TBOBS 01

Chapter: 01

Prologue

“Haa… haa…”

The sky above was pitch black.

Black smoke drifted through the air, and the stench of decay seeped in from somewhere nearby.

Barely managing to pry open my blood-caked eyelids, I looked around at the corpses scattered across the battlefield.

…That one is the male lead. And that one is the second male lead.

Wherever I looked, more dead bodies lay piled on top of one another.

The only unusual thing was…

They all had the same hair color.

The same color as mine.

They were my brothers.

That one’s the eldest. The one still clutching his sword until the very end is the second. And the third… even though he cried so much, he couldn’t even close his eyes before dying.

My time wasn’t far off either.

I let out an irritated sigh.

Ah… I couldn’t even make it past twenty-two this time either.

There wasn’t a trace of the fear people usually felt before death.

Because this was already the third time I’d gone through this.

Believe it or not, this world existed inside the pages of a childcare fantasy novel.

And I had lived through it three separate times.

I was exhausted.

Twenty.

Twenty-one.

Twenty-two.

Those were the ages at which I had died.

Looking at my dead—or dying—family members, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them.

…It’s not like being born into a villainous family is a crime. Damn it.

There probably wasn’t anyone else who had been transmigrated into a novel and ended up living as miserably as I had.

Especially not when the novel was supposed to be one of those adorable childcare stories.

Slowly, I raised my head.

A massive black mass filled the sky.

Suspended in the middle of it was a single man.

Behind him, the smoke had taken the shape of a dragon.

To put it simply…

That man was a living dragon.

The one known as the Dragon Duke.

And the reason everything had turned into this catastrophe was because that dragon had flown into a berserk rage.

Ha… I hope there isn’t another timeline after this one.

Though that’s probably wishful thinking.

No matter what I tried, fate refused to change.

I could already feel my life slipping away.

At the same time, the man raised his hand.

A black sphere formed in his palm.

An enormous black sphere.

Considering that something much smaller than that had once erased an entire city…

This really was the end.

If only those insane male leads hadn’t driven the Dragon Duke into a frenzy…!

Why did they have to provoke an innocent Dragon Duke and cause all this?

Seriously! How does a childcare novel end with total annihilation?!

As I stared blankly at the sky one last time, my eyes suddenly widened.

The sky where the man floated.

The world that would soon be destroyed by that black sphere.

Through the shattered cracks in the sky…

I saw something strangely familiar.

A familiar road.

A familiar bridge and roundabout.

And then Gwanghwamun.

Gyeongbokgung Palace.

Wait… Seoul?!

I wasn’t imagining it.

It was the streets of Seoul.

The city I missed so desperately.

The moment I spotted a Korean signboard, my eyes flew even wider open.

Why can I see that? If I could just get over there… I think I could go home!

But sadly…

My eyes were slowly closing.

What is this?

What is happening?

I finally found my way home…

How unfair.

I didn’t have the strength to hold on any longer.

Yet even as I watched the black sphere drawing closer, joy welled up inside me.

That’s it! If that thing hits me, I’ll get another chance!

I can go home.

Standing before death, I smiled.

This was my third life in a childcare novel.

In the next one…

I’m conquering the dragon.

“Hey, hey, look over there. The Dragon’s Bride is passing by.”

Ugh…

My ears were starting to hurt.

“So she’s this generation’s bride? That’s perfect. I heard she’s famous for being completely useless.”

“Yeah. Apparently she never awakened a single ability after she was born.”

My name was Calypso Aquasiadel.

I was someone who had transmigrated into a generic childcare fantasy novel…

And a person cursed by time.

What did that mean?

Well…

I tried changing the original story so I could live a better life.

Instead, I reached nothing but a bad ending.

I thought that would be the end of it.

Instead, I was forced to keep repeating time over and over again.

This world came from the childcare novel titled I Became the Terminally Ill Baby Daughter of the Black Panther Duke.

Back when I had read it, childcare novels had flooded the market.

This novel had simply been one of them.

A beloved heroine.

Doting older brothers who adored her.

A cold father who eventually became a complete daughter fanatic.

It was a story packed with every cliché imaginable.

The problem was…

None of those clichés applied to me.

What an unbelievably unfair system.

The story followed a squirrel beastkin girl who was adopted into the Black Panther family.

She entered the household as a child and gradually grew close to the youngest son.

Unfortunately, that youngest son was merely the second male lead.

After being showered with love by the Black Panther family, the heroine eventually ended up with the lion beastkin crown prince—the true male lead—for a perfect happily-ever-after.

The character I had possessed…

Was the powerless youngest daughter of the killer whale family, the final villains of the novel.

Unlike the original heroine, who only had to be cute and lovable to receive endless affection…

The killer whale family lived by one rule.

Power.

Only strength mattered.

It was a world where the strong devoured the weak.

There wasn’t a family here that would melt because a baby babbled “Gwa-gwa?” or called someone “Grandpa?”

To begin with…

The head of the family wasn’t even a grandfather.

It was a grandmother.

Since killer whales naturally lived in matriarchal societies, the strongest grandmother had always inherited the position of family head.

The current matriarch had three sons.

I was the youngest granddaughter of the insignificant third son.

On top of that, I possessed no abilities whatsoever and had an exceptionally frail body.

I had three older brothers.

They were all talented enough to earn our grandmother’s approval.

As for me…

They ignored me.

Or looked down on me.

In the original story, I was chosen as the Dragon’s Bride—a sacrificial offering destined to die.

But by my grandmother’s orders, I was sent to the Black Panther family instead of the dragon.

More precisely… I was offered up as a political marriage sacrifice to the Black Panther family.

There, I became jealous of the original heroine, who was weak like me yet loved by everyone.

I bullied and harassed her.

My actions were exposed.

I was thrown out of the family.

Then I died a gruesome death in an accident.

The Black Panther supporting character—my fiancé, who was also the original heroine’s adoptive older brother—simply stood by and watched it happen.

The moment I transmigrated, I tried to change all of that…

The result?

Complete and utter failure.

Let’s see… In my first life, I tried seducing the original male lead and got myself killed.

In the second, I scratched myself on a rusty nail and died of tetanus.

The third life had been the one just before this.

I corrected all my previous mistakes.

I even rose to become the head of the killer whale family.

And yet…

I was caught in one of the original male lead’s schemes.

Everyone died.

It ended in complete annihilation.

But that’s over now.

I possessed an enormous amount of knowledge.

And this time…

I wasn’t going to fail.

In this life, I’ll definitely become the Dragon’s Bride!

Because of that, I paid no attention whatsoever to the whispers around me.

“Hmm… If she’s the Dragon’s Bride, she’ll definitely die. But at least she’ll bring wealth to the family. Looks like the matriarch found a good way to get rid of a useless child.”

“She’s basically been sold off.”

Keep talking.

Spread the news that I’m the Dragon’s Bride as far as possible!

In this world, the Dragon’s Bride referred to a child offered as a sacrifice to the Dragon Duke.

Once every ten years, the dragon’s fury would awaken.

To calm his rage, a child had to be sacrificed.

Everyone believed the child would certainly die.

The tradition dated back to the founding of the kingdom.

The nation itself had been established with the help of a dragon.

That dragon married the first emperor, and together they had two children.

One inherited the traits of an ordinary beastkin and became emperor.

The other inherited too much dragon blood.

Unable to control his violent berserk episodes, he eventually gave up his claim to the throne.

Instead, he became a Grand Duke.

His bloodline continued through the generations…

Until it produced the current Dragon Duke.

“So she’s basically a young lady who’s about to die.”

“Exactly.”

“Tsk, tsk. She’s barely a year old. Honestly, it would’ve been kinder if she’d simply died. Better than being chewed up by a dragon…”

“Oh, come on. Then she wouldn’t be of any use to the family.”

Listening to every whispered conversation, I arrived before a massive room.

The enormous doors slowly opened.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen this room.

It was the family head’s office.

Oddly enough, a baby’s crib had been placed in one corner.

Without saying a word, the servant carrying me set me down inside the crib.

He handled me so roughly that my backside smacked against the railing.

It stung.

Seriously… couldn’t you be a little gentler?

This family had absolutely no respect for babies.

It was survival of the fittest.

The strong took everything.

Babies were no exception.

Only those who survived deserved to live.

Today’s the day I receive my name.

At the moment, I was three years old by this world’s reckoning.

Exactly twenty-four months had passed since I was born.

Among whale beastkin, no child was recognized as a true member of the family until they had lived for two full years.

The reason was simple.

During their first two years of life, whale beastkin had an unusually high chance of dying suddenly.

This world was inhabited entirely by beastkin.

The land-animal families and the sea-animal families constantly opposed one another.

Every major character in the original story belonged to the land faction.

The sea beastkin were always the villains.

The comment sections were full of people calling them those evil fish bastards.

And the leader of those “evil fish” was the person now striding into the room.

Her face was lined with age, yet she carried herself with overwhelming dignity.

She possessed a massive frame.

Jet-black hair.

Its tips were pure white, as though they had been deliberately bleached.

She was my grandmother.

Ocula Aquasiadel.