Chapter 02Ā
Goal:
Get caught up in an assassination attempt targeting the heroine who will become the Empress, and die.
I stood in front of a huge mirror and stared at the strange letters floating in the air.
I was definitely watching Perenustus’s handsome face slowly twist, but in the blink of an eye, I was standing in an unfamiliar place. I couldn’t believe it.
‘What the hell does Perenustus want me to do? What’s this Empress Selection Ball all of a sudden?’
Unable to shake off a strangely indescribable feeling, I tried to adapt to the immediate reality.
‘I’ve only experienced banquets for about four or five nights while being treated like a heroā¦ What does he mean by repaying with my body?’
I looked at myself in the mirror, dumbfounded, then shook my head hard and started preparing for what was to come.
‘I ended up in a place like this right after being cursed by the Silver Dragon. I can’t even guess what kind of harsh things I’ll go through, so I’ll justā¦ face it head on.’
With that simple and foolish decision, I looked straight ahead.
In the mirror stood a woman with her brown hair roughly tied up, wearing a plain dress.
‘Unfamiliar.’
My face, unable to hide its tension in this place full of unfamiliar things, seemed to be the ‘me’ of now.
Only my own reflection and the large Erba leaves swaying outside the window gave a small comfort to my confused self.
‘Only my appearance is unfamiliar. Things like clothes, buildings, and plants aren’t that different. That’s a relief.’
I was just finding some peace of mind by recalling the thick Erba forest around my house.
<Merial von Evergreen>
Suddenly, a line of text appeared above the mirror.
‘ā¦That name is really shallow. They slapped a maid’s name onto a distant imperial noble surname.’
I mumbled the name to myself, which was clearly mocking rather than sincere. As if that were some kind of signal, long and short sentences began to be forcibly injected into my mind.
Merial von Evergreen. 23 years old. Female.
The third daughter of a humble baron family at the edge of the Empire.
She gets caught up in an assassination attempt targeting the heroine who will become the Empress, and dies.
‘The setting is also very sloppy. Don’t most nobles get married before twenty?’
I shook my head, reviewing the information about this world seeping into my mind.
> ‘Since I was cursed to live a trivial, uneventful, and infuriating life, it’s certain that I’m not a very important characterā¦ Hmm.’
If so, Merial was probably just a role to highlight the greatness of the flashily dressed noble ladies.
‘Ah. My goal is to get caught up in an assassination attempt targeting the future Empress and die, right?’
Looking at my plain face in the mirror, I soon found my own answer and slapped my knee. So they’re telling me to quietly hand over my life for the sake of this so-called worldview.
> ‘This is absurd. If they were going to just throw me into a world where death is the goal, why did they hold my hand so kindly?’
Anyway, he was a strange man.
I couldn’t even imagine what Perenustus gained by doing something like this to me.
> ‘I don’t get it, so I’ll just die quickly. Seeing that it says Training Stage, it seems like dying here won’t erase my existence. So after I die, I’ll meet Perenustus and ask him.’
“Maria, are you ready?”
A strange woman’s voice came from outside the door. I didn’t even feel like correcting her that my name was Merial, not Maria.
Without answering, I just flicked the wrinkles of my plain dress once to straighten it and left the room.
The woman waiting in front of the door just frowned once when she saw me and then guided me silently.
The shadows cast by the Erba leaves swayed slowly in the narrow hallway where only the footsteps of the maid and me echoed.
How long did we walk like that?
A banquet hall so dazzling it could blind you appeared.
‘Wowā¦ā¦. Seeing this ballroom, I realize just how shabby my hero welcome ceremony was.’
Pillars decorated with colorful jewels on top of a thin layer of gold, chandeliers shining with transparent crystals, and noble ladies dressed so elaborately it was uncomfortable to moveā¦
Suddenly, I looked down at the plain dress I was wearing. Everywhere around me was shouting that a country bumpkin like me didn’t even deserve to be here.
At the very back entrance of the banquet hall, without even my name being called, with only one maid leading me, my entrance looked particularly shabby compared to the other ladies.
> ‘That’s good actually. This way, I can quietly stay in a corner without standing out and then get poisoned or strangled.’
I could hear sounds of people sneering and gesturing at me from all around. Between the giggles behind the fans, I could hear my mispronounced name being passed around.
Even if I were born again, I couldn’t seem to understand the way nobles thought.
> ‘If you really want to look down on someone, isn’t it right to not even give them this kind of attention? These ladies go through so much trouble to ignore people.’
I shook my head slightly and stuck to the back of the meaningless decorative curtains on the wall of the banquet hall.
Thanks to experiencing banquets for four full days while being treated like a hero, I had definitely acquired the skill of neatly grabbing and eating the food the passing servants were carrying.
I was just downing my second glass of a bluish drink that looked like it was made from squeezed Erba leaves.
“All participants, please come forward.”
The voice of an elderly man echoed through the hall. I casually followed behind the other ladies heading forward.
I stood appropriately in a corner spot that wasn’t too far back or too far forward, and quickly scanned my surroundings.
‘It said I’d get caught up in an assassination attempt targeting the heroine and die.’
If those fragile-looking ladies, who looked like they might fly away if you flicked them, were going to kill someone, nine times out of ten, they’d use poison.
I narrowed my eyes and tried to recall any knowledge about poisonings.
‘I don’t thinkā¦ there was any book like that.’
Almost all the random knowledge I had came from the adventurers who came to our village to catch the dragon. More precisely, the books they left behind half-read were my teachers.
Unfortunately, the adventurers who came to our town didn’t read books about noble poisonings. That meant I also had no idea what kind of bizarre tricks these ladies might pull.
> ‘Probably the easiest way is to put something in the food, right? Or maybe dip something on those feather fans everyone’s holding.’
I was just taking note of the items that seemed plausible when my eyes met with someone among the confident-looking ladies who was glaring at me particularly fiercely.
When I stared back without avoiding it, the other person snorted daintily and turned her head away.
‘She’s really pretty. That person must be the heroine.’
Accidents usually happen around the main character. So, should I go near that woman? While I was thinking, the old man’s voice rang out again.
“His Imperial Majesty the Emperor arrives!”
With a grand trumpet sound, a huge door opened.
I wondered what kind of emperor had been living without an empress all this time, so I glanced up and accidentally caught my breath.
With his large height, solid body, and even the calloused knuckles ā he wasn’t a noble born and raised in the palace, but a man who looked like an adventurer who would come and go from our village.
The contrast between his pitch-black uniform covering his tightly packed muscular body, his hair as black as that uniform, and his fiery red eyes sent a chill down my spine.
His sharp eyes, completely devoid of any smile, seemed to make his stubborn-looking jawline stand out even more.
> ‘He’s that handsome, so why hasn’t he gotten married all this time? Usually, royal families are tied through marriage from the moment they’re born.’
I was just tilting my head at this realistic question when the Emperor furrowed his brow.
He was such a handsome man that he pressed his fingertip against his shaded, sunken eye. Just that trivial action made several of the fragile-looking noble ladies start fainting one by one.
The sensual fatigue of this masculine handsome man and the faint mist spreading around him. It was quite a mystical and fantastic scene, but I shook my head.
> ‘If I were him, I wouldn’t have spread mist at this entrance timing.’
For a man who looked like that, whether he spread mist or water, wouldn’t he look cool no matter what?
> ‘He looks very intimidating and sharp. Compared to the Emperor’s appearance, this delicate silver mist is a bitā¦ Huh? Silver mist?’
Suddenly, goosebumps rose on my back.
I covered my nose and mouth and urgently looked around.
‘Crazy. As I thoughtā¦!’
Silver liquid was rippling in the decorative magic fountains placed on both sides of the entrance the Emperor was using.
It was a liquid perfectly identical to the one that had dripped from the Silver Dragon’s severed neck. If that was real Silver Dragon blood, the situation would become extremely dangerous.
> ‘That’s a deadly poison!’
Biting my lips tightly, I glanced at the ladies who had already fainted and the few people staggering. Come to think of it. No matter how overwhelmingly handsome the Emperor was, there was no way they’d just faint from looking at him.
‘Ah, what do I do?’
All I could do right now was grab my already wrinkled dress and make even more crumpled creases.
> ‘I just wanted to quietly stay as invisible as possible and then die.’
After thinking it over, I frowned and lifted my head. No matter how set my goal was, I couldn’t just watch the situation unfolding before my eyes.
> “Hey, everyone! Cover your mouths! Don’t breathe in this mist!”
I shouted urgently, and as a first step, I snatched the drink jugs the servants were carrying. Then, taking advantage of people’s confusion, I splashed the contents right onto the faces of the fainted ladies.
> “You knights over there! Don’t just stand there blankly, quickly cover your mouths with your cloaks and check the fountains!”
The maid who had been keeping her distance and acting like she didn’t know me came running with a face that looked like she was about to faint, calling my name.
“Lady Maria! What are you doing!”
“Ah, no time to explain, so open all the windows and doors! Quickly soak any cloth in Erba leaf juice and hand it out to people! Over there, another person is about to collapse!”
As soon as I finished speaking, the woman who had been glaring at me staggered and fell with a thud.
I clicked my tongue, tore off the hem of my skirt, and covered the fallen woman’s nose and mouth.
“Hey, you idiots! I told you to check the fountains, what are you doing!”
“Who dares to cause a disturbance at my banquet and call my knights idiotsā”
“Stop bluffing and just give orders! Aren’t you holding your forehead because you’re feeling dizzy too?!”
The Emperor’s low, growling voice stopped abruptly.
