Chapter 2
Chapter 1
I was reincarnated into the world of the long-running game series Aria Chronicle, a franchise that had remained steadily popular since the 20th century.
It was a legendary JRPG series that kept itself alive through countless sequels, spin-offs, and side stories.
A game loved by countless gamers in Japan, yet every time it tried to launch globally, it failed miserably.
Even so, it was still a title known by gamers all around the world.
Its hardcore battle mechanics built up a solid and loyal fanbase, and the decade-long narrative and romance lines displayed in promotional videos caught the attention of players who normally had no interest in JRPGs.
The slow-burning love between a man and a woman.
There were even players who said the developers should just make it a dating sim instead.
By weaving romance lines into the lives of side characters as well as the main cast, the game created a deep sense of immersion in its story.
The only difference between main and side characters was whether they could avoid their death flags or not.
“When this war ends, I’m going to propose to her.”
“If I die, will you deliver this letter for me?”
“When this battle is over, let’s all go see the ocean together.”
Even when saying lines like that,
it was always painfully obvious who would live and who would die, so many players criticized the game for being a pile of clichés.
Trying to turn around the community’s negative reactions, the director started twisting those clichés, causing bizarre reversals where supporting characters overtook the main cast in importance.
Characters you grew attached to would suddenly die one day or fall into darkness.
It became impossible to truly love anyone deeply.
By the time the series numbers entered double digits, nobody cared anymore about fantasy, heroes, or demon kings.
And when the story reached the timeline where the Demon King became the Hero’s mother after going beyond a simple romance between hero and demon king—
players were busy voting on which heroine had the strongest wife potential and who had the highest chance of becoming the true partner.
And how many women the new protagonist would charm this time.
Sometimes the heroine candidates even included the childhood friend’s mother.
Or the aunt.
Honestly, it didn’t matter who became the heroine as long as it was entertaining.
But when I saw a woman shamelessly cling to the protagonist after he saved her life once, demanding he take responsibility because she’d fallen for him despite having no connection to him at all—
I completely lost it and smashed my monitor.
[Aria Chronicle has seriously lost its way.]
Posted by: PureLoveSupporter
What happened to the pure love that Floria and Agnes showed us, the kind that defied the world itself?
What happened to the devotion Zeke Frix showed when he broke the laws of the world to save the Witch of the End?!
And now the main heroine is making cheap jokes like this?
If the world ends tomorrow, it’ll be because of Aria Chronicle.
After posting my rant on the community board through my phone, I threw myself onto my bed.
A new release had come out, so I’d rushed home from work, even enduring my manager’s glare to leave exactly on time.
I don’t want to go to work tomorrow...
I shouldn’t have broken my monitor.
Trying to shake off the late-arriving regret, I buried my face in my pillow.
It was time.
Time to let Aria Chronicle go.
You were the one who tempted me first.
You were the one who lured me in with pure love.
Even a remake of the older games would be fine.
Just give me pure love again.
Give me sweet romance.
No, actually—
don’t remake anything at all.
“What am I even supposed to enjoy now?”
Tomorrow, my manager would definitely start my day by making my life miserable.
No point worrying about what had already happened.
I should just sleep.
“Ddya…”
Would you believe me if I said that when I opened my eyes, I had become a baby only capable of making nonsense sounds?
By the time I turned ten, I had fully grasped my reality.
As I rubbed my chin, I sank into deep thought.
Honestly, I was grateful that this was the world of Aria Chronicle.
I had experienced the kind of reincarnation you’d only read about in web novels.
A second life.
A chance to plan for the future.
At first, I had imagined all kinds of happy possibilities.
But what was the point of knowing the road to happiness if there was no path to walk?
First, I was an orphan abandoned by my parents.
A passing woodcutter had found me and raised me well enough, but I had no connections whatsoever.
Wasn’t there supposed to be something more?
Chosen by a god.
Raised by a dragon.
Picked up by a great mage.
Wasn’t that how these things usually went?
Second, I had been a man in my previous life, but I was born as a woman this time.
At first, I was confused by the fact that something important was missing.
But I had already lived once as a man, so I figured living once as a woman wouldn’t be too bad.
So I let it go.
But being born as a woman in Aria Chronicle without bloodline, talent, or connections—
that meant there was only one future.
Becoming a farmer’s or woodcutter’s wife, having children, and living a life where at least I’d never go hungry.
Well.
Unless you were that one in ten thousand.
And that one had to be me.
After coming all this way, I had to live an ordinary life?
I’d rather die.
Third—
Aria Chronicle was famous for its pure love stories, making people misunderstand it as a world full of dreams, hope, and romance.
But in reality, it was a world where both supporting characters and protagonists could die if they let their guard down.
There was no special reincarnator power.
No floating status window.
No system.
No matter how much I shouted for one, no translucent screen appeared before me.
At the very least, couldn’t it tell me what talents I had?
And the biggest problem of all—
this was three hundred years before the beginning of the first Aria Chronicle game.
When the woodcutter came home one day talking about the founding of the Holy Kingdom, I nearly collapsed in shock.
Because the Holy Kingdom was founded three hundred years before the original story.
Which meant—
if I lived as an ordinary human woman, I wouldn’t even get to see the pure love stories of the original.
Instead, I’d spend my life struggling through uncomfortable fantasy farming life with my modern mind, living in filthy conditions until I died.
This is bad.
Think.
Think carefully.
Search through everything I knew about the original.
The legends, quests, and fairy tales that made up Aria Chronicle’s world.
Anything that could let me live long and gain power...
“Estelle, if you’re not busy, could you help me move some firewood?”
Right then, the woodcutter stepped into the house, shaking rainwater from his old robe.
A robe.
That meant mage.
Naturally.
I imagined myself dramatically wearing robes, raising a staff, and casting massive area spells.
But without connections or confirmed talent, could I even get near the Magic Tower?
And even if I became a mage, living three hundred years would probably turn me into some old crone laughing, “Heh heh heh.”
No thanks.
I wanted immortality.
And magic.
The kind only possible in a fantasy world.
“I’ve decided. I’m going to become a witch!”
“So that’s why you got kicked out.”
“That’s right. By my own will.”
“I don’t think it was by your will.”
Kids these days were way too sharp.
As I chatted with my adorable assistant, Joshua, the cauldron let out pink smoke.
Done.
That was the last one.
I had finished every potion I thought I’d need, based on my knowledge of the original story.
The pink liquid shimmered beautifully.
Just one sip would be enough for the effect.
Its name—
the Love Potion.
A hundred years had passed since I was driven out.
And now, I was a proper witch with an assistant of my own.
A witch so well-known in these parts that there was no one who didn’t know my name.
That reputation had even attracted the attention of heresy inquisitors.
But so what?
The ordinary village girl I had been a hundred years ago no longer existed.
To go back a little—
in the end, I found the Witch of the West and became her disciple.
That was how I became a full-fledged witch.
Even now, a hundred years later, I could still vividly remember crawling to her house, half-dead and unable to walk anymore.
“I want to become a witch.”
After that, I became the Witch of the West’s disciple and suffered through all kinds of hardships.
But compared to what I gained, it was a cheap price.
With her teachings and my knowledge of the original story, I spent my endless time creating poison apples, potions, and elixirs straight out of fairy tales.
With this apple, I’ll eliminate every obstacle standing in the way of pure love.
Hehehe.
When I achieved immortality through the Witch of the West’s final lesson and gained an eternal nineteen-year-old body—
tears filled my eyes.
“I taught you, but that’s a curse, you stupid girl.”
I missed the way she used to snap at me in annoyance after seeing I had truly become immortal.
She was immortal too, yet she only complained when it was me.
I wonder what that old woman is doing now.
I stood up, drenched in sweat from the heat of the cauldron.
I wanted a shower.
An indoor hot shower—something rare in a fantasy world.
By using magic to recreate modern comforts, I could enjoy a lifestyle almost identical to the modern world, as long as I had mana.
After taking off my clothes and pouring mana into the shower device, warm water burst out.
Soft pink hair that reached down to my thighs.
And a chest that made its presence known.
Back in my previous life, I had completely agreed with the saying that bigger was better.
So I drank one of my master’s breast-enhancing potions without hesitation.
As a result, my master nearly crushed me by grabbing my chest in anger.
But—
Flash!
That incident gave me an idea.
If a potion could make your chest bigger—
wasn’t that the perfect Love Potion?
After all, there wasn’t a man in the world who disliked a woman with a large chest.
Well.
There were some strange men who preferred otherwise.
But I didn’t think their opinions mattered.
“Joshua, you didn’t secretly drink that potion, did you?”
After my shower, while changing into fresh clothes, I warned Joshua, who was staring at the pink potion in the cauldron.
A child with that kind of body?
Absolutely unforgivable.
“I’m not curious enough to drink some suspicious potion with an unknown origin.”
Joshua neatly arranged the bottles into a box and answered with a pout at my teasing.
“Hm~ Acting all mature.”
“Someone has to, since you act like a child, Estelle.”
She never let me win a single argument.
That was adorable too.
Three years ago, I found Joshua in a ruined village while gathering herbs that grew from human corpses.
I originally had a contract with a village for regular supplies.
But for some reason, the supply had stopped.
Joshua had been standing before her parents’ graves, holding a charred wooden stick.
Tears and snot covered her face.
Her hands and feet trembled in fear.
But even so, she held onto that stick with both hands like it was her last resistance.
The herbs blooming beside the graves were valuable.
But more than that—
the same herbs were growing from the wounds all over Joshua’s body.
The injuries had worsened and started rotting.
“Will you give me that flower?”
Carefully, I removed the herb hanging over the burn scars covering half her face, as if trying to hide them.
Then I patted her head.
I could have stepped over the girl and taken only the herbs.
But I needed an assistant.
And after living alone for so long, maybe I had grown lonely.
Making excuse after excuse in my head,
I took her cold hand.
As I remembered our first meeting, Joshua, now done organizing, pulled out a fairy tale book from the shelf.
Snow White.
Back when I was living in hiding and bored out of my mind, I had written books by copying fairy tales from my previous life.
That was one of them.
“Joshua, do you like handsome princes too?”
“It’s not because he’s a prince.”
“Then what do you like about him?”
“It’s just… the way he risks himself for a princess he barely knows. The princess doesn’t even realize it because she’s asleep. I envy that.”
That answer was far too mature for a ten-year-old.
I stared blankly for a moment, then smiled and patted her silver hair, proud of how thoughtful she was.
Her long bangs, grown out to cover her burn scars, quickly slipped away from my touch.
“Then what about me? I love Joshua this much.”
“I don’t like you, Estelle.”
Hearing it directly did sting a little.
But keeping my smile was part of being an adult.
“The witch is hurt~ It feels like just one nice word from her pretty assistant would cheer her right up.”
“Still no.”
Even exchanging silly jokes like this made for a happy daily life.
I had been born too early to witness the pure love stories I wanted to see.
But bickering with Joshua was enough to keep each day from becoming boring.
When Joshua grew older, became independent, and fell in love with someone—
I might end up becoming a frightening mother-in-law.
“Grow up strong, Joshua.”
“Even when I grow up, I won’t be tasty enough for you to eat.”
She had already read Hansel and Gretel too.
“That’s not true~ You look very delicious~ So delicious I might just gobble you up~”