‘Who is it?’

It was a voice she’d never heard before. The intonation was rough, and the crude words mixed between sharp pronunciations and conversation revealed that these were certainly not cultured individuals.

“Found her while looking around the collapsed cave. She was lying by the valley without a stitch on her, so I thought some guys had already had their fun and left her for dead. But look at this, not a single scratch on her?”

A snickering voice was heard, and then someone grabbed Ir’s body and turned her over. Even in her not fully conscious state, Ir noticed something strange about that sensation.

‘What is this?’

Someone grabbing her, the hard floor touching her back, someone’s shoe tip stepping on her chest.

She could feel it all too clearly.

‘What a strange dream.’

Sensation was something she hadn’t properly felt for a very long time. After getting burned, however her body had been damaged, sensations like cold, heat, and pain got mixed up and were only perceived as complicated feelings. But now she could feel so clearly how others were rolling and stepping on her body as they pleased.

“The valley by the cave? What’s there to see there? Aren’t there no more noble folks visiting there anymore?”

“You don’t know anything. Seems one of the royal family still can’t let go and visits regularly. They say they pay people to dig around the cave site. Of course, nothing ever comes out of it. Anyway, I went to see if there was anything worth picking up, but to think I’d find a woman like this. Hey, maybe this woman was someone’s plaything they used and threw away?”

“Don’t talk nonsense. Who would throw away someone this pretty? If it were me, I’d tie her to my bed and enjoy her all day long. More importantly, move your foot. If we’re going to sell her, don’t leave any marks.”

Even in her dizzy state, Ir realized that the woman they were talking about was her, and that they were talking about selling her.

‘What a dog’s dream.’

Understanding the situation, a sneer unconsciously escaped her. The men were treating her like an object. While she couldn’t say which was better between being treated as a monster or an object, neither situation was pleasant.

If that was all, she could just call it a strange dream, but the men were talking as if Ir had value worth selling. They even called her pretty.

That made Ir feel somewhat embarrassed. She knew better than anyone what she looked like.

Of course, she didn’t like those scars. If she hadn’t been burned, she could handle a sword faster and more skillfully than now. She could have entered the Imperial Knights sooner, and could have completed missions more quickly without being called a monster and ostracized.

But her thoughts only went as far as wondering what it would be like without the scars; she had never particularly thought about wanting to be beautiful.

She was a knight. Beauty wasn’t a valuable talent for a knight.

‘But was I actually longing for it?’

After joining the 9th Knight Order, many of Ir’s assignments were guard duty. Specifically, guarding the temporary companions of royalty or high nobles.

Other knight orders were mostly nobles and found it shameful to guard those of lower status. As a result, these duties fell to the 9th Knight Order, and the high-ranking individuals who assigned the tasks disliked having the well-built male knights of the 9th Order near their women.

Because of this, all such duties were pushed onto the female knights.

Moreover, Ir was the most skilled knight in the 9th Order. Since she could easily handle the work of five knights by herself, those who wanted quiet protection inevitably assigned missions to Ir. As a result, Ir had to work almost every night, coming and going from the imperial palace.

This meant she frequently encountered the women who visited the palace as companions for entertainment.

‘They were all beautiful.’

They were women so beautiful that even Ir, another woman, would find herself staring blankly at times. Among them were women who could walk so lightly and gracefully that even Ir, a knight, was amazed, and others whose voices were so beautiful that just hearing them would lift one’s spirits.

So during idle moments, she would steal glances at them.

Some found Ir’s gaze unpleasant, while others preened under it. And some others would look at Ir’s scars with pity.

Had she unknowingly been envying them all this time?

But even if she had harbored such longing, she had never dreamed of a situation where strangers would try to sell her.

Just as she was wondering what exactly was going on, a sudden scene flashed in her mind.

With a thud, a head rolling toward her feet. The head of Shulat, the youngest in the knight order, who was slick but never unlikeable, and thus beloved by the order. That wretched head full of wounds and bruises.

At that moment, all the memories came rushing back at once. The cave, the Holy Sword, the camp, the attack, and…

“…!”

With the sudden rush of shock, Ir’s eyes flew open.

Naturally, everything appeared blurry. It had always been that way. The flames that had covered half her body continued to affect her even a decade after being extinguished. So when she woke up in the morning, it took quite a while to return her blurry vision to normal.

But not now. Within a few blinks, the objects around her came into focus.

Ir immediately moved her gaze to survey her surroundings. It was a habit ingrained in her body since childhood, as natural as breathing.

‘Underground, three men, one table with two chairs, one door.’

Ir slowly inhaled. Her misshapen nose not only made breathing difficult but also made it hard to smell things properly. So when she had to breathe more deeply than others, knights from other orders would mock her, saying she was like a dog. That had definitely been the case, and yet…

More air rushed into her chest than she had expected. Many smells brought information to Ir at once. The musty air peculiar to underground spaces, the unpleasant smell of sweat-soaked clothes and the foul odor of people soaked in alcohol, the smell of insect and rat droppings, and the smell of unwashed cloth.

‘Back alley thugs?’

The underground rooms in dangerous areas that she had frequented during missions always had these smells. But that made this situation even more incomprehensible.

Her last memory remained clear in her mind.

‘I was definitely buried in the cave.’

The 9th Knight Order was all dead, and the attackers had fled. There was no way someone could have come in to save her after that, and even if they had, it would have been impossible to escape from there. Besides, if someone had risked such danger to save her, they surely would have wanted something in return.

‘These men said they found me in the valley.’

Someone who had gone through such trouble to save her wouldn’t have just left.

As the current situation didn’t connect with her last memory, Ir kept blinking. She wanted to get up first, then figure out what had happened…

“Oh? She’s awake.”

One of the men who had been talking noticed Ir was awake and came closer.

“Hello, pretty lady. What’s your name?”

The incredibly casual voice carried a disgusting sense of superiority that looked down on her. Ir found it absurd. Everyone who faced her had undisguisable fear in their eyes. Even while mocking her as a monster, there was that fear of what would happen if she actually acted like one.

But the man facing Ir now was arrogant, as if looking at something weak that he could kill whenever he wanted.

Moreover, pretty lady? That wasn’t something others could say to her, even as a joke. In fact, because she usually wore so many layers to cover her scars, people meeting her for the first time couldn’t even tell if she was male or female.

“Are you, talking, to me?”

A cracked voice came out due to her parched mouth. Ir flinched unconsciously at her own voice. Strange. This wasn’t her voice.

The burns had affected her vocal cords too. Because of that, her voice had always been unpleasantly raspy, as if scratched somewhere. But the voice she heard now, though terribly cracked, was thin and high enough to be called feminine.

“Yes. As I thought, your voice is as pretty as your face. But your attitude… are you from some noble house? That would be even better. The people here get even more excited and worked up for that type of lady.”

While the latter part with its vulgar implications was easy to understand, the earlier words were still impossible to accept.

“What the hell… are you talking about… Just call me a monster instead…”

This attitude was strange. It would be better if they just despised and spat at her as usual.

“Monster?”

The man looked puzzled at Ir’s words before bursting into loud laughter. Then he grabbed her chin and turned her head.

Through this, Ir could see the room she had been observing. The three men who had been looking at her too. So this must be a mirror, but…

“How could anyone call this appearance a monster?”

In the mirror, where she should have been, there was a woman she had never seen before.

A beautiful woman without a single trace of burn scars.