In the palace Lucrece was complaining to the king like she said she would but there was a little twist and a little change on the script.
"... this is what happend, your majesty don't you think that it was cruel? Aldwin didn't even want to listen to my side and do you know what that means? That it's my win! Your majesty, please don't be a sore loser, a bet is a bet and honorable men keep their words"
"What a disappointment of a son... He can't even win against fate, I can't believe that his head was muddled so easily by those nobles sweet words. His impetuous and careless personality will lead to the nation's down fall if I made him king. I'm just glad that the girl he choose is not a spy if not it would have been a real needle in the butt to convince him. Don't worry I shall listen to your wish, what was that again? You wanted to become an adventurer and explore the world right?"
"Yes your majesty! I wish severe my ties with this country, for now, and to register in the Adventurer Guild so that I can explore new places and get to know new cultures! Tombs of ancient rulers, the land of fairies, far away lands or just the daily life of a commoner. I want to know them all! How fun it will be!"
"It must be nice to be young and not the heir. As a king, I can't even leave the palace for too much of there would be consequences, if only I had brothers..."
"Did your majesty forget my story? I'm not young any more, was this not the reason you made me play with little Aldwin and teach the royal mages? I'm older than your majesty even though my body is that of a 16 years old girl"
"How could I forget your ridiculous story? Especially since all the things you said came true. Only Iovitas knows why you were sent here"
"What the god of fate and passion think is not of my problem, such a capricious god is lead by his emotions and always end up creating problems for his twin. I feel sorry for the goddess Auda"
"The goddess of wealth and fortune with her cold and calculative personality, the muse for researchers and merchants and.. your role model. You need to stop being so cold, what is wrong to have feelings?"
"I should be glad to be heartless if not how many time do you think your son would have broken my heart? Most emotion are useless to me, I just need amusement as long as something can entertain me I happy and that is the only emotion I need. Deep love would only chain me down and deprive me of my freedom. That aside did you receive the sphere?"
"That glass sphere? What is it for?"
"It's just a little toy I told the royal mages to develop, it's called Verdandi it was written in one book I've read that it meant 'that which is happening/becoming' or 'in the making' in an ancient language. It'll be useful for communication as there are places letters can't be send and familiars can't reach. You just need to put a little mana in it to confirm ownership at first, from then you just need to think of the person you want to talk to and feed it a little of your mana, as long as the other person has a sphere they can get your call instantly even if they are on the other side of the continent and to accept the call you simply need to feed the sphere some mana."
"Another one of ground breaking gadgets. It'll hurt to part with such a wonderful inventor"
"Take it as a parting gift and you know that I will return soon. Any news from your spies?"
"The winter is getting harder and harder to bear for them, either it will be this year or next just like you told me"
What the king Casimir and our protagonist Lucrece were talking about is an empire not too far from the kingdom.
The Avraria empire, is situated in the lands of the north, with cold summer and harsher winters, a land where normal crops have difficulties to grown. It's economy revolves mainly on monster skin and its precious ores, the empire could be considered pretty rich if not for the fact that it's situated in a way that isolates it from the rest of the continent on its east are the Dunes of the New Moon, under it there is the continent biggest frozen lake and under the frozen lake there is the Forest of no Return, on its west kilometers and kilometers of rocky plains with a big river that starts from the frozen lake and ends in the ocean and in the waters of the ocean thousands of marine monsters ready to swallow any embarcation brave enough to dare to cross it.
The problem arise in the second volume of the book, it was written that ten days after Jasmine's 17th birthday, the Avraria empire would wage war against this place, the Aster kingdom, in order to obtain warm lands as the temperature in their empire keep getting lower and lower, failing in the process but still mark the start of something worse that's going to happen to the entire continent, but that a talk for the future.
Now the prince Cadeyrn Aldwin, the heroine Jasmine and the villainess Lucrece are all still 16 year old and the first book is just about to end, after that there would be an entire year of peace before the start of the storm.
Lucrece again warned the current king, Casimir Alva Ianuarius, of the future conflict and how it will play as she was not sure to make it in time to return before the war and the bracelet only worked for two destinations not too far from each other basically useless outside the country. She told the king to not to look down on a hungry dog for it would gain the power equal to a fenrir, to be ware of what was under the ocean and to hurry up to build the academy as the island the current one is situated one may disappear under the waters.
They talked for some time and before they noticed, it was already lunch time. As nobles would start to suspect something if she to keep the king company for too long, Lucrece simply wrote and signed the paper for the annulment of the engagement with Cadeyrn and bid the king farewell as she quietly returned to her mansion in the capital to pack up for her journey.
There was no need to tell her parents as they had a very stained relationship since she could remember, her father is a marquess with his territory situated on the north who fought against monster that come from the plains, strong monsters that keep popping out from tin air and become stronger in the nights of red moon. Her mother, a cold woman full of narcissism and pointless thoughts about acting like a 'true noble', someone that is so busy socialising with other nobles that left the discipline of her children to the maids and the other workers of the mansion, interacting with them just the bare minimum was a lot for her especially with Lucrece as she was not even a possible heir candidate. Despise this Lucrece loved them or so she told the prince when they were kids, a little white lie, there was no need to expose them in front of who could have been their future king plus even thought they were absent those two never directly abused her neither physically or mentally.
Had she been a normal child there would be no surprise if she grew up twisted and clutch to every tiny bit of affection she received but luckily she was not, at two year old, Lucrece hit her head when the maids were busy and regained her memory from when she was alive in another word called Earth. She was a 39, almost 40, years old woman that was extremely tired because of her job and monotonous daily life. As a kid she was extremely curious of the world and wanted to do and know thousands things about anything, but as she grew up all her dreams slowly vanished like the rainbow after the rain, it faded in a way that old her couldn't but think if it was even there in first place or it was just a tender dream.
She didn't hate her life as she reached an age where she was pretty passive in a lot of things but there was just one thing she found entertaining enough to tick with it and that was the isekai genre of stories: it reincarnation, transmigration or summoning or time travel; the woman who was Lucrece found it amazing on how different and colored each world created by the writers were, how broad and different the culture of these creature were, sometimes a fusion of one or more traditions and other times just the same culture but divided in different parts, what more she could even learn things she didn't even know before!How to make paper, how to build a log house, how to hunt, each of them were probably informations she didn't need in a modern setting but she was just so curious.
With every story that she read, she found out how different even the same setting could be and in her search for amusement somehow she stumbled on a novel called "Flowers Garden", a novel like the others, it's rating was not very high but it was still received well from the readers. It's plot was pretty interesting as it started with a romance on school ground to a battle against the gods, the heroine called Jasmine Griffin was an orphan of an soldier that lived all her life in a church that worshipped the male god Iovita, she was a lively and tenacious girl that with all her might studied to enter the Saint Jupiter Academy to get a job with high salary to repay the orphanage of the church and it was during her time at the academy she somehow met the second prince and male lead of the story Cadeyrn Aldwin Ianuarius, a prince who was seen as the next king because his high intelligence, good swordsmanship and for his great sociability, he was supposedly a perfect union between Iovita's passion and Auda's intelligence but it was not aò rose and flowers as he had a painful past of being surrounded of people that just wanted to use him, nobles full of lies and falsehoods.
His fiancè, Lucrece Avia Bergstrom was the only one that never told him a lie and clearly told him her feelings but he deep in his heart couldn't believe it and was insecure, he asked himself 'how could her feelings be true?' and 'it's impossible that just because I've treated her nice she would give me all her heart' but that was where he was wrong. Lucrece was a poor girl that starved for affection, something that only two people in her life gave her, Cadeyrn and the king Casimir. For this pitiful reason Lucrece gave her all her might to study to be praised by the king and to become the perfect queen for Cadeyrn but who knew that all her effort would be futile before something so unrealistic like 'True Love'.
'What a shame, all that knowledge treated like an item to court when it's just something you enjoy'
After some twist and turns the heroine and her prince defeat the villainess and with the help of the king, the evil Lucrece is sent to live outside to the kingdom away from the couple and in a zone near the forest of no return. The pair after driving away Lucrece finally realized their love for each other and after nearly a year of fighting with the 2nd, the 3rd and the 4th male leads convincing other nobles and his female fan club, he properly got together with the heroine just a month and half before her birthday. It was all sweets and sugar but something interrupted their joy and it was the start of a war against the strong empire of Avraria.
This was were it all came in and the Jasmine with her memory of her past life helped the prince to strategize powerful tactics to defeat the enemy and even went personally on the battlefield to help with her magic and healing abilities. It ended in the empire's lost and the kingdom obtaining new territory but a new problem awaited them and it had something to do with the plains, something was spreading from the north that drove normal animals crazy and to attack humans. It didn't affect peoples but monsters were getting much more stronger and in the story, the Bergstrom's territory was one of the first to go down.
'There must be something hidden is our march, our fief may not have some staple product and be as rich as those in the south but still it is one of the strongest border of this kingdom. If even the power of the heroine and her entourage combined failed then there must be something hidden there'
The woman who became Lucrece was single and virgin with an heremit style of life, she had a little inside joke that she repeated to herself and for some strange irony it was the last thing she said before her death, it went like: 'if someone successfully reaches his 30 years while still being a virgin they will become a wizard', for her it was an amusing joke especially when she started to reach her 40 years. Her last thought was: 'If being virgin at 30 will make you a wizard wouldn't that mean that I'm going to the next level, in mage terms maybe I would become a sage-' and just before finishing her 'joke' she slipped on the stairs because of the snow under her shoes and somehow merged with the child Lucrece.