Regina's POV
She was awake. She always was.
Sleep was a dull necessity, an interruption she tolerated rather than welcomed. It was the hour before sunrise she preferred—the liminal time when the world had not yet decided whether to live or die, when silence still carried the weight of possibility.
This morning, she perched on the edge of her balcony, her robe pooling like spilled ink around her legs, and gazed down into the courtyard.
The hour: four bells.
Below, the courtyard already burned with life. The air was sharp, cold enough to sting the lungs, but that did not stop the cadets. Boys and girls, clad in simple training gear, moved in stuttering unison across the stone. Swords gleamed faintly in torchlight, staves thudded against the ground.
Their voices rose ragged, half-broken by sleep and strain, yet stitched together into something relentless:
"Today, today, if I die today… I will die no more!"
The first repetitions were sloppy, desperate, but repetition hammered desperation into rhythm, rhythm into precision. Soon the chant had the cadence of a war drum.
Her aunt's second-in-command stalked before them, barking orders like a whip cracking through the morning fog.
"Squad! Fall in!"
The cadets scrambled, stumbling, correcting. Shoulder to shoulder, breath misting in the cold.
"Squad! Attention!"
Spines snapped straight. Heels slammed together. Hands locked rigid at sides.
"Stand at Ease!"
A perfect echo of movement: left foot sliding out, hands clasping neatly at the small of backs, right over left, thumbs crossed. Eyes forward. Breath tight.
"Stand Easy!"
The rigidity melted, barely. A shift of weight. A subtle blink. The smallest concession to being human.
Regina did not blink. She measured every gesture, every breath.
These are not the postures of peasants clutching pitchforks, she thought dispassionately. This is not militia chaos. This is design. This is structure.
Too polished. Too patterned. Too precise.
And then her eyes found her.
The maid.
Flailing. Gasping. One step behind, always. Her boots dragged, caked with yesterday's dirt. Silver-white hair stuck to her face like damp string, and her uniform clung crookedly where she had half-pulled it on after drills began.
Yet she kept moving.
The commander's voice cracked the dawn again.
"Squad—Attention!"
Bodies snapped straight. The maid lurched late, nearly toppling.
"By numbers—Left Turn!"
"One!"—the pivot.
"Two!"—the stamp.
Her pivot was clumsy, her stamp weak, but she did not falter.
"About Turn—By numbers!"
"One!"—the pivot back.
"Two!"—stamp, unsteady but present.
Her arms trembled. Her chest heaved. She looked like a doll winding down, about to collapse into the dirt. But still—she obeyed.
When the final call rang—"Dismissed!"—the formation broke, cadets scattering toward mess halls and bunks.
The maid did not scatter. She stumbled. Hauled herself toward the manor like a half-crushed roach, eyes glazed with exhaustion.
Regina did not smile. Did not frown. She felt nothing save perhaps the smallest flicker of curiosity, like one might feel upon seeing a moth still flutter after its wings were torn.
By six bells, she noted, the maid had dragged herself inside. Right on time to perform her one essential duty: waking Regina.
And so the girl entered the chamber, still sweat-stained, still reeking faintly of mud and effort, and immediately began her routine. No words. No instructions. Sheets folded. Curtains drawn. Outfit laid out. Boots arranged with stiff precision.
Conditioning.
Routine hammered into her until obedience became reflex. Pavlov would have been proud, if Regina had ever heard the name.
---
By mid-morning the sky was pale blue, and Regina had long since dressed. She stood again by the window, watching the world continue without her. Her hair was brushed, her tea drained, her robe replaced by tailored finery.
And she was bored.
That was reason enough.
"I'm going to town," she said aloud, not looking back.
The maid, still hovering on wobbling legs like a marionette whose strings had been half-cut, blinked but did not argue.
"You. Come."
No explanation. No permission. Exhaustion was irrelevant. Regina's entitlement was not the loud, insecure kind. It was quiet, absolute: I want, therefore I take. I command, therefore you obey.
---
MC's POV
I was running on fumes.
Between being screamed awake for drills at four bells and dragging myself to "maid shift" at six, I'd had maybe one solid minute of downtime. And that only if you count blacking out against a stairwell for twenty seconds as "rest."
Now, without so much as a crust of bread in my mouth, I was being ordered on a field trip.
Regina didn't care. She glided ahead like her slippers had never touched dirt in their lives. I trailed after her like a drunk dog—half-stumbling, half-falling, entirely humiliated.
We cut back through the training yard. Some poor bastards were still drilling. The commander's voice was thunder in a canyon, relentless, pounding:
"Today, today, tomorrow no more, if I die today… I will die no more!"
The cadets shouted until their throats tore. Their boots slammed in unison, echoing against stone, against sky.
And it hit me.
The cadence. The steps. The rigid "By numbers!" calls before every pivot.
This wasn't some cobbled-together fantasy militia drill.
This was Earth.
Military. Structured. Synchronized. Imported.
My blood iced.
"System," I whispered, words sticking in my throat as I followed Regina toward the gates.
[Yes, Host?]
"That drill… you didn't give me that, right? That's not one of your little 'helpful upgrades'?"
[Correct. That level of tactical formatting was not part of your transferred knowledge.]
"…So it came from somewhere else?"
[Possibility: another Transmigrator. Probability: eighty-seven percent.]
I nearly tripped over my own boots.
Not the first. Not the only.
Someone else had been here. Long enough to reshape knights into Marines. Long enough to etch Earth into stone and bone.
Which meant they weren't just surviving. They were thriving. Powerful. Dangerous.
"Perfect," I muttered, half to myself, half to the void. "I finally get reborn into a new world… and someone else already beat me to colonizing it."