Chapter 1 – Poisoned soup

Inside my head, rather than whiting out, it was more like 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 or where I was looking at all. With leather gloves that were way too big for me on my hands, I thought it looked silly and felt like laughing at it.

Although I cried when I first decided to poison my family, I have no more tears to cry now.

As I looked at the finely ground poison while being extremely careful not to touch it, my head was completely filled with blankness, with no s.p.a.ce whatsoever for emotion to get in.

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

Viscount Cardia and his family that was famous 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 famous for being villainous was executed.

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

Since hemlock is a poisonous plant that doesn’t take effect immediately, I thought that maybe someone would survive, but it seems my fears were unfounded. They either died due to a lack of oxygen caused by paralysis, or choked to death on hurl that got caught in their throat, or hit their head and died as they lost consciousness, there was a rich variety in the way that my family died, but the scene that my crime had caused 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’s ironic that I’ve now used that memory to poison and kill others.

It would be no lie to say that my mean, 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 my relatives were wiped out, as the only survivor of the Cardia family I inherited everything.

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

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

Although I don’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 number 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 tyrannic regime that they were too exhausted to even complain. Meaning, the people in my domain are all tattered to the point of falling apart. I can safely say that h.e.l.l would be something like 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 is imperative that I rebuild my domain no matter how difficult it was. After all, that’s why I killed all six of my family members, my parents and all my siblings.

Well…… I guess, there’s also one more reason. And that reason is related to why I was able to carry out this a.s.sa.s.sination. Long story short, it’s because I’m someone who reincarnated into this world.

Cutting to the chase, I’m able to recall that this world seems to be that of an otome game that I played in my previous world. Of course, I didn’t know this right when I was born. I figured this 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 Axia Kingdom. That’s the country I was born into, the country where Viscount Cardia’s lands are located. From the lullaby, and from day to day life here, I think that life here is similar to medieval Europe…… probably. Well, I only have 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’m certain that there was no such country called the Axia Kingdom in my previous world.

However, the reason why I’m certain this is a different world, is 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 was.

Eliza Cardia. Combined with the Axia Kingdom, that’s not simply a coincidence of European naming anymore. The unfortunate thing was, my name matched exactly with the name of one of the game characters.

I hate this name, is what I first thought when I recognized my name.

After all, it was easy to a.s.sociate this name with the Eliza Cardia that had appeared in the game, a truly repulsive, villainous game character. The youngest daughter of the Cardia 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 have a higher position than commoners, she seems to misunderstand commoners as nothing more than garbage to be stepped upon, is the type of character that she was written to be.

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

Then, what I immediately thought about was what would eventually happen in the game.

The story was that the heroine would come over from the neighboring country to the Axia Kingdom’s school where many n.o.bles 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, was the viscount’s daughter, Eliza Cardia, and no matter which ending you ended up on, her entire family would be executed.

After all, even if you take away Eliza’s actions at school, since her family’s crimes within their own lands wouldn’t change, the only difference between the different paths in the game was how fast they would all be executed, is what I remembered.

I had originally borrowed this game from my younger sister in order to kill time, but now that I’ve reincarnated into this world I need to really think things through clearly.

No matter what, I definitely won’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, among other things, helped me decide to poison my entire family. Something like a destruction flag, I’m going to utterly destroy it to the roots as early as possible.

……As a result I feel like I’ve done something even worse than the Eliza in the game. After all, I a.s.sa.s.sinated my entire family. I don’t know the specifics of the laws in this country, but, from what I remember 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 have no intention of suffering through such painful executions, I’m going to take this secret about my family’s deaths with me to the grave.

From now on, since I can’t do anything right now, I’ll just leave rebuilding my domain to my guardian, and it probably won’t be a problem for me to live quietly for now. Fortunately, it seems 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 can’t even compare. ……Once I become the family head I wish I could change my name back to Maria, and as for why it’s probably because my personality in the previous life has greatly affected my life in this one. Oh well, countries like Austria and France don’t exist here.