Chapter 1

My corpse had been casually discarded halfway up the mountain.

Like food for wild beasts.

I realized that at dawn that day.

“Cough, cough-cough—, kheuk—!”

The moment I felt a burning sensation as though the root of my tongue were being scorched, a lump of blood surged up from my throat.

The ground beneath me was cold and damp. Without even thinking to wipe the blood from my lips, I stared blankly at the clump of blood that had spilled onto the ground.

Ssssss—.

The black leaves beneath the blood began melting with an unpleasant sound, as though they had been doused with hydrochloric acid.

It was proof that the blood flowing through my veins was deadly poison.

Especially when it came into contact with certain special compounds found in plants, it could cause an intense and dangerous reaction like this.

‘No wonder they treated me like a witch….’

I mocked myself inwardly as I slowly pushed myself up.

At any rate, I was alive….

“……Ugh.”

A hoarse voice scraped its way out of my throat.

‘Those bastards repaid my kindness with hatred.’

I looked toward the lights of Billot Village, not far away.

“Evelyn, this is all for the sake of the village. It’s absolutely, absolutely not because we hate you….”

The village chief’s face flashed through my mind as he spouted that nonsense with such sincerity.

‘Even though they took more of my herbs than anyone else, they were also more enthusiastic than anyone else when it came to making me drink poison.’

Billot Village was a tiny village at the southernmost tip of the Empire, so small it did not even appear on the map.

They were the people who had taken me in and raised me when I was an orphan.

So I had willingly sacrificed my own body for them.

I chewed and swallowed poisonous herbs until I reached my limit in order to have prophetic dreams and prepare the village for epidemics, droughts, and floods.

I even experimented directly on my own body to distinguish poisonous herbs from medicinal ones and create potions.

But what I received in return was the label of ‘witch’ and a dose of poison.

‘They went and found some cheap poison I’d never even heard of….’

Ptooey—!

I spat the black blood remaining in my mouth toward the village.

Ignorant fools who had repaid my goodwill with poison.

They probably had no idea.

The poisonous herbs I had chewed and swallowed to help them had made my body highly resistant to poison.

And thanks to them poisoning me and stopping my breathing once.

‘Everything came back to me….’

My memories of my past life.

And even the fact that this world was the setting of a novel I had read in my previous life.

I no longer had any time to waste here.

‘If they find out that I survived, they might burn me to death for real this time.’

I had to get out of here immediately.

First, I headed toward the cabin I had secretly built halfway up the mountain.

It was a laboratory and something like a secret base where I studied medicinal and poisonous herbs, completely unknown to the villagers.

I wondered if the musty air inside the cabin had ever felt as welcoming as it did today.

But I didn’t even have time to say a proper farewell to the cabin I had grown attached to.

I hurriedly swept everything I could find from the drawers and shelves into my arms.

They were the medicinal and poisonous herbs I had collected while climbing the mountain over the past several years.

‘Ah, I need to bring my research journal too.’

I stuffed even the battered notebook, which I had read and rewritten hundreds, even thousands of times, into a small backpack.

There was no time for sentimentality.

I immediately ran out of the cabin and began descending the mountain.

At the same time, I unfolded a map of the Empire in my mind.

‘First, I absolutely have to avoid the capital and the northern part of the Empire.’

Those were the territories of the main characters in this novel.

They were the stage upon which the story unfolded.

The capital and the North.

The Imperial Family and the Grand Ducal House.

The Crown Prince and the Saintess.

The Saintess and the Grand Duke of the North.

Every event, romance, betrayal, and power struggle took place there.

‘The East would be better.’

Crunch, crunch.

The dry leaves crumbled beneath my feet.

I lightly leaped over protruding rocks and skillfully traversed the slippery dirt path with the practiced movements of someone accustomed to the mountains.

The instincts I had developed from climbing the mountains like a wild animal for more than a decade while gathering herbs had become even sharper after I had stood on the brink of death.

Whenever I ran without hesitation until I was completely out of breath, I leaned my back against a tree trunk and paused to catch my breath.

‘I’m going to the eastern coast, where commerce is well developed.’

I even considered selling the herbs I had brought with me there, buying passage on a ship, and simply leaving for another empire altogether.

Yes.

After all, I had knowledge of both medicinal and poisonous herbs.

‘I’m confident I can at least keep myself fed wherever I go.’

I’m done with this.

Now that my memories had returned, I would never again destroy my body for the sake of helping other people.

Besides, those dreams I had thought were prophetic had simply been memories of the original novel resurfacing.

‘Now that I remember everything from the original story, there’s no reason to swallow poison just to have prophetic dreams.’

It was all already inside my head.

The future?

Prophecy?

‘To hell with all of it!’

I just wanted to open a little apothecary somewhere quiet, live peacefully, grow old, and die!

I pushed myself upright again.

Then I ran like mad toward the eastern forest, where darkness still lay thick.

Perhaps because I had been steadily drinking the potions I had brought with me, my body, which had stopped breathing once already, was recovering at an astonishing rate.

How long had I been running?

The early morning fog grew thick, gradually obscuring my vision.

That was when I heard it.

The sound of horses’ hooves echoed from somewhere in the distance.

‘What? Could it be the villagers already?’

No.

I shook my head.

‘They’re not the kind of people who would climb the mountain at dawn just to check my corpse.’

It would take them some time to realize I had disappeared.

Perhaps they were so afraid of climbing that mountain that they might live their entire lives without ever realizing I was gone.

‘Then who is it?’

I quickly stopped running and crouched down.

I was familiar with situations like this.

It wasn’t as though I had only encountered wild beasts once or twice while wandering through the mountains in search of poisonous herbs.

Just as I had done back then, I held my breath and concealed my presence.

A moment later, a black carriage emerged through the fog.

In front of the carriage, a woman was kneeling with her head bowed.

Several men dressed entirely in black surrounded her.

Her dress, which must once have been splendid and beautiful, was covered in mud and spread wide across the dirt ground, looking completely out of place.

Then—

Shing—.

The cold sound of steel cut through the morning fog.

And then—

Thud.

The woman’s head fell to the ground without her even having time to scream properly.

‘M-Mad…!’

I clamped both hands over my mouth.

I barely managed to swallow the scream that was about to escape between my teeth.

Very slowly, I stepped backward.

Quietly.

Careful not to step on the dry leaves beneath my feet.

Careful to make sure even my breathing was swallowed by the fog.

Just a little farther.

Just a little farther, and—

Crack!

A dry branch snapped cheerfully beneath my foot.

‘Ah….’

And the heads of the men wearing black masks turned toward me in perfect unison.

“Get her!”

“Damn it—!”

I immediately turned and ran in the opposite direction.

But—

Whoosh!

A sharp dagger flew through the air and embedded itself in the ground right in front of my feet.

“Eek!”

Unable to run because of the sudden attack, my feet tangled beneath me, and I tumbled across the ground.

Before I even had time to feel the pain, dark shadows fell over my body.

“There was a little rat hiding here.”

One of the men grabbed me by the hair and yanked my head backward.

“Ugh!”

I groaned in pain and glared fiercely at the men.

“P-Please spare me! I really didn’t see anything! I swear!”

“Where do you think you’re going with that nonsense—”

I knew it too.

There was no way they were going to believe me.

‘But saying something is better than just dying without trying anything!’

Then the man’s eyes widened slightly as he examined my face.

“Well, well?”

What?

What did he see?

I huffed as I looked around at the sudden change in atmosphere.

The other men also looked at my face before glancing back and forth between me and the corpse of the woman lying a short distance away.

“……She looks just like her.”

What?

Me?

Who did I look like?

Surely they weren’t talking about that corpse?

‘Well, technically, I was a corpse until just a little while ago….’

I stared anxiously at the men.

I had no idea what they were talking about, but one thing was certain.

It definitely wasn’t a good sign.

‘They don’t exactly look like they’re planning to let me live, do they?’

Suddenly, a surge of frustration welled up inside me.

I had just barely survived because of the villagers, and now I was going to die again in a place like this….

‘If this was going to happen, they shouldn’t have let me live in the first place!’

I felt resentful toward the heavens.

I clenched my molars tightly before suddenly screaming.

“Ah! If you’re going to let me live, then let me live! If you’re going to kill me, then just kill me!”

The man’s eyes narrowed into a smile.

“You’ve got quite the temper.”

“Who in the world doesn’t have a temper?”

When I snapped back through gritted teeth, a short burst of laughter escaped from among the men.

Then the man holding me glanced at the bag slung over my shoulder and spoke.

“You were an herbalist, were you? How interesting. You have the exact same face as that princess from Delmar, yet you’re making a living as an herbalist.”

At those words, my shoulders flinched.

What…?

A princess from Delmar…?

I turned toward the woman lying cold on the ground in shock.

‘That woman… is the Princess of Delmar?!’

Princess Ibellina Delmar.

A hostage sent to the Empire by the enemy kingdom of Delmar, a tool for peace between the two nations.

In the original story, the Emperor gave that princess to the Grand Ducal House of Escar in the North.

Eventually, she did marry the Grand Duke….

‘But later, when the original female protagonist appeared, she was ultimately abandoned and took her own life.’

A princess abandoned by her own country, and then abandoned by the husband she had crossed enemy territory to rely on.

She had nowhere to go and was no longer in her right mind.

Perhaps her decision was inevitable.

No, more importantly—

‘She just died?!’

Before she even met the Grand Duke.

Before she got married.

Before she was abandoned!

‘Why is the princess who was supposed to still be alive lying dead over there?!’

As I stared in confusion toward where the princess had fallen, the man holding me by the hair looked down at me and said,

“From today onward, you are the princess.”

“What…?”

What kind of bullshit was this?

The man stared unpleasantly into my eyes as he continued.

“You’re lucky. We won’t have to use expensive mana stones to change your eye and hair colors.”

Then, with his other hand, he pulled a small glass vial from inside his clothing.

Inside the transparent bottle was a hideous-looking root with a dark brown color.

It was writhing ever so slightly.

“This is a poisonous herb. It will make sure you don’t get any ideas.”

A poisonous herb?

My eyes widened slightly as I looked at the root inside the vial.

Ordinary poisonous herbs could hardly harm me anymore.

But I had never seen a poisonous plant like that writhing root before.

Through the knowledge from my previous life and the experience I had gained in this life from collecting and consuming countless plants, I could instinctively tell.

‘That thing is dangerous…!’

When I tried to move and escape again, the other men grabbed both my arms and forced me down.

“Let me go!”

“Wouldn’t it be nice to live as a princess and die as one?”

“Why the hell do you get to deci—, mgh!”

The man roughly twisted my jaw in his grip.

Then, as though he had never cared about my opinion in the first place, he opened my mouth.

“All right, Princess.”

A sinister laugh followed.

“Open wide.”