Eliminating the Variable
Except for the very first regression, the opening day had always followed the exact same pattern.
Barring that single instance where I had gotten lost and arrived late—earning an earful of furious shouting—the start of every cycle greeted me with predictable monotony. I would bring him his meal, find him tinkering with some magitech contraption in his quarters, place the tray on his desk per his dismissive wave, and quietly step out. Out of the corner of my eye, I would always catch sight of a letter resting beside his desk, but his impatient glare meant I never had the leisure to examine it closely.
That routine—as immutable as the natural law that the Earth is round and revolves around the sun—had just shattered for the very first time.
First was his total failure to recognize me. Next came him staring into the mirror, pinching his own cheeks in frantic disbelief. The maid whose body I currently occupied had already worked here for six months; my face was not one anyone could easily overlook. It felt a bit obnoxious to say it myself, but I certainly didn't possess an unmemorable face.
"It is the maid, Young Master. I have brought your meal."
His expression remained a portrait of utter bewilderment.
"Um, excuse me... where exactly is this?"
"I'm not quite sure why you're suddenly speaking so formally, but... this is your bedchamber, Young Master."
"Then my name is..."
"Arthur. Did you have a nightmare? Shall I summon the physician?"
As he listened, the boy's complexion drained of all color. It felt as though I were watching my very own first cycle through someone else's eyes.
Is this guy a transmigrator too?
"No. It's fine."
"If you require nothing else, I shall take my leave."
I stepped out into the hallway, pressed my ear flush against the wood, and focused. It was lunch hour for the domestic staff, and since his room sat tucked away in a remote corner of the second floor, the corridor was deserted. From inside came the anxious scrape of pacing footsteps, followed by frantic muttering.
"I was definitely playing a game in my room and just dozed off for a second... Where the hell am I...?"
Before long, the sounds of rummaging furniture echoed from within, and hurried footsteps drew closer. I swiftly pushed off the doorframe and turned toward the stairs. By the time I had put a decent distance between us, the door swung open and he emerged.
Catching sight of me, he called out.
"Excuse me, could you guide me to the library... I mean, lead me there?"
Perhaps he was trying to adopt informal speech after my remark earlier, but to my ears, it sounded excruciatingly unnatural. If it looked this clumsy to me—someone who had spent practically no time around the real Arthur—how bizarre must it seem to the rest of the servants?
"Yes. Right this way, please."
I led him up to the library on the third floor. Befitting a ducal residence, the library was enormous and packed with a dizzying variety of volumes—so vast that locating anything without an experienced guide was near impossible. Just as I prepared to slip away for lunch, he called out once more.
"Could you help me find a few books?"
He asked for a continental map and volumes on history. While I hunted through the shelves, he pulled down a tome on magic and became completely engrossed, turning pages in fascinated silence. Only after tracking down the requested texts and hauling them back to his quarters was I finally able to head down for my midday meal.
The servants' dining hall was nearly deserted, save for my fellow maid, Sally.
"Aria! What took you so long?" She glanced around furtively, then leaned in close to whisper in my ear. "...Did that scoundrel torment you again?"
"No, nothing like that. He just asked me to track down a few books in the library."
At my reply, Sally launched into an incessant barrage of chatter about Arthur's wretched temperament, warning me to keep my guard up. She was entirely too noisy and talked non-stop, but since she had been an enormous help when I was first getting my bearings during loop one, I patiently listened to a lecture I had heard at least forty times while we ate together.
Even though I had just encountered a fellow transmigrator—likely someone from my old world—my mood remained thoroughly sour. I had no way of knowing what kind of wild variables he might introduce. If he did something reckless, the butterfly effect could distort the future I knew down to the second. Worse still, if he remained alive, it would rob me of my favorite moneymaking scheme.
I had abandoned any grand ambition of averting the apocalypse ages ago. Anything that threatened to disrupt my comfortable retirement was unwelcome; I would simply feign ignorance. Stack quick cash, slip away to a safe haven, and spend the next twelve years in peace and quiet—that was my sole objective. Having surrendered nearly everything else, it was the single selfish indulgence I allowed myself.
Burned out and exhausted to the bone, I had become a thoroughly self-serving creature.
To explain the body he had hijacked: the younger master of this household was Arthur Croft, second son to the current head of House Croft. According to Sally, he was parental despair incarnate—a lecherous, thoroughly unhinged degenerate. Weekly visits to the brothels were baseline behavior, beating the servants was a daily routine, and his constant scandals gave the Duke an endless headache. His miserable relationship with his fiancée was equally renowned, though expecting marital bliss with someone who maintained perfect attendance at the local brothels was asking for a miracle.
Yet despite knowing all of Arthur's vile habits, his fiancée couldn't dissolve the engagement. An arranged political alliance between noble bloodlines wasn't something one could simply walk away from over personal distaste. Her family held considerable prestige in its own right, but Croft was a ducal house—one whose financial reserves and military might outclassed the realm's other three ducal families. Furthermore, Duke Croft had ascended to the supreme martial pinnacle of a Swordmaster, giving rise to the rumor that the Duke's only true failure in life was his parenting. His eldest son wasn't much better, after all.
And yet, across all my regression cycles, I harbored no particularly foul memories of Arthur. He had never thrown a tantrum in my presence, nor had he ever leered or made an unwanted advance on me.
Correction: he never had the chance. He had always died on the very first night.
"That comes to ten silver coins in total."
"Here you go."
Using the modest stash of coins the original owner of this body had saved in her quarters, I purchased mana herbs. Five roots of Chervil—the exact quantity required for my peaceful retirement scheme. Being a toxic herb with negligible market demand, it was by far the cheapest variety of mana herb available.
When it comes to magic, assembling the 1st Circle is surprisingly straightforward. At this point, I could form one in under an hour. I had whipped it together in the servants' quarters the moment my shift ended, and a fairly sizable ring of mana was already spinning cheerfully inside my core. Still, while it served as the entry tier of magecraft—and they say beginning is half the battle—there was precious little one could actually accomplish with the 1st Circle. Only upon reaching the 2nd Circle did a mage become somewhat functional.
Unfortunately, the difficulty skyrocketed from the 2nd Circle onward. There was the repulsive resistance exerted against the existing ring, alongside the divided concentration required to keep multiple rings rotating in perfect synchrony. Under normal circumstances, one had to invest considerable time and painstaking care to build it gradually without incident.
Unless, of course, you used Chervil.
Bathed in the herb's destabilizing, chaotic mana, the existing circle's rotation grew sluggish, and its repulsive force withered. Seizing that brief window of vulnerability, one could assemble a 2nd Circle almost as easily as the first. The process grew progressively tougher with each higher tier, but it remained infinitely simpler than forging them raw. Early on, I had died attempting to erect a 3rd Circle in one go. Now, by advancing steadily step by step, reaching the 3rd Circle took a mere week. Ever since I gave up, I had no need for the 4th Circle or above, so I couldn't say for sure how long those higher ranks would require.
I crushed the Chervil roots and dried them rapidly using basic cantrips. Simply dehydrating a single stalk sucked away nearly half my mana reserve. As expected, a 1st Circle mage was practically useless.
By the time I finished preparing the herb for circle construction, the hour had already arrived. Grabbing the wooden pipe I had bought from a nearby vendor, I slipped out and climbed onto the mansion's roof, perching myself where I had a clear, unobstructed view right into Arthur's chamber.
Channeling the dregs of my mana, I sparked an ember and began burning the herb. As I drew the smoke deep into my lungs, a languid, melting sensation washed through my limbs.
"Right on cue..."
Beneath the window of Arthur's room, an assassin slipped into view. Originally, I had intended to turn in and rest in the servants' quarters, but I decided to keep watch just in case. Any unforeseen variable had to be stamped out cleanly.
Inside, Arthur was feverishly leafing through the stack of books and documents he had retrieved from the library—continental maps, treatises on magic, mythic lore, historical chronicles, and more. While I couldn't catch the sound from up here, I could see his lips moving in relentless murmurs as he scribbled notes onto a pad. Inhaling this herb sharpens visual acuity alongside its stimulant effect. If not for the minor drawbacks of wrecking one's internal mana flow and eating away at one's lifespan, archers would have fought tooth and nail for a stash of it.
At last, their eyes met. To my surprise, both of them recoiled in shock.
What? Why is the assassin the one who's startled?
The only difference from the usual script was that Arthur had skipped his meal to pore over books until this late hour... Did someone spike his dinner with a sleeping draught?
Arthur's panicked shriek echoed, and as footfalls neared and a servant rushed to shove the door open, the assassin spun on his heel to flee.
Ah... this won't do.
"I really didn't want to use this."
I forced the circle in my core into a violent, high-speed spin. Another application of this toxic herb was drawing upon the volatile internal mana to discharge an unstable yet devastating Mana Cannon. It completely incinerated the circle used to cast it, but since it was only a 1st Circle, it didn't matter.
The concentrated magic gathering at my fingertips lanced outward in a brilliant beam. I felt genuinely sorry for the guy, but I was a selfish coward through and through.
"See you in twelve years..."
"Aria, hurry and take the Young Master his meal!"
"Ah."
The instant I killed him, I was sent straight back. Even though I hadn't died this time.
A throbbing ache flared behind my temples.