Chapter 04
“Why do I have to look like this?”
Harry grumbled in obvious displeasure.
“Well, that’s because…”
Instead of answering, I bent down on one knee and met eyes with the large dog standing guard in front of me.
A big dog with fluffy white fur — it looked quite close to a Samoyed.
‘To think that Harry’s inside that cute, gentle face.’
Strictly speaking, Harry wasn’t inside it. He was the dog — having shapeshifted into this form himself.
“Demons and dogs. That’s quite an odd pairing.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, dogs are known for being gentle and loyal.”
Harry clicked his tongue as if he couldn’t understand my reasoning.
“Humans really have the wrong idea about us. We demons are quite loyal, you know. We keep our contracts until one side dies.”
“That’s not loyalty — that’s obligation. Loyalty comes from the heart.”
“Humans are so exhausting. It should be enough that we lend them our power, but no — they always want our hearts, too.”
Harry sighed in a weary tone, like some old man who’d seen too much of life.
“Harry, you know it’s kind of funny hearing that from a dog, right?”
“You think I wanted to look like this? You’re the one who asked if I could transform into something else!”
All demons, apparently, possessed a spirit beast — a creature tied to their soul — and could take that form if they wished.
In Harry’s case, that form happened to be a dog.
“I can’t help it. I’m apparently a rather well-known noble lady, and if I brought home some random man no one’s ever seen before, the rumors would spread like wildfire. I came to Erel to stay quiet and out of trouble, remember?”
A duke’s daughter, freshly disgraced after being dumped by the crown prince, suddenly bringing a strange man into her country estate?
That was a perfect recipe for scandal.
‘The Duke told me to keep quiet and avoid trouble. If I get caught up in another mess over a man…’
The Duke’s anger would be legendary. This time he might not just exile me to the countryside — he might disown me entirely.
‘And that would mean goodbye to my dream of living comfortably as a pampered rich girl.’
“So just stay like that, alright? If people see your real form, things will get complicated.”
It was a relief that Harry’s spirit beast was something as ordinary as a dog.
‘If anyone asks, I’ll just say I found a lost dog on a walk and decided to keep it. It looks like it has no owner, so that should work.’
Nobles keeping dogs or cats was perfectly normal, after all.
It was only a shame that he wasn’t a cute little lapdog like most noble ladies preferred, but still — a dog was fine.
‘If he’d turned into a snake or a bat, though… imagine the gossip. I’d look like a full-on witch.’
An infamous villainess and a witch?
‘Aren’t witches burned at the stake in this kind of world? Tortured first, maybe?’
The thought alone made me shudder.
‘No, I absolutely can’t get caught. My life’s already tangled enough as it is.’
I sighed. There was no use crying over spilled milk.
“Anyway, just act like a normal dog when people are around. And don’t talk.”
“Do you think I’m stupid? I know that much. I’ll give you the perfect dog performance.”
Then Harry barked proudly, “Woof!”
“Oh?”
The sound was surprisingly realistic — almost indistinguishable from an actual dog. I clapped in admiration, and Harry lifted his chin proudly.
“But how are you going to explain the fire I made? Those logs wouldn’t burn with normal fire — that’s why you summoned me, wasn’t it?”
Harry padded over and sat down by the fireplace. The blackwood logs inside crackled and burned beautifully, warming the whole room.
“I’ll just say I made a really strong flame with my magic. Easy.”
Mages were people who could manipulate mana, wielding mysterious powers.
They weren’t as powerful as the legendary Blue Mage of myth, but compared to normal people, they were extraordinary — able to light fires or conjure water from nothing.
Since only a handful of people were born with magic, even in the whole kingdom, they were a rare and revered group.
Ivria happened to be one of them.
But no one in the kingdom ever called her a mage.
“You? A mage?”
Harry squinted at me suspiciously.
Mages used the mana within their bodies to cast magic — but that mana couldn’t be trained or increased.
You had to be born with it.
‘Talent matters more than anything.’
Mana was measured on a scale from 1 to 10 — the higher the number, the greater the power.
In the novel, Ivria’s mana level was a pitiful 0.5.
If she tried to use fire magic? She might not even manage to light a candle on a birthday cake.
‘Point five… I’m literally a point five?!’
By comparison, the heroine, Catherine, had a mana level of 9 — one of the strongest in the kingdom.
That was why people first noticed her, despite her humble birth.
‘Which made Ivria look even more pathetic.’
A talented commoner heroine versus a talentless highborn villainess — it was the classic setup.
“Hmm, you do have a tiny bit of mana in there. Just a speck, really. You’re practically a zero.”
Harry sniffed me for a while, then snorted in amusement.
“Zero” — that was what mages called those born completely without mana.
It was a pretty big insult among them, but since I came from a world where magic didn’t exist at all, being compared to a zero didn’t bother me in the slightest.
“Yeah, people say that a lot. That I barely dodged being a zero. They say it’d almost be less embarrassing if I were just a normal person.”
Harry blinked, apparently surprised that I wasn’t upset.
“…Doesn’t that make you angry? Being called a zero?”
“What can I do? I was born this way. It’s not like being mad will change anything. I might as well just live with it.”
“Humans really are pessimistic creatures.”
“Not at all. I think I’m quite the optimist, actually. I may be a useless mage, but I was born rich and noble. That’s plenty.”
Honestly, I preferred it this way.
If Ivria had been a talented but poor commoner, I’d have despaired the moment I woke up in her body.
A gifted underdog?
‘Ugh, sounds exhausting.’
Being a useless rich girl was way easier.
“I thought humans were obsessed with mana.”
Harry circled me slowly, studying me as though I were some kind of oddity.
And he wasn’t wrong — people admired mages, precisely because there were so few of them.
That was why, the moment a child was born, their mana was tested — everyone hoping their baby might be one of the chosen few.
Harry tilted his head.
“But if humans test for mana at birth, wouldn’t everyone already know your level? No one’s going to believe you could light that fire.”
“That’s fine. Who’s going to argue with me?”
“And where’s that confidence coming from?”
“Why not? I’m a duke’s daughter. There’s no one here above me.”
At the Oberon estate, there were two people above me — my father, the Duke, and my older brother, the heir.
But here in Erel, I outranked everyone.
Of course, I didn’t actually have any power. The real authority over the land lay with Baron Insetia, the local administrator.
He was said to be capable and well-liked — a loyal vassal whose family had long served the Oberons.
He wasn’t a major figure in the original story, but from what I’d heard on the way here, he sounded reliable enough.
Still, even the capable Baron Insetia would have no choice but to nod if I pointed at a pebble and said, “That’s a jewel.”
After all, I was Ivria Oberon.
Technically, his rank as a baron placed him above me, but my bloodline as a duke’s daughter outweighed that completely.
In this world, lineage was everything.
“Besides, I don’t have any qualms about using my status as a weapon when needed.”
The villainess Ivria Oberon — what a convenient role to play.
‘Really, when you think about it, being the villainess is the best way to live.’
