Chapter 1 (1/2)

Story 1   Everything doesn’t go as planned.

“Young Lady, do you really want to meet that boy?”

The concerned prison guard peered at the small, young girl before him.

“Yup, yup.”

The eleven-year-old daughter of the Grand Duke, Kynemeia Lyonne, wore a smile on her angelic face as she nodded. As her soft, silky blonde hair fluttered about, the prison guard choked up and clutched at his thumping chest.

‘Cute…!’

The people of the Grand Duke’s residence always—almost habitually, actually—spoke about how they wanted a daughter like Lady Kynemeia. Her soft blonde hair shone with lustre, her eyes were large and round, and her plump, rosy cheeks compelled one to try and have a nibble at it once.

The Grand Duke’s daughter was a precious being the guard couldn’t lay his eyes on often, being stationed in the underground prison. But her request to allow her to meet the prisoner was as if a bombshell had been thrown at him. He glanced at her nanny and averted his eyes before saying,

“But he isn’t someone who can be allowed to meet you, Young Lady…”

The nanny heaved a small sigh of relief. Despite having served the young lady as her nanny since forever, she still couldn’t go against the girl’s stubborn streak.

“That boy’s a dangerous creature.”

A boy had trespassed the Grand Duke’s private hunting grounds before the full moon arose. The same boy that had inclined his head to the side while his body dripped with blood and put on a smile as he surveyed the 10 or so disconcerted knights before him, muttering,

“I thought I killed them all. Turns out there’re more still.”

Far from being scared in spite of being surrounded by the knights, he appeared rather relaxed. The ones who grew apprehensive were the knights instead. However, the boy collapsed immediately afterwards.

The prison guard secretly thought it was only thanks to that that the boy ended up getting caught in the first place. Under the pretext of trying to unearth who the mysterious boy hurt to the extent that he’d been drenched in the blood of others, he was held captive in the underground prison.

Not minding the guard’s concern, Kynemeia asserted firmly,

“I know that, so just lead me inside, will you?”

Her determined gaze revealed that she wasn’t intent on backing down. The girl standing there wasn’t simply any eleven-year-old girl, but someone who would succeed to the title of the Grand Duke one day and become the master of the ducal castle.

Although the guard was worried, he was but an insignificant prison guard so he couldn’t disobey her command. He answered affirmatively and began to take the lead.

“Please mind your steps, Young Lady.”

“I’m fine.”

“There are rats about, you see. Only occasionally, though…”

Kynemeia, who’d confidently declared she was fine a moment ago, furtively grasped Nanny Vanessa’s hand. Holding on to the girl’s hand firmly, Vannessa looked at her with an expression that said, ‘This is why I asked why you felt the need to enter the underground prison.’

Kynemeia pretended to not take note of her and covertly turned her head.

‘I’m sorry, Nanny. But there’s a reason for all of this…’

Having to enter this damp, dark, dismal, rat-infested and horrid underground prison just for the sake of meeting a 12-year-old brat also didn’t make Kynemeia particularly happy. It wasn’t as if she came here because she thought along the lines of ‘I want to try out new things!’, ‘Alright, let’s venture to the underground prison!’ as Vanessa presumed she did due to her carefree nature as a Grand Duke’s daughter.

‘This is for my security and the house’s advancement, okay?

Though of course, this information was something only she possessed but inevitably couldn’t inform others about. Actually, Kynemeia held some secrets she couldn’t divulge to anyone else.

The first was that Kynemeia Lyonne has been reincarnated. Secondly, the realm she’d reincarnated into was a world within a webnovel she’d enjoyed reading in her former life, ‘Althium Chronicles’. Lastly, Kynemeia was doomed to die in the near future.

‘How should I explain, this is just…’

Kynemeia bit on her innocent lips and muttered,

‘I feel like I can’t even mention the ‘Al’ in ‘Althium Chronicles’ and ‘re’ in ‘reincarnation’ because it would make me cringe.’

She recollected her past life in the spring of her 10th year. It wasn’t a particularly special day. She didn’t undergo stuff like taking a blow to her head or being on the verge of dying after drowning. She simply woke up after a good night’s sleep just like any other day.

‘Ah, so that dream earlier was my previous life.’