After that, Leticia made sure to eat properly, and whenever nobody was around she exercised on top of the bed to build up her muscles.
Because she feared the backlash her body would suffer later on if she relied solely on magic to get by.
People seemed to find it somewhat odd that Leticia, who until then had been consumed by despair and had sometimes thrown violent fits, had suddenly turned obedient.
So although they were wary at first, the beastmen gradually looked satisfied, thinking that Leticia had finally begun to accept Kashu.
There was no chance of that whatsoever, but with Leticia so docile, Kashu had been in a good mood lately as well.
Every last beastman here was a supremacist who thought Leticia, the one doing the refusing, was at fault.
In their view, the one in the wrong wasn't Kashu, who had kidnapped her, but Leticia, who had been chosen as his fated mate yet still refused to accept him.
It wasn't merely a difference in race; their values simply didn't align.
Besides humans and beastmen, this world was home to all sorts of races, but few were as arrogant as the beastmen.
They had no doubt whatsoever that they were the rulers of the world.
Leticia would never forget the many lives that had been lost because of that.
They could call her prejudiced or discriminatory however much they liked, but the lives that had vanished before her eyes stayed with her, and the screams of the people who wept and grieved for them still rang in her ears.
Even though this had happened in her past life, she could still recall it vividly.
"If the beastmen try to repeat that tragedy, then I won't show them mercy this time."
For the sake of the Evil Dragon as well, whose will had been ignored when he was made to destroy the world, this was not something she could take lightly.
Well, it was also simply that Leticia herself was furious.
To begin with, Leticia wasn't the sort of person who acted out of some noble purpose to help others.
She acted because she personally didn't like something. She helped because she wanted to help.
She struck back when she was angry. Simple and straightforward, that was all she was.
So even without the gods' request, Leticia would surely have saved the Evil Dragon as well.
Which was why she didn't resent the gods for the fact that it had cost her her life in the end.
Do something about the beastmen, though! she grumbled inwardly.
Leticia also wanted to search for the Evil Dragon's reincarnation.
Although it was a request from the Supreme God, that wasn't all there was to it.
"I have to find him soon..."
If her old comrades were here, they would surely wonder why she took the Evil Dragon's side to such an extent.
Even after she was reincarnated, she was taking the initiative to try to protect him.
She was aware that her feelings towards the Evil Dragon went beyond what the Supreme God had asked of her.
But no matter what anyone said to her, Leticia would not abandon him.
Leticia opened her grimoire, laid a hand on it and channelled her mana.
Her mana spread outwards like ripples.
That mana was probing the mansion, seeking to reveal its entire layout.
Searching through a mansion this large and labyrinthine was difficult magic, but for Leticia, whose command of magic was so great that she had been called an Archmage, it was nothing at all.
Her mana had settled a fair amount of late, and thanks to that it had become easier to handle.
Had she been using ordinary magic, someone might have sensed her mana, but mana channelled through the grimoire was imbued with divine power.
Mere beastmen wouldn't sense it.
If anyone were to notice Leticia's mana passing through the grimoire, it would only be someone who also bore a god's blessing.
And the reverse was equally true.
"Found you..."
Leticia broke into a fearless smile at the presence that had stayed in her memory from her past life.
"So he really was close by."
She had been wondering why the Supreme God had gone to the trouble of restoring her memories and power at this particular moment.
She had thought it must be because the Evil Dragon's reincarnation was somewhere nearby.
"This is... the dungeon of this mansion?"
She concentrated harder, trying to pinpoint his location.
She sensed the presence far below where she was.
The power of darkness belonging to the Goddess of Darkness, the counterpart to the Supreme God's power of light.
The clumsy kid goddess had changed her fate, but Leticia was relieved to learn that the thread of fate binding her to the Evil Dragon hadn't been severed.
If it had been severed, then a coincidence like the Evil Dragon's reincarnation appearing this close by could never have happened.
"Well then, now that I've found him, shall I go and say hello?"
She had been eating properly lately and her stamina had improved.
It was about time she widened her range of movement and saw the state of this mansion with her own eyes.
And when the time came to escape, she would take the Evil Dragon's reincarnation with her.
"What sort of person is he?"
Leticia's heart fluttered with excitement, more so than it had for quite some time.
Late that night, Leticia opened her grimoire.
There was no window, but she knew it was the middle of the night because the servant who had stopped by earlier with her meal had called it dinner.
From there, while making a show of being frightened, she had hesitantly asked what time it was.
Of course, she had acted that way to draw information out of the servant.
In truth she could have forced the information out of her, but causing a commotion this early would have been unwise, so she restrained herself.
She had planned to slip out of this oppressive cage in the dead of night, once the beastmen were asleep, and explore the mansion. But if by any chance someone came to check on her, they would immediately notice her absence.
She needed a countermeasure for that.
She channelled more mana into the grimoire than she ever had before.
The grimoire's pages turned on their own, and the instant they stopped, light came spilling out.
Amid the dazzling glow pouring from the grimoire, the light gradually gathered and took shape.
It was a bird with long, elegant tail feathers that shone with an almost divine brilliance.
Yet her form was unlike any bird in this world.
Which was only natural, for this bird was a being known as a sacred beast.
Born from Leticia's grimoire, she was different from living things made out of flesh and blood.
The bird, as large as Leticia's own body, fixed her round eyes on Leticia, then narrowed them sharply.
"You're laaate!"
Leticia hadn't expected the very first thing out of her beak to be a complaint. Her eyes widened in surprise, before her expression changed to one of exasperation.
"Aerith. It's been ages since we last met and that's the first thing you say?"
In response to Leticia's dissatisfaction, the sacred beast named Aerith retorted with yet another complaint.
"Of course I'm going to complain! Why did it take you so long to summon me? You could've called me out much sooner. I was waiting inside that grimoire the whole time!"
Apparently, she knew something of Leticia's current circumstances through the grimoire.
Squawking and carrying on, Aerith had none of the divine majesty she had a moment ago; she was just a child throwing a tantrum.
"Sorry, I forgot."
"That's harsh! Is that any way to treat your one and only partner?"
"There, there, we can do this later. Sorry, but could you be locked up in my place right now?"
"Even worse! What's that supposed to mean?"
"I have to go see someone. But it'd be a problem if somebody came while I was gone, wouldn't it?"
"The Evil Dragon's reincarnation? Why not just leave him be? Sounds like a pain."
"You really have picked up way too much from Supreme God-sama, haven't you?"
Aerith had certainly been created from Leticia's mana, but she could only exist because of the grimoire, a divine artefact. And that grimoire had been bestowed by the Supreme God.
Watching Aerith's behaviour, Leticia could definitely feel the Supreme God's influence.
There were plenty of other similarities too, like how she sulked when people ignored her, how lazy she was, how cheeky she was.
"How could I possibly leave him be when the beastmen are trying to make another evil dragon? Besides, the room feels cramped when you're that size, so could you shrink down? I want you all white and fluffy and round, nice and cute."
"That's a lot of demands!"
Even as she snapped her beak open to complain, she shrank her body down.
Eventually, she took on the form of a cute, fluffy bird, exactly as Leticia had requested, and she was so round that a strong gust of wind would have sent her rolling away for miles.
"How's this!?"
"Ahah, so cute, so cute!"
Leticia clapped her hands in delight.
"To reduce my elegant form to something this stubby... the humiliation..."
"It's cute, so what's the problem? Please stay like that from now on. Anyway, I should get moving, so could you take my form?"
"Your demands never end! And to think we're meeting for the first time in two hundred years."
Grumbling all the while and looking annoyed, Aerith hopped up onto the bed.
"Speaking of which, is it still all right to call you Leti?"
The thought seemed to have only just occurred to Aerith.
Leticia nodded at Aerith's question with an "Mm," then paused.
"Now that you mention it, isn't it strange that I have the same name as in my past life? That's too much of a coincidence, isn't it?"
"The Supreme God or someone probably had a hand in it. Works out fine for me, less confusing."
Having accepted it with astonishing ease, Aerith transformed in the blink of an eye from a white bird into the very image of Leticia.
But upon seeing that form, Leticia was startled, and not at all pleased.
"Huh, is that really what I look like?"
"I've copied you exactly as you are."
"There's no way I look sixteen..."
There was no mirror in this room, so she'd had no chance to see herself as others saw her.
Still, she was sixteen. The same age as when she'd died in her past life.
Naturally her appearance had changed since then, but the Leticia that Aerith had turned into looked far too young to pass for sixteen, and she was short as well. On top of that, she was thinner than Leticia had expected.
She didn't look healthy at all; anyone would have called her sickly.
"I have been eating properly lately, and exercising too..."
It had been eight years since she'd lived a normal life.
However much she'd improved her diet this past month, she could hardly have put on weight that quickly.
"When we escape I'll just have to make up for it with magic, I suppose."
There was no way she had the strength to flee in her current state.
Just being able to see how she looked from the outside made it worth it to summon Aerith.
"Be careful not to get caught."
"Leave it to me. Nobody knows you better than I do."
Aerith puffed out her chest smugly, but since she was wearing her face, Leticia rather wished she wouldn't.
Still, there was no time to waste on exchanges like this, so she gave up and removed the shackles from her ankles.
They were sturdy shackles designed to keep Leticia from escaping, but she was able to unlock them easily with magic. Then she fastened them to Aerith's ankles instead.
She was given a blatantly disgusted look, but Aerith would just have to bear it.
"Right then, I'm counting on you."
"Come back soon. I'm not sure I can fool a beastman's instincts when it comes to his fated mate."
"Ah, that is a worry."
Feeling rather deflated, Leticia said she would try to be quick, then opened the heavy cell lock as easily as if it had never been locked at all and stepped outside the cage.
It had been exactly eight years since she had last set foot outside.