Chapter 1
God hates me. I truly believed that.
In my twenty-three years of life, I’ve never met anyone more unlucky than me.
It started well. I was born as the precious only daughter of the Apelremion Ducal House, one of the empire’s founding families. Sadly, my parents died in an accident when I was young.
“Iris, you’ve become an orphan. I’ll be your guardian, so be grateful.”
“From now on, you’ll live in that small corner room. Your cousin Demel has so many belongings—she needs more space, don’t you think?”
After that, a distant relative moved into the mansion with their family and mistreated me. Fine, I could accept that. But was it really necessary for the entire family to be cursed by an evil god and wiped out?
“I—I’m not the head of the Apelremion family! I was just staying here to take care of a distant niece!”
My uncle fled with the remaining money from the estate, vanishing without a trace. I was stripped of my noble status and forced to leave the capital.
Afterward, I sold my jewelry, saved up, and searched for investment opportunities.
This was when I truly began to believe God despised me.
“I’ll buy this mine.”
“This one? Really? Even the overseer struggled with it—well, good for me!”
After scouring books and gathering information, I found an abandoned mine suspected to have magical energy veins.
“Oh dear, I was about to sell it to you, miss… but a high-ranking noble made the same offer yesterday. How unfortunate.”
Someone bought it the day before I could put down the deposit. Later, I heard that the mine yielded a massive deposit of magestones with record-breaking purity and size.
And that wasn’t all.
“Why are perfectly good men wasting their lives like this?”
“You’re taking us in? For Iris’ sake, we’ll give our lives!”
“No need for lives. Just make money.”
I gathered a group of street thugs who showed potential in hunting monsters, fed and trained them, and turned them into a guild.
“Really sorry. We want a shot at glory too. We’ll repay you in the next life.”
A noble family offered them knighthoods and hefty rewards, taking them all away. They later succeeded in slaying a dragon—a feat even the imperial knights had failed at—and gained immense wealth and fame.
This kind of thing didn’t happen just once or twice.
Whenever I devised a brilliant method to capture rare, dangerous magical beasts, someone else would use the same method first. Whenever I spotted a diamond in the rough—someone who could become a valuable connection—another person would swoop in and take them far away.
Still, I didn’t give up.
I scraped together my remaining fortune to buy a painting.
“You have a keen eye. Will the empire’s people see it too?”
“I’ll make sure they do.”
But just before the final seal was stamped, the artist sent a brief note saying, “It couldn’t be helped,” and unilaterally broke our agreement.
Now, that painting is the most valuable artwork on the continent.
“Cough! Cough!”
Ah, I almost forgot. I also contracted a fatal illness—thanks to the evil god’s curse on my family.
It wasn’t completely incurable, but a large-scale war broke out across the continent, making the treatment impossible to obtain.
“Damn it.”
I reflected on my situation.
Here I was, lying in a shabby hut no better than a ruin, coughing up blood in the freezing cold, waiting for death without even a blanket.
Was this really the end of Iris Apelremion?
Creak—
Just then, the sound of the rotten wooden door opening reached my ears. My half-closed eyes shot open.
Someone stood inside my bedroom. A familiar face. I frowned.
“Why are you… here?”
It was the woman I least wanted to see.
The one entangled with my misfortune, the one who held no small share of responsibility for my ruined life.
“We meet again at last.”
A noblewoman with pristine silver hair and shimmering sea-blue eyes approached my bedside, dressed in elegant attire.
She was beautiful.
The empire’s wisdom, the eyes that could read all things, the saint—now called a business genius.
Expensive accessories made of spirit stones and magestones adorned her neck, arms, and hair, yet her delicate face outshone them all.
“Grace Serbel, daughter of House Serbel.”
“Grace Serbel… Cough!”
Her eyes widened as she took in my near-death state.
“I’d heard your condition was severe, but I didn’t expect… this. How pitiful.”
“How… did you even get here?”
I managed to answer after taking a sip of water from the grimy cup by my bed.
But she didn’t answer my question.
“Well, with the large-scale war against the Yulcan Kingdom, supplies are tight. Commoners like you must struggle to secure even the bare necessities.”
She sighed as she surveyed the messy surroundings.
“Daring to wage war against our empire, Yulcan will pay the price. Crown Prince Karsiel advocates for a peace treaty, but as always, everything will go my way.”
She met my gaze squarely and spoke decisively.
I narrowed my eyes, staring at her for a few seconds before replying.
“If you’re not here to state your business, get out.”
“You dislike me.”
“Obviously.”
Grace looked at me with a gentle expression, as if she understood everything.
“Is it because I redirected the evil god’s curse to the Apelremion family?”
As she tilted her head innocently, my frown deepened.
Grace Serbel.
A name I could never forget, no matter how hard I tried. My misfortune was always tied to her.
Ever since that day—when, under the pretext of loyalty, she diverted the evil god’s curse from the imperial family to mine.
She had claimed that only a ducal house, with power second only to the royals, could absorb the curse. A necessary decision to protect the empire.
The moment she painted the Apelremion crest onto a red fruit, the curse turned our lands to ruins and planted the seeds of illness in me.
That was when Grace Serbel became a saint.
While I fell from grace, she rose as a hero.
And how did I fall?
With no land or subjects, I couldn’t pay taxes. My title was revoked, and aside from a few pieces of jewelry, I was left penniless.
Naturally, I became the laughingstock of the nobility.
“But it was for the sake of the imperial family.”
Grace shook her head as if it weren’t her fault. Her pretty eyes sparkled.
“If the curse had fallen on the imperial family, the entire empire would have suffered, wouldn’t it?”
“……”
“Blaming me is selfish and disloyal.”
I bit my lip.
As much as I hated to admit it, she was right.
Even a three-year-old would know that a ducal house suffering was better than the imperial family collapsing. What could I possibly say to refute her?
Thus, my anger was unjustified. I had no grounds to blame Grace. It was just that my family happened to be the ones chosen to bear the curse.
Grace smiled faintly at my silence.
“You look furious. I understand. You’ve worked so hard, after all.”
“……”
“I also understand why seeing me upsets you. If I saw someone who achieved everything I wanted before I could, I wouldn’t feel good either.”
My chest tightened at her last words.
“How… do you know what I’ve been doing?”
Instead of answering, Grace smiled again.
The misfortune she brought me wasn’t limited to the evil god’s curse.
Every business I attempted and failed—she had accomplished each one just a step ahead of me.
She bought the abandoned mine before I could. She recognized the potential of the beggar gang and offered them knighthoods I couldn’t provide. She executed every idea I was proud of before I could act.
All of them were Grace’s doing.
As her ventures succeeded one after another, her fame grew.
“To see value in a worthless mine—truly, the empire’s wisdom!”
“Offering knighthoods to a commoner guild? I thought she was insane at first, but it was foresight!”
“She tamed the dragon Canus! She’s like a goddess!”
All I could do was listen to the praises heaped upon her and swallow my bitterness.
At first, I couldn’t believe it. It felt like someone had stolen my life.
But after thinking coldly, I had to accept it.
I had kept all my business plans to myself—not even writing them in a journal. No one could have peeked into my mind and stolen my ideas.
Grace must have simply recognized the potential of the mine, the hunter guild, the masterpiece painting, and countless other things—just like I had, or even a step ahead.
But did she also know that I had planned to pursue those very ventures?
“I knew without you telling me. My eyes can read all things.”
Grace answered briefly.
Her noble, beautiful blue eyes gazed into the distance, as if seeing something no one else could. Truly the face of a saint capable of bewitching the imperial family and the people.
Yet, from the moment she arrived, I had felt something off about her.
It was hard to pinpoint, but her attitude, her voice, her words—they were subtly different from the saint I had imagined.
After staring at her for a while, I spoke. There was something I needed to confirm.
“…The fruit you used to redirect the evil god’s curse to me.”
“Huh?”
Grace’s eyes widened, as if wondering why I’d bring that up now.
“When you traveled from the Serbel lands to the imperial capital, you carried two treasures. The ‘Transfer’ red fruit and the ‘Purification’ blue fruit. I was once a high noble—I know at least that much.”
“Yes. By then, I already held the title of saint—”
“I’ve always wondered. Why use the red fruit against the evil god? If you had the blue fruit of purification, why choose to transfer the curse and create another victim?”
Grace tried to avoid my gaze, but I pressed harder.
“If you want to talk to me, answer. You could have erased the curse entirely—why redirect it to my family?”
“…Because I already knew the blue fruit of purification would be needed for Karsiel.”
She met my eyes squarely, as if giving up on evasion.
“The first prince? Why would he need purification?”
“At the time, he was hiding his illness, but I knew he was poisoned by thornspike venom. Even the imperial physicians couldn’t cure it—he needed the purification stone.”
“Thornspike venom? So the illness the first prince suffered from was—”
I raised an eyebrow.
It was a well-known story: Crown Prince Karsiel had hidden an incurable illness, Grace had coincidentally discovered it and cured him, earning the imperial family’s trust.
As if to say, “Satisfied?” she shrugged.
“Are we done now? Resent me all you want, but there was no other way.”
Having shown enough kindness, she looked down at me haughtily and concluded:
“I made the best choice for the empire. With my eyes that read all things, I saved the imperial family and the prince. There was no way to avoid your sacrifice—”
“…Lies.”
I cut her off coldly.
“…What did you say?”
Grace stared at me as if doubting her ears.
“You just said—”
“Lies. Everything you’ve said is a lie.”
I straightened up from where I’d been leaning against the wall and locked eyes with her. The longer I looked, the more certain I became.
“You’re no saint. You’re not chosen by the gods.”
“What—? On what basis are you saying this?”
Grace asked as if she couldn’t comprehend it. I smiled faintly.
“You’re just a fraud who manipulated her way into the imperial family’s favor.”
The confusion I’d harbored for so long finally cleared, and my mind felt sharp.
“First, the first prince’s treatment. Thornspike venom is hard to diagnose, but once identified, there’s a cure—a folk remedy from the eastern continent, highly effective. An imperial physician trained in western academies might not know, but someone with ‘eyes that read all things’? Impossible.”
“…What?”
For a fleeting moment, her blue eyes wavered. Satisfied, I continued.
“Second, this burning continent. And you, refusing peace with Yulcan. Dragging out this bloody war to subjugate Yulcan isn’t just cruel—it’s stupid. Even if you succeed, the empire’s casualties will be catastrophic, and a forcibly conquered Yulcan will never extinguish its embers of vengeance.”
“How can you be so sure—?”
“Third, your eyes.”
I cut her off again.
“Eyes that claim every choice was made out of loyalty to the empire—how brightly they shine.”
“……”
“As if you can barely contain your pride at effortlessly countering my resentment.”
Having spent years stripped of my title and wandering, I’d seen countless gazes.
Eyes filled with pity, trust, unconditional love, the eyes of swindlers luring people with sweet words, even eyes quietly observing others’ misery—distinguishing them was second nature to me.
Grace’s enjoyment of my suffering was unmistakable.
The way her eyes swept over me the moment she entered, the twitch of her lips when she assessed my living conditions—it was all I needed to see.
“You’re no sage. No saint. You’re not even well-informed—just someone with a few pieces of privileged information.”
“…!”
“Even if you truly could glimpse the future, your vision is narrow. The title ‘Empire’s Wisdom’ is— Cough!”
Before I could finish, I burst into a coughing fit. I’d pushed myself too far.
Grace didn’t offer water or pat my back. She stood frozen like a statue, her earlier pretense gone, her eyes cold as they bore into me.
“Ha.”
Finally, she spoke, her lips trembling.
“I thought the original work exaggerated, but your mind really is terrifyingly sharp.”
