The Most Dangerous Place In The Magical Kingdom

A carriage was prepared, and I was supposed to head alone for the land of Lineage, but Ciel and Vincent quit their work for House Lumiore and came with me.

I heard Father was quite furious about losing two such capable people.

Especially Ciel, who had been born a commoner—it seemed she had all sorts of awful things said to her when she resigned.

“He told me, ‘I’ll make sure you can never work as a maid again.’ But that’s fine, since I have no intention of serving anyone except Lady Mythia.”

Ciel said that.

“Now I can officially serve Lady Mythia, so please rely on me even more from now on. You are more than welcome to lean on me and let yourself be pampered. To me, Lady Mythia is the most precious angel in this world, fulfilling the maternal feelings within me that have nowhere else to go.”

I did not understand what she was saying near the end, but I figured it was probably Ciel’s way of showing concern over the fact that I had lost Mother.

Since the opportunity was there, I decided to let myself be pampered a little.

“Ciel. I desire that you hold me.”

I said it while brushing back my hair with a gesture befitting a cool villainess,

“Yes. I’ll give you a nice tight hug.”

And Ciel gently patted and stroked me.

It was a space of pure happiness.

I was dissatisfied that it did not feel very much like a cool villainess, but there was something there that made me think this was fine in its own way.

For a little while, I wrapped myself in the warmth of human touch and replenished my energy.

Feeling restored, I consulted Vincent about Lineage, the place we were heading toward.

“Were the preparations completed as planned?”

“Yes. Everything is proceeding according to your plan, Lady Mythia. We also secured the intended quantity of magical medicine with the funds we had been secretly managing. There were a few details I altered at my own discretion, however.”

“That is fine. I support your judgment, Vincent. If you made the choice you thought best, then that is enough. You are more capable than I am.”

Vincent stared at me for a moment, then narrowed his eyes.

“Lady Mythia truly is a great person.”

“Really!? I’m getting bigger!?”

My voice rose before I could stop it.

A curse continuing from my previous life.

A trial given to me by the gods as I pursued becoming a cool villainess.

My height would not increase—

I had tried not to worry about it because I was still only ten, but my height was clearly short even compared to children my own age.

The cool villainess I idealized was tall and had a magnificent figure.

To somehow reshape reality, I wore raised shoes and worked hard every day, hanging from things in an effort to grow taller.

So for someone to think I looked bigger was the greatest joy.

If I kept growing at this rate, then someday I too would become a grown lady with an excellent figure—

“No, I did not mean that your height had increased.”

“……………. Understood.”

I looked sad.

Reality was always cruel and severe.

“It’s all right, Lady Mythia. I’m sure you’ll grow bigger in time.”

After being rocked in the carriage for about half a day while Ciel patted my head, we arrived in the land of Lineage, and it was every bit as ruined as the rumors had said.

Abandoned fields and the remains of vegetables.

The town shops seemed to have been attacked by rioters, and looked as if they had been torn apart and picked clean.

From all around the nearly deserted town, rough coughs could be heard.

It had been a region with poor productivity compared to other territories.

Even so, there was no doubt that it was the ruling side, which had imposed crushing taxes, that had made the situation this terrible.

(They treated the residents without magical aptitude as inferior beings, stuffed their own pockets, and then cut and ran when it became unmanageable.)

Still, it was nothing unusual.

If anything, among the nobles of this country, it was a common way of thinking and acting.

That was exactly why I disliked it. Why I could not forgive it.

(Spineless, corrupt nobles dripping with greed and lacking conviction. As one who aspires to be a cool villainess, I’ll magnificently blow them away.)

As I renewed my resolve, I noticed some sort of noise outside.

I wondered if something had happened, and looked out the window.

Beside me, Vincent let out a deep sigh.

“We have been surrounded by rioters. What shall we do?”

“Huh?”

Terrifyingly enough, Vincent’s words were exactly true.

The public order in Lineage, now said to be the most dangerous place in the magical kingdom.

Ruined enough that I could understand why my brother had fled.

It seemed they had spotted the carriage of the count’s house and gathered to steal anything valuable.

“We can’t stay in a place like this! We’re turning back!”

The coachman pulled on the reins.

But the rioters moved faster than anyone had expected.

“We can’t get away…”

The coachman murmured with a deathly pale expression.

The rioters had already blocked off our retreat.

(Isn’t this really, really bad!? What am I supposed to do…!?)

This was, without exaggeration, a crisis threatening my life.

Intense confusion.

My thoughts stopped working.

(I-if I beg for my life with everything I have, maybe they’ll spare me at least—no, that won’t work! Nobles of the magical kingdom are hated like crazy by commoners, so they’ll definitely beat me to a pulp!)

And besides, the people of this land had suffered under oppression for a long time while being treated as inferior beings.

No matter how much I tried to persuade them, expecting them to calm their anger at this point was hopeless from the start.

“Yeehaw! We’re gonna smash you trash nobles to bits!”

“Come on, come on! Don’t stand there shaking, you pieces of garbage!”

The rioters’ voices rang out from outside the carriage.

A thrown stone cracked one of the windows.

(It’s over… I’m going to die…!?)

That was what I was thinking as I clutched my head in my mind, but at that moment, what crossed my thoughts was the back of the person I admired.

The cool villainess from the novel I had loved in my previous life.

If it were that person, who had a strong core that never wavered no matter what, she would not yield to this level of adversity.

What had I put in so much effort for?

Wasn’t it to become like the person I had always admired?

If so, then I could not afford to give up over a crisis like this.

Brace yourself.

Make your resolve.

You must not put it off.

Become her now.

Become the villainess like the one I admired that day—

I let out a deep breath and focused my mind.

I pictured the person I wanted to be.

“Shall we go, everyone?”

I stood up and said it, my hair fluttering lightly.

“Let us teach them what true evil is.”

To the rioters surrounding the carriage, the three figures who stepped down from it were unexpected.

A butler, a maid, and a young girl.

There was no trace of fear on the faces of the three as they stood together with composed bearing.

Was it noble pride, perhaps?

They straightened their backs and approached the rioters with dignified movements.

However, the number of rioters surrounding them was more than fifty.

The difference in strength was not even worth comparing.

The three of them were no more than rabbits surrounded by a pack of savage lions.

Hatred and anger toward nobles, piled up over time.

A perfect opportunity lay before them to vent everything according to impulse and desire, and blow off their resentment.

The armed rioters narrowed the distance with sadistic smiles on their faces.

The air tightened.

The sense that devastation was drawing near.

The rioters kicked off from the ground.

“Go to hell, you damn noble trash!”

It was at the moment one of them raised a blunt weapon toward the small girl.

“Kneel.”

No one understood at all what had happened.

Why was he lying on the ground?

His body would not move.

It was violence born of pure magical pressure.

Through her daily training of more than eight hours, the girl’s quantity of magical power had reached a level capable of planting primal fear into her opponents.

And meanwhile, the largest and strongest man among the rioters had been thrown through the air and slammed into the ground by the butler standing at her side.

A completely waste-free martial technique refined to the point that it could be called art.

How could he throw a man nearly two meters tall so easily?

In those few seconds, the rioters understood.

These two were something beyond their common sense.

“You are weak. So weak that you cannot even be called evil. But I do affirm the way you are. Because it was this country’s warped righteousness that drove you to the point where this was your only choice.”

The girl said that.

“I hate the magical kingdom nobles’ way of thinking—that those without magical aptitude deserve to be oppressed—so much that it makes me want to vomit. That is why I am going to beat down those corrupt nobles who brandish their warped sense of justice. That is why I came here.”

Then the girl showed the carriage’s cargo to the collapsed rioters and said,

“Your families are suffering from the epidemic, and you need money, don’t you? I will provide medicine. Give it to them.”

“Why would you give us medicine this expensive…?”

“Because the villainess I admire is merciless to her enemies, but kind to her own people. To me, as the new acting lord of this land, you are my people and my own.”

Together with her maid, the girl distributed the medicine loaded onto the wagon, while using healing magic to treat the rioters’ illnesses and injuries.

“I can only use household magic. So the healing magic I use ends up a little weaker.”

Yet contrary to her words, the “Magic to Heal Small Wounds” and the “Magic to Make Illness Slightly Better” that she used surpassed ordinary healing magic in effectiveness.

“No way… the wound that never healed…”

“I can walk… I can walk again…!”

“Thank you for healing my daughter! Lady Mythia!”

Before the girl who had come to this land as acting lord, the rioters stood there in a daze.

(What a noble and powerful person she is. Even though she is a noble, she does not discriminate against us, and she even personally casts healing magic for us.)

They had lived their lives without receiving kindness from others, and now they watched the sight before them in utter disbelief.

(We will never forget this kindness. We will follow you for the rest of our lives, my lady.)