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On a dark night, a mansion with magnificent comparable to that of an imperial palace was sitting in still silence.
The top of the tower was subtly s.h.i.+mmering in the moonlight.
Locks of red hair blew fiercely in the wind against the jet black sky.
The Magician Ariel was waiting for an order.
"Enter"
Ariel had no choice but to obey the command ringing inside her head, as if she were cast under a spell.
"Kill them all."
And a night of slaughter began.
"…… Huff, huff."
A small figure in a cape who had annihilated the last of the knights breathed heavily.
The cloak revealed a part of Ariel"s shaking hand.
She could never get used to the psychological distress that accompanied being forced to murder people against her will, no matter how many times she had to do it.
"No. This is the last time. I don"t need to do this anymore, not anymore……"
Soon, her body was bombarded with heavy pain that she couldn"t breathe.
It was the side effect of using her magic excessively.
It hurt so much.
Ariel barely managed to suppress a painful moan.
"Ugh-"
She was rolling up her back forward in pain when her body suddenly froze.
The air around her had changed.
When Ariel managed to raise her head to gaze forward, she saw a man.
It was a very beautiful man.
However, she sensed terrible danger from this man.
An intimidating pressure, unlike anything she had encountered, gave her the impression that she was going to be crushed to death.
The man approached her and removed her cloak from her head.
The face of a small red headed girl was revealed in the moonlight.
The man held out his hand.
"Let me help."
"Please……"
Ariel slowly took his hand.
But Ariel"s heart, which was under the influence of a villain, burst that very moment.
The last thing Ariel remembered was her vision became stained red and slowly fading away.
* * *
She thought that was the end of her life when—
She was in a cold attic when she opened her eyes.
"This is…… It"s the attic in the Marquis"s house that I grew up in."
It was a place filled with haunting memories that she couldn"t forget even if she wanted to.
Ariel looked down to her body.
When she moved, loose clothes slid off the thin little girl"s shoulder.
"Is this a dream? Am I dreaming after I died?"
None of this felt real.
She was sure that her heart had burst and that she died.
But…… how?
She pulled her clothes back up and opened her hands in front of her eyes.
She saw a pair of hands that were much fairer and much smaller that she remembered.
"What…… is this?"
Why did my body suddenly become so small?
What was even more alarming than her shrunken body was the inside of her body.
Ariel fumbled around her neck.
"My throat was always sore from blood soaring up into it."
The painful feeling was gone.
She was confused that the pain that had been controlling her for the past 3 years had suddenly vanished.
Ariel put her tiny hands onto her stomach and felt it.
A small growl came from her body that was so gaunt that her ribs were exposed.
"I"m hungry."
This was also strange.
It had been a long time since Ariel had felt something called hunger.
As a result of her repeated use of offensive magic having had her internal organs progressively corroded away, Ariel had been unable to properly digest food.
As she ate less and less, perhaps a part of her brain that triggers hunger was damaged, she came to a state in which she could not feel hunger even until the point she collapsed from malnutrition.
Ariel carefully lift up her clothing to examine her leg.
When she saw her exposed leg, she gasped.
"My leg is……"
Her left leg that was crippled when she was being beaten by her father……
"Intact."
Suddenly, she was breathless.
Is this really a dream? If it is, how can this be so realistic?
Panting, Ariel raised her hand in front of her rapidly beating heart.
"……It"s gone."
A stupefied, childlike voice slipped out of her mouth.
That which had been in her heart"s place was gone.
Undyr"s curse.
The cursed jewel that had been embedded in her heart causing continuous pain had disappeared.
Ariel jolted up on her feet out of disbelief.
Then, she took hurried steps with her now-childlike legs to the attic window.
"Year 809 of the Aurelian calendar…… December?"
What Ariel was looking at was the markings that she had made every day on the windowsill in order to keep track of her age and the date.
The markings which Ariel had personally made every single day until she left the Marquis"s house when she was 14 years old was no doubt accurate.
But the markings which should have continued until the spring of the year she was 14 years old……was only marked until the winter of the year she was 9 years old.
According to the records, she had traveled back 8 years in time.
So I am now…… back to when I was 9 years old?
* * *
Ariella Lucillion.
The only daughter of the Marquis Lucillion family.
Ariel was ten years old when everything started to go wrong.
Ariel was the second and youngest child of the Marquis Lucillion Family.
She had one older brother, who was a half-brother with a different mother.
After Marquis Lucillion lost his first wife, he remarried with a young woman who was over ten years younger than him.
The second Marchioness, Blanche, was a stunningly beautiful woman with gleaming blonde hair.
The Marquis being an old man with gloomy bronze hair, the two were rather a mismatch couple.
Blanche gave birth to a baby two years after she came into the Marquisate family.
Unfortunately, she died while giving birth to her baby.
The baby that Blanche left when she died was a girl with red hair and skin as white as snow, Ariella.
It could have been expected that a man is endearing to his daughter left behind by his deceased wife, but the Marquis hated Ariel.
It wasn"t because of another cliched reason that he couldn"t love the child because his wife died giving birth to her but rather because of Ariel"s physical appearance.
"A redheaded……girl?"
Ariel did not inherit her mother"s brilliantly blonde hair.
Her hair was a vivid, scarlet red.
One thing to note here is that those of Lucillion bloodline all inherit bronze hair.
Ariel inherited neither her mother"s color, nor her father"s.
"This girl is not my daughter."
The Marquis claimed that Ariel was not his daughter.
The Marquis was enraged thinking that his wife had had an affair with another man, but the Marchioness who could clarify this issue was dead and gone.
The Marquis, saying that this was an issue with his pride on the line, tried to find Ariel"s father.
Unfortunately, the Marchioness had rarely left the mansion when she was alive and there were no male residents in the mansion with red hair.
There weren"t any men with auburn hair or orange-toned hair in the mansion either who could have possibly fit the picture with a bit of a stretch.
Unable to find the father, the Marquis put down Ariel"s name in the family registry to protect his dignity.
However, she was locked up in a secluded attic in the mansion.
It was an empty room without even a small mirror.
Rumors began to circulate amongst social circles about why the daughter of the Marquis, who is of such high degree, did not socialize with any of her peers.
Some said that Ariel was monstrously ugly, while others claimed that she had a nasty disease.
The Marquis who unwillingly acknowledged Ariel"s existence, never mentioned her in front of others nor did he refute any of the malicious gossip regarding her.
Ariel grew up silently in the attic as if she was someone who didn"t exist.
As she was always beaten by her father"s fists, the young girl could only think that she was hideous.
Her scarlet hair which was said to be extremely rare had always enraged her father.
The Marquis would be consumed by rage whenever he caught sight of Ariel"s red hair or her crimson blood, and hurl his fists at her like a madman.
It was inevitable that young and inexperienced Ariel came to think that her scarlet hair was something that was abnormal and wrong.
"It would have been nice if I had bronze hair like my older brother, Jerome."
He was a pathetic older brother who only wasted his time trying to bully her every chance he got but she envied him.
Ariel had repeatedly daydreamed like this every day.
That if she had the same colored hair as her father and her brother, she wouldn"t have been beaten or tormented like she had been.
That she would have also been a lovable child.
"But…… not anymore."
Ariel said to herself in her mind with a sigh.
Even servants" rooms were heated warm during the winter in the Marquis"s mansion, but the little girl in the attic could see her own breath pouring out into the air.
Ariel gathered her hands and produced a small ball of mana at her fingertips.
It was a small and weak ball of mana, but it was enough to temporarily unfreeze her frozen fingers.
This was the only skill that she had right now.
Magic.
Ariel was a child who congenitally possessed mana in her body.
* * *
Magic was a very precious gift in the empire.
Only those who were born with mana could use magic.
Those select few could become either get jobs in the magic tower become royal magicians or elect to be a pharmacist in villages or cities.
Ariel did not have such choices.
It wasn"t only when she was seen by the Marquis that he beat her with his fists.
He hated Ariel"s ability to use magic.
This was because the Marquis jumped to the conclusion that Ariel inherited this gift from an unknown adulterer.
When in fact, magic had nothing to do with heredity.
"That is the ability of the devil."
Once he declared this, the Marquis beat Ariel every time she used her magic.
Young Ariel who did not learn how to control mana had a tendency to accidentally release mana when she was in danger or when she desperately desired something.
Until she turned nine years old, there wasn"t a day that she didn"t have bruises and scars on her body.
Ariel didn"t even receive proper medical attention.
The Marquis was wealthy but things that Ariel received were poor.
The maids didn"t look after her and her father and brother extremely disliked spending money on her.
Shabby clothes, dreadful meals, and the small s.p.a.ce in the attic was all that she was allowed to have.
She lived her life being beaten and abused like this until that happened.
As any other day, the door to her attic was securely locked.
That is, until her brother Jerome decided to set a hunting dog loose in the attic through the ceiling door.
"Woof, woof woof!"
"Grrrrrrrr……"
Placed in front of the nine year old girl, the hunting dog drove her into a corner as it drooled profusely through it"s teeth.
"Bite! Go on, bite her!"
Inside the tiny s.p.a.ce of the attic.
There was nowhere for Ariel to run, and as she became desperate, her mana transported her to another place.
"Oh, dear me!"
The only problem was that of all the places that she could have been teleported to, she ended up right in front of Duke and d.u.c.h.ess Monica, who were guests of the Marquis.
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