My master. My heart. My blood. You’re my everything in this world.
I heard water dripping, slowly, very slowly, as if suspended in time for all eternity. For a brief moment, the sound of water droplets hitting the ground echoed, and the gravity became weaker as time slowed down around me.
I looked up. Only then did I realize that I had been keeping my head down all along. For how long had I been doing this? A few seconds? More? I didn’t know.
[The ego of the subject under the Skill penalty is unstable.]
Groaning, I reflexively pressed a palm to my forehead. My head hurt a lot. It felt like I wanted to vomit but couldn’t, so the sensation just shot up straight into my brain.
“River Eternal? A-Are you okay?”
A soft voice was calling out to me. With some difficulty, I managed to open my eyes and glance around. A girl with hair as white as snow was looking at me with worry. It should have been my first time seeing her, but her title easily popped up in my mind.
“Yes, I’m fine... Marchioness.”
Marchioness Snowhite Rabbit turned sixteen this year. Due to the sudden death of the previous marquis, an overly heavy mantle had been placed on the shoulders of the young marchioness.
According to rumors from the family, there were talks of taking away her title. If Viscountess Amethyst hadn’t taken care of her, Snowhite Rabbit would have been assassinated before anyone noticed.
[The ego of the subject under the Skill penalty is unstable.]
[Resuming the trauma recreation.]
I groaned. My head hurt as if my skull was going to split in half. Quickly drawing up my mana, I suppressed the bitter taste on my tongue as I recited enchanted verses.
“Stability—and—relief.”
An enchanted verse to calm the mind, another to ease the pain, and one to link them. After activating the magic of three enchanted verses, my headache gradually subsided.
I sighed, relieved. I didn’t have time to compose a sophisticated mana poem, so I recited random enchanted verses in a hurry. Fortunately, it worked.
At times , I once again realized that I was one of the twelve best magic practitioners in the kingdom.
“A-Are you really okay? You’re very pale.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me. I appreciate your concern.”
“Really? You’re not sick or anything, are you?”
I told her once again that I was okay. Once that was out of the way, I calmly diagnosed the abnormality plaguing me.
I have trouble recalling memories.
The headache was gone, but I felt a strange discomfort when it came to my memories.
Could it be mind control magic?
It was difficult to actually consider the possibility. Throughout the history of the kingdom, there was almost zero record of mind control magic that could influence the minds of someone else other than one’s own.
Moreover, I found myself at the grand assembly hall of Platinum Tower. All the nobles of the kingdom gathered for meetings and held heated discussions here.
The number of security forces mobilized to protect the noble assembly was mind-blowing. The warriors directly under the royal family’s command could prevent anyone from entering, even an ant. If anyone tried anything funny here, their head would hit the ground in an instant, even if they were a dragon emperor or a god’s avatar.
Maybe I’m just tired.
I activated a simple magic spell. If the problem was blurry memories, I could just restore them.
“Information—Snowhite Rabbit—Restoration.”
I didn’t know why, but memory loss was familiar to me. To prepare for an event , I had taken measures in advance. The product of my meticulous preparation appeared before me.
Social Status: Marchioness from the capital.
Connection: Viscountess Amethyst’s sworn sister.
Note: She is the head of the Marquisate of Rabbit. After losing her parents when she was young, her grandfather, Marquis Whitecrest Rabbit, trained her to be his heir. Unlike her grandfather, who was famous for being a genius, Snowhite Rabbit’s idiocy has been notorious ever since she was young.
When she was twelve years old, she whipped a commoner child to death in winter. Her reason was that she didn’t like seeing a child of her age smiling happily together with her family.
It’s presumed that the education of Snowhite Rabbit’s grandfather was quite strict. She didn’t receive love or praise. Although she appears to have calmed down in recent years, she longs for the love and praise she cannot get from Viscountess Amethyst. Snowhite Rabbit recognizes her as her mother and older sister figure.
Snowhite Rabbit is an ally, so there is no need to kill her.
Strengths: Self-awareness, strong ethics, connections, assets
Weaknesses: Citizen murder, child murder, guilt, helplessness, goodness, temporary infantile regression, extremely low self-confidence
Caution: Many nobles are currently staying at the marquisate. Assassination will be difficult.
Just as I was trying to feel reassured by the information, eeriness struck me. Something was definitely strange.
I blinked. Huh? Did I use to have this ability?
The information that came to mind was probably notes I had written down myself. In other words, they were traces of my past. I was supposed to feel a sense of deja vu and think Oh, I did write something like that...
Instead, rather than a deja vu, everything felt bizarre. Even at this very moment, something made me feel very uncomfortable, as if there was a fishbone stuck in my throat.
I used magic to check if I was suffering from mental distortion. As expected, there was nothing wrong with me... Wait a minute. Magic? I was one of the top twelve practitioners in the kingdom? Me? No, I had never lost my composure . I should act more elegantly, like a noble...
[The subject’s ego is being eroded.]
Yes. Why did I use such an inelegant metaphor? Magic was the art of refining language and materializing it into reality. A practitioner of magic should handle a language with caution at all times.
Even if I was just muttering to myself in my mind, I needed to always be humble and mindful of myself so that I wouldn’t forget the wonders of this world. That was how I had been walking down the path of magic. I was sure of it.
I should pull myself together.
A thousand words became a hundred habits. Those habits developed ten behavior patterns, which then determined one’s life. As a magic practitioner who served the viscountess from up close, I shouldn’t treat a single word lightly.
“What’s going on? It’s so noisy here.”
Another person approached while I was still busy composing myself. Snowhite Rabbit recognized her first and bowed. “Oh, Viscountess Pure Sacrednoir...”
“You’re also here?” the viscountess asked.
“It’s our last break for today. Wouldn’t it be better to rest in the lounge a little longer?” Snowhite Rabbit asked.
Pure Sacrednoir smiled bitterly. “Staying there won't relax me one bit. Even though I’m just sitting down, the nobles from other factions won’t stop glancing at me. It looks as if they can’t hold themselves back and want to curse us. It would be easier if I just cursed them out loud... I should have stayed in the hall like you, Marchioness.”
“Ah... I-Is the mood in there...”
“... Is it because of the Foundation faction?”
“The Foundation faction, the Innerbound faction, the religious faction... You name it. They look at us like we’re sinners. Well, it’s sad to admit they aren’t really wrong.”
I listened to the conversation between Snowhite Rabbit and Pure Sacrednoir. The two were executives of our mirror faction. In particular, Pure Sacrednoir was the chairman of the faction committee. This was one of the most important positions in the faction. It showed how much Viscountess Amethyst favored her.
There should be no doubt that Pure Sacrednoir was favored. For some reason, I wasn’t confident about what I remembered. I hesitated and cast the information spell again.
Social Status: Viscountess from near the capital.
Connection: Viscountess Amethyst’s lover.
Note: She’s the head of the Sacrednoir family, which rebelled twenty years ago.
The kingdom dispatched the Unconditioned Duchess and suppressed the rebellion, showing no mercy. As a result, Pure Sacrednoir lost all her family and vassals. As the sole survivor, she swore revenge on the Unconditioned Duchess and the kingdom.
She vanished and went under the command of the Noir Witch, the leader of the rebels. The witch taught her how to perform a Ritual of Darkness. The exact details of this ritual are unknown, but Pure Sacrednoir devoured more than three hundred humans for this ritual. Just before the ritual was completed, Viscountess Amethyst captured her.
After that, Pure Sacrednoir ended up becoming the toy of the Unconditioned Duchess and Viscountess Amethyst. Six months later, Pure Sacrednoir regained her sense of identity and was liberated.
However, her diet hasn’t changed, so Viscountess Amethyst still “feeds”her from time to time.
Pure Sacrednoir is an ally that can’t be killed.
Strengths: Genius, strong willpower, Ascendant
Weaknesses: Rebel remnant, gluttonous cannibal, former wanted woman, music.
Caution: She has one very capable assassin as her vassal.
It still felt strange. I understood the information, but it felt like I was reading someone else’s notes.
Why did I feel the need to mention if they should or can be killed?
According to these notes, there was no need to kill Marchioness Snowhite Rabbit. This made me feel like a lunatic who distinguished people by the possibility of killing them. I considered myself an ethical person. At least, that was what I thought. It was difficult to understand why some of the notes were written .
Pure Sacrednoir sighed and patted my shoulder. “Of course, I can’t just lament on a day like today.”
Then, suddenly, an unpleasant feeling flashed through my heart.
It’s annoying. I hope she can tone it down a little. She thinks we’re the same and is always anxious to show that. Murderer. I always feel pity for people who feel alive only when they find others like them. Well, if she wants to find her people, she’ll have to go to hell first and start searching. She probably clings to me because she doesn’t want to fall into hell. There is no worse nuisance than her.
What was that just now?
“Hmm? Advisor River Eternal, you don’t look so good. Are you okay?”
“Y-Yeah, you’ve been pale for quite a while. I really think you need to go to the lounge and rest,” Snowhite Rabbit told me.
“It’s okay,” I answered with some difficulty. Words I hadn’t even thought of came out of my mouth. “We already had five breaks. There is no point in resting any longer than this. The few remaining items on the agenda are our faction’s core goals, so I would like to hold my place for as long as possible.”
Pure Sacrednoir looked like she somehow understood me. “Today is a historic day. A new duchess has been born for the first time in a thousand years, and the kingdom is welcoming her today. I also have mixed feelings about this, though.”
The viscountess turned her head. Both my gaze and Snowhite Rabbit’s naturally shifted, too.
“Amethyst is happy,” Pure Sacrednoir murmured.
There was a blonde noble sitting in the middle of the conference hall. No, her posture was too coquettish to say she was simply sitting. She was resting her cheek on the throne with her bottom on the floor. From the throne, the queen smiled and stroked the noble’s head.
To anyone, they would look like an incompetent ruler and the subject who was the cause of the incompetency. They were showing off their affection in the middle of the sacred assembly. A conservative noble would lament that the kingdom was ruined.
Pure Sacrednoir said, “Many nobles fled to the lounge to avoid seeing that. I asked them, ‘Isn’t it nice to see people in love?’ And they rolled their eyes. They’re so old-fashioned.”
I couldn’t believe I shared the same opinion with a murderer. I should clean out my schedule for the day and reorganize my thoughts. I looked at the blonde noble, the person who meant more to me than anyone else.
I said, “Information—Amethyst—Restoration.”
Letters appeared before me. The notes were a lot more concise compared to before, but they couldn’t have been more precise.
My master. My heart. My blood. My everything in this world.
My head suddenly cleared.
Huh? No, she isn’t. The master of my heart is Raviel. What the hell am I talking about?
The fog in my head immediately disappeared.
Who is Snowhite Rabbit? What should Pure Sacrednoir be? Where am I? Why the heck am I talking like a snoot? I’m a magic practitioner? River Eternal? Advisor? It’s like hearing Confucius speak English!
My eyes widened as if I just woke up from a nightmare.
I’m Kim Gong-Ja. Kim Gong-Ja. The Death King of Ascension City. The Moon of Ivansia. The Young Heaven of the Heavenly Demon Cult. And the friend of Terras!
[The ego of the subject under the Skill penalty has been restored.]
[It has been confirmed that the ego of the subject under the Skill penalty is intact.]
[Resuming the trauma recreation!]