Chapter 1 · The Tenth Life

I opened my eyes amidst a splitting headache, and heard a familiar voice.

“I’ll definitely come back to get you soon.”

A woman’s voice, beautiful and clear, yet trembling as if she were being chased by something.

‘No, you can’t come to get me. You’re going to die soon!’

I struggled and tried to shout, but all I could produce was meaningless babble, unable even to hold my head up properly.

“Waaah… ah-woo!”

“Oh my, this is so sudden…”

“I’m truly sorry. With this, you shouldn’t have trouble with the child-rearing expenses for a while.”

The woman handed a small box from her arms. The other woman opened the box and let out a small gasp, “Huh!” I couldn’t see, but I could feel her greedy eyes estimating roughly how much the treasures inside the box were worth.

“You must… really come to get her? We can barely make ends meet as it is…”

The woman nodded quietly and carefully handed me over to the other woman. I struggled with all my might, but it was no use.

‘Hey, you irresponsible human! Don’t go! Don’t leave me in this hell again!’

“Waaah!”

The woman left my cries behind and quickly disappeared into the deep green forest of May, unaware of the fate that would soon befall her.

And as soon as the door closed, I was thrown onto a hard chair. The sound of the whole family bustling toward the living room to examine the gold coins and jewels they had received for my care was noisy.

Left alone, I thought.

‘Ah… it’s started again. This f*cked-up life.’

“Asha! Is that all you’ve managed to do?”

Three and a half years have passed since that day.

Even so, I’m still a four-year-old baby who toddles along and often falls.

Yet these crazy people claim they’re destitute and are even borrowing my hands.

“All day long… and only one load…”

I was picking out usable minerals from a pile of stones, but even after rummaging almost all day, I could barely gather a few.

“This isn’t even enough to pay for one meal for you! Isn’t it time you earned your own keep? We have nothing to eat tomorrow as it is!”

They had blown through the gold and silver treasures my mother left—enough to live off without working for a good ten years—in a single year, and yet they were utterly shameless.

In truth, this household was dirt-poor.

My adoptive father spent money the moment he got it, and he didn’t go to work because it was hot in summer and cold in winter.

The only son of this house was full of hot air and would often come home after lazing around all day with the village boys, saying he was going to train as a knight.

My adoptive mother was quick to blame me for the family’s misfortunes.

She said I was a cursed child or something like that.

Thanks to their relentless torment, I was the smallest and most unimpressive among my peers.

Mother, if you were going to entrust your child to someone, you should have sent me to a normal household.

Then again, you can’t judge people by appearances alone.

My adoptive mother looked so very warm and cozy that she seemed like someone who would recoil in horror at the mere word “abuse.”

What was even more horrifying was that I was now experiencing this for the tenth time.

I had experienced regression—returning to a certain point after death—nine times already.

The beginning was always the same.

It began in lush, green May, when a woman wrapped entirely in a robe so that her face was barely visible brought me, not yet a hundred days old, wrapped in swaddling clothes to this horrible house.

But the ending was different every time.

I always died before I could pass twelve, and the reasons varied widely; in my ninth life, just before this one, I couldn’t even remember how I had died.

Perhaps I had been ambushed from behind and died in the blink of an eye.

“It’s because there’s no discipline, no discipline.”

This household’s pathetic son, Andy, had just crossed the threshold when he shouted.

“The way that brat can’t even do her own share—who do you think she takes after?”

When I didn’t reply and just kept rummaging through the stones, he came over and needled me softly.

“Who else? Your real mother. She’s a woman who abandoned her own child. That bloodline has to show somewhere.”

Listen to this little brat cursing someone’s parents.

“What did you just say?”

I clenched my hands and raised my head.

“What, does it hurt to hear your real mother insulted? Do you still think she’s coming to get you? Hey, it’s already been over three years. Usually, that means the game’s over.”

He kicked the stones I had sorted, scattering them with a light thud.

“Our family is just too softhearted, so we’re still looking after a burden like you, but even this has its limits. If you get cocky, we’ll just throw you out. No one will want a scruffy brat with grandma hair like you, I bet.”

“Andy’s the one who looks worse. With that scrawny body of yours, you’ll never be anything like a knight. You’re short, you have no muscles, and you’re stupid but your head’s too big.”

“…What?”

In my first life, I had meekly put up with it, but by the tenth time, I didn’t feel any need to do that and often talked back.

Even so, the physical and strength gap that came with our age difference was so vast that it always ended with me getting beaten just short of death.

“Too stupid to understand? You can’t be a knight. Ev. Er!”

“…Why, you!”

Andy viciously kicked aside the stones I had sorted.

I tried to avoid it and ended up sprawled face-first over the pile of stones.

“What did you say?! We fed you and gave you a place to sleep, and this is what we get!”

Neither my adoptive father, reading the newspaper in the living room, nor my adoptive mother, making dinner, stopped him.

It was always like this.

The threatening curses stung my ears, and my back throbbed from the sharp stone fragments beneath me.

The stones I had spent all day sorting were all mixed together and rolling across the wooden floor.

It was a shitty situation—bad enough to bring tears—but today I could endure it.

Because today was that day.

‘It’s about time he came…’

Clop, clop, clop.

It was faint, perhaps because there was still some distance, but it was unmistakably the sound of hooves.

Clop, clop, clop.

The sound grew louder and louder, until everyone, not just me, could hear it.

“What is that sound?”

Andy stopped beating me and walked toward the window.

The window was fogged with moisture, making it hard to see outside.

He breathed on it and wiped the window with his sleeve, revealing a procession of carriages on the dim forest path beyond.

In a deep mountain village like this, even owning a single horse was difficult, yet more than a dozen warhorses were surrounding a carriage that looked far from ordinary and rapidly approaching this cabin.

“Andy, what do you see?”

My adoptive father also folded his newspaper and came to the window.

“Wait, that’s… that’s definitely the flag of the knight order!”

Andy narrowed his eyes, then pressed his face against the window until his nose squashed.

“I think I’ve seen that among the knight order emblems Rudy showed me! They’re coming this way, right? There’s no other house around here but ours. Good heavens, what’s going on? Ah! It must be that!”

He shouted excitedly, then, overcome with joy and emotion, spread both arms and ran to his mother.

“I took the knight exam last month! I must have passed! They’re coming to fetch me! Mom, now our hardships are over and happiness begins!”

“What a load of crap,” rose to my throat, but I calmly swallowed it.

Even though I had experienced it several times, my body trembled with tension.

Finally, he was coming.

In this life, time had flowed especially slowly, making it hard, but that day had finally come.

“Andy! Really?! You really took the knight exam? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, if I failed, it’d be embarrassing… no, it’s cooler to tell you after I pass! But I never thought the knight order would come to fetch me as a group. What do I do—did I maybe get first place on the exam? I need to change clothes right now! Mom, where are my decent clothes?! I can’t greet the knight order looking like this!”

While they bustled about, the carriage had already stopped in the front yard.

The man riding the largest and most beautiful silver horse at the head of the procession leaped down lightly and walked straight to the cabin.

Knock, knock!

At the sound of the knock, Andy sprang forward like a coiled spring.

“Ah… hello? What brings you—”

He greeted the visitor with the brightest of smiles, then froze when he saw the tall man outside the door.

The man was beautiful.

He had dazzling, vividly colored blond hair that reached his shoulders, and perfectly formed features on a smooth, slender face like a marble sculpture.

He possessed an air of nobility and sanctity.

Yet the endlessly cold red eyes within his sharp gaze made anyone who saw them want to fall to their knees and beg, even with no wrongdoing.

His white cloak, too, was stained all over with red blood the same color as his eyes; strangely, it gave off no smell of blood, yet it radiated a vividness as if he had just burst out from the heart of a war.

Andy, momentarily speechless under the murderous pressure emanating from the man, stammered out.

“Uh… it’s an h-honor to meet you. I am—”

“Is this House Windmilld?”

“Yes! That’s right! I am Andy Windmill—”

“Where is the princess?”

He cut him off and asked immediately.

“…The princess?”

Andy asked back, dumbfounded, but the man ignored him and strode into the house, looking around.

Past cobwebs hanging everywhere, a worn-out dining table and chairs, and a dust-covered living room filled with piles of unsorted clutter, his gaze reached me, standing alone in a corner.

“….”

I hoped in my heart.

That he would be distressed by the sight of this house and of me.

That it would pain his heart.

That he would feel guilt…

But no emotion whatsoever showed on his cold face.

“So you were here.”

He came toward me, knelt on one knee, and saluted.

Even kneeling, because of my tiny height, he had to tilt his head far back to meet my eyes.

My reflection settled in his eyes.

My unkempt, tangled, frizzy white hair from not being brushed properly, my wavering emerald eyes, my dirty face covered in soot, and my shabby figure wrapped in a single worn outer garment with frayed threads.

My heart raced madly and ached with a stinging pain, more than a child’s body could bear.

The person I had resented to death and waited for to death all this time.

“Paeon Parsiel, Commander of the Holy Veritas Knight Order, greets Princess Anastasia.”

And the war hero of Santra who ended the war of the past three years, and the strongest holy knight renowned throughout the entire continent of Tranquillum.

Naturally, a man who had sworn a vow of chastity to God!

It was only in this life that I learned, quite miraculously, that this man was my biological father.

“Her name is Anastasia Entimos.”

He spoke to my family, who were still staring blankly at us, unable to grasp the situation.

“She is the First Princess of Santra.”