Chapter 1: Miss Lillian Luzor – Age 18
“I had a dream. An oddly vivid one.”
When Lillian woke up as if it were part of her usual routine, she found herself in the body of her eighteen-year-old self. A nostalgic, plush, luxurious bed. Fancy dolls lined up around her.
And a photo of her first love, Weltall Gandemann, conspicuously displayed in an eye-catching spot.
“Surely not…”
This was her room from when she was eighteen. Her rich blond-pink hair cascaded down to her waist, and the supple, youthful skin she prided herself on was unmistakably her own from those days.
Yet her mind held the awareness of a seventy-nine-year-old.
Though she was incinerated by heavy particle beams, leaving not even dust behind, somehow sensations remained. She could definitely say her current state was one of being alive—she had the feeling of life.
“So that’s what it feels like to vanish without a trace… I wonder if this is a good experience or not.”
And she was strangely calm. The sensation of being swallowed by the light of heavy particles, and then everything suddenly disappearing. Was it fortunate there was no pain, or did she simply vanish before she could feel pain?
In any case, though her life was cut short, now she felt her heart beating. The warmth coming from the bed, her breathing, the sound of wind rustling outside the window, the scent of perfume.
All of it felt so nostalgic.
“This is…”
As if out of habit, Lillian glanced at the pillar clock leaning in the corner of the room.
Though it looked like an antique, it was actually a digital clock that projected the time and date into the air.
The date read: Year 4103, March.
The day of her academy’s graduation exam—
“Could it be… that I’ve gone back?”
The situation was bizarre, bordering on absurd.
If she were still her younger self, she would have screamed in shock. But at seventy-nine, she could remain eerily calm.
In other words—she had returned to the past.
Back into the foolish, naive body of her younger self…
but with the mind of an old woman.
“Honestly, what a joke.”
So Lillian sank back into her bed.
If this was the afterlife, it was a cruel joke of a hell.
“I surrender. I lose. Game over. I won’t interfere.”
She spat out the words and tried to fall back asleep—but her eyes were drawn to the character-decorated clock.
The hands pointed to 5:00 AM.
In a few hours, she would have to depart for the graduation exam—a real space battle exercise aboard an actual warship.
“I don’t want to go…”
That was the first thing that escaped her lips.
Immediately, she felt childish and ridiculous for saying it.
“Ah, right… I’m eighteen now. How mortifying.”
An eighteen-year-old child. Unable to defy adults. Back when she was seventy-nine, even as a mere figurehead admiral, no one dared oppose her openly. But now? She had no authority.
She was just a child.
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And even if her body was young, her mind was that of an old woman—leading to an uncanny dissonance. For one, the idea of wearing a school uniform filled her with resistance.
Somehow, she had become her past self. No matter how much she pondered why, there was no answer. It simply was.
The only small mercy was that this would be the last day she had to wear this uniform. After all, the graduation exam was today.
But the problem was that very exam.
An exam in name only. In reality, it was just a training voyage aboard a mock battleship with other graduates.
Supposedly, it was meant to simulate real combat, so the ship they’d be boarding was an actual battleship—not a mere destroyer or cruiser, but a capital warship of the fleet.
Fully armed, equipped with sixteen space fighters, and even carrying pilot-course graduates.
The ground troops had their own separate graduation exercises, so they weren’t participating.
At the same time, professional Imperial Navy officers would oversee the exercise from two accompanying battleships.
The whole thing would take place near the moon and last only a single day.
A peaceful, glorified graduation test from an era of complacency.
If it had truly ended there, she wouldn’t be so anxious now.
“[The Battleship Tiberius’ Miracle Return Incident]… Ugh, my head hurts.”
But Lillian, who knew the future, was aware that this graduation exercise would spiral into an unimaginable disaster. The battleship they were boarding—Tiberius—would suffer a warp malfunction, stranding them in the Orion constellation.
As if by strange coincidence, the warp drive malfunctioned while the adults were absent. No matter how hard anyone tried, repairs would take three weeks. In the meantime, they would move toward Earth using conventional propulsion as much as possible.
The inability to use the function developed for traversing vast distances across space, meant to leap across light-years in the blink of an eye, was nothing short of terrifying.
However, that problem could be solved with repairs. The real issue came next.
It was the enemy’s attack. Aliens appearing from behind the Orion constellation, the Horsehead Nebula.
(I only know they were humanoid-type aliens. More detailed information never made its way to me.)
There used to be a saying about knowing your enemy, but at that time, no information beyond “enemy aliens” was deemed necessary.
The only thing we learned was that the captured alien’s appearance wasn’t much different from humans, except for purple skin and green blood. With no hair on their heads and an appearance that made it difficult to distinguish between male and female, they somewhat resembled the Grey alien type, but ultimately that was all the information we obtained.
(Well, I suppose that’s enough when dealing with enemies.)
The war with them was initially evenly matched, but it eventually reached a stalemate. The Earth Empire, having expanded its territory, deployed forces to protect its domains.
However, this meant dispersing their military strength, causing them to temporarily fall into an inferior position.
Sensing this crisis, the Imperial Government mobilized the entire fleet and began a distant expedition toward the Orion sector… This was the prelude to collapse.
(The long-lasting peace… naturally led to complacency, as our only hypothetical enemies had been anti-state terrorists and space pirates.)
Until the incident occurred, the Earth Empire had been relatively stable. Although opposition forces existed, they lacked sufficient military strength to aim for national overthrow.
However, the number of military personnel hadn’t increased proportionally with the expanded territory. Sensing a potential crisis, the Imperial Government began recruiting soldiers from among students.
Becoming a soldier meant tuition exemption, acquisition of various qualifications, and various other preferential treatments.
In fact, it must be acknowledged that this policy made the war against the aliens possible.
This appeared to be a meritocratic system where even young people could be promoted to commanding positions if they had ability, but in the absence of enemies, the practice of powerful people giving their children credentials began to spread.
As a result, problems erupted in the worst possible way four years later.
“That’s why we ended up with the absurd situation of an eighteen-year-old girl leading a fleet…”
No, the mistake happened four years later.
And the source of that disaster was Lillian herself.
“A foolish child whose enthusiasm ran wild without awareness of her surroundings. An incompetent, unlucky admiral who caused the meaningless deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers with her commands and authority… Lillian the Great Failure. Why am I now in the past…”
Due to her meaningless commands and stubbornness, the Empire’s main fleet was annihilated. Her first love, her friends, and many officers and soldiers died without being able to do anything. Entrusted with a wing of the Earth Imperial Fleet, without real ability but driven by ambition, vanity, and jealousy, she ignored formation and strategy to charge recklessly forward. The Imperial Fleet was annihilated, leaving only [Lillian’s Fleet] behind.
As if deliberately allowed to escape, the enemy didn’t pursue, and only Lillian survived.
And then, that end.
What happened to the Earth Empire after she died? Was it destroyed as she feared?
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Yay. Translation is a lot better than the other site. Pretty sure that was un-edited MTL. This is a lot better.