She had maliciously orchestrated a false accusation after making him accidentally stumble upon her bathing at a secluded waterfall—framing the entire scene to look as though he had broken into her private moments specifically to assault Lilia while she was taking a bath.
That single, calculated royal lie resulted in Landra being thrown into a dark, damp dungeon for a grueling year after the Emperor's fury exploded.
It even gave Hendrix the perfect political excuse to target his family, a household that was actually one of the most fiercely loyal to the Empire.
Worst of all, that was the exact time Landra's father tragically died in battle against a neighboring kingdom, allowing Hendrix to freely tear his family apart without any consequences from the throne.
And just a few days ago, upon his release after a year in a dungeon prison, he had returned home only to find his mother and younger sister completely missing.
He didn't even know that his mother and sister had been abducted by corrupt slave traders and smuggled out of the kingdom shortly after his imprisonment.
The sheer despair of losing his family and his home had completely broken the original Landra's spirit.
Even though I personally didn't hold a grudge against them, the moment I looked at her crying face, this physical body grew instantly tense, practically vibrating with an instinctual, biological urge to exact bloody revenge on the royal bloodline.
Before she could even say another word, I grabbed her arm roughly, pulled her shivering body inside the threshold, and slammed the heavy wooden door shut, locking the iron bolt with a sharp, echoing click.
I couldn't care less about her personal comfort, but I wasn't about to let Hendrix's searching dogs spot her standing blindly on my front porch either.
Lilia's face turned utterly, ghastly pale at my aggressive actions, her wide eyes reflecting a mixture of profound shame and primal terror.
She swallowed hard, the lump in her throat seemingly insurmountable as she desperately tried to form a coherent response.
"I... I remember," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the increasing clamor of the soldiers searching the nearby streets outside.
"I was wrong... so incredibly wrong. I was young, arrogant, and scared, and I didn't understand the consequences... I never thought that just because of that, you and your family... I'm sorry, Landra. I am so deeply sorry for what I did to you."
Fresh tears streamed freely down her dirt-streaked face, her chest heaving rapidly as she struggled to maintain whatever royal composure she had left.
"But that's why I'm here now! I know I don't deserve an ounce of your help after what I've done, but I have absolutely nowhere else to turn."
"Hendrix has to be stopped, and I... I can't do it alone. All the remaining guards loyal to me sacrificed their lives just so I could flee the palace. Even my own parents and sister... they are..."
She took a desperate step forward, reaching out instinctively as if to grasp my arm for support, but caught herself at the last second, letting her trembling, blood-stained hand fall back helplessly to her side.
"I know it's a massive ask, especially after everything. But please, Landra, think of the kingdom. Think of all the innocent people who will suffer under Hendrix's tyrannical rule. You've always been a good person... please, at least help me get out of this city safely."
"A good person? Good, my ass." I turned around slowly to face her, locking my cold, detached gaze onto her trembling, bloodshot eyes.
"I did like you once, sure. But now, I couldn't care less about the tragic fate that's befallen you, and frankly, I don't care whether you live or die," I said calmly, my tone as cold and unyielding as the stone walls of the dungeon I had rotted in.
I watched with detached satisfaction as the very last trace of color completely drained from her face, leaving her looking like a porcelain doll ready to shatter.
There was something that had finally become crystal clear to me during her pathetic speech.
I knew this exact place, this dark world, this specific sequence of tragic events, and the ultimate, bloody fate of this body.
This was the exact plot of the dark fantasy RPG I used to play for hours in my past life.
According to the original storyline, if the main character chose to blindly bring her back to the capital guard out of a sense of duty, this royal girl would eventually end up as a high-tier slave anyway, while Landra would be manipulated into becoming a vanguard general once again by Hendrix's lies.
The ultimate, cruel plot twist was that Landra never knew that, even though Maria was the one who accused him and caused him to be thrown into the dungeon prison, Hendrix was actually the one who had orchestrated the abduction of his family.
It wasn't some random bandits—it was Hendrix himself, the treacherous Grand Magus of the Empire. Hendrix had sold them off to foreign traders to break the Aurelius lineage.
In the original timeline, Landra would only discover the tragic truth after he had already slaughtered countless innocents under Hendrix's deceptive orders, only to find his remaining family dead at the hands of Regalian soldiers.
That exact event was the sole reason he became an antagonist and tried to destroy the Regalia Kingdom.
Driven completely mad by grief, he would then turn his weapons against the empire, ultimately dying a dog's death against thousands of royal troops.
A dark, mocking smirk played lazily on my lips as I stepped closer, deliberately using my height to tower over the shivering princess.
The flickering candlelight cast sharp, villainous angles across my face.
If she truly wanted a savior in a world that had abandoned her, she was going to have to pay the ultimate price to the very monster she herself had created through her arrogance.
But I wasn't the old, naive Landra anymore. I knew the whole script. The whole story.