A Mad Dog Needs a Leash
"Ha."
Yet again, Daisy opened her eyes in bed and ground her teeth.
For someone worn down to the very last thread, only one option remained.
"I'll just have to kill him."
She climbed out of bed and, with a dark expression, began picking out her clothes. Choosing didn't take long. Daisy had already repeated the act of picking out today's clothes dozens of times over.
With every preparation complete, she stood before her door and glanced at the small mirror hanging beside it. But she wasn't really looking at her reflection. In her mind, only the face and name of her enemy floated, round and round.
Ezra Alkenes.
Master of the Alkenes Grand Duchy, whose domain stretched across the mountain range at the empire's northeastern edge. If she wanted this rage to subside, she would have to strangle the life out of that man — the hero who had saved the continent, everyone's idol — with her own two hands.
With a look of grim resolve, Daisy opened the door, stepped out, and descended the stairs.
From today — the graduation ceremony of the Imperial Academy — she had been repeating a single year of time, over and over again.
The first regression happened without her knowing a thing.
On her professor's recommendation, Daisy had taken a job with Alpha, a guild of middling rank, and passed her days developing new medicines in the capital without a hint of trouble.
That is, until an A-Rank dungeon opened.
When a dungeon like that appeared, not only the major guilds but a mid-tier guild like Alpha was obligated to join the conquest. Nothing of the kind had occurred in years, so the guild coalition leadership was on edge, and appeals for aid went all the way up to the imperial family.
And somehow, for whatever reason, the Grand Duke of Alkenes joined as well.
He had slain an S-Rank monster single-handedly in his mid-twenties, and in one stroke became the hero of the empire. With a man like that on the raid, everyone assumed success was a foregone conclusion.
Daisy was among them. Call it rear support if you liked, but it was human nature to want to feel safe by standing next to the strongest person available.
Unfortunately, mid-conquest, she was swallowed by a wave of searing heat in the blink of an eye and died.
And so the first regression began.
At first, Daisy truly believed she'd had a dream. Only after the events of that dream began repeating themselves, one by one, did she grasp the truth — she had regressed.
Her regression did not end with a single loop.
After regressions beyond counting, Daisy had worked out a few of its patterns.
First, she could never die before the day the trouble began.
Second, no matter where she was or what she did, the world ended all the same.
Third, something went wrong with the Grand Duke inside the dungeon.
That last piece of information had been the decisive one. In one loop, she had stayed outside the dungeon after fitting one of her guildmates who entered with a covert transmission device. And in the moment before her death, she heard that colleague screaming the Grand Duke's name in anguish.
What on earth happened to him? What could possibly go wrong?
Even as she pieced together this apocalypse, Daisy couldn't bring herself to believe it — that something had happened to the Grand Duke, whose power stretched far beyond human limits.
In any case, the conclusion she reached after countless loops was this: to learn what happened to him, she would have to be selected for the vanguard team that explored the dungeon alongside the Grand Duke himself.
Proving her worth within a year and joining the Grand Duke's vanguard was, frankly, no easy task. One or two regressions wouldn't cut it.
In the middle of all that trial and error, there were moments Daisy wanted to throw everything away. And in truth, she did — once or twice.
But Daisy couldn't die. The regressions kept coming, and left unable even to die, she could do nothing but wait out the final day in excruciating agony.
So every single time, she had no choice but to give her all.
When she was finally chosen for the vanguard, Daisy thought that this time, at last, she could put an end to this interminable cycle.
For the first time in ages, Daisy was nervous.
It was her first time joining the vanguard, and she had no way of knowing what dangers awaited.
Somehow, I've got a good feeling about this.
Still, the simple fact that she had finally made the team had her feeling light enough to float.
Reviewing the roster of guild members departing on the raid, the Grand Duke of Alkenes lifted his head and looked at her.
"You seem too young and too green for a subjugation like this."
Stung by the Grand Duke's blunt assessment, Daisy faltered. Wasn't this the sort of thing he was supposed to raise privately with Ludgar, the guild master?
Besides — who was calling whom young? The age gap between her and Ezra wasn't that large!
Granted, she looked inexperienced. But for all her appearance, she was an alchemist with dozens of regressions' worth of hard-earned polish under her belt. Not that it was a fact she could ever disclose.
Daisy forced herself to smile brightly, as if nothing were wrong.
This kind of dismissal doesn't even surprise me anymore.
Of course he wouldn't relish including a girl fresh out of the Academy in a mission this critical. But Daisy was confident she could win him over. She hadn't been sitting idle during all those loops, after all.
Here we go again.
Ludgar sighed inwardly.
This noble hero, with his flawless, gentleman's face, was a man who detonated bombs the moment he opened his mouth. And because he never actually lied, his candor was all the more brutal. It was the reason Ezra had become someone who kept his mouth shut in almost any company.
He was such a cute child, though.
Having briefly reminisced about the boy he'd once been, Ludgar resolved to speak up for Daisy. He, too, had not expected her inclusion in the party to be welcomed.
But then he recalled the staggering achievements Daisy had stacked up until now. Her papers from the Academy days aside, she boasted ideas so striking and craftsmanship so meticulous that he could scarcely believe his memory of them.
But Daisy spoke first.
"I hear Your Highness's knight order has been using our guild's acceleration potions and critical-strike potions since this year. Is that correct?"
The Grand Duke's gaze swept over her, undisguised and unapologetic. Deep in his eyes, in some dark and fathomless place, it seemed as though he were seeing straight through to her misfortune.
"And yet."
"I'm the one who developed the core technique behind those potions. Does that qualify me to join this vanguard?"
At Daisy's audacious words, Ezra looked mildly surprised. Those potions, with almost no side effects, were currently in such demand that you couldn't buy them at any price.
The Grand Duke gave a small nod.
"Your skill seems beyond question."
"Yes, Your Highness."
The Grand Duke of Alkenes offered no further comment and turned away. Daisy let out a light breath.
Stage one, finally cleared.
Everything ahead was plainly going to be an uphill battle.
She was no titan like the Grand Duke. The knowledge and experience she'd gained through regression had made her formidable, but the only people who knew how exceptional she was were her fellow guild members.
Besides, Daisy was a commoner, and her counterpart was a highborn Grand Duke — it was only natural he'd balk.
Daisy glared at Ezra as he conversed with the others. His great height and solid frame, crowned with princely golden hair like something out of a fairy tale and crystalline blue eyes that gleamed like the purest gems — his looks alone made him seem divine, as if he'd descended from the heavens. Even the cold indifference that made your body shrink the moment you crossed his path couldn't diminish that beauty.
Still insufferable, though.
That wasn't the hero she had imagined.
Whatever Daisy's private feelings, she tightened her watch over the Grand Duke's surroundings to ensure that nothing unforeseen befell him within the vanguard.
He was the team's single greatest asset.
Within an A-Rank dungeon, in practice, no monster would ever appear that the Grand Duke of Alkenes couldn't kill. That was why, every loop, Daisy had concluded that humanity's annihilation stemmed from some problem that kept the Grand Duke from unleashing his full strength.
And so she made certain that every scrap of food and every potion he consumed passed through her hands first.
She had dedicated herself to this task for several loops before finally joining the vanguard at his side.
Thanks to that, she had caught and removed countless trace poisons laced into his meals and his tea.
So being a Grand Duke isn't easy either, huh.
The Grand Duke of Alkenes occupied a singular position in the empire.
His domain sat at the empire's northernmost reaches, commanding the continent, and was a land of riches thanks to its abundance of magic stone mines. With the duchy's military might being formidable as well, he was unquestionably a thorn in the empire's side.
Perhaps that was why.
His meals were laced with grotesque poisons that no one but Daisy would ever have detected. Drugs that would dull his virility, say, or that would sever his line altogether.
"Hmm..."
Things she would rather not have known, Daisy thought.
At any rate, with such an arbitrary cocktail of substances in play, no one could say what effect they might have on the Grand Duke's body — so removing them all was the only option.
She never managed to identify who was administering the drugs. But she had her suspects.
First, herself, the alchemist, and Ludgar. But she had personally verified every reagent Ludgar brought in, so it couldn't have been him.
That left the personnel dispatched from the other guilds — specifically, anyone of a drug-wielding class. Mages who used mana amplifiers sat at the very top of her suspicion list. Rogues who worked with poison were a close second.
What on earth was going on around the Grand Duke?
Little by little, the vanguard pushed deeper into the dungeon.
It proved far longer and more labyrinthine than Daisy had imagined — lose your way inside, and you might never find your way out.
And then the truly unthinkable happened.
That day, she had forced herself to sleep, and when she woke, the area outside the barracks was in an uproar. When she stepped out, the vanguard's previously peaceful atmosphere had soured considerably.
Daisy approached Ludgar, who stood there with a tense expression, and asked:
"What's happened?"
"Miss Amy went out scouting for a route, and word is she's been surrounded by monsters and cut off."
"Miss Amy?"
She'd crossed paths with the woman several times in past loops. A rogue by class, Amy was sharp-eyed and scrupulous about protecting her own skin. That a woman like her was in danger could only be cause for suspicion.
