Chapter 1: Poisoned Soup

Rather than whiting out, it felt like the inside of my head was being filled with darkness.

Without hesitation, I sunk the hemlock into the pot of soup. I didn’t know what kind of face I was making, nor where I was looking at. With leather gloves too large for me on my hands, I felt like laughing at how silly it looked.

Although I cried when I first decided to poison my family, I no longer had any tears left to cry.

As I looked at the finely ground poison, while being extremely careful not to touch it, my head had been completely filled with blankness, leaving no space whatsoever for emotions to seep in.

Luckily, on the dinner table was a large quantity of seafood and other delicacies that my vile mother had probably obtained from unscrupulous merchants. The irony was, this was all supposed to be in celebration of my birthday today. I just happened to recognize a poisonous plant from my previous world. Perhaps the merchants that had sold this food had tried to assassinate us, is what I thought people would think. No matter what, I probably wouldn’t be suspected due to my age.

Viscount Kaldia and his family that were infamous for being villainous, all died, leaving their daughter Eliza who had just turned two as the only survivor. For the crime of poisoning the viscount’s entire family, a merchant who was once again infamous for being villainous was executed.

…And that is the story of how I, Eliza Kaldia, succeeded the position of a Junior Viscount.

Since hemlock is a poisonous plant that doesn’t take effect immediately, I thought that perhaps someone would survive, but it seemed my fears were unfounded. They either died due to lack of oxygen caused by paralysis, or choked to death on vomit caught in their throats, or hit their heads and died as they lost consciousness. My family members died in a rich variety of ways, but the scene caused by my crime wasn’t even able to traumatize me.

In my previous life, hemlock had caused my younger sister to become hospitalized, causing quite a commotion. Because it almost killed her, it had remained as a frightening memory up until now, so it was ironic that I had now used that memory to poison and kill others.

It would be no lie to say that my vile, base mother was interested in nothing but money, and my father’s favorite interest was to see blood and pain along with contorted facial expressions, so this was their punishment. And since all of my relatives were wiped out, as the only survivor of the Kaldia family, I’ve inherited everything.

Of course, taking my age into consideration, it was impossible for me to actually run the Kaldia family, so this seemed to have sown the seeds of a pointless power struggle among the conservative nobles in this country. Well, if they all crushed each other, it might even turn out to be a good thing for me.

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Obviously, as I was only a two year old infant, I wasn’t even considered a suspect in my family’s assassination, even though I was the one who benefitted the most by inheriting everything. But of course, I wouldn’t be able to immediately take up the duties that came with being a Viscount. For the time being, the royal capital sent someone to become my guardian. All I wished was for the person who came to be more humane than my father. After all, if he were just like my father, then I wouldn’t know what I even killed my family for. It wasn’t even funny to think about how rotten this country must be if that were to be the case.

Although I didn’t know if the heavens responded to my dearest wish, the vigorous elderly aristocrat that the royal capital sent to me let out a terrible wail at seeing the terrible state of my family’s lands and economic situation.

From haphazardly stacked bills and debts, to the countless numbers of idiotic, despotic laws and higher taxes than permitted that had been enacted illegally despite the country’s national laws. The people in this domain had been under such a tyrannical regime that they were too exhausted to even complain. Meaning, the people in my domain were all tattered to the point of breaking down. I could safely say that hell would be akin to this.

Of course, I was powerless to do anything about this.

Therefore, no matter how elderly my guardian was, until I became an adult, or at least until I matured and was able to provisionally take power, it was imperative that I rebuild my domain no matter how difficult it was. After all, that was why I killed all six of my family members, my parents and all my siblings.

Well… I guess, there was also an additional reason. And that reason is related to why I was able to carry out this assassination. Long story short, it was because I was someone who reincarnated into this world.

Cutting to the chase, I was able to recall that this world appeared to be that of an otome game that I played in my previous world. Of course, I didn’t know this the second I was born. I figured it out when I heard a maid singing one of this country’s lullabies to me.

The supreme power in the northwest of the continent, the Arxia Kingdom. That’s the country I was born into, the country where Viscount Kaldia’s lands were located. From the lullaby, and from day to day life here, I thought that life here was similar to medieval Europe… probably. Well, I only had a rough idea of what that would be like. After all, I wasn’t that interested in history in my previous life, nor was I all that interested in foreign countries. But, I was certain that there was no such country called the Arxia Kingdom in my previous world.

However, the reason why I was certain this was a different world, was that this country’s name just happened to be that of one in a game I played in my previous world. What made me certain of it, was myself. Or more accurately speaking, it was the name given to me, and the way my family behaved.

Eliza Kaldia. Combined with the Arxia Kingdom, it was no longer a mere coincidence of European naming. The unfortunate thing was, my name matched exactly with the name of one of the game characters.

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I hate this name, was my first thought when I recognized my name.

After all, it was easy to associate this name with the Eliza Kaldia that had appeared in the game, a truly repulsive, villainous game character. The youngest daughter of the Kaldia family, the family whose misdeeds piled up so much that they were eventually executed by the country. Even though she was born as an aristocrat, without even thinking about why she was allowed to hold a higher position than commoners, she appeared to misunderstand commoners as nothing more than garbage to be stepped upon. That was the type of character that she was written to be.

At first I thought it was a mere coincidence, but after witnessing my family’s characteristics, and finding out that the name of the country I lived in matched the Arxia Kingdom in the game, I had to admit it, even if I hated the idea. Meaning, this must be the same Arxia Kingdom as from the game.

Then, my thoughts immediately turned to what would eventually happen in the game.

The story was that the heroine would come over from the neighboring country to the Arxia Kingdom’s school where many nobles gathered, in order to find a marriage partner.

Obstructing the heroine, I suppose you could call her the rival, as someone meant only to give the heroine difficulties, that was the viscount’s daughter, Eliza Kaldia. And, no matter which ending you ended up on, her entire family would be executed.

After all, even if you took away Eliza’s actions at school, as her family’s crimes within their own lands wouldn’t change, the only change that I recalled between the different paths in the game were how fast they would all be executed.

Originally, I had borrowed this game from my younger sister in order to kill time, but now that I’ve reincarnated into this world, I needed to carefully think things through.

No matter what, I definitely wouldn’t face a future like that in the game. With the current situation, I figured that I would eventually be executed.

With that taken into consideration, it also helped me decide to poison my entire family. Something like a destruction flag, I would destroy it to the roots as early as possible.

…As a result, I felt like I had done something even worse than the Eliza in the game. After all, I assassinated my entire family. I didn’t know the specifics of the laws in this country, but, from what I recalled hearing about laws in medieval Europe, the crime of killing your family was said to be punished by quartering. Well, since I used poison, I might also be called a witch and burned at the stake.

Since I had no intention of suffering through such painful executions, I would take the secret of my family’s deaths with me to the grave.

From then onwards, since I couldn’t do anything right now, I would just leave the rebuilding of my domain to my guardian, and it probably wouldn’t be a problem for me to live quietly for now. Fortunately, it seemed that he was even able to calculate how much money would be required to rebuild my domain. My guardian, the Senior Earl Terejia, seemed to be quite a capable person. My father couldn’t even compare. ……Once I become the family head I wish I could change my name back to Maria. As for why, it was probably because my personality in the previous world had greatly affected my life in this one. Oh well, countries like Austria and France didn’t exist here.