Published: September 2, 2025
I’m Satou. It seems there are many tragedies the hero couldn’t save.
In a fantasy world, you’d hope everything would end happily ever after.
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“I tried to enrich my homeland using knowledge from my previous life, but I failed.”
Arisa said this playfully, “I was even a princess back then.”
“At first, things went well, but then failures started happening so unnaturally that the country fell into chaos. Civil war broke out, and eventually, the neighboring country took over.”
“What did you do?”
“Just regular agricultural reforms. Things like using leaf mold, fertilizers, four-field crop rotation—basically the basics of domestic affairs cheat.”
Domestic affairs cheat? That’s an unfamiliar term, but let’s just interpret it as internal reforms in my mind.
“Can such failures really cause a country to fall into chaos?”
“That’s why I said ‘unnaturally.’ The mountains where we gathered leaf mold withered. Huge numbers of insect-type monsters appeared from fermenting fertilizer. Instead of restoring the soil, clover and turnips made the land barren.”
These are obviously fantasy-like phenomena, but adding ‘unnaturally’ implies...
“Someone was sabotaging it?”
“Yes, but I only found out later. At the time, I was just depressed thinking it was due to differences between this world and Earth. I even got called the ‘witch of the fallen kingdom’ and the ‘mad princess.’”
So those titles were from this.
It wasn’t that I used mental magic to control the king and make a harem of beautiful boys or anything.
“Still, if they wanted to take over the country, wouldn’t it be pointless if they couldn’t profit from it? Ravaging the land would be counterproductive.”
“They didn’t care about the poor country’s land. They only wanted the ‘Withered Labyrinth’ beneath the castle.”
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“After taking over the country, they publicly executed the king, crown prince, and queens to quell the citizens’ dissatisfaction.”
Tears welled up in her frustrated face.
“Then they gathered the remaining princes and princesses and said this:
‘The reason the country fell is because you are all stupid. You have no right to be royal.’
“The court magicians ordered by them cast compulsion (geass) magic on us princes and princesses, including me.”
‘Live as slaves until you die.’
“Believing it was my fault the country fell, I accepted the compulsion (geass) and became a slave.”
I took a handkerchief from storage under the futon and wiped her tears.
“I wonder why they made us slaves...”
“It was to perform the ritual to revive the ‘Withered Labyrinth’ I mentioned earlier. Slaves can’t rebel or run away, and unlike contracts, only one person in the country could lift the compulsion (geass)...”
She continued, gripping my hand along with the handkerchief.
“Every month, on the night of the full moon, one person was sacrificed at the labyrinth’s depths in a suspicious ritual.”
“A year later, it seems the labyrinth was revived. The sacrifice ritual ended, leaving only me with my cursed-colored hair and Lulu, who was an illegitimate child, alive. We were moved from the tower where we’d been imprisoned to a nearby palace. I don’t know why we weren’t disposed of on the spot—maybe as a backup if the labyrinth withered again.”
Her grip loosened.
“And then, on the next full moon night, tragedy struck. Demons appeared and destroyed the castle and its town. The palace I was in was burned down, so Lulu and I fled to the mountains.”
Though Arisa had a curfew, thanks to the treacherous minister registered as her master dying when the castle was destroyed, she managed to escape the palace.
“I thought I was just going to burn to death, but I noticed Lulu’s status changed to ‘without a master.’ If I’d been alone, I would have died then and there.”
Arisa wrapped her arms around me and sat on my lap. Her hands were trembling a little, so I let her do as she wanted.
“We wandered the mountains until we were close to death, then were picked up by the slave trader Nidoren. Slaves without masters can’t enter the city. To avoid being sold to perverted nobles, I used skill concealment (hide skill) to hide my skills, and Lulu feigned aphasia with mental magic.”