I Reincarnated as a Noble Girl Villainess But Why Did It Turn Out This Way?

Chapter 1 - Poisoned soup

Inside my head, rather than whiting out, it was more like my head was being filled with darkness.

Without hesitation, I sunk the hemlock into the pot of soup. I didn't know what kind of face I was making or where I was looking at all. With leather gloves that were way too big for me on my hands, I thought it looked silly and felt like laughing at it.

Although I cried when I first decided to poison my family, I have no more tears to cry now.

As I looked at the finely ground poison while being extremely careful not to touch it, my head was completely filled with blankness, with no space whatsoever for emotion to get in.

Luckily, on the dinner table was a large quantity of seafood and other delicacies that my vile mother probably got somewhere from unscrupulous merchants. The irony is, this was all supposed to be in celebration of my birthday today. I just happened to recognize a poisonous plant from my previous world, maybe the merchants that sold this food had tried to assassinate us, is what I thought people would think. No matter what, I probably wouldn't be suspected due to my age.

Viscount Cardia and his family that was famous for being villainous, all died, leaving their daughter Eliza who had just turned two as the only survivor. For the crime of poisoning the viscount's entire family, a merchant who was once again famous for being villainous was executed.

......And that is the story of how I, Eliza Cardia, succeeded the position of a Junior Viscount.

Since hemlock is a poisonous plant that doesn't take effect immediately, I thought that maybe someone would survive, but it seems my fears were unfounded. They either died due to a lack of oxygen caused by paralysis, or choked to death on hurl that got caught in their throat, or hit their head and died as they lost consciousness, there was a rich variety in the way that my family died, but the scene that my crime had caused wasn't even able to traumatize me.

In my previous life, hemlock had caused my younger sister to become hospitalized, causing quite a commotion. Because it almost killed her, it had remained as a frightening memory up until now, so it's ironic that I've now used that memory to poison and kill others.

It would be no lie to say that my mean, base mother was interested in nothing but money, and my father's favorite interest was to see blood and pain along with contorted facial expressions, so this was their punishment. And since all my relatives were wiped out, as the only survivor of the Cardia family I inherited everything.

Of course, taking my age into consideration, it was impossible for me to actually run the Cardia family, so this seems to have sown the seeds of a pointless power struggle among the conservative nobles in this country. Well, if they all crush each other, it might even turn out to be a good thing for me.

Obviously since I was only a two year old infant, I wasn't even considered a suspect in my family's assassination even though I was the one who benefitted the most by inheriting everything, but of course I wouldn't be able to take up the duties that came with being a Viscount immediately. For the time being, the royal capital sent someone to become my guardian. That the person who came would be more human than my father, was all I wished for. After all, if someone came here who was just like my father, then I wouldn't know for what I even killed my family for. It's not even funny to think about how rotten this country must be if that were to be the case.

Although I don't know if the heavens responded to my dearest wish, the vigorous elderly aristocrat that the royal capital sent to me let out a terrible wail at seeing the terrible state of my family's lands and economic situation.

From haphazardly stacked bills and debts, to the countless number of idiotic, despotic laws and higher taxes than permitted that had been enacted illegally despite the country's national laws. The people in this domain had been under such a tyrannic regime that they were too exhausted to even complain. Meaning, the people in my domain are all tattered to the point of falling apart. I can safely say that hell would be something like this.