A Death Who Would Rather Not Be Doomed!
The instant my fist connected with Natasha's brigandine, I threw every ounce of will I had into pulling the blow. But I already knew it was too late.
Then, the moment I saw Natasha's body launched into the air by my punch, my heart felt as though it had frozen solid.
Please, please be alive……!
"Natasha! I'm sorry! This was my fault, it was! You mustn't die! Please don't die!"
I shouted as I sprinted toward her, sprawled on the floor after slamming into the wall. Cold sweat was pouring down my whole body.
Me. Katerina. Committing murder? And of all people, the daughter of Count Volkov?
This was no joke — my heart rate had spiked so violently I was practically seeing my life flash before my eyes. Thankfully, Natasha pushed herself up on her own a few minutes later. If she hadn't woken, I might well have dropped dead of a heart attack right beside her.
Was it because Natasha was sturdier than she looked? Because I had managed to pull my strength at the last moment? Or both? I couldn't say for certain why she'd come through unharmed. Either way, the only thing that mattered right now was that Natasha had survived.
"Natasha, are you all right?"
I sat down carefully in front of her, where she lay propped against the wall.
I was worried about her health, naturally — but her feelings too. She had been the one to insist on a serious bout, yes, but she'd taken a blow hard enough to send her crashing into a wall and knock her unconscious. She had to be absolutely furious.
"Yes, I'm fine. And……"
"And?"
"It was an honor!"
"Ehhh!?"
But Natasha's reaction was nothing like what I had expected. So unlike it, in fact, that it left me utterly bewildered. When I could only stare at her in silence, she continued in a voice trembling with excitement.
"To experience Lady Katerina's true strength with my own body…… it was a truly priceless experience!"
Her eyes sparkling, she stroked her hopelessly crumpled brigandine as though it were a medal of honor. There was even something like pride radiating off her.
"Th-that's…… a relief, it is……"
I said it with an awkward smile. Who could have guessed that a noble lady who looked so demure on the outside was this battle-crazed underneath?
I know the Northern Grand Duchy worships martial prowess, but isn't this going a bit far?
"I feel as though Lady Katerina has acknowledged me. No — she truly has. I was the one who pressed for the match, but…… if you hadn't acknowledged me, you would never have struck with such devastating force!"
Natasha's eyes kept gleaming. To her, that crushed brigandine was clearly a badge of pride.
"You should rest now, my lady."
Thankfully, Eliza stepped in with her soft, composed voice. As always, she appeared at precisely the right moment and untangled a situation that had become hopelessly awkward.
"Count Volkov's daughter must be exhausted as well. Why don't we all take a short break?"
At Natasha's nod, her maids sprang into motion. Relief at having survived a near-catastrophe was written plainly on their faces. One loosened the straps of the ruined brigandine while another readied clean clothes.
"You should rest a while too, Lady Katerina. I'll have hot water brought for tea."
"Y-yes, that sounds good, it does……"
Eliza's suggestions carried a reasonableness that simply could not be refused.
Then I happened to notice Natasha's maids exchanging a quick glance with Eliza. Something other than relief flickered across their faces for an instant — something I couldn't quite read.
As I made my way to the garden, I sank deep into thought. My bout with Natasha had meant far more than an ordinary sparring match.
It had been a window into the essence of the person who was this body's original owner — Katerina, Lady of the Grand Duchy of Eisenmark, the woman who had somehow survived by sealing my soul inside her flesh.
If this world were a novel or a game, Katerina would fill the role of "villainess" without a single gap. Sifting through her memories during and after the fight with Natasha had left me certain of it.
In Katerina's memories, there was not a single scene of anyone's face twisting because of something she had done, no one's gaze turning cold, no one's expression hardening. Not one.
This wasn't the level of merely failing to register other people's negative reactions. She had never perceived them at all.
It had happened just moments ago, in fact. When Natasha had requested the bout, my reflexive urge had been to refuse flat out with something like, Sparring with you sounds boring, it does.
I hadn't, of course. I had suppressed the urge to commit an act of rudeness through sheer force of will.
And during the bout itself, I had even felt the impulse to slap Natasha's cheeks — the girl who was bothering me — as some amusing one-sided prank, or to kick her feet out from under her. All of it, naturally, would have been a monumental insult.
Those impulses had undoubtedly been Katerina's. Why am I so sure? Because a sensible, well-adjusted person like me would never dream of doing such things.
If my consciousness hadn't reined in those impulses — if I had never possessed Katerina's body in the first place — she would have spent her "fun little time" mocking and toying with Natasha without a second thought.
And if that had happened, Natasha would have taken the whole affair as vicious mockery. Her feelings would have been deeply wounded.
Thinking over how Katerina had come to be this way, I concluded that the absence of any real education was the biggest culprit.
Katerina's father, Grand Duke Chadomir Gigant Eisenmark, was the ultimate man's man — so much so that the northerners had taken to calling him by an odd, affectionate nickname of their own invention.
The northern lords and their people still revered him as the greatest warrior and hero of the age. That was how much they adored the man — they admired him enough that the Grand Duchy could end a war it had all but won by being the first to bow its head.
But to a man like that, managing the duchy's finances was a "small matter," and as a result the Grand Ducal House had come to rely heavily on the House of Count Volkov — the very family of the Natasha now sipping tea before me — on all matters of money.
And naturally, something as "even smaller" as the education of his children never once entered the Grand Duke's field of vision. His philosophy of child-rearing was beautifully simple.
'Feed a child well, clothe them well, and let them sleep well, and they'll grow up just fine on their own. That's how it was for me!'
Maybe there was some truth in it. Katerina's body had, after all, grown to astonishing proportions.
But emotionally……?
That needed no explanation. The callousness toward others scattered throughout Katerina's memories was the direct harvest of the Grand Duke's parenting philosophy, wasn't it?
If the lack of education and her father's hands-off neglect were one half of the problem, what about her mother? The Chosen of the Thunder God of the North — surely she had been different.
Delving into Katerina's memories, I found that her mother hadn't been entirely indifferent to her daughter. She had simply delegated everything — education, upbringing, all of it — to the servants.
The reason was simple. Her mother had appeared like a comet after receiving a revelation from the Thunder God one day; where war was concerned she possessed almost divine talent, but in nearly everything else she was hopelessly ignorant. Before it all, she had supposedly been nothing more than a devout country girl from the northern backwaters.
As such, merely serving as the bridge between the northern lords and the Grand Duke already pushed her to her absolute limits.
The Grand Duchy was vast, the northern lords were many, and while they revered and followed the Grand Duke, their own minds were each set in different directions. Coordinating them all must have been a staggering burden for her mother.
And there was one more problem stacked on top of it all: Katerina's own extraordinary physical abilities.
Given the Grand Duchy's reverence for strength, Katerina's uncanny, monstrous power hadn't struck anyone as strange at all — if anything, it had made her an object of admiration.
If it had ended there, that might have been for the best. The real problem lay in everyone's reactions. The other noble daughters, the servants, the maids — all of them feared her strength even as they stood in awe of it.
Is it any wonder Katerina came to quietly look down on other people?
Even modern people, when they possess some gift others lack, develop a quiet sense of superiority whether they mean to or not. Imagine, then, a girl raised in a northern duchy that worshipped strength, stronger than everyone around her from the earliest age she could remember.
Then an ominous thought struck me. If I had never taken root in Katerina's body, could she have ever come to a happy ending?
Almost certainly not. Today's events alone made that painfully obvious.
Had Katerina done exactly as she pleased, she would have made an enemy of the only daughter of the wealthiest and most powerful vassal house in the entire Grand Duchy. And for no reason other than that she'd felt like playing a prank.
There was an even bigger problem, though. The loyalty of the northern lords was almost certainly directed at Katerina's father — the Grand Duke of Eisenmark — as an individual.
If Katerina went on living exactly as she always had, there was no chance whatsoever that they would swear fealty to her after the Grand Duke's death.
The grim premonition kept unspooling. And in such a situation, if civil war broke out, or invasion came from abroad?
Katerina would have exactly two options. Either flee in abject humiliation, trusting nothing but her superhuman body, and survive on borrowed time — or stand her ground with a ruler's dignity and die.
My footsteps grew heavier as I walked into the garden. I was becoming certain of it: at this rate, Katerina's future — my future — was very, very dark indeed.