Warnings: lack of proofreading or beta of any kind, character death (she had to get isekai'd somehow)

[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]

•prologue•

Girl dies. Girl wakes up. Girl remembers.

•••

All she remembered was blaring lights and a loud, prolonged sound of the klaxon, then a sensation of something colliding with her body, and flying-

God, if you exist, please don’t Isekai me. Especially into an Otome Game.

She was dead when she hit the asphalt

♦►☼◄♦

She wasn’t old enough to properly understand the words when she started having dreams. They felt vivid, like a memory, and she found herself startled at being able to understand them. Vaguely, somewhere in her mind, she knew that a one-year-old should not have the cognitive ability to do any of these.

Sometimes, her eyes would glaze over, remembering a dream-memory, and her mother would look at her with concern.

The maids thought she was weird. Too smart for her age, too aware, but at the same time too confused. Too creepy, wide-eyed and silently watching. All she knew was that maids were a very outdated concept. She didn’t like them. They didn’t like her much, either.

She was five years old and she had been having dreams for four when her little sister was born—a tiny, wrinkled, angry-red creature with lungs so powerful that when she, used to peace and quiet, heard little Rosalie scream for the first time, she almost blacked out from shock.

She vaguely remembered hating those human larvae in the dream-memories. Rude, loud, ungrateful-

She loved her little sister. For some reason, the child was important but information obscure, still alluding her why exactly. But she suffered through the screams with nothing more but a very sour face.

She was six when she used magic for the first time. Rosalie was a devil, and she climbed a drawer and then lost balance. Nobody was quite close enough, and then something surged within her and then suddenly Rosalie was harmlessly floating to the floor.

That was wrong. Magic wasn’t real. It was just a fairytale-

Magic was a commonplace here.

Her waking world and her dream-memory world didn’t align at all. When she dreamed, she saw tall buildings made of glass and metal and metal vehicles that moved all on their own. Many, many people, enough to make her head dizzy, but everyone so lonely, so busy. When she woke, the life was slow, the fire used to light the dark, horse-drawn carriages and mansions in the middle of the forest. No metal machines flying in the sky, just birds. No choking gases in the air, just the flower fragrance.

The world she dreamt of was not the one she lived in at all.

When she was seven years old, her memories finally aligned and then, everything was clear.

Her name was Mary. She was twenty-seven years old, and she died.

Her name was Adelia Henrietta Belville. She was seven years old, and she was the most loathed villainess in the history of the otome games.

The realization hit her quite randomly as she was walking through the gardens. It was kind of like an electrical current coursing through her body, and for a moment she lost control over her limbs, and then she was falling face-first into the paved walkway-

Her mind didn’t quite hold, and the last thing she heard was her mother’s shout as blackness enveloped her, six years of remembering a life that she lived in the past, six years of dream-memories suddenly making sense all at once despite being incomplete yet, despite making no sense at all before.

She didn’t even feel herself hit the pavement.

♦►☼◄♦

Adelia Henrietta Bellville was a true beauty—the fairest in the land, easily, with her lilac hair and pink eyes, perfect skin and delicate, regal features. Her face was perfect, her body was perfect. She had an immaculate pedigree and great wealth behind her; and, on top of that, she was a dual elemental wielder, with one of her elements being of the super rare class. By all means, she was perfect.

But then, she was also the most hated character by the whole fanbase. Why? Because of her personality, of course—this was the woman who single-handedly brought down a family second only to the royalty, and completely ruined it because of her greed. Adelia was vain, greedy, deluded, egomaniacal and, quite possibly, psychopathic. She died in every gameplay. Every single time, and every time it was her fault, and she was also usually the reason for another war, so soon from the first one.

She was betrothed to the prince because she threw a tantrum until they agreed. She treated her brother worse than dirt. And she loathed the Heroine, regardless of who the girl pursued, due to her status as a commoner. In the Bad End, she killed the Heroine midpoint in the game. In the True End, she crippled her with the assassination attempt. In Good Ending, she did no harm only because she was killed before she could.

A loathsome existence hidden behind a pretty face.

This was who Mary was reborn as.

All that awaited her was destruction end as of now, but that was ten years into the future. The game she found herself in now, as per cliché novel trope, [Regalis: in search of Love!] was the new ‘in’ thing on the otoge market, especially western one. It had a relatively good story and lore, especially for a game of the genre, and the world it was set in was quite grim—war-torn and ravaged by plague and famine, a [Saint] would emerge, heal the land and cure people.

That [Saint] was, of course, the Heroine—Sally Higgins, a common girl wielding one of the rarest dual combinations of magic, [Light] and [Nature]. While training her abilities at the Regalis academy, she would catch the attention of one of the four capture targets and eventually, together, they would pull through the second war to break out and save the kingdom. The not chosen Capture Targets would also find happiness elsewhere, so it was a happy ending for everyone—

Except for Adelia, of course, and her whole house minus her stepbrother, a capture target. The only other person with truly bad ending would be prince’s younger sister, paralyzed from the waist down and insane from her confinement who would go openly murderous after the death of Adelia, the person with whom the princess was heavily implied to be in love with.

It was sad, the princess’ fate, actually. She fell from the tower and nearly died, her mother sacrificed her life to the gods so that she would even wake up, and then the person she admired the most was killed by some common girl. It was sad, really.

As for herself, all Adelia needed to do to avoid her bad end, to be honest, was not to be a psychotic, egomaniacal madwoman. Doing something about the princess, who was merely the victim of a circumstance, would be much harder, if possible at all.

As for other issues-

Oh.

Oh no.

The war. It would break out in a year from, if Adelia was seven right now, and would last good seven years. And the act of aggression between the Kingdom of Sheothia, where Adelia lived, and Forest Kingdom of Ifa Nalore, where elves lived. If she remembered the lore right, Ifa Nalore’s prince, Shelor Alytharion, was killed on Sheothia’s lands by humans and the elves went to the war for it. Due to war, famine and then plague would outbreak, and Rosalie, Adelia’s younger sister, would fall to the plague and Adelia’s parents, distraught and depressed, would allow their only remaining daughter to do anything and everything she pleased in fears of losing her too.

Rosalie was loud, annoying and climbed everywhere, but Adelia didn’t want her sister to die. If it were avoidable to begin with, she would do anything to avoid it. However, if Rosalie caught the plague, she was done for—she died aged seven, too young for her body to fight the disease, not because she was famished or lacked medical attendance. Bellville Archduchy was only really second to the Royal Family, they lacked nothing. Adelia’s only bet was preventing her sister from getting ill, to begin with.

As for the Capture Targets, Adelia would only have any real influence over her stepbrother, Elijah Dixon Bellville. Soon, his parents will die in a carriage crash, and he will be adopted by Adelia’s father. In the original game, she loathed and abused him, because she felt he was a threat to ‘rightfully hers’ Archduchess Title. It only got worse with Roselia’s death, and Elijah grew up hating Adelia more than anything. He would then gravitate towards the Heroine, who, too, was hated by Adelia, fuelled by the need to protect people from his deranged stepsister. He and Heroine would fall in love if his route was chosen, and he would eventually kill Adelia himself before she could do too much harm. It was his route in which it was the easiest to kill Adelia before she caused too much harm. As for his appearance, he had relatively dark, blue hair and grey-brown eyes. His magic was [Water].

Next, she would probably come into contact with was the prince, Alastair Matthias Sinclair. Originally, he hated Adelia because she kept throwing a fit until he was betrothed to her, and then began treating him like her property. His family situation also wasn’t great; paralyzed sister and dead mother, and his father melancholic and oppressive because of it. He easily falls for the kind and loving Heroine who showers him in unconditional affection and genuinely cares for his situation. Frankly, he falls in love first in his route and had to work to convince the Heroine they’re better off as more than friends, another score she had with him—she doesn’t approach him for his status or looks, she approaches him because he looks like he needed a friend. He had long, straight red hair and yellow eyes. He was a dual wielder of [Fire] and compound element [Lava], much like his father, the king.

It’s very much similar with the Knight character, Felix Galashiels. He’s the dark and broody type, but that’s later revealed to be because his parents both died in the aforementioned war, and he closed himself off to brood in peace. Heroine eventually breaks through his sadness and grief and shows him that attaching himself to others is not as scary as it seems, despite the fear of losing them. Adelia doesn’t play too big of a role there, except customary harassment of the lowborn heroine, and serves as a medium for Felix to protect the girl and bond with her more. He himself isn’t quite of the nobility and therefore had easy time bonding with the Heroine once he stops brooding. He had brown hair and green eyes, and his magic is [Earth]. It is said that he awakens the compound metal element in the Bad End due to the emotional shock.

Last but not least, Noah Isaac Cotynghin, a genius mage capable of using all four basic elements where people would, at most, wield two, a once-a-generation genius. He was powerful, intelligent and the farthest removed from Adelia. Frankly, he scorned Adelia, for she had quite powerful magic—[Wind] and [Lightning]—but never took time to cultivate any of them. (It was good she didn’t, from a game perspective, because then she would have become truly dangerous, though.) He gravitated towards Heroine, a girl wielding powerful dual [Light] and [Nature] magic and deemed her his rival, and from then on they would try to outdo each other in scores. His route was a fun slapstick romance between a lively girl and a tsundere boy, and Adelia wouldn’t even come to play so often, until the very end where she would try to kill the Heroine, fed up with being ignored. Untrained, she would easily fall to Noah’s superior magic or even Heroine’s who put much more work into herself than in other routes. Actually, from the perspective of the world, Noah’s route was the best because the Heroine became her strongest incarnation and helped most people. It was the ‘true route’ if one would. He had silver hair and eyes.

It was kind of sad, though, that the game became so popular where it’s only real twist was that the Capture Targets were actually genuinely likable, respectful people. That should have been the rule, not an exception.

♦►☼◄♦

 She woke up with a start, half-drowned in the soft sheets of her bed. Her room was rather tasteful, all pretty lilacs and well-picked colors, nothing garish in sight. She was seven years old and filthy rich, but somewhere in her psyche, a part of Mary was always alive. Maybe that was why she was always a rather well-mannered if a creepy child.

Her cheek stung, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she scratched it on the pavement. Hopefully, it wouldn’t scar.

God doesn’t exist, she realized, vaguely remembering the sensation of flying and hitting the asphalt and silently asking to not to be put, exactly, into this specific situation.

First, however, she took stock of her surroundings and situation. She was seven. The game started in ten years, after that she would begin attending the Regalis Academy. Her father would soon adopt Elijah, the stepbrother capture target, whose parents died in a carriage crash, and not even a year after, a war would break out and with it, the famine and plague that would eventually claim Rosalie’s life five years from now. Sometime around that the princess would suffer a fall from the tower that will shatter her spine and soon after, her mother would sacrifice her life for her. Few years along the like, Adelia would throw a tantrum and force the betrothal between her and the prince after she saw him once and apparently fell in love.

Things were looking good for Adelia. If she didn’t abuse her brother, he wouldn’t hate her. If she didn’t throw a tantrum and actively seek betrothal with the prince, he would be left well alone. And if she ignored the Heroine, or maybe even were nice to her, no Destruction End would await her at all!

As long as she behaved like a civilized person, she would be perfectly fine. She liked that prospect, it let her focus on much more pressing issues; how to avoid her sister’s death, for starters. And maybe help the princess if she was at it, if at all possible.

Somehow.

She didn’t have much time to dwell on it, because her mother as if guided by some sort of sixth sense, burst into her room shortly after Adelia woke. Penelope was her name, and she was a beautiful woman—and something about her beauty was inhuman, but Adelia couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Penelope had long, soft, wavy pink hair and pink eyes, which Adelia inherited. (Where her purple hair came from was anyone’s guess; Penelope’s mother, supposedly.) Penelope was tall with a well-defined body and sharp, regal features. She was beautiful, in carnation-pink dress and summer flowers in her hair. She was the one to put them in there, so she couldn’t have been out for long.

“Adetta, love, are you well?” her mother asked, and Adetta nodded. It was her nickname, made from mashing her two names and used only by family. In-game Adelia didn’t use it, and the lore stated that she stopped somewhere after her sister’s death.

“Adetta!” her father, Crawforde, came rushing in with Rosalie in his arms. He was a very handsome, man, tall and quite princely, with soft, blonde hair and eyes that were somewhere between blue and green. Rosalie had his hair and mother’s eyes.

“I’m terribly sorry for worrying you,” she says and it’s sincere, because they’re her family now, after all. “I think I spent too much time in the sun.”

It was a convenient coverup since today was a particularly sunny, warm day, and Adetta had a rather strong preference towards wearing dark colors—as in, she would never wear anything else. It was stupid, she knew, but the dark color and simple design made her look more mature. And, which might or might not have been secretly her goal, creepier.

“It’s quite alright, love,” her mother said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “But I think the cause might have been a bit different. When we came to get you, you were very… Electrized.”

Adetta blinked up at her. “Electrized?”

“We think that you might have awoken a secondary element and that it is [Lightning],” her father said, coming closer. “It sometimes happens like this.”

“Ah,” is the only thing Adetta can really say. “That’s good, yes?”

It was good. Adelia originally, in the game lore, awoke to her secondary element five years from now, due to emotional shock caused by Rosalie’s death. But Rosalie was alive, two and healthy and not seven and dying, and Adetta was seven and dual-natured. Was it connected to her memories finally making sense? Most likely. But it wasn’t like she was complaining.

Or that she was like Adelia. She had power, significant power, and mana pool. It would be a waste to leave it to fester.

“Father, could I bother you for a tutor sometime next year?” she asks, mind made up. “If my magic really is [Lightning], then its rarity is second only to [Darkness], and it would be a waste to leave it untrained.”

“Indeed,” Crawforde says with a smile. He looks all too happy with himself-

Oh. Oooooh.

He, too, was a dual [Wind]-[Lightning] user. She kind-of forgot. Well, now he can easily rub the fact into the face of anyone who so much as dares to bring up Adetta’s paternity into question, especially since she looks little like him. In turn, Penelope had [Nature] magic, and so did Rosalie, judging by how flowers behaved around her. To be using magic at the age of two, conscious or not, her magic was very strong already.

There were three categories of magic. Basic four, [Fire], [Water], [Wind] and [Earth], then the rare trio—[Light], [Lightning] and the very rare [Darkness] and then the compound magic that was technically an amalgamation of basic four, but didn’t require them to work; [Lava], a staple of Royal Family, [Ice], [Nature], [Metal] and the exotic [Sand] had by people from the far south.

As much as most elements were directly hereditary, maybe skipping one generation, but even that rarely, [Light] couldn’t be called anything other than a chaotic bastard, skipping generations on end, surfacing where it never was before and then vanishing with no trace.

A triple wield of [Light], [Nature] and [Water] was an extremely rare thing, but boasted borderline ridiculous regenerative prowess. It was a person like that who was called [Saint]—however, the Heroine lacked the [Water] magic. Despite that, in times of dire need, even dual wields lacking [Water] or [Nature] would be accepted as the [Saint] due to their already significant healing capability. The game developers have mentioned that a triple-wielding [True Saint] was born in the time of the game, and died during the war, but they refused to elaborate anything over that.

“We could get you a tutor right away-“ Penelope says, but Adetta shakes her head.

“No, I would prefer to complete some of my other studies before tackling magic. I’m almost finished with geography, basic etiquette, and dance lessons anyway—I will have completed them in a year from now, and then I will be able to focus on magic studies fully, as I intend.”

Okay, maybe she was speaking stiffly, but it was fun to talk like a lady dowager while being a seven-year-old little miss. Yes, she took pleasure in creeping out everyone around her. She’d grow out of it, maybe. Or she’d grow into it.

“Ah, that is a wise move,” her father praised. “You are a very diligent student, we wouldn’t want to burden you more than necessary. I’ll see who we could hire, and we’ll discuss this again in a year’s time. Will that be fine?”

“Yes, father,” Adetta nods her head. Her sister starts to writhe in father’s hold.

“Dear, put Rosaria on the bed, you know she doesn’t like to be held for long,” Penelope chides, and Crawforde does so, with a put-upon sigh. One of his daughters is cold and creepy, and the other only suffers hugs for short periods of time. And Rosalie, too, had a nickname in the family—Rosaria, because her names were Rosalie Gloria.

Rosaria crawls over to Adetta and plops herself under her sister’s arm, very happy with herself. Adetta smiles and lets her.

♦►☼◄♦

A week after Adetta collapsed, Crawforde receives heart-breaking news—his third cousin Georgina Langton and her husband Paul died in a carriage incident returning from a party during a thunderstorm, orphaning their only son, Elijah.

A week after that, Adetta meets her haunted-eyed cousin face-to-face for the first time.

And so it begins, Mary’s life as Adelia Henrietta Bellville, the villainess of [Regalis: in search of Love!], striking down flags and searching for peace and quiet.