TRAFC 05

TRAFC

Posted by Akame, Released on August 2, 2026

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Chapter 5

‘I hid my skills all this time.’

That was the persona I was using, and Talain seemed momentarily pressured by my aura.

He can read the situation pretty well.

His expression said as much—like he was wondering why a girl who had always ranked last was suddenly acting so confident.

“Hah. Listen to this.”

But Talain did not kneel and apologize to me. Instead, he rushed at me with his sword.

Whether he thought I was bluffing or believed he had a chance…

He swung his blade at me with full killing intent, as if he meant to kill an unarmed woman.

“If your head is empty,” I said, leaning my body backward to evade the sword as it came close, “your body suffers.”

Clang!

At the same time, I smoothly drew the Rose Sword from Talain’s scabbard and blocked the blade he swung at me again.

A legendary sword really was a legendary sword.

Even the feeling of it in my hand was different.

Talain, with the same yellow eyes as Talesset, glared at me with burning fury.

His eyes were similar to the Pope’s yellow eyes, but his looked more like those of a sly snake.

Back when I was being sold off as the fourth wife of some insane noble, I remember how satisfying it was to watch him flail his tongue.

There was none of that dreamy “marry first, love later” romance I used to read about in romance fantasy novels.

This world was brutally real, and I had withered away in that reality.

How unfair had it been when I was poisoned to death by the first wife?

The memories from my first life were so disgusting and irritating that I didn’t even want to think about them.

“Her older sister should’ve been kept alive instead of killed. She would’ve been useful.”

“Brother! Did you think this would happen to me? I just killed her because her screaming was funny!”

Talain and Talesset kept mocking my dead older sister until the end.

“She fits perfectly! Not second, not third—fourth!”

Talesset laughed hysterically, while Talain chuckled and nodded beside her.

I planned to give them back the exact same pain I had suffered.

“Agh! Ghk, cough!”

The claim that the succession ranking didn’t matter was literally true.

Talain’s sword could not touch me.

Not even once.

Meanwhile, my sword carved wounds all over Talain’s body and made him bleed.

Why did they obsess over bullying me from such a young age?

Victims never forget what was done to them.

Perpetrators forget what they did.

For the first time in a long while, the sensation of fighting someone skilled made my body move so quickly it almost felt refreshing.

I struck like I was dancing—elegant, flowing, and precise.

A sword that overwhelms the space around it.

Talain instinctively thought that as he faced the insignificant “Tia” before him.

The Rose Sword drank in blood and shone even more brilliantly.

Unlike the battered Talain, Tia remained beautiful and untouched.

The five roses blooming along the sword’s spine scattered a lovely afterglow.

Even more than I expected.

The five roses lined up side by side like a chain, swaying in the air like a snake.

It gave the impression that the sword was instinctively obeying its master, almost playfully clinging to Tia.

When the family head had first told him to bring the Rose Sword to Tia, he had thought it was like putting a pearl necklace on a pig.

It usually takes more than a year to tame a legendary sword.

But now look at her.

With a single sparring match, Tia had made the Rose Sword her own.

Talain recognized his miserable, perfect defeat.

This isn’t even a sparring match.

It was one-sided instruction.

Despite having no audience watching, Tia wore a bored expression as if her skill were the most natural thing in the world. It didn’t even look like she was forcing that expression.

Without any showmanship, she swung a sword technique he had never seen before, completely casually—and every strike found a vital point.

Her stance was far from textbook-perfect, yet she gave off the unmistakable presence of a true master.

Was she really hiding her ability? This, this impossible level of skill?

Her beautiful dress and softly falling hair.

The blue light in her jewel-like eyes was as sharp and intense as if she had slaughtered countless people to earn it.

Talain’s surrender rose to his throat, but pride kept him fighting until in the end he lost his grip on the sword.

It was the first time in his life something like this had happened.

Crash!

Talain stared at me in shock, his eyes asking how this could be possible.

“This is impossible…”

Even as he coughed up blood, his stunned expression remained unchanged.

He was trembling so badly that merely staying on his feet seemed miraculous.

Perhaps it was only his pride that kept him from kneeling.

I answered coolly.

“I did say I was hiding my skills.”

“I thought that was just a rumor…”

“Get out there and tell your fellow candidates. Tell them about the sword your older brother faced, the sword your older brother saw.”

I had become tired of dealing with my annoying family.

So if I wanted my life to be easier, the rude ones had to hear the rumor themselves and bow their heads.

As I took a step closer, Talain could no longer endure it and dropped to his knees.

Rather than kneeling, he more or less collapsed onto the floor.

He probably could barely keep his eyes open, much less stand upright.

I had only lightly struck his tendons, so recovery would take quite a while.

“It would’ve been better if you’d knelt the moment I spoke.”

I held the Rose Sword to Talain’s neck and said,

“The roses are following my will.”

The roses, connected like a chain, curled around Talain’s neck without touching it, as if surrounding him in space.

Every one of those roses could cut if I wished it.

Talain, knowing this, trembled like a leaf in the wind.

“Apologize.”

“I, I’m sorry…”

“What exactly are you sorry for? Where did your promise not to do it again go?”

“I—I apologize for using vulgar language toward you, for bullying you all this time, and for acting arrogantly! I swear I will never do it again. So please, spare me.”

It was infuriating that he had been able to apologize so quickly now, when all this time he had been so disrespectful.

I lowered the Rose Sword diagonally.

The roses followed me gently.

“I could have killed you, but I didn’t. That makes me your lifesaver. Understand?”

Talain, despite how absurdly forced that logic was, nodded enthusiastically.

“Now go out there and repay your debt.”

At my order to get lost, Talain stared at me blankly for a long while before scrambling away like he had lost his tail.

Even while crawling out, stumbling and falling several times, he did not stop—whether because his pride was less important than his fear of me.

Knights entered through the open door soon after.

Looks like they came to report to Father.

By reading the traces of blood scattered throughout the room and tracing the movement of the sword fight, they seemed to understand what had happened. When they saw me, they paused briefly.

Like the calm eye of a typhoon, I probably only looked composed.

“Respect to the strong sword.”

The knights did not mock my appearance. Instead, they respectfully bowed to me.

It was quite unexpected to be treated with respect.

So I quietly responded in kind.

“And courtesy to your swords.”

Three years passed.

Naturally, I won my wager with my father.

“This is the freedom you won.”

I inherited a very luxurious castle by the seaside, along with a small territory.

For the first time in the family’s history, I became a child who was living independently without even being married.

My fellow candidates were secretly envious of me, but no one dared openly pick a fight with me anymore.

House Catobleta, after losing its family head, had been thrown into chaos, but they never discovered that I was the culprit.

The situation was similar to what had happened when the Pope died.

Now there are no obstacles left to becoming beyond the law.

This was a world of war.

In a world full of mad, violent strongmen constantly fighting and clashing, being recognized as someone outside that order was almost a miracle.

To be beyond the law meant not just being free from my empire, but from every other country as well. I would have to become an existence entirely outside international law.

The answer is to gather the Divine Relics.

While enjoying a luxurious semi-retired life in my castle, I focused on researching the relics.

But these Divine Relics were extremely difficult to deal with…

If I only knew where they were, I would have gone anywhere.

If I only knew who had them, I would have taken them by force somehow.

But even figuring out where they were was the hard part.

“According to legend, only the most moral person can discover the Divine Relics, Miss.”

“Why… morality?”

“Because only then could they gather the relics and use them to make the right wish.”

Morality.

Strictly speaking, I was more of a villainess from a romance fantasy novel.

And since I couldn’t suddenly become a moral saint and also couldn’t revive all the people I had killed, I temporarily put the project on hold.