Chapter 2

Two years ago from now—

Elizabeth had returned again.

As she opened her eyes, Elizabeth let out a long sigh.

She looked down at her now-small hands, and her eyes dimmed with a faded light.

“Haah…”

Right before this regression, she had been the Empress of a vast empire that unified the entire continent.

It had been, without question, the most successful life out of all the countless lives she had lived.

And that success had come from pouring everything she had gained through all her previous lives into that one.

It had taken a year—just one year—to overthrow Cornwall I, who had only been driven out after years of grueling civil war in her other lives.

As soon as she came of age, Elizabeth reclaimed the throne that was rightfully hers and crowned herself.

After that, it took three years to crush all the damned nobles who didn’t have a shred of patriotism.

Then ten more years to reform Castillo by recruiting and appointing talents hidden across the kingdom.

And finally, only five years to bring Enrique and his empire—root of all her suffering—to their knees beneath her feet.

“This can’t be… How dare a wretch like you…! Cough, cough…”

The thrill of cutting off Enrique’s head as he screamed in disbelief…

The countless efforts she had made to force him to kneel before his death—

That life was everything she had ever desperately wished for.

She had achieved all she had set out to do, and with that, she thought she had no more regrets, no more desires.

That’s why she had prayed—so desperately—that she would never regress again.

That this time, she could finally rest in peace.

But despite all that, she had returned once more.

And at the realization of this unwanted regression, endless sighs escaped Elizabeth’s lips.

The first time she had regressed was when the throne of Castillo, which was originally meant to be hers, was stolen by her uncle and she died. After that her only goal had been survival.

And rightly so. Regression wasn’t omnipotence.

Just going back in time wasn’t enough to guarantee success—life had far too many variables for that.

Perhaps conscious of the curse tied to the bloodline of the great witch, the first queen, her uncle spared Elizabeth’s life until she turned eighteen—when she would legally become an adult.

But instead of killing her, he raised her as a fool.

Poisoned by the hand of a lady-in-waiting she had trusted, Elizabeth lay dying and begged, over and over again.

She didn’t want to die.

And then, like a lie, she found herself back at ten years old. Upon realizing she had regressed, Elizabeth fled the palace, moved only by the desperate thought of not wanting to die.

She was dead within ten days.

Even though she had a pretty face for a ten-year-old, she had no other talents or means of survival.

The world outside the royal palace was far too dangerous for a child like her to survive alone.

In her third life, she tried telling those around her that she had regressed. Within two months, she was locked away in the northern tower—branded a mad princess, locked up just in case she did something unpredictable.

It wasn’t until her fourth life that she finally learned to start using her head, but even then, not much changed.

She simply lacked the experience, knowledge, and skills to accomplish anything meaningful with just a few regressions.

It was only after dying and returning over and over again that she was finally able to break free of her fate—to die either before or just after turning eighteen.

Even then, at first, she only managed to extend her life by a few months.
But Elizabeth never gave up.

After repeating her life so many times, she was eventually able to become the public face of Marquis Asim, a royalist noble opposed to her uncle.

And after dozens more lives, she finally became queen.

Up until that point, Elizabeth had believed that once she became queen, everything would be over.

“I was naïve.”

Clicking her tongue at her foolish past self, Elizabeth shook her head.

She had thought becoming queen would mark the end—but it wasn’t.

The power struggles with the nobles who tried everything to turn her into a puppet were even harder than the civil war against her uncle, Cornwall.

And so, after enduring dozens more grueling lifetimes, fighting again and again, Elizabeth finally discovered the truth behind her endless hardships—
her uncle’s usurpation of the throne, the civil war that followed, the rebellions of the nobility—

all of it had been orchestrated by Emperor Enrique of the Frank Empire.

The moment she realized she had been dancing in the palm of Enrique’s hand, while her own nation, Castillo, was being driven into ruin—

Her goal shifted once more.

She would erase Enrique.

She would erase the Frank Empire from the continent itself.

And once again, her life repeated. Over and over. Boring. Exhausting.

But because she had a goal—she could endure it.

She could bear it.

But why!!!

“I clearly cut off Enrique’s head in the end, and I wiped out every last drop of that bastard’s bloodline. So why…”

Why had she come back again?

In the end, unlike in her previous lifetimes, Elizabeth shut herself away for several days.

She simply couldn’t find the will to do anything.

And her behavior left those around her filled with anxiety and concern.

Not that she cared.

Elizabeth just lay on her bed, staring blankly at the ceiling with hazy eyes.

Truthfully, she was utterly sick of everything.

The desperate struggle to survive—racking her brain, pushing her body to the limit, enduring endless hardship.

The countless mountains she had to climb to become a proper queen.
And the wars—unending wars—that would follow.

‘I’m tired of it. All of it. I really am.’

She truly didn’t want to do anything anymore.

Even just breathing—no, just existing like this—felt utterly exhausting.

And yet, she couldn’t even die.

It wasn’t fear or aversion to death.

It was because she already knew—no matter how many times she died, it wouldn’t end. She’d just come back again.

So Elizabeth merely ate when meals were brought to her, slept, woke, ate, and slept again…

She never left her bed or her room, simply lying there in a state of total lethargy.

After spending several days like that, a new question began to occupy her thoughts.

‘Why? Why did I come back again?’

Considering how many regressions she had experienced—so many she’d lost count—it was a rather late question to be asking.

Until now, she had never once wondered why she kept returning.

She’d been too busy—rejoicing at being alive again, throwing herself headfirst into trying to survive.

Maybe during the first few regressions, she had wondered.

But eventually, the endless regressions became something she simply accepted as a matter of course.

All she thought was:

“I have to survive.”

And for that,

“I have to claim the throne.”

I became queen, so I had to do the job properly.

I had to defeat the damned nobles who stood in my way.

And after that, I had to crush that bastard Enrique who made me suffer so much.

Elizabeth’s entire life had been filled with things she had to do.

Whenever she achieved one goal, another would immediately take its place.

And when she completed that, yet another task awaited.

Every time she regressed back to the age of ten, a never-ending list of responsibilities was already lined up in front of her.

And Elizabeth, like following the steps of a ballroom dance, had always tackled those duties in order, one after the other.

With the hope that, in the end, it would all lead to a grand and glorious finale, she had never once stopped.

“But no. No, this isn’t it.What am I, some cursed girl in magical shoes? I’m not doing it. Not this time. I’m not doing any of it.”

Honestly, it wouldn’t matter if she did nothing.

If she just sat back and let things happen, she’d live as a brainless, naïve little princess until she turned eighteen—and then die from poison.

For a moment, Elizabeth shuddered involuntarily as the memory of that first death—still vivid and sharp—rose up in her mind.

She might have grown used to death, but the fear and pain she had felt the first time were still…

“No. Not that. I don’t want that.”

No, that was definitely a no.

The poison tasted disgusting, the time it took to die was longer than she expected, and the pain was unbearable.

But even so— she didn’t want to walk the same path again just to avoid that ending.

“Ugh… I just want to disappear somewhere.”

As she muttered to herself and turned her head, a single beam of sunlight pierced through the tightly drawn curtains and caught her eye.

Watching the dust particles slowly drifting through the light, Elizabeth thought:

“I want to live like that dust.”

Unnoticed, unbothered—utterly ordinary, like something no one ever pays attention to…

Thud.

Lost in thought, Elizabeth suddenly sat upright.

It had been ten days since she returned to the past.

At last, Elizabeth had decided on the goal for this life.

First and foremost—she didn’t want to die painfully.

But that didn’t mean she wanted to live desperately, clawing and fighting like before.

After all, if she died, she’d just come back again.

So this time, she simply wanted to live comfortably, without hardship, and die of old age.

“Alright. Let’s find a way to make that happen.”

The peaceful life she wanted wasn’t anything grand.

Just a small house in a quiet rural village, where she could tend flowers, read books, and live out her days in peace.

Now, where that ideal countryside might be, and how she would have enough wealth to hire servants to handle chores so she could focus on flowers and reading—that was secondary.

The real problem… was her very existence.

The first in line to the throne.

The heir of the first queen—the great witch.

That alone made the peaceful life she imagined feel like a dream.

As long as she existed in Castillo, whether she wanted it or not, her uncle—who coveted the throne—would try to kill her.

And it wasn’t just him. Other nobles hungry for power would no doubt seek to use her, just like Marquis Asim once had.

Escaping to another country wasn’t a simple solution either.

First of all, there wasn’t anywhere suitable to go.

Aside from the Frank Empire, the other nations were all smaller than Castillo.

Even if she fled to one of them, it was obvious that people like her uncle or Marquis Asim could still reach her.

But going to the Frank Empire wasn’t an option either.

The Emperor—that bastard Enrique—would never leave her alone.

Enrique.

The man who had been her nemesis—the one she had tried so desperately to eliminate in her last life.

Her father wasn’t a saintly ruler, but he had been a decent king—until Enrique’s schemes turned him into a broken shell of a man.

It was because of Enrique’s manipulation that she and her uncle ended up locked in a long civil war over the throne.

And even after she finally won—after enduring countless regressions and retries—it was Enrique’s meddling that forced her into yet another drawn-out battle with the nobles, even as queen.

All of it had been part of Enrique’s plot to erase Castillo from the continent.

If it hadn’t been for the monster outbreak in the northern region of the empire at just the right moment, Enrique probably would have succeeded, too.

“In the end, everything comes back to that bastard Enrique.”

She had to stop his ambitions—his constant attempts to throw Castillo into chaos.

And at the same time, she needed to find a place outside of Castillo to stay—
somewhere she could remain hidden and safe until the right time came.

But that was far easier said than done.

Currently, the Frank Empire was the only true empire on the continent—undisputed in its dominance.

There weren’t many places where she could hide from the reach of an emperor like that.

But after a month of agonizing over it—struggling to sift through her fading memories—

Elizabeth finally managed to recall one possible way.