite character died.

‘The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it is.’

Ansharie Serentia.

At first, she was portrayed like a villainess, constantly putting the protagonist in danger and framing her, only for the story to later reveal the classic twist: she had actually been a good person all along.

Born into a family opposing the heroine, she clashed with her at every turn, but in truth she had only been brainwashed, and the real villain was her father.

So naturally, I assumed the heroine would soon save her and they’d become friends.

‘After all, Ishtar had helped so many characters already.’

Perhaps to show off the heroine’s overpowered abilities, she rescued everyone who needed help, from the male lead to one-off extras who only appeared briefly.

Most of the twelve volumes consisted of the heroine helping people.

But Ansharie died pointlessly.

Because of her father’s rebellion.

‘If you were going to kill her in volume ten, then why were you dropping all those hints since volume two? Seriously.’

The more I thought about it, the angrier I became, so I permanently deleted the novel.

Etching it into my memory as the biggest landmine of my life.

‘Was this fate’s way of telling me to change the story myself if I hated it so much?’

Amazingly enough, I had become the older sister of the villainess from <The Duke’s Youngest Daughter Is a Great Mage!>

Tiamia Serentia.

The eldest daughter of the villainous Serentia Marquisate, and an extra who had only been mentioned by name in the original story.

‘By the time the heroine and the Serentia family began openly clashing, she was already dead.’

Killed by her own father, Marquis Serentia.

“My lady, are you paying attention?”

A gentle voice interrupted my thoughts.

It was Cain, the head butler, who watched me with sharp eyes despite his benevolent appearance.

‘The right-hand man of the villainous Marquis Serentia.’

Though he acted kind enough to fool even the heroine Ishtar, he was actually the marquis’s most trusted subordinate and one of the people responsible for the misery of both Ansharie and Tiamia.

Well, technically Cain had only encouraged things while the marquis committed the actual atrocities.

Still.

After organizing my thoughts, I calmly turned the next page of the magic book spread before me and answered,

“I’m reading.”

“If there is anything you do not understand, feel free to ask.”

“Understood.”

His tone sounded like that of a gentle teacher, but it wasn’t hard to guess the hidden meaning behind his words.

He was testing Tiamia.

Not to see how much she understood from the magic text, but to determine whether the mental magic placed on her was still functioning properly.

That was right.

This marquis had been brainwashing both of his daughters with mental magic.

Turning them into puppets absolutely obedient to his commands.

Thanks to the original novel painstakingly detailing Ansharie’s tragic backstory, I knew exactly what schemes the marquis had and what he would do in the future.

‘Including the future where the entire family is destroyed.’

In the original story, the Serentia Marquisate was publicly known as a prestigious magical family that produced imperial court mages.

But in reality, it was a rotten household where the marquis sacrificed his wife and eldest daughter as offerings for black magic and brainwashed his younger daughter with mental magic.

‘Well, everyone except that trash marquis was basically a victim sacrificed to soothe his inferiority complex.’

Mana circles referred to rings of mana formed around the heart, and they were the standard used to measure a mage’s level.

Since the heroine had been a great mage in her previous life, the novel included many episodes involving magic, and because I had carefully read the earlier volumes, I remembered everything clearly.

Normally, first through third circles were considered apprentice mages.

From the fourth circle onward, one was recognized as an official mage by the Magic Tower, and becoming the Tower Master required at least the sixth circle.

And beginning from the seventh circle, one would be called a Great Mage, someone worthy of being recorded in history.

‘The marquis lacked talent and hit his limit at the fourth circle. That’s when the black mage Cain appeared and offered him a way to increase his mana circles.’

It was black magic that forcibly increased mana circles by absorbing the souls of mages.

When the empire’s first seventh-circle mage appeared, the marquis used his own wife—who had just given birth to Ansharie—as the first sacrifice to increase his mana circles.

‘Apparently, the reason he even married an apprentice mage from a fallen noble family in the first place was because of that.’

He needed someone who satisfied the difficult conditions required for the sacrifice, someone he could bring into the household without arousing suspicion.

Using his wealth and power, the marquis conducted countless experiments in secret, and once success was guaranteed, he absorbed his wife’s soul.

Later, when Ishtar succeeded in using the long-lost silent-casting magic, the marquis grew anxious and resorted to black magic once more.

This time using Tiamia, who looked exactly like her mother, as the second sacrifice.

‘If things continue like this, I’ll definitely die.’

In truth, I had awakened in Tiamia’s body just one week ago.

On the first day, I couldn’t adapt to the sudden change in reality.

It all felt far too unreal.

Only after meeting the marquis and Cain, and after dreaming that night of Tiamia’s memories, did I finally accept what had happened to me.

‘Luckily, they seem to think my strange behavior and nonsense were just side effects of the mental magic causing confusion.’

Starting from the second day, I calmly tried to figure out what point in the original story this was while making plans.

Pretending to be Tiamia based on her memories.

Sometimes they seemed suspicious that the mental magic might have been undone because of my odd actions, but they never imagined their brainwashed eldest daughter could secretly be plotting escape.

‘So there will definitely be a chance.’

I made a firm vow to myself.

I would save my favorite character—the one the author killed off—with my own hands!

Cain, who stayed glued to my side all day to monitor me, finally left after assigning homework before dinner.

The original Tiamia would have finished the assignment and immediately gone to sleep, but instead I sat at the desk planning my escape.

As soon as I sat down at the now-familiar desk, a little brown fluffball leapt onto my lap.

“Kiing!”

Black fur around its eyes like a panda.
Striped tail.
Tiny round ears.

Even though I had never seen one in person before, it looked familiar from photos and videos.

A raccoon.

“Kii. Kking.”

Why was there a raccoon in the marquis’s mansion?
According to Cain, it was the familiar I had summoned.

The strange thing was that this raccoon had never appeared in either the original novel or Tiamia’s memories.

‘In the novel, Tiamia was only briefly mentioned after the marquis’s use of forbidden black magic was discovered, so it makes sense there, but…’

The fact that it didn’t appear even in her memories made me feel slightly uneasy.

Still, it didn’t give me any sense of danger or rejection, so I wasn’t particularly wary of it.

“Kkiing?”

Regardless of my suspicions, it was simply too cute not to pet.

“So adorable!”

I hugged the raccoon as it tilted its head up at me slightly.

‘This is healing my soul.’

After resting for a while like that, I took a diary out from the drawer.

“Ansharie is nowhere to be seen. Based on Tiamia’s memories, she still seems to be imprisoned underground.”
“Aside from Cain, the servants of the marquisate do not appear connected to the mental magic. However, when I behave strangely, they seem to report it to Cain or the marquis.”

I wrote down the important information I had observed throughout the day.

‘That underground place was called the recuperation room, right?’

It was a place I had seen through Tiamia’s memories and one frequently described in the novel during Ansharie’s miserable childhood.

The servants and visiting nobles were told it was a recuperation room to avoid suspicion, but in reality the entire chamber had been enchanted with mental magic.

The marquis spread the absurd lie that Ansharie suffered from a rare illness where exposure to sunlight shortened her lifespan, then built a brainwashing chamber disguised as a recuperation room in a windowless basement.

Ridiculous as it was, people in this world—where science had not advanced—easily believed the marquis’s lies.

What was even more absurd was that Marquis Serentia was publicly regarded as a devoted father who cherished his daughters dearly.

Rumors spread everywhere that he was desperately searching for healers and priests capable of curing his daughter’s rare disease, and that he had spent a fortune hiring a famous physician from the far reaches of the empire as the Serentia family’s personal doctor.

In reality, it was all staged.

The marquis deliberately kept the reception room doors wide open where servants could overhear him asking about the illness, and the fake physician handed over prescriptions prepared in advance.

He instructed that she should stay in a place untouched by sunlight while taking the medicine he prepared, and that she should only come out once a week for examinations.

He also added that the disease might be contagious and that she should avoid contact with others as much as possible.

That warning was specifically intended to keep the servants far away from the basement.

‘And they said I might have been infected too, so I also had to enter the recuperation room once a week for treatment.’

By bringing up contagion, the marquis could naturally confine Tiamia in the basement as well.

That was probably his plan all along.