Chapter 07
When I returned to my room, I stretched out my arms and legs across the huge, soft bed.
“This feels good.”
It felt as though I were lying on top of a cloud. It was the first time in my life I had ever slept on such a soft bed.
“I’ve really made it big.”
Although my life was still on borrowed time.
I looked around before rolling up my sleeve.
The ancient-language markings on my left arm were still there, unchanged. Before my regression, those markings had eventually covered my entire body.
‘First, I should write a letter to that eccentric scientist.’
The eccentric scientist was a strange person who had been abandoned by his parents as a child and raised among monsters.
Perhaps because of that, he had an intense interest in monsters, which were unknown creatures to most people.
‘I’ll write down some information and send it to him.’
He would probably take the bait on his own.
There was no need to think about this any further. However, even if I succeeded in persuading him, there was still the problem of money.
I would need to provide him with research funds, but I didn’t have a single penny.
The most urgent thing was money.
“I guess I’ll have to go for that.”
Stealing ideas.
Of course, I wasn’t talking about stealing the ideas of innocent people.
The ideas I intended to steal belonged to the mad scientist who had experimented on me.
“That guy may have had a rotten personality, but he did make quite a lot of inventions.”
Research required a lot of money.
In other words, even that mad scientist had no choice but to create and develop legitimate inventions if he wanted to conduct major research.
That was also why he regularly attended academic conferences while secretly conducting human experiments behind the scenes.
And I knew every invention and development he had ever made well enough to have them carved into my bones.
The worst of them all was the chimera he created for combat.
“Hmm. Around this time, he should be right in the middle of inventing… that.”
Let’s get started.
For a moment, I could almost see the image of the mad scientist screaming after having his own invention stolen right out from under his nose.
Knock, knock.
“I’m coming in.”
A voice came along with the knock.
The door clicked open, and I hurriedly pulled my sleeve down before jumping to my feet.
A moment later, Shacol Aubrey entered.
“Father?”
“That’s right.”
He entered carrying a tray with an elegant posture and held it out toward me.
The tray was piled high with chocolates, candy, hotcakes covered in whipped cream and decorations, and pudding.
They were all so sweet that my mouth practically ached just looking at them.
“Take it.”
“What is this?”
“…I picked it up on the way.”
You picked it up on the way?
At this hour?
After I had already brushed my teeth and washed up because I was getting ready for bed?!
There were so many things I wanted to point out that my throat actually closed up.
And what did he mean by “picked it up on the way”?
The steam rising from the hotcakes and the faint chill coming from the pudding made it obvious that they had just been made.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine…?”
The blanket was soft and warm, so there was no reason for me to feel bad.
“I see.”
What? That was it?
I turned my head in confusion and looked toward the slightly open door. Mary was standing there with an awkward smile.
When our eyes met, Mary made horns with her fingers and placed them over her head.
‘Ah….’
No way.
Was he doing this because he had yelled at me earlier?
‘Tsundere….’
Huh? What word was I trying to think of?
I scratched my head, feeling strangely confused.
‘Since Mary and Gold are watching, I should play the role of daughter.’
I hugged the tray filled with sweets that were completely inappropriate for this late hour and smiled brightly.
“Father, thank you! These are all things I like!”
“…….”
When I smiled from ear to ear, Duke Aubrey looked down at me with a somewhat stiff expression.
I carefully placed the tray on the bedside table before running over and throwing myself against Duke Aubrey’s leg.
Duke Aubrey’s body stiffened even more.
“Father really is the best!”
Good grief, what’s wrong with this man?
He’s acting like some third-rate character.
The maids outside were watching, too. I had to play along properly here.
“I’m so happy that such a wonderful father like you is my father.”
At that moment, I saw it.
Duke Aubrey, who had been stiff as a board, widened his eyes slightly before the corners of his cheeks twitched.
Seeing that, I thought,
‘…Aha.’
This man might actually be weak to flattery.
“You’re merely stating the obvious.”
He quickly became smug and nodded, so I smiled even more brightly.
“Father is the best!”
“I know.”
“Father is a genius!”
“I know that too.”
Right. Of course he knew.
His answer was so completely devoid of humility that I was left speechless, but I deliberately kept smiling sweetly.
It was a night filled with the scent of sugar.
‘Hmm. I need to bring up the business idea with the Duke somehow.’
Since I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the food he had brought me last night, I had eaten a mountain of sweets. The adrenaline from all that sugar had kept me awake all night, and after thinking things through, I realized…
With my abilities right now, stealing his inventions was completely impossible.
I had the knowledge, but there were too many obstacles to turning it into reality.
Besides, I had only just arrived here. If I started ordering the servants around as though I were already familiar with them, they might think something was strange.
What I wanted to steal was a new way of using magic stones.
Normally, one magic stone could only possess one attribute. In other words, if you put the power of fire into a magic stone, it became a fire magic stone.
But by making a slight modification to the magic stone, it was possible to put two effects into a single stone.
For example, a fire magic stone could be used to emit fire or warm objects.
However, if you melted a completed fire magic stone and a completed water magic stone together and combined them into one, you could create a magic stone that produced streams of hot water.
These were called “Combination Magic Stones.”
The mad scientist who made a fortune from these magic stones eventually began hiring people and conducting experiments in earnest.
“Ah, first I should earn some points with Duke Aubrey.”
To do that, I should use what I was best at.
I jumped to my feet and immediately left my room. Since he had given me food yesterday, I thought it would be nice to repay him by cooking something.
“Even I have to admit I’m a genius.”
I was carefully avoiding the servants coming from the opposite direction when—
Thud!
“Ah!”
I thought I had avoided them properly, but somehow I collided with a maid coming from the other side.
My frail body went tumbling to the floor.
“Ugh….”
I had landed hard on my bottom, and I groaned from the pain.
Then I heard giggling from above me.
“Oh my, are you all right? You really should watch where you’re going~”
“Child, you need to have something to learn from before you can even walk around with your head held high.”
“Pfft, that’s true. How nice. I want to live in an orphanage for a few years and then become a noblewoman too.”
“For someone as smelly as this orphan to be the person we’re supposed to serve. I guess the prestige of the Duke of Green has really fallen. I heard another family offered me a position this time. Maybe I should go there instead~”
The servants’ giggling voices made my mood sink to the bottom.
‘No matter how prestigious or magnificent the place is, there’s always this kind of bullying.’
I couldn’t tell how this place was any different from the orphanage.
Even the throbbing pain seemed to disappear for a moment.
‘Did they think I was going to cry?’
No. This kind of bullying didn’t even make me flinch.
Of course, the fact that it didn’t hurt much wasn’t a reason for me to tolerate it.
I dusted myself off and stood up with a bright smile.
Perhaps they hadn’t expected me to make such a face, because the expressions of the servants who had been giggling became slightly awkward.
The orphanage I had lived in was far more like a den of demons than this place. These lukewarm fools had no idea.
“It hurts.”
“It was an accident. I already apologized~”
“Do I smell?”
I asked while still smiling, causing the servants’ brows to furrow slightly.
“Well, I can’t say you don’t.”
One of the three servants answered bluntly.
“Okay, then I’ll tell Father that.”
“…What?”
“Oh, and you said another family offered you a position, right? I’ll tell him that you said you wanted to leave because you don’t want to serve me, an orphan who grew up in an orphanage.”
As I innocently recited the words as though I knew nothing, their expressions changed slightly.
“W-Well, if you say that, he’ll think you’re lying. And Duke Aubrey will probably hate you.”
“T-That’s right. It’s because you weren’t watching where you were going in the first place.”
“A truly noble aristocrat would never fall. If you tell him that you fell, he might think you’re a fake daughter.”
What a load of nonsense.
And they were trying to sell it to me.
To me, who had been through hell and back.
This was exactly the kind of rhetoric I had heard endlessly from that mad scientist.
That way of speaking where, no matter what happened, simply breathing was somehow my fault.
It made me angry whenever I heard it now.
“Hey.”
“…Yes?”
“Do you think I’m a pushover?”
I wiped the innocent smile clean off my face and asked in a completely emotionless voice.
