At last, the war of conquest was drawing its long curtain to a close.

Adele now understood why, four years ago, the king and queen had so desperately prevented her from retiring.

It was because there had been a succession of battles that could never have been won without her.

“Ha…… So this is the end.”

The war had been won. It had become a fact that no one could change, no matter who came, even without her. Before long, the kingdom would change its title to an empire.

Whether it did or not no longer mattered to her. Because the sensation in her body was gradually fading away.

She might actually die this time, Adele thought.

Even as her vision blurred, she still found herself thinking of Vincent Rogato.

His wet eyes, swollen and red from crying so much, his white skin and ash-gray hair that had still been beautiful even in that state. And……

The expression that had crumbled the moment he saw Queen Layla over Adele’s shoulder.

Holding that beautiful man close to her heart, Adele breathed her last.

At that moment, words began to slowly appear over Adele’s lifeless body.

And so, Dame Adele Grey fell in battle during the war of conquest fought for King Rohide and Queen Layla.

The sentence, written in a composed and indifferent hand, shone brightly and did not fade for a long, long time.

– – –

“D*mn it. To think I was a supporting character.”

Since she was already dead, there was no one to hear her voice, but Adele vented her anger by cursing under her breath.

The words that had appeared after her death were not the end of it. With Adele gone, a love story between King Rohide and Queen Layla, one that could only be read with tears, was written out in full.

Reading that story, Adele had no choice but to realize it.

The fact that she was nothing more than a supporting character in a novel.

No wonder she had found it so strangely difficult to recall her past, even during the moments when the queen had called her a dear friend and whatnot.

To those two, she was merely a passerby, so her story had simply flowed along to suit the protagonists.

Even for someone as composed as Adele, the truth that she had been nothing but a chess piece for the sake of those two people’s love was enough to make her furious.

She deliberately chose not to think about what had come before. Given how little her role had been described here, there was surely only a handful of scenes featuring Adele earlier in the story as well.

She had worked so hard to live!

But no matter how much she trembled with rage……

“Hah, is this really it? I have no choice but to wait for their ending……”

If her assumptions were correct, the ending was surely not far off. Vincent, who she had thought of as the villain, was dead, and the war of conquest had been won, so all that remained would be the sight of those two living happily ever after.

It was a truly complicated feeling.

She had fought with everything she had through two wars. Through training that felt like cutting through bone and flesh, she had gained a strength that no one could rival.

While the protagonists were falling in love and laughing together, she had been struggling alone, grinding her teeth and pushing herself to the limit.

And yet all of it had been meaningless. Because dying in the war of conquest had always been her fate. Even being refused retirement had been nothing more than a stepping stone toward victory in the war.

‘If I had known it would come to this, I would have spent my days in leisure and died of old age in peace. I should have retired by any means necessary.’

It was only after death that Adele realized everything had been pointless. Since she was going to disappear without leaving anything behind anyway, she should have ignored her superiors’ orders and whatever else and spent the rest of her life in happiness.

She had done nothing but work right up until the moment of her death, without enjoying a single thing. She felt like screaming at her past self to wake up and get a grip.

Perhaps even that sense of helplessness had been the influence of the original work. That was why her mind had only started working properly now.

‘So it’s only after dying that they let me start thinking for myself? Pfft, I suppose I should be moved to tears with gratitude.’

But what good did any of it do? She was dead in the end.

After calming down a little, Adele sighed and took stock of her surroundings.

She had no idea where this place was, with light shining brilliantly in every direction, but it was littered with large glass marbles that made it difficult to move. Some of them appeared out of nowhere.

“What are these things?”

As Adele muttered and picked up one of the glass marbles, someone else’s life began to flow into her mind.

It was Vincent Rogato’s childhood, something that had continued to weigh on her mind.

〈What is the meaning of this! Do you want to die?〉

〈I, I’m sorry. Young Master Vincent, I’ll clean it up right away.〉

A voice filled with rage rang out through her mind.

Along with it, a vivid image formed in her head, a crowd of people, Vincent furious in the center of them, and a maidservant on her knees begging for forgiveness. As well as everything that would unfold afterward.

“Ugh!”

The problem came next.

Perhaps because of the vast amount of story that had suddenly flooded into her mind, a splitting headache erupted.

Clutching her head, Adele dropped the glass marble……

Thud — ting — clatter — crash!

The fallen marble began rolling around on its own and shattered what looked to be at least twenty other marbles. It had all happened in an instant.

“……W, what was that?”

The absurd part was that the marble containing Vincent’s childhood remained completely intact.

The shattered and cracked glass marbles turned to ash and vanished into the air. Only that wretched marble, the one that had given her the headache, sat there looking utterly shameless.

“What on earth is going on……”

Adele glared hard at the glass marble. It was just a marble, and yet it somehow felt like Vincent himself.

‘Ah, come to think of it.’

In life, even when she had no other particular memories to speak of, her recollections of Vincent had always been vivid. Had she not been thinking of him until the very end?

Recalling that fact, Adele felt a sense of unease.

Why did she keep getting entangled with Vincent Rogato, both when she was alive and even now?

It was at that moment.

Rumble——!

At the tremendous sound that reached her ears, Adele clapped her hands over them.

Perhaps because several marbles had shattered, a deafening roar suddenly rang out and things began to go wrong everywhere. The space that had been shining brightly gradually darkened, and at the same time, the floor beneath her feet began to cave in.

“Aaah!”

There was no use trying to escape.

Adele had tried to flee to safety away from the suddenly collapsing floor, but she staggered from the lingering effects of the headache and ultimately lost her balance. She flailed to grab onto something, and as a result, she managed to seize the very marble that had given her the headache.

“This thing is no help at all! What kind of suffering is this after dying!”

Once again watching Vincent’s childhood through the glass marble, Adele lost consciousness and fell.