Chapter 1: Return

When I first woke up, I thought I was seeing a kaleidoscope.

A test from God to make me see clearly what I had done?

Something like that.

I thought God was throwing this test to me to rehabilitate and repent before I died, having lived like a loser.

However, it was too peaceful for a kaleidoscope, and no matter how much time passed, nothing happened.

Usually, a kaleidoscope would show my past life passing by quickly, but not only did I not see my past life, nothing happened on my peaceful bed.

There was no sign of anything happening, and as always, only silence filled my room in a corner of the Count’s house.

“······Am I not dead?”

At this point, I started to think that I was lucky enough not to be dead.

My brain really did think I was dead, but in fact, my brain misunderstood because of the extreme pain.

It made sense… Long story short, it was really the most meaningless and useless thought in the world.

The pain caused by Adele’s chronic illness caused my brain to misperceive this.

Even I thought it was a ridiculous thought, but I couldn’t keep up with the current situation to the point where I could think like this.

The reality unfolding before my eyes was not one that could be easily accepted.

“I… am definitely dead.”

I died.

In the most remote room of Count Kindred’s house.

In this lonely room that was hard to believe was the count’s room without a single proper decoration.

I died.

This was an undeniable fact, something that had already happened and would never change.

I’m saying this now, but I didn’t have any resentment or regret about my death.

It was my own choice, and I thought it was the right thing to do for my family and Adele, who I had been hurting.

That’s why I didn’t hesitate to absorb Adele’s chronic illness, who was the main character and my fiancée…

“Why am I fine?”

Of course, the chronic illness I absorbed from Adele seemed to be intact, but at least by my standards, I was fine.

Of course, right before I died, my body wouldn’t move as I wanted, I couldn’t eat properly, and I was so sick that I got all sorts of diseases.

The energy of the disease I absorbed was still there, but at least my physical condition wasn’t as bad as I just mentioned.

At least I could breathe well, and it wasn’t hard to get up.

If that didn’t work, you could say there was something wrong, but in reality, my past body, not my current body, wasn’t in a state that ordinary people would say was absolutely normal.

It’s not something to brag about being in poor health, but… it’s a fact.

Well, that’s not the important part.

“Then… there are only two hypotheses that can explain my current physical condition.”

I don’t know how it happened, but either the disease I absorbed got better, or I went back to the past.

If we check the first hypothesis first, it was obviously ridiculous.

There was no way that the main character, Adele’s disease, could be cured so easily.

Of course, the people of Adele’s family, the Duke of Listonia, weren’t stupid, and they wouldn’t have diagnosed it as incurable because they couldn’t cure a disease that could be easily cured.

If it was nothing serious, Adele wouldn’t have suffered so much from it, and when I absorbed the illness and recovered as if I had washed it away, the entire Listonia family wouldn’t have been so happy.

“The first one definitely doesn’t seem like it…”

The first one definitely didn’t seem like it, but the second hypothesis wasn’t easy to make sense either.

Going back in time to the past, even though I was in a novel, wasn’t this really novel-like?

Of course, it was somewhat more believable than the first hypothesis.

“It could be the unique magic power of the people around me…”

Magic power.

Everyone in this world lives with magic power.

Mana flows through people’s bodies along with their blood, and people use that mana to perform various magic.

The quality and quantity of mana can be expressed as a magical realm called a circle…

But that’s not important right now.

What’s important here is that there is something called unique magic power.

The magic that people mostly use is usually element-related magic.

Fire, water, wind, ice, earth, lightning, etc.

Most people use magic that suits them well, and the magic they use doesn’t deviate much from the element.

However, there are people who use magic that is not specific to these elements, so other people call those who use this magic ‘inherent magic holders’.

Inherent magic.

Literally, it is magic and magic that only the holder can use, and no one else can use it.

It is not only difficult to find someone who possesses unique magic, but it is also not easy to meet someone who possesses unique magic in one’s life.

That is why unique magic is also called the blessing of God.

There are very few people who possess it, and it is not easy to meet someone who possesses unique magic, but in the case of Lian Kindred, he had a unique magic called ‘absorption’.

It is a unique magic that can absorb anything in a person, and with this, he was able to instantly solve Adel’s chronic illness that even the most famous doctors could not cure.

Rather than saying that he solved it, it would be more correct to say that he just carried the burden for her.

Anyway, just as I had solved Adel’s chronic illness through my own magic, there was talk that someone else could have turned back time using their own magic called regression.

‘Or maybe they were a great magician who could use time reversal magic.’

Since time reversal wasn’t completely impossible with magic, a great magician could have done it, but no magician had yet reached that level.

So it was right to assume that the only creatures that could use time reversal were dragons who had reached the 9th circle, the final level, from birth, and since the dragon couldn’t have known me and sent me back to the past, it was right to assume that it was someone else’s own magic.

“Did I really… go back to the past?”

My opinion was starting to lean more and more toward the idea that I had time reversal, even though I didn’t know whose magic it was.

While own magic wasn’t exactly common, I couldn’t assume that the people around me didn’t have own magic when I had own magic.

While I was thinking like that, a knock came from my room, where I usually don’t hear knocks.

“······ Who is it?”

There was no one in particular who would come.

Since my family was disappointed in me and moved my room to this corner, they rarely came to visit me, and the other servants of the count’s house knew that I was treated like an ugly duckling in the count’s house, so they usually ignored me.

If there was anyone who would come, it would be Stella.

“Who is it?”

“Master! It’s me!”

My guess that the person knocking would be Stella was correct.

And when Stella came into the room with a loud noise, saying, “Master! It’s time to wake up!”, I had no choice but to admit my thoughts that had been agonizing over me.

That I had returned to the past.

At first, I thought that I simply hadn’t died, but seeing Stella’s reaction convinced me that my thoughts were wrong.

Stella, who had cried so much when I died, couldn’t have reacted so normally when she saw me alive.

When I was dying, Stella, who was the only one by my side, wouldn’t have come to wake me up with such a bright expression.

“Master?

Why are you awake?”

“Huh…?

Oh, you woke up early today.”

“I always had to come in and shake you to wake you up.

You’ve finally grown up a lot!”

“…”

Stella’s way of speaking, seemingly praising me but also subtly criticizing me for things I didn’t like.

‘It’s been a while since Stella talked like that.’

I’d heard it often when I wasn’t sick and was just a rascal, but when I absorbed Adele’s illness and became weak and just lay in bed, it was a way of speaking I’d hardly ever heard.

‘Master, don’t worry.

Everything will be okay.’

That was because when I continued to stay in bed, Stella focused only on taking care of me.

She rarely had a chance to use her playful way of speaking.

“Master?

Are you upset?”

While I was lost in thought and not saying anything, Stella spoke cautiously with a frightened expression, wondering if I was upset because of her words.

“Pfft.”

I burst out laughing because her expression was so cute and funny.

“What… what’s so funny about that!

“

When I burst out laughing, Stella, who must have known that it was embarrassing for her to say something, blushed and screamed.

Even so, it only made me feel a little cuter.

“No, it’s just that I found it a little funny.”

“Shh, that’s okay.

I won’t talk to you for the rest of the day.”

Stella was about to sulk, perhaps because I laughed too loudly.

‘If you’re going to sulk like that, she really won’t say anything to me for the rest of the day.’

I’ve experienced Stella sulking a few times before, so I didn’t want to experience it again, so I had no choice but to use all my strength to calm her down.

“So, Stella, what’s wrong?”

After I calmed her down to some extent and she had calmed down a bit, I asked her why she came.

Stella had visited my room often in the past, but when she did, there was always a reason, no matter how small.

“That’s right!

Your Highness, the Count told me to come see you because he had something to tell you.”

“The Count?”

The Count is looking for me?

The Count had come to see me only a few times in the past…

As I was thinking hard about all the times the Count had called me, a day suddenly passed by.

“Stella, what month and day is it today?”

“Today?”

Stella asked back as if she was asking something like that, but it was a matter of great importance to me right now.

“Uh, today.”

“Today is xx month xx year xx, right?”

“Ah.”

It was that day, of course.

The day when the Count called me and scolded me terribly about what happened the day before.

The day after I absorbed my chronic illness from Adele, and the day when I received notice of the break-off of our engagement from the Listonia family.

The day when Adele and I were no longer engaged.