Chapter 1
“Waaah!”
Plump baby-fat cheeks like sticky rice cakes, cherry-red lips, and big round eyes.
The baby in front of me was mine—my child—yet so unbelievably cute.
“Uuung?”
“……”
It was impossible to imagine this adorable child one day losing his mind and destroying the entire continent.
It had been a year and a few months since I transmigrated into this novel.
Everything started around then.
‘I’m definitely inside a book, right?’
The moment I opened my eyes, memories came flooding in, telling me I’d transmigrated into the world of a novel—but I had no idea which novel.
‘So… I am a noble, right?’
I straightened my back and tapped my lower waist. After bending over all morning working, my back was stiff and sore.
The memories in my head clearly said this body belonged to a noblewoman.
‘But seriously, what kind of noblewoman does manual labor like this?’
I stared blankly at the vast, golden scenery in front of me.
‘Okay, I might be from a very minor viscount family… but still, noble is noble, right?’
My name was Cillia Evanroir—the name of the body I now occupied.
I had a decent noble surname, Evanroir… Yet my daily life was strangely suspicious.
Normal noble ladies spent their days cultivating etiquette in salons, socializing with other nobles, preparing tea parties, embroidering…
You know—the usual.
‘But what the heck is this?’
I massaged my temples while staring at the golden crops gleaming in front of me.
‘These are rice plants, right?’
Heavy grains drooped from the stalks—so plentiful that farmers would normally be hugging each other crying, “It’s a bumper crop! Hooray!”
And this magnificent harvest?
I was the one who grew it.
Considering this was my everyday routine, I naturally assumed I’d fallen into a farming novel.
‘That novel… what was it called again? Farming… something…’
Ah.
Farming? A Noble Lady Can Do It Too!
Yes—pretty sure that was the title.
The joy of finally identifying which book I was in lasted all of two seconds before I shriveled like a popped balloon.
‘Haaa… Farming, seriously? My dream was to transmigrate into some noble side character and drink tea all day, not this…’
At the time, I had absolutely no idea what this world really was.
I kept reviewing this body’s memories, pouting to myself.
‘Also… another weird thing.’
This body had something unusual.
She wasn’t married.
But—
‘She has a child.’
I’d never seen the child myself yet, but still.
Wiping sweat from my forehead, I stared up at the sky.
Unmarried—but with a child?
Even if this was a Korean author’s K-romance-flavored fantasy, this world was still a conservative pseudo-medieval society.
It was absolutely scandalous.
But somehow, this body had managed it.
‘Judging from the memories, she even finished the adoption paperwork before I transmigrated… she must’ve had real guts.’
There was a story behind it.
This body’s older sister—who had left the estate long ago—had died in a carriage accident. The body’s original owner then adopted the sister’s child.
‘And today… the child finishes treatment at the Magic Tower and is coming home.’
The baby had miraculously survived the accident, though severely injured, and was urgently treated by the Magic Tower.
Only because the carriage accident happened near the Magic Tower.
It was a bit suspicious, though.
Why had her sister been near the Magic Tower—far from the Evanroir estate—with a newborn?
And since when was the snobbish Magic Tower so generous as to treat a commoner’s baby?
…Well. Whatever.
Today was the day I would finally meet the child.
“Are you Lady Evanroir?”
“Uh… yes, that’s me.”
“I’ve come from the Magic Tower. Ahem!”
But did he really have to appear so suddenly?
Standing in the middle of a field full of the smell of fertilizer, I squinted at the man who popped out of nowhere.
In other novels, a servant first runs over to announce the arrival… Then you meet elegantly in some fancy reception room over tea… you know, civilized things.
“W-where is this place? The smell is… rather strong.”
The man, covered in drifting white light powder from his teleport, clamped his robe over his nose.
So he had teleported.
Did he not even check the destination first?!
I answered flatly.
“Oh, well. You just happened to land right on the fertilizer patch.”
“UACK!”
The man—wearing a robe that marked him as a Magic Tower mage—leapt back in shock.
‘Is this the guy who’s supposed to bring the child today?’
He seemed awfully unreliable. And where was the baby?
“The coordinates shouldn’t be wrong… This must be because of the child again. Ahem.”
The mage muttered nervously, then flinched when he noticed my cold stare.
He held out a small round basket.
A handkerchief covered the top—so I couldn’t see inside.
Was the baby in there?
“In any case! Aksion’s treatment is complete, so you may take him now.”
Right. So the baby must be—
…Wait.
What did he just say?
“…Pardon?”
The mage blinked back at me.
“Pardon?”
“What did you say just now?”
“That you can take the child—”
“No, before that.”
“Oh. That Aksion’s treatment is finished?”
“Action?”
Action?
Why did that name sound so horribly familiar?
And why did I get goosebumps all over my spine?
“Yes. It’s the name of the child you adopted, my lady.”
“Eck. No, that can’t be right. There’s no way the child is Aksion. No, absolutely not.”
As I shook my hands frantically, the mage began rattling off words like a malfunctioning machine gun.
“You’re not suggesting the child was switched, are you? Impossible. The Magic Tower only treated one infant—Aksion. And look here, there’s the mark on his neck! The one he originally had! Your sister—his mother—knew of the child’s existence, so you should recognize it too, yes?”
He lifted the handkerchief—
—and inside slept an angelic baby.
With a black mark on his neck.
‘Gasp.’
I staggered.
Because I knew that mark.
It was on the cover of the novel Aksion.
It was the birthmark of the male lead—Aksion himself.
Seeing it made my ears ring.
“This… wasn’t a farming novel…?”
The freshly harvested rice I was clutching slipped from my arms and scattered uselessly.
Action.
Action!!
Of all novels… why this one?!
‘Did I transmigrate into that nightmare, despair-ridden tragedy novel?!’
Action.
A novel told from the male lead’s point of view—a curiosity that made me read it back then.
…Well, let me be honest.
I read it because of the rumors.
“The highest-difficulty misery novel of all time.”
Right before I died in my original world, I had been mentally unwell enough to actively seek out emotionally devastating fiction.
And Aksion?
It was so dark and twisted that it almost made me feel refreshed.
‘The male lead kills the heroine…’
A male lead who literally kills the female lead. That tells you everything.
And he splits the entire continent in the process.
Aksion was so monstrous that readers voted him the #1 Worst Male Lead of All Time.
‘And that baby right there… is that Aksion?!’
The mage, unaware of my silent horror, assumed I had finally accepted reality and pushed the basket into my hands.
“Well then, please take the child. I’m quite busy—”
His words snapped me out of it.
Slap!
I smacked my cheeks and shook my head violently.
‘If this really is Aksion’s world…’
Then I absolutely could not let this mage leave.
I grit my teeth so hard I could hear them grind.
Then I lunged at the mage—who looked bored and annoyed.
“You—YOU CON ARTIST!!”
“UWAH?!”
I dropped the basket with the baby gently to the side, then grabbed the mage by the collar.
My farming-trained arms were more than strong enough to shake around a bookworm mage like a ragdoll!
“W-what are you doing, my lady?!”
“Give me back the damned dragon heart you shoved into this kid’s chest!”
The dragon heart—the thing that played the biggest part in Aksion becoming the #1 nightmare villain.
The Magic Tower had secretly implanted the dragon heart of a demonic dragon into him during his infancy, all in the name of “treatment.”
It was purely for experimentation.
And it was what destroyed Aksion’s sanity later.
“W-w-w-what are you t-talking about?! We would never implant a d-dragon heart!”
“One hundred years ago! The demonic dragon Rohad that the Magic Tower kept after the subjugation! You planted that dragon heart in this baby’s chest! You think I wouldn’t know?!”
“HIEEEK— How did you—?!”
Shaken back and forth like a flimsy piece of paper, the mage finally raised both hands in surrender.
“P-please listen! Lady Evanroir! There is an explanation for all this!”
“Explanation, my foot! TAKE IT OUT! RIGHT NOW!”
Otherwise, both of us were going straight to the afterlife!
