*SLAP!!*

"KYAA!!"

"How dare you speak that way to me! Do you know who I am?! You've been wagging your tail around the prince lately too haven't you? This is why common trash like you shouldn't be allowed to blow around the school hallways!"

*snickers*

"I'm telling you now so get it through your thick skull. The Prince belongs with me! There's no way someone like you could stand beside him so don't show your unsightly face around him again if you know what's good for you!"

This scene came to mind when I thought about the words "The Magus' Romance".

In my entire life as Yukimura Michi, I'd only truly been sick a handful of times. One time in particular was during the chaos that was my divorce. My work piled up along with my clingy soon-to-be ex-husband and I may have fainted from exhaustion for a small while.

It was nothing really, but my secretary and close confidant, Eiko, nearly exploded and joined hands with Aki to force me to take an entire month's vacation stating that the company practically ran itself whether I was there or not.

I spent this forced vacation sitting around the house bored out of my mind after I realized that I didn't have any hobbies that were "relaxing" as Aki put it.

I was bored. How bored you ask? Bored enough to play one of those silly little games that my daughter insisted were popular among her friends.

So, there I was, a full-grown woman playing an otome game... I have no excuse...

The one Aki had shoved into my hands was titled "The Magus' Romance". A simple title and a fantasy setting. As long as it saved me from death by boredom anything was good.

The game followed a female protagonist by the name of Yukina Glais, who, despite being a commoner, was allowed to attend The Magnus Academy, The most prominent magic academy on the entire continent because of her overwhelming talent for light magic.

There was a diverse cast of eight male characters, capture targets, one could get closer to and romance throughout the game while fighting monsters and levelling ones magic. It was flash animated with an RPG style battling sequence.

The plot changed depending on which route you choose. I was in awe.... I thought.

'Isn't the protagonist a jackass?!'

She was accepted into a school that usually only accepted nobles, yet she went in with the crassest behavior and conduct possible! Climbing trees, entering wherever she pleases, saying tactless things and casually approaching and talking to people who are definitely of higher status than her, showing to everyone that she was stupid.... How did the capture targets even fall for this idiot with a head full of fluff and a naïveté that even kindergarteners would scoff at?

She realizes that some of these boys are engaged right? She knows that she can't just approach them and ask to dance right? She knows that she can't just casually hang out with the prince whose country is on the brink of war with her own right? She realizes that inciting the subordinate countries that are basically the frontier of the Demon Lands to rebel leaves the country vulnerable to demon attacks, right? She understands that the world isn't that simple right? Right? Right?!

She was a complete airhead. The capture targets were complete saps for falling completely in love with such a girl anyway.

I didn't really put this game into my eyes because of the shallow plot and dubbed it unimportant. Eventually it was swept to the back of my mind and buried under the reality of work and my divorce.

Who would have thought... that I'd end up living in said stupid game? The thought was so ludicrous that I still had trouble connecting my current life to it... a video game.

Kaoru Onyx, A capture target.

I knew that the name was familiar. The character was a student, two grades higher than the heroine. He was the super manly type with short cropped blood red hair and differently colored eyes. The left eye was blue and the right red. His skin was bronzed, and his preferred weapon was the broadsword.

A knight trainee and close aid to the first prince of Gestalt kingdom along with the knight captain's son who was also a capture target, he was the righteous heroic type, yet his route was one of the hardest to enter because he only takes notice of the heroine if she was at a certain level. He eventually leads the charge against an oncoming Demon surge and comes out on top with the heroine by his side.

I... am him.

Imagining myself all ripped and manly... Is too much. I'm still a dignified lady on the inside after all. I also have no intention of becoming a loyal meat shield for the first prince, so it's safe to say that this character no longer exists. Rest in peace heroic ikemen.

But that wasn't what stressed me at the moment.

That scene from before was one that takes place in the true route: The Second Prince's route. Noble children entered the Academy at the age of thirteen and spent six years there before graduating at the age of nineteen. The heroine enters in the third year.

Prince Leon, in the game, was in the same year as the heroine who entered the school late and is actually one of the first characters she meets. He was the frail, flower boy type with pale skin, golden blonde hair and blue eyes like you'd see in those old shojo manga.

He immediately makes himself known as the privileged, narcissistic, playboy of the story. In other words: The Fop.

Despite his frivolous attitude and frequent flirting, his route was the hardest. I actually had to put brain cells to work to complete his route. He had a dark personality, stemming from the fact that his mother, the second queen, kept trying to push him, to steal his elder brother's, who was the son of the deceased first queen, rights to the throne. He refused to and stated that he had no interest in the throne. He even behaved like a complete wastrel to present himself as weak competition to the eyes his brother had all over the school.

Prince Leon was actually very gifted at water and dark magic, but the former he downplayed to just passable and the latter he hid from the world. When he was forced to fight seriously, he was far from foppish.

He was extremely suspicious of everyone around him under the facade and pretended to flirt just to study the heroine, seeing if she was friend or foe. He never made it clear what he was really thinking, and just choosing one wrong answer would make him wary off you and close of his route completely.

In his bad end, where you'd present yourself as loyal to the first prince and endlessly bother him, he'd end up cracking under the pressure of his mother's schemes, his brother's suspicion and his own internal loneliness and using his powerful yet, unstable dark magic to blast away half the academy killing the heroine along with hundreds of students and draw the Demon beasts to rampage across the continent. It was a bloodbath.

In the good ending he reveals his dark magic to the school on accident while saving the heroine from an S class Demon and is branded dangerous by the country and incarcerated. The heroine then saves him with, surprisingly, the help of his brother, First Prince Fabian.

Prince Leon and the Heroine end up having to fight their way out of the capital, but they finally escape Gestalt kingdom to one of the smaller countries and live the rest of their days happily as commoners.....

This wasn't what was stressing me either.

In all the routes the heroine would get bullied mercilessly by the noble children for being common born. It was only in certain routes such as Kaoru's route, the prime minister's son's route and especially Prince Leon's route where the bullying gets severe and you finally get to meet the mastermind behind it: Veronica Verne.

I never connected the dots because my Veronica's surname is Onyx, while the game's Veronica went by the surname Verne. The game mentioned nothing about her mother remarrying into Verne house. Well, there was no way a whole world could be as shallow as what the game showed but still...

She showed up as a villain in Kaoru's route because he was actually her brother, huh?

The Kaoru in the game ought to have been an actual toddler, so there's no way he could have thought to look after Veronica the way I did, and with her not getting to spend as much time with father as he did she only had her mother as a role model. She even tossed away her name and grew up to be a vicious noble ojou-sama.

She was beautiful, which was a given seeing as father was that handsome and Claire was considered a top-class beauty as well. With waist length, straight glossy black hair, a delicate slender build, smooth creamy skin, red lips and almond shaped ruby red eyes she was the picture of a pampered noble daughter.

She along with her entourage of lesser noble daughters made these three routes quite irritating. She was even more of a nuisance in Prince Leon's route. She was his self-proclaimed fiancé despite her parents' wishes for her to marry Fabian, and she accosted and harassed the heroine who was slowly but surely getting closer to the Prince. Leon never gave her the time of day; however, it didn't stop her from lashing out at any girl that dared to approach him. Most didn't... that is, except for the empty-headed heroine.

The fallout from her harassment depends on the capture target whose route you are on. The prime minister's son and Kaoru's route were light with her getting expelled in both routes, but in Leon's route she desperately used Duke Verne's obscene amount of filthy money to search for the eloped prince and heroine. The First Prince then uses this as a chance to investigate her entire household, unearthing crimes such as slavery, kidnapping torture, extortion and countless murders.

They're stripped of their status as nobles. Richard Verne is executed while Claire and Veronica are exiled to the frontiers of the Demon Lands where these two spoiled women, most likely met a horrible fate.

The Verne House....

....

That was where I was right that second.

I groaned and ground the heels of my palms into my eyes.

I was still laying in the exact same place since the night before fully dressed. I didn't catch a wink of sleep. I was now living in that kind of household.

My intuition didn't dull with my rebirth. I knew that Verne was slimy the first time I met him, but it turned out that he's real scum. I needed to get my plans in order.

The game's Veronica probably met the Prince for the first time at the wedding reception and became infatuated, but my Veronica was actually raised properly, and she didn't seem very smitten with the prince the night before either. She seemed indifferent. Even if she did fall for him, I'd make sure that she's nowhere near as spoiled as the game's Veronica. That would probably be all it would take to save her from that miserable fate. The game's Veronica was just too rotten.

I also had to do something about the two sorry excuses for adults I now lived with.

I sighed heavily before calling for one of the maids to bring me a cup of tea to calm my raging headache. As soon as she was off, I ran a bath for myself.

Water in noble households was provided by something called a magic stone. Apparently, they were mined in areas with excess magic energy, but they were still extremely rare, and only nobles could afford them. Water stones like the fist-sized one embedded in the giant claw footed tub before me, secreted an endless amount of water, fire stones gave off heat, light stones gave off light, wind stones made things lighter and earth stones strengthened materials. They could last for decades depending on the quality.

Magic stones are activated by injecting mana into them, which turned out to be really easy... For me. According to Maddie, most people didn't learn to manipulate mana until they were at least ten, so the six-year-old me was quite amazing. I don't know why. It wasn't that hard. I made her stay quiet about it though, to avoid Mrs. Loose-lips bragging about it to all of Gestalt Kingdom.

I ran my fingertips over the smooth surface of the deep azure gemstone, willing the energy to flow from my core, down my arm and through my fingertips onto it. Immediately, clear sparkling water began to gush off of it into the tub. I then did the same to the vermilion some embedded into the foot of the tub causing the water around it to heat up. I made sure to use only enough mana that the water stayed at a comfortable temperature before undressing.

I was also told that repeatedly injecting mana into magic stones made you tired when your mana runs out, but I didn't feel a thing. I reckon that just two stones weren't nearly enough to make me feel drained yet.

Another touch was all it took to turn the water stone off before sinking into the tub of warm, scented water.

There was no soap in this world. Solving that problem also was on my bucket list.

Speaking of lists it just came to me that I could actually view my status as Aphrodite had said.

I just willed it ever so slightly and immediately a blue screen popped up in my line of sight so quickly that I jumped slightly in shock.

It looked exactly like the status screen from the game except this one wasn't a garish pink color. It was the same blue as my eyes, in fact. Come to think of it... I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that the heroine's eyes were that same shade of pink too.

Just as I thought this, there was a knock at the bathroom door.

"Young Master, your tea." It was the maid.

I called her in and had her place the cup of tea on the table with the bath oils. I refused her offer to help bathe, and she excused herself slightly dejectedly.

I turned my attention back to the screen and studied the table listed there. It was something along these lines:

Name: Kaoru Onyx

Level: 2

Title(s): The Child Prodigy, Aphrodite's Champion

HP: 50/50

MP: 80650/80650

Affinity: Fire, Water, Earth

Properties:

Strength: 5

Speed: 10

Dexterity: 5

Mentality: 577

Intelligence: 805

Luck: 60

Passive Skills:

Blessing Of The Love Goddess (SS)

Charm (SS)

Charisma (S)

Ethereal glow (S)

Muse (A)

Indifference (A)

Leadership (A)

Merchant (SS)

Active Skills:

Seduction (SS)《locked》

Schemer (S)

Haggle (S)

Appraisal (D)

'S.... seduction?!'

I sat there gaping at the screen. What the hell were some of these skills and who was her champion???

It was obvious that skills like leadership, haggle and Merchant were carry overs from my past life as a businesswoman but... ethereal glow?

A lot of the weird ones were passive too. Is that why people kept crowding me?

That goddess...

The air in the bathroom became gloomy and my tea eventually went cold...