Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Awakening. Tyrant Noble Lady
Once a mansion of a prestigious family, it had now fallen into ruin, with too few servants left and only dust rolling about in loneliness.
A girl wearing an old dress she had inherited sat on a stool, absentmindedly staring into the mirror as her hair was being done.
Furniture and wallpaper that would have been called luxury a hundred years ago, along with the inner walls of the mansion, had all peeled and worn down from the lack of proper repairs since then.
The one tending to her hair was not a maid, but the girl’s aunt.
While fixing the hair of the doll-like beautiful girl, she continued to nag.
“Idnia. Today you will be meeting your fiancé, His Highness the Crown Prince. This is a very important engagement for our family that fell because of the demon race, so make sure he falls completely for you. The glory of our house rests entirely on you. And, of course, my comfortable old age as well.”
The girl called Idnia nodded absentmindedly as if sleepwalking while listening, then suddenly her eyes lit up.
“What?!”
“Oh my, that startled me. What’s gotten into you all of a sudden, Idnia?”
“Did you say Idnia?”
“Yes. You. Idnia. Idnia Kache Betelgeuse. We are the Betelgeuse Grand Duke family, one of the prince-elector houses of the Holy Eldar Empire, and our ancestor is the Tyrant Yurik Kache. You do remember that, right? Even if you’re young, you should at least know your family lineage.”
‘Idnia Kache Betelgeuse?’
Looking into the mirror, Idnia realized that she had become a young girl and was shocked.
‘If it’s Idnia, that means… the villainess noble lady from Awakening Girl Concert!’
Awakening Girl Concert.
It was once a popular pay-to-win mobile game where you raised a saintess and her companions to fight against the demon race, a brutally monetized game.
In it, Idnia Kache Betelgeuse was the villainess noble lady who served as the enemy of Season 1….
‘Oh my? Is this one of those stories where you reincarnate as a villainess?’
The girl quickly grasped what had happened to her. This kind of thing had really become a trend.
‘To think something like this would happen to me. But surprisingly, I’m calm… even I find that strange.’
Amazingly, her mind was at ease.
‘Becoming a character in a game! I thought I’d feel a huge sense of rejection… but thinking about it, living as a human on Earth wasn’t exactly easy either.’
Her life on Earth had never been smooth.
Of course, a civilized world was better than one with disease, starvation, war, and monsters, but even a civilized world was filled with malice that threatened human dignity.
‘In the end, humans have a duty to make the most of their given environment and advantages to protect their dignity. Even if that means becoming a character in a game. Nothing really changes. As long as I keep my beliefs, this is just a change in environment!’
She even felt a bit excited.
The powerful advantage of knowing the future through her experience with the game, and on top of that, Idnia’s appearance reflected in the mirror was outstanding.
If she used these advantages….
‘But Awakening Girl Concert definitely….’
Idnia tried to recall. Her mind felt muddled.
She had played far too many games during her life on Earth.
Among them, Awakening Girl Concert was definitely known for its brutal difficulty.
Idnia was a villainess noble lady doomed to destruction in Season 1, with the fatal weakness of being half-demon.
A Season 1 boss character who falls after her identity as the Crown Prince’s fiancée is exposed—being half-demon. A typical villainess.
And that wasn’t all. Afterward, her monster-transformed form would be recycled in every weekly raid in later seasons.
She was even reused with palette swaps, her colors changed and nothing more—a miserable fate.
Thinking about the destiny awaiting her, Idnia shuddered.
‘I refuse that! Palette swaps?! After raking in users’ money, they just lazily reuse assets?! Still, thankfully, this is only the beginning. Hmm… what should I do?’
Just then, a servant approached.
There was only one servant in the vast mansion, and his forehead was drenched in sweat.
“Huff… Huff… His Highness the Crown Prince has arrived.”
“Oh my, really? Come on, Idnia. Time to deploy! Go seize the Crown Prince’s heart!”
“That sounds like an assassination order, Aunt.”
“Hm? Idnia, you?”
Her aunt was startled by the sudden change in Idnia’s tone.
Originally, Idnia spoke politely due to etiquette training, but her words always carried hidden contempt.
As a defense mechanism to protect her pride as a fallen grand duke’s daughter, she treated others with polite hostility—even her aunt.
But the current Idnia was different. She had to be.
Unlike a ten-year-old girl of a ruined noble family, the current Idnia was an adult woman who had gone through all kinds of hardships on Earth.
‘I need to escape my fate first. Profits come after that.’
With firm resolve, Idnia stood up and strode through the vast corridors of the mansion—not as if going to meet her fiancé, but as if heading to a battlefield.
And then….
“Your Highness. I return this undeserved gift, and this undeserved engagement.
This humble girl cannot dare to bear the position of Crown Princess of the Empire.”
Idnia Kache Betelgeuse, only ten years old, openly declared the annulment of her engagement in front of the Crown Prince.
After seeing the guest off, the Duke stood at the cold facade of the rear garden, facing his only daughter who had committed an outrageous act of rudeness.
Draken Kache Betelgeuse.
He was a great hero who had defeated the Demon King alongside the previous Saintess, Flora.
But the price had been severe.
The Duke had exhausted all his vitality, lost the ultimate technique of the Tyrant passed down in his family, and now even his life was slowly fading away.
Even so, he still radiated a sharp and imposing aura befitting the hero who had defeated the Demon King.
“So. I hear you declared the annulment directly to the Crown Prince. Why did you do that?”
“Brother! Stop Idnia! The child has gotten strange ideas! Someone must have filled her head with nonsense! Otherwise, how could she do something so important right in front of His Highness?”
Augusta fussed and begged him to stop Idnia.
It was only natural to think so, given that a ten-year-old girl had declared an annulment before the Crown Prince.
But Idnia had no intention of backing down.
She knew what would happen in the future through the game. She couldn’t retreat here.
With composure unbefitting a ten-year-old, she endured even her father’s overwhelming presence and calmly explained her position.
“Father, I have a question. The Holy Eldar Empire’s law dictates that the prince-elector families choose the emperor, so why does a Crown Prince exist?”
The Duke inwardly admired how sharp his daughter’s question was.
The girl who had only cared about her position and benefits had suddenly begun to show interest in international affairs and law.
“As you know, it is due to the difference in national power. Unless something extraordinary happens before the current Emperor Franz passes, the next emperor will belong to Kaliestre anyway. By approving it in advance, we were able to obtain what we need from Kaliestre right now. And among those was this marriage.
Idnia.
We have already paid the price, so this engagement is our rightful claim.”
“Father, you are deceiving yourself.”
“?!”
“If I, your only daughter, marry the Crown Prince, the Kache family will be absorbed into the Kaliestre family, and both electoral votes will belong to them. Is that not correct?”
Idnia had already grasped the meaning of this marriage.
This was not something a mere ten-year-old could understand.
“This marriage is a path where our family is offered to the imperial house and quietly absorbed until we disappear. Though I am young and lack experience, I understand that meaning well.”
“Then are you saying, Idnia, that you chose annulment to protect the family and restore the glory of our ancestors?”
The Duke was impressed by her brilliance.
‘To think a child could think this deeply. This is not someone else’s advice—she has clearly thought this through herself.
I worried because she spoke so little, but now I see her thoughts run this deep. As expected… is it the bloodline?’
Despite her unchildlike insight, the Duke did not doubt her much.
He had seen countless geniuses as the head of one of the empire’s greatest noble families.
“Very well. If this is your own decision, I will support you. Augusta, proceed with the formal annulment.”
“No, Brother! What about my peaceful retirement?! Idnia, what do you even know as a child to say such things! We’re not the only family facing extinction! Do you know how thorny the path is for a woman to inherit a family? And besides—”
“In terms of stability, Idnia’s choice is far more stable.
From the imperial family’s perspective, it would be more beneficial to assassinate us or frame us and wipe out the entire family rather than honor this engagement.”
“Even so, you’re the hero who defeated the Demon King. Would they really go that far?
More importantly, you and the Emperor studied together, didn’t you?”
……
Just like the Crown Prince Rudolf, Emperor Franz Kaliestre was a youthful and handsome man despite his age, beloved throughout the empire.
But the masses only saw the surface he presented.
The Duke, who knew the Emperor’s true nature as his academy peer, remained silent.
“Idnia.”
“Yes, Father.”
“My body has been unwell, so I entrusted parental authority to your aunt in place of your mother. But since your thoughts are sound, from now on, make your own decisions and seek approval afterward.
Here, I give you the Betelgeuse signet ring.”
The Duke evaluated Idnia more highly than Augusta, the guardian, and handed her the signet ring—the symbol of the family head.
“Yes, Father. I will strive to meet your expectations.”
After finishing her discussion about the future with the Duke, Idnia withdrew.
“Alright. That should be enough to avoid the destruction flag, right?!”
She had made the bold move of declaring annulment in front of the Crown Prince, but the backlash was not severe.
As Idnia herself had felt, the engagement had been unreasonable from the start.
The fallen prince-elector family had only maintained the engagement by relying on past promises and imperial honor at the twilight of the empire—all because the Duke’s health had worsened and authority had passed to Augusta.
Idnia proved she had better judgment than Augusta and secured the Duke’s full support.
‘Now then, what should I do? Awakening Girl Concert originally… it hasn’t started yet, right?’
The original game began when the female protagonist, a saintess candidate, enrolled in the Imperial Academy.
Attending classes and using free time to grow her and her companions’ stats while surviving approaching threats—that was the flow of the game.
‘Being Korean by origin, I’m drawn to pre-studying… no, I am. But right now, I don’t have a status window or paid items, so I’ll have to go with a no-spending survival meta.’
Idnia hesitated for a moment.
Even in the pay-to-win game Awakening Girl Concert, there were ways for free players to survive.
An extreme efficiency build—taking advantage of the fact that stats wouldn’t go below zero, abandoning certain stats entirely.
‘I’m pretty sure logging work during part-time jobs lowered charm and elegance.’
Charm and elegance would drop, along with social reputation, but stamina and grit would rise—the part-time job, “logging.”
However, it was a choice almost unthinkable in an otome game.
You needed to build relationships with many male characters, but if charm and elegance dropped, most of them would reject you, and with low social reputation, social events wouldn’t even trigger—making you completely unpopular.
And it wasn’t even a long-term strategy usable beyond Season 1.
So most free players would gather resources given by the developers and use such characters merely as inheritance material for stamina and grit skills.
‘I don’t like it….’
Idnia honestly wasn’t thrilled.
She had already broken off the engagement with the Crown Prince. Wouldn’t it be fine to just live comfortably now?
But her mind was still Korean.
Even when starting a healing game, the Korean instinct to jump into 24-hour labor to pay off debt first… drove her into this experiment.
‘The moment I declared annulment in front of the Crown Prince, I already became an outcast in high society. I can abandon charm and elegance stats. More importantly, logging earns money, doesn’t it? With capital and sincerity, elegance can be gained later.’
Resolving herself, Idnia headed toward the logging site.
And six years passed.