IPMB 01

Chapter 1

May the Lamb Be Protected

“What did you just say, Oppa?”

I dropped the cookie I had been eating.

When I looked up at the boy with disbelief in my eyes, he gave an awkward smile and avoided my gaze.

“Well… it seems I somehow caught the Emperor’s attention. He asked me if I happened to be free on the night of the festival.”

“Surely that Emperor isn’t the Emperor I know, right?”

He couldn’t possibly mean the mad Emperor of Delphiam—the one rumored to be a homosexual, who had an obsession with collecting pretty boys and changed his favorite consorts every year.

Surely not.

It couldn’t be.

Although we were currently in Delphiam, and Kallian had gone to meet the Emperor of the Empire with the head of the family earlier that morning…

Still, there was no way that Emperor was that Emperor.

I forced a smile and picked up the fallen cookie.

But before I could even brush the dust off it, Kallian answered with a helpless smile.

“Hmm. If you mean the master of the Delphiam Empire, then I think you’re right.”

I dropped the cookie again.

Oh my God.

My brother was about to be dragged away as the tyrant Emperor’s favorite consort.

Brilliant platinum-blond hair and vivid scarlet-red eyes.

With a slender body lined with lean muscle and delicate, sculpted features, Kallian Wignac was a beauty among beauties.

He had turned fifteen this year, and held the astonishing position of being the next head of Wignac, one of the Transcendent Houses of the Kingdom of Abwie.

And this boy was my older brother.

Although we weren’t related by even a single drop of blood.

It’s a somewhat long story.

I entered the Wignac family three years ago, when I was around nine years old.

Kallian found me rummaging through garbage cans on the streets, looking for something to eat in my filthy state, and brought me back to the estate.

Fortunately, I had a talent for swordsmanship, and the head of Wignac—a renowned family of swordsmen—accepted me as a member of the family.

This was an extremely unusual occurrence.

That was because receiving the surname of a Transcendent House meant receiving a share of the power of the Star that protected the family.

The “Stars” were divine beings that looked down upon this world from the distant reaches of space.

There were five Stars that directly influenced this world, Rachnar.

「Judge of Darkness and Chaos」

「Spellbinder of All Things」

「Creator of Beginning and End」

「Messenger of the Formless」

and

「The Foreseeing Eye」.

Each of them had entered into a sacred covenant with one of the five great families and lent them their power.

Families protected by one of these guardian Stars were called Transcendent Houses.

Wignac was one of them.

Under the protection of the 「Judge of Darkness and Chaos」, it was a prestigious family of swordsmen whose reputation had spread throughout the entire continent through the sword.

Every year, they held selection examinations for new disciples and accepted only swordsmen with outstanding talent as members of the family.

And among those members, only a very small number who demonstrated exceptional talent were granted the surname “Wignac,” which carried the power of the guardian Star.

It was a ruthless world where even direct descendants were cast out if they lacked talent.

And yet, I—a grimy nine-year-old girl—had become a member of Wignac overnight.

It was more than unusual.

It was shocking.

There were two reasons why this had been possible.

First, because I was no ordinary genius.

And second, because Kallian was remarkably frail for the heir to a renowned swordsmanship family.

Let’s start with the first reason.

Why was I no ordinary genius?

The answer was simple.

I was someone who had died once and been reincarnated with all the memories and abilities from my previous life.

My original name was Rosietti Kirges.

In my previous life, I had been a candidate to become the head of Kirges, another Transcendent House blessed by a guardian Star, just like Wignac.

While Wignac was a family that had reached the pinnacle of swordsmanship, Kirges was a family of sorcerers who wielded “Spellbinding.”

It was a gathering place for people who could cause supernatural phenomena by uttering words imbued with the power of the Stars.

Although I now lived as Rosien Wignac, there had once been a time when everyone in the Delphiam Empire knew the name “Rosietti Kirges.”

As “the mutant born from Kirges.”

I had certainly been born into Kirges, but my talent for swordsmanship was far greater than my talent for sorcery.

So, when I was seventeen, I lost to my brother in the succession battle to determine the next heir of Kirges, and died.

Because the succession battle allowed us to use only the power of sorcery…

Damn it!

If I had been born into Wignac, I wouldn’t have had to die!

Perhaps thinking that right before I closed my eyes had some effect, because after I was struck by the sorcery my brother cast and left this world in such a meaningless way, I was reincarnated in the neighboring Kingdom of Abwie.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself wrapped tightly in a swaddling cloth and abandoned on some kind of wooden board.

As a newborn baby, no less.

“Waaaaah! (Alpien Kirges, you bastard! Even if you hate me that much, did you really have to cast a lethal spell at me?!)”

Just you wait.

One day, I’ll come back and chop your head clean off!

All I could do was cry my heart out in rage.

The person who took me in was a middle-aged woman who lived next door.

Out of a sense of moral responsibility, she kindly left me in front of an orphanage and went on her way.

And so, I spent the next nine years growing up alongside the children at the orphanage before I was discovered by twelve-year-old Kallian.

Kallian had been exceptionally beautiful even when he was younger than he was now.

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

“What? Get lost!”

And back then, I was…

Well, my personality was a little terrible.

I couldn’t help it.

Not only had I suffered an absurd death, but the crumbling orphanage only gave us one meal a day.

Of course, the sorcery power granted by Kirges’s guardian Star hadn’t disappeared completely.

I could still use Spellbinding, albeit only weakly.

But the Star wasn’t kind enough to feed me, too!

I couldn’t just say, “Bread, appear!” and have it magically pop out!

There was no resisting hunger.

After a second life spent constantly starving, my personality grew more rotten with every passing year.

Kallian didn’t receive a particularly warm welcome when he first approached me, either.

“You have a wound on your cheek. The blood has frozen. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“What’s it to you? Mind your own business!”

“Why are you rummaging through that? That’s a garbage can.”

“None of your business. I’m really irritable right now, so could you stop bothering me and just go away?”

“Did you lose something? Should I help you look for it?”

Even back then, Kallian was the same kind-hearted, oblivious young master he was now.

I snapped at him in frustration.

“I’m looking for something to eat for dinner, okay?!”

“Why are you looking for dinner in a garbage can?”

“Because I have nothing to eat, nobody to give me food, and no money to buy any! Can’t you tell just by looking?!”

“……Do you live like this every day?”

“Hey. Is this your first time seeing an orphan living off scraps?”

If you’re going to pity me, give me money instead!

Kallian listened silently to my outburst before quietly correcting me.

“Hey? No. Oppa.”

“What?”

“Don’t rummage through that. Why don’t you come with me instead?”

He had pulled his hood deeply over his head, so all I could see were his delicate jawline and reddish lips.

“I’ll give you food and money. I’ll give you a place to sleep, too. Come with me.”

“Who are you?”

I asked irritably.

He pulled off his hood.

The moment I saw his revealed face, I completely forgot that I had been angry and simply stared blankly.

The boy smiled brightly.

Wow.

So this was what a divine halo looked like.

“Kallian.”

“Uh…”

“My name is Kallian Wignac. So, what do you say? Want to come with me?”

Honestly, I didn’t even hear his name.

By the time I came to my senses, my mouth was already speaking on its own.

“I’ll follow you anywhere…”

I had been bewitched by his face.

What else could I say?

He was that beautiful.

Beautiful enough that it was hard to believe he was actually a living human being with warm blood flowing through his veins, rather than some doll operated by gears and springs.

It wasn’t until I followed the beautiful boy all the way to the front of the Wignac estate, holding his hand, that I learned who he really was.

He was the one and only heir to Wignac, the strongest swordsmanship family on the continent…!

I had stumbled into an incredible stroke of luck.

Wignac, the House of the Sword!

Wasn’t it one of the Transcendent Houses I had admired every single day back when I was Rosietti Kirges?

Just how strong could the heir to that family possibly be?!

My innocent expectations were completely shattered after only three days of living at the Wignac estate as an extra mouth to feed.

“The sword is too heavy…”

“You call that heavy? You can’t even swing it?”

“Mm-hmm. It feels like my arms are going to break. My legs are shaking, too.”

He struggled just to lift a single sword.

That happened all the time.

“How are you ever going to lead the family if you can’t even lift something like this properly? Give it here! I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, Rosi.”

He couldn’t even carry five sacks of training wheat at once.

And then there was this.

“You hopeless idiot! I know you felt sorry for them, but how could you give away everything you had and even come home without your clothes?!”

“But I thought of you, Rosi, so I couldn’t just walk past them…”

Whenever he saw someone poor and miserable, he immediately shoved cash into their hands.

He was also a master at donating his clothes’ buttons, brooches, and expensive accessories one by one to random people on the street.

How was it even possible for someone to leave the estate alone and come back wearing nothing but a shirt?!

I should have realized something was wrong when he had casually picked up a filthy girl like me, who had been rummaging through food waste, and brought me home to live at the estate!

But that wasn’t even the end of it.

“Rosi. Look! I got all these flowers from Usella’s salon for you! They’re the same color as your hair, aren’t they?!”

He didn’t even understand the meaning behind the flowers shyly offered to him by girls his age.

Instead, he accepted more than fifty flowers and brought every single one home, intending to give them all to me.

“Oppa, do you know that these mean ‘I have feelings for you’?”

“Oh, really? Then Rosi should definitely have them.”

“You’re giving all of these to me? They’re a declaration of love!”

“Yeah. I want Rosi to like me even more.”

“……”

“You’re always busy scolding me every day.”

Was he genuinely oblivious?

Or was he really so innocent that he could only interpret a romantic confession this purely…?!

“Giving these to me means you want to date me, you idiot!”

You just came home with fifty girlfriends!

In the end, to prevent Kallian from building himself a harem, I personally took his hand and went around finding every single one of the thoroughly offended young ladies to return their flowers.

It was an absolutely ridiculous episode.

What on earth was I supposed to do with this hopelessly kind and destructively innocent person?

There wasn’t a day when I didn’t find myself rubbing my forehead because of that living relic known as Kallian Wignac.

Eventually, I simply gave up on trying to educate him.

He was living proof that the Stars were remarkably fair.

Wignac’s Star had given Kallian beauty, while taking away his stamina, social awareness, and practicality.

And so, I came to a conclusion.

Fine.

I’ll just protect him myself.

If someone’s head is this full of flowers, they should be under government protection.