The Villainous Young Lady Would Even Risk Her Life for Her Beloved ～ Her Fiancé, the Prince? By All Means, Please Be Happy with the Heroine! - Chapter 1.3

I could hear faint murmuring.

Forcing my heavy eyelids open, I saw the glow of the setting sun filtering into the room. Had I been asleep for half a day?

In my line of sight, I spotted my father. He was deep in conversation with Eliza, but both of them quickly noticed my gaze.

“Lidi! Are you all right?!”

“…Shelly?”

I was still drowsy, but I had to ask. This world might have a way of correcting the story’s events, and I needed to make sure.

As I struggled to sit up, Eliza immediately moved to support me.

“She’s better! She’s already opened her eyes! It’s all thanks to you, Lidi!”

My father ruffled my hair with a gentle, crinkled smile. His warmth was so comforting that if I closed my eyes now, I would fall right back asleep.

“Ah, sorry, sorry. Get some rest.”

“No, I need to talk about the treatment method—”

“No! Right now, you just need to rest—”

As my father and I went back and forth, the door suddenly slammed open.

“Lidiiiiii!!!”

My mother, Sasha, practically flew into the room, shoving my father aside and pulling me into a tight embrace.

It was warm, and incredibly soothing. I could already feel my eyelids drooping again.

“I’m so sorry! You finally woke up, and I was just asleep the whole time!”

My mother was, at her core, a playful and endearing person. But at the same time, she was also the woman who had dethroned my grandfather and become the Duke at a young age.

“Mother… please… use healing magic on me…”

I was on the verge of drifting off again, but I forced the words out.

“Huh? Sure, I guess?”

A wave of warmth enveloped my entire body. The sluggishness vanished, and my mind became crystal clear.

This! This is what real healing magic feels like!

“Your magic hasn’t recovered, though, so don’t push yourself too hard~.”

“Thank you!”

“All right, now let’s hear it.”

My mother’s gaze sharpened slightly—her Duchess persona had surfaced. Meanwhile, my father still looked visibly concerned.

I had already prepared an explanation. In this fantasy world, I figured there was a good chance people would accept it.

“I saw it in a dream. Something was inside her stomach, feeding on her magic.”

“A dream?”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. After all, I had recalled my past life in what felt like a dream.

“So, you performed that treatment on your little sister just because of a dream?”

Her tone held an unspoken challenge.

In the past, there had been others who attempted a similar method of treatment. Since patients kept losing magic, people had assumed that simply replenishing it would cure them—similar to a bl00d transfusion in my past life.

But in reality, they had only ended up feeding the parasite.

The patients died even faster, as the parasites inside them matured more quickly with the additional magic.

(Mother really did forcefully heal me with magic, didn’t she? That’s incredible…)

I had been on the brink of death, yet she had overridden the disease itself. It was an overwhelming, brute-force use of healing magic.

“Sasha!”

My father tried to defend me, but I knew I had to convince my mother first. There were very few people capable of performing this treatment, and she was one of them.

“I was certain after you healed me.”

“Well, I did flood you with an enormous amount of healing magic all at once.”

She paused, considering my words.

“A prophetic dream, then?”

“With Lidi’s level of magic power, it’s not impossible for her to have one!”

My mother still looked unconvinced, but she didn’t press any further.

I had to reflect on my mistake, though. If I had run out of magic mid-treatment, it would have been dangerous. I was still only ten years old. I had overestimated my—Lydiana’s—magical capacity.

Once this treatment started, stopping wasn’t an option.

(I need to research this more thoroughly.)

At the same time, I didn’t want to waste a second while my other siblings were still suffering.

“So, how exactly did you do it?”

“Um… I didn’t pour magic into Shelly’s body directly. I targeted the thing in her stomach. It was really small, but it kept absorbing magic like crazy.”

I placed my hand over my own stomach to illustrate my point.

“But when I kept feeding it, it suddenly just stopped consuming. After that, Shelly’s hands became warm. I tried sending magic again just to be sure, but there was no response anymore.”

Did I sound like a ten-year-old? I hoped I did. That was another thing I had to be mindful of.

“So, it wasn’t healing magic, just pure magic itself?”

“Yes. I didn’t think healing magic was necessary. I had only heard that the disease caused magic depletion.”

Magic itself was simply a form of energy, and spells were the process of shaping that energy.

Healing spells, in particular, had an extremely high magic cost. While they could slow the patient’s deterioration, they weren’t a viable cure.

Yet my mother had still managed to heal me using healing magic alone.

Her magic was on an entirely different level.

“Did you see anything else in your dream?”

For a moment, I hesitated.

It felt like my mother could see right through me.

But there was no way I could tell my family the truth—that I had read their entire tragic fate in a shoujo manga.

The story I knew was far too cruel for them to hear.

“When that thing matures, it looks like a plant but moves around like a monster!”

I decided to stick to discussing only the aspects of the disease.

“Also! There’s a medicine that works really well against that parasite in the country where Father used to live… I think it’s a type of deworming—”

“A medicine, huh…”

The truth is, this country is terribly underdeveloped when it comes to medicine and pharmacology. Not only that, but it also lags far behind other nations in the field of magical tools.

(Why did it take them so long to realize this was a crisis?!)

Later in the story, the heroine and her allies become involved in medical and pharmaceutical reforms, earning widespread admiration from the commoners with a “Wow, amazing!” reaction. But honestly, now that I have the mind of an adult, I can’t help but think it’s all a bit too convenient.

This country originally prided itself on being home to a population with naturally high magic power. As a result, personal magic was revered, and people believed illnesses should be cured only with healing magic. Some even looked down on magical tools, considering them to be something for those with low magical power.

Of course, there are many things I could never have learned just from reading the manga.

“Understood. I’ll send an urgent letter to my brother to arrange for the medicine.”

Eight years from now, a spoiled rich merchant’s son from Father’s homeland—who, naturally, falls for Iris—will bring this medicine to this country in bulk. This event leads to its widespread use and eventual refinement into an effective cure for Ice Stone Disease, turning it from a fatal illness into something treatable.

(Iris, I’m so sorry for stealing your credit! But lives are at stake, so please forgive me!)

The treatment my mother and I performed could never save everyone. For one, there simply weren’t enough people with the necessary level of magical power to sustain such a process. And to make matters worse, those with high magical power were precisely the ones most susceptible to the disease.

“If healing magic isn’t necessary, that’s good news.”

“Huh?”

“It means multiple people can do it.”

“Oh! You’re right!”

Now that she mentioned it, it made perfect sense. Healing magic could only be used by a select few—even among healer families, not everyone was born with the ability. But if the treatment didn’t require healing magic, then in theory, anyone could do it. The only requirement was a sufficient amount of magical power.

“Deworming medicine… There might be an old folk remedy for it somewhere in this country. I’ll check some old connections and see what I can find.”

Father used to be an adventurer, apparently. Looking at him now, with his gentle demeanor, it’s hard to believe, but before he got married, he supposedly made a living fighting monsters and collecting bounties. He loved telling grand tales of his past exploits, but whether they were true or not remained questionable.

Everything was moving quickly toward a solution. My parents were incredibly reliable.

“Well then! Let’s get to work!”

Mother’s eyes gleamed mischievously once more, her playful personality returning.