Gravity did not count as Staywes’s hands.

  Alira sat on the roof of the palace, the faint blue light of dawn blanketing over her. It would be an understatement to say that she was very much disappointed to find that the hard way. After all, it hadn’t been so easy to get here. Sure, the hardest part was sneaking out of her newly assigned bedroom without getting caught, but climbing out of the ceiling window and to the attic hadn’t been effortless either.

  She stood up abruptly and strode towards the edge of the roof, her shoes rattling against the tiles. From up here, she could see the entirety of the palace grounds enclosed within tall stone walls. A hushed garden, a long road, and closed gates at the end.

  Most part of the palace were in still slumber.

  Only a few were awake as she was. Down there, in the garden, she could see a gardener tending to the hedge. A small crowd of laundry maids was striding across the field on their way back to the palace with baskets of freshly washed clothes in their hands. Just when the group passed the garden, one of the maids would trip, and the gardener would rush in to help her.

  It was a scene Alira had seen before.

  She sat at the edge, kicking her feet as she leaned forward to look down. Three stories up high, the view made her heart pound; the ground seemed both distant and dangerously close. A fall from this height would be fatal as long as she landed on the compacted dirt road the right way. She knew that very well. After all, she had just jumped off and ‘died’.

  “I was half-expecting to see my bloody corpse sprawled down there...”

  She rotated her neck, her hand kneading the tight muscles to get rid of the phantom pain lingering in her shoulder. The dull, pulsing ache at her temples felt like a bug eating its way through her brain. Mere seconds ago, she was broken on the ground and bled to death with shouts and cries for help as the last thing she knew. Now she was back here on the roof, minutes before she’d made the jump.

  Time had rewound.

  Now she knew why the Goddess told her to spare herself the trouble. She paid the pain to death, but it didn’t grant her escape.

  “It feels almost like a glitch in the system. Being able to rewind time upon unnatural death... That’s totally a cheat.”

  One she doubted was intended.

  She glanced around as she talked to herself, hoping to see a glimpse of them and what they thought about this. They had a lot to say when she was busy sneaking out, but now that she actually wanted to see them yammer, they refused to show up at all.

  Regardless, Alira could think of a few ways she could take advantage of this and abuse it to no end. In a losing battle, she could just stab herself, and the time rewind would add to her favor. Not that she was staying long enough to use it and do any world saving, of course.

  “But really. I thought gravity should count. Sure, I jumped, but if it weren’t for Staywes’s gravity, I wouldn’t have died... That’s Staywes’s hand, no?”

  Alira sighed and lay flat on her back. She lay there for a long time and watched the sky slowly shifting from cool blue to warm orange. It was a new day.

  “Happy birthday to me... That was pathetic.”

  Alira sprang back up with a groan. Did Staywes’s hand have to be an actual person after all? That was just a rule blatantly against her. Since Staywes’s gravity didn’t work, it seemed she had to give up on trying out her lists of things belonging to Staywes, such as fire, water, poisonous plants, venomous animals, and so on and so forth.

  This wouldn’t do. She couldn’t afford to be wasting her time here with people who kept going ‘miss’ this ‘miss’ that.

  “Wait, what’s that?” A voice came from below. “Is that... Is that a miss?! Why is she up there? Be careful!”

  “When’s that guy coming back again?” Alira said, stirring a cup of cooled milk tea. The rhythmic clangs of metal spoon against porcelain cup resounded throughout the room.

  “Um,” Cynthia, the person on duty to be Alira’s caretaker for the next two hours until someone else replaced her, hesitated. “I think you should address his Grace as his Grace...”

  Alira scoffed. “He’s your master, not mine. At least not yet...”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t mean it like that,” Cynthia said in a fluster.

  “How would I know what you meant? You people refuse to tell me a damn thing about this place,” Alira said, pointing her spoon at the older girl. As everyone else before had, Cynthia only looked away, refusing to respond to any of Alira’s attempts to provoke.

  With an audible groan, Alira turned her gaze to the milk tea instead. She used her aspect Narrate on it without expecting much. She wasn’t entirely sure whether an object counted as a Character until faint glows of milky runes appeared on top of the cup, swarming into existence one stroke at a time.

  [ A cup of chilled chamomile tea with an unbalanced ratio of tea to milk. The chamomile used to brew this cup is specially cultivated inside a mana dome. The potency of mana enhances its calming and healing effect. ]

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Enhanced calming effect, my foot. I bet they’re just trying to slow me down.

  Alira didn’t doubt that they would have knocked her out completely if they were permitted to do so.

  Then again, she couldn’t exactly blame them after getting caught trying to use a tied-up servant’s hands to drive a kitchen knife into her chest. She wasn’t proud of traumatizing the poor servant, but since they were restrained, Alira hoped they would at least be spared a murder charge. Of course, it made things easier for her too, saving her time and effort that would take to sweet-talk someone into homicide.

  Unfortunately, she made a grave mistake in assuming that the wine cellar wouldn’t have visitors since the household masters were absent. Now they wouldn’t even let her leave the room, and someone was watching her around the clock.

  Alira took a tiny sip of the tea. It was sweet, so terribly sweet. Worst was the fact that she liked it. Her taste buds had changed with a new shell. A sour aftertaste from the sugary milk lingered at the back of her throat.

  “You know, when that guy took me out of that cell, he said I’ll never be caged again...” she said, exhaling loudly. “Yet look at me. In a bigger, fancier cage. Don’t know what I was expecting from someone who runs a slave market.”

  “No! You’re mistaken. You misunderstood His Grace, but he isn’t like that!”

  “How would you know?”

  “Everyone knows that his Grace has been working to get rid of all the markets in his territory! He saved you from one, miss. He also arranged a home for everyone else trapped there...is what I heard,” Cynthia said, her voice softening toward the end as if she realized she was talking more than she should.

  For whatever reason, no one was willing to tell Alira about what she was doing here other than ‘his Grace will meet you soon’.

  From what she observed, this nobleman seemed to be not that bad since his servants were so eager to defend him even without any incentive involved. He should be a rare case for a noble. Still, that wasn’t enough of a clue for Alira to know who he was, with Raine being reluctant to mingle with the nobles. Then again, he barely knew the names of everyone he interacted with daily.

  “Right. Such a good man he is. Keeping me locked here, waiting for him like a pet,” Alira spat.

  As much as she was complaining, Alira wasn’t planning to stick around and actually wait for him. She was merely poking at her new supervisor, who looked more easily bothered than her last ones, to pave a way out of this room.

  Other than Narrate which was barely useful, none of her other Aspects were usable. The first two were too cryptic, and the last two were still counting up to fifty of who knew what. Her Lower Bronze Mana Affinity meant she couldn’t so readily use magic. She couldn’t take advantage of her Upper Gold Will favorability either. Thanks to neither of the protagonists pursuing alchemy, she didn’t know a single complete alchemic cast from the novel.

  The damned Goddess wanted her to save the world and proceeded to equip her with a wooden sword. She used to think the ‘lie equals truth’ Role would be almighty, but from what little she’d been experimenting with, it worked whenever it wanted to. That, or she couldn’t figure out the hidden rules just yet.

  Where is my promised isekai OP skill?!

  “I really wish I didn’t wake up again...” Alira mumbled to herself, mostly brooding over her first almost-successful attempt. Somehow, that apparently was the final push Cynthia needed.

  “...Master didn’t tell us to keep you here. He just told us to make sure you’re safe and sound, but you...so we thought this was for the best,” Cynthia rambled, “still, I think a short stroll should be fine. I’ll be right next to you!”

  Alira’s grin at the woman’s compromise out of pity for her could make the devil cringe.

  Alira hugged a tree, hiding among its thick branches, as people rushed to and from beneath her in a hurry to find a stray cat on the loose, no doubt.

  It wasn’t so hard to shake Cynthia off her tail using what she knew about the girl from Narrate and taking her straight to the stable boy. It was made easier with her new body being far more agile than when she was back on Earth, even though it likely hadn’t had a good meal before she arrived.

  Alira knew she wouldn’t get a second chance after this. She had to make it out. Even after she managed to slip past the innermost palace gate, there would still be a couple more to climb before she was free of the noble’s estate. But once she hit the forest outside the palace, her chances would improve.

  She couldn’t directly leave via the main gates since they were never not guarded. The walls were too tall even with her newly found mastery at climbing, but from the early morning sightseeing, she knew there was a tree near the northern walls. She might make it if she jumped from its furthest-reaching branch.

  She was currently in the northeast portion of the palace where the stable stood. Alira jumped off once the ground was clear. She wasn’t too scared of getting caught—a small knife in her dress reassured her somewhat. The one she managed to hide after they took away the larger one.

  She could, for one, use it to threaten others into backing away. And if they don’t, she would have no choice but to use the newly discovered ‘ability’. She didn’t know for sure how much time would rewind after she died, but she knew she could outrun most people as a hybrid, especially if she had a head start. Of course, it was for the best if she didn’t have to do it. Technically dying twice was nowhere enough to get used to it.

  As Alira made her way north, her hybrid body continued to prove itself worthy. Now that she was paying attention to her surroundings and wasn’t engrossed like she was in the wine cellar, her ears didn’t miss the subtle shifts in the air when someone approached near.

  She surprised herself when she made it to her destination without being seen even once. She looked back and forth between the wall and the tree. The tree was bigger than it looked from above and less climbable than the one she had earlier. Though it seemed more doable compared to climbing the neat wall with flat stones that provided no grip.

  Alira rolled her sleeves up, tugged her dress in, and got to climbing.

  It took a few tries to nail the right angle of kicking herself off the ground and swinging off the trunk before she managed to grab the lowest branch. The climb was easier from then on, though her palms were red and scraped.

  She stood next to the trunk on a branch to look for the branch she needed to reach the top of the wall.

  Deep breath. No rush, she was so close now. All she needed was to balance along the branch without falling off. Rushing would only—

  “All my servants are on the search for a single girl on the run, yet they apparently couldn’t find her anywhere. Aren’t you special?”

  Alira hissed in surprise at the voice that came out of nowhere. She didn’t hear his footstep, breathing, or anything at all. She looked down but couldn’t see the person beyond the leafy branches under her.

  Fuck it.

  She pushed herself away from the trunk and made a run toward the wall, branch shaking and leaves falling as she did. Just when she was halfway there, her view shifted in a blink, and the next thing she knew, leaves were falling from above her. The brief overview of the forest she could see was swiftly replaced by grey stone at the base of the wall.

  What?!

  “For your information, I set up invisible barriers twice as tall as the walls themselves. You would have just slammed into them and fallen right off.” The man’s voice came from behind.

  When Alira turned to face him, she saw a face all too familiar. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised at all.