'I have to get out of here!'

With that thought, Rina tried to get up and grab her dagger underneath her skirt with her arm that was not injured and scarred with burns. However, she couldn't. After all, her left arm was also chained. The same was true for both of her legs.

In fact, only now did she notice that she was completely chained to a stony bed. So now, slightly starting to panic, as she realised that she was in grave danger, she trashed around with all her strength, hoping that the chains would get loose.

Unfortunately, all of her actions were futile, even counterproductive as she only wasted her energy, from which she barely had anything left.

When the chief saw how she reacted, his sadistic grin contorted into a burst of sadistic laughter. “Hahaha... do you now finally realise what situation you're in? It doesn't feel good, right?” At this point, he didn't bother hiding his ecstasy anymore.

Even though Rina was slightly panicking from the sight of the burning-hot rod approaching her body, this situation wasn't quite unscaleable for her yet. After all, she had still a trump card hiding up her sleeve: her magic.

That was also the reason, that, despite finding herself in a rather peculiar situation after waking up and being under a lot of physical pain because of the burns on her arm, she was still somehow able to observe her surroundings and formulate a plan to get out of this mess.

All she needed to do, was place a sigil that was strong enough to immobilise everyone in this room. Luckily, Rina still had enough Mana for it, even after trying to set up the large barrier for the demons before.

So with all the training she had been through, she gathered all of her remaining Mana in her body to pour it outside in a split second and formed the respective sigil. But...

'It's not working!?'

… for some reason, she failed.

But It wasn't like she made a mistake in creating the seal. Her Mana inside her body wasn't responding to her at all. But this feeling wasn't unfamiliar to her. She had already experienced similar to this. To be precise, she currently felt the same as the time three years ago, when Duke Thalas had sealed her magic away.

However, before Rina could even understand what was going on and why she wasn't able to activate her magic, the danger approaching her arrived, meaning the burning metal bar made contact with her body.

This was once again confirmed by a loud sizzle, as the rod swiftly burned through the Academy uniform and pushed on her bare skin in her stomach area.

So unfortunately, in contrast to when she had that nightmare from the void, Rina was now fully awake and aware. The consequence was...

“AAAAARRRGGHH!!”

… that she had to experience pain with full consciousness.

Naturally, never in both of her lives combined before, had she felt pain that unbearable before. Not even with all the abuse she had gotten from her father in her previous life, or the injuries she had gotten from the training in this life could measly compare to what she had to currently go through.

Sadly, there was nothing she could do to escape this predicament, and even if there still was a way, her mind was by now no longer able to think straight. So forming another plan to flee was impossible.

But it didn't mean, that her mind was not working at all, or that she wasn't able to think anymore. Quite the opposite, for some reason, while she was screaming out her lungs as if to fight of the pain she felt on her stomach area, she also saw images of key moments of both of her lives.

'Is that, when they say that your life flashes before your life just before you die?'

Funnily enough, even though she found herself unable to think of a plan to get out of this, she was still able to reflect upon her life up to this point.

When she found out that she fell in love with her twin.

When she distanced herself from all the girls, she was fond of.

When was kicked out of her family.

When all her remaining dignity was taken away from her, when everything about her was exposed by that office lady in the love hotel room.

The moment, when her sad existence had ended.

Remembering all that, Rina at first, once again, wanted to lament to god, her parents, her sister, her surroundings, and first and foremost to herself, that she had rather not lived at all. But then, she recalled,

the moments she met Clara, Fran, and Marianne,

the moments she realised that she had fallen for each of them,

the moment when Clara had confessed to her,

the moment when she had cuddled with Marianne,

the moment when she had noticed how cute the usually mature elf could be.

So, she realised, that her life at this point, was not a bad one at all. But that was a problem for her.

In her past life on Earth, there were many moments, too many in fact, when she had seriously considered just ending her miserable life. But she hadn't. She wasn't courageous enough to do it. So she was actually happy when she realised that she had been killed in the love hotel room. After all, she wasn't attached to her life at that time.

However, it had changed now. She was currently content with her life, as she had many who were important to her. On top of that, there were even a few, who seemed to care for her too.

Unfortunately, all that was about to end. If she had a wish right now, she would have wanted to be alive for a little longer, to see her loved ones smile a little more. She would have wanted to keep the heaven-like status quo a bit longer.

But it was not to be.

She was going to die. And even if she survived this situation by some miracle, would that still be a life worth living? Would the people, who were slowly but surely breaking through the walls of her heart, abandon her, now that she was heavily scarred, maybe even disfigured?

After all, Rina knew that at least Clara and Marianne liked to have tight skin-ship time with her, because of her seemingly smooth skin. Would that still be the case with her burned and scarred body? Or would they turn around?

Even though Rina didn't care about it that much, she didn't know.

But still, there was one fact, she was sure of.

'I was clearly too happy recently.'

***

Western of the Valkyria Kingdom was bare, unused land. Even though it was rich in resources, no one dared to enter that land. After all, the Human Forces had labelled that land as 'Demon Territory'.

In the centre of the 'Demon Territory' was the highest mountain, that could be found in the world Yggildos. On top of said mountain was large castle that was barely visible, as it was partly hidden behind the clouds.

“...”

Inside the throne room of that castle, a girl sat arrogantly on a throne. Even though the throne was too large for her, no being that was crouching before the throne even dared to say those thoughts.

After all, the usually benevolent owner of the throne, the Demon Queen, was currently quite obviously in an enormously bad mood. Were someone to say something that the throne-owner didn't like, heads would surely fly. But that seems all the more puzzling to the dozens of demons in the throne hall, as the report given by the figure kneeling directly in front of the throne sounded like a positive one.

“So everything went according to plan?”

Even though those words were only muttered in a small volume, the bell-like voice echoed throughout the hall, something that should have not been possible. Again, the mismatch of the positive sounding content of the dialogue and the tense mood, caused almost everyone to sweat bullets fearing what was to come.

However, the figure who just gave that report didn't seem to belong to those fearing for their lives, as the figure nonchalantly stood up without permission from their queen and responded curtly, “Yeah.”

“Alright, take a rest for the time being. I'll take over from here.”

At that prompt the figure seemed to yawn and slowly made their way to the exit. As soon as they left, the Demon Queen, a small, young looking girl with two horns on her head wearing a black one-piece, stood up and glanced at the succubus maid standing slightly behind her.

“Let's go, Serena.”

“Yes, milady.”

Hearing the maid's words of confirmation, the girl stretched out her left hand and formed a black magic seal with a diameter of two metres into the air.

To the demons watching, the sight was somewhat hard to endure, as the magic sigil was close to twice as tall as their absolute leader. But again, nobody dared to say anything, as it surely would be the last thing they would have said.

Luckily, they didn't have to endure the situation for long. A few seconds after the seal was placed by the girl, black smoke started to build up around the sigil, forming a small black cloud.

Not wasting any time, the girl and her maid immediately walked into the black cloud and disappeared without giving all the demons that were in the throne hall a single glance. And that even though every demon present should be pretty high up in the pecking order. In fact, except for the Demon Queen herself and a few of her most trusted companions, they were on top of the food chain in these lands.

But still, for the third time, nobody even dared to voice their complaints.