Chapter 2

1. The Princess’s Return

“It’s cold! Somebody save the princess!”

My moment of sentimentality lasted only briefly before an incredible cold swept over my body.

Seeing me trembling as I hugged my shoulders, the Hero hurriedly took off his cloak and handed it to me.

Perhaps my shoes had crumbled away because of the Demon King’s power, because all I was wearing was a white dress—the Goddess’s Cloud.

This treasure dress had an excellent ability to restore divine power, but since it was sleeveless, its ability to keep me warm was absolutely nonexistent.

Wrapping myself in the cloak made me feel a little better.

After taking care of the immediate problem, I examined my body. Nothing had changed much, except that my hair had become incredibly long.

It had originally been a short bob that swayed just above my shoulders, but now it was long enough to drag along the floor.

“Please excuse me for a moment, Princess.”

The Hero saw my bare feet and suddenly scooped me up into his arms.

My field of vision rose in an instant.

At the same time, my hair, which had been spread across the floor, floated up into the air.

“Magic?”

The Hero gave me a faint smile and nodded before walking forward without hesitation.

When we stepped outside the Demon King’s Castle, I could see an army filling the plains.

Two enormous ships were floating in the sky, battling against the fierce winds.

“The airship on the left is the Viviana. The one on the right is the Fluria.”

I’m not imagining that those names were obviously taken from something, am I?

I had seen a drawing of an airship before.

Princess Vivian, who had been exceptionally talented at creating artifacts, had drawn one in her research notebook.

At the time, she had told me:

With the technology we have now, it’s impossible to build one. It will probably take hundreds of years before the ship in this drawing can actually fly.

I took a deep breath before asking the Hero,

“Licht. Which Hero are you?”

“I am the seventh. After you entered the Demon King’s Castle, it took five hundred years to defeat the Demon King of Despair.”

Five hundred years.

My mind went blank at that unimaginably distant number.

I must be the only Princess of Victory in history who went to fight the Demon King and suddenly ended up becoming 520 years old.

I’d never imagined something like this happening in my life, so I was completely at a loss for words.

People used to say that I had an exceptionally strong mental fortitude.

But suddenly being told that five hundred years had passed left me with absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do.

While I was lost in thought, the Hero joined the unit that had been waiting for him outside the Demon King’s Castle.

“Wow, she’s exactly like the portrait!”

“She really is the Princess of Victory.”

“You should all greet her first.”

A heavily built knight who appeared to be the oldest bowed with a disciplined movement.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Princess of Victory. I am Grayson Navier, the shield of the Demon King Subjugation Army.”

“I am Miles Soil, the Archmage’s first disciple.”

“I’m Teyra, a spirit mage and the healer.”

The standard composition of a Demon King subjugation party consisted of the Hero at its center, a tank who defended the front line, a mage who dealt with the Demon King’s army of monsters, and a healer responsible for recovery.

The primary role of the Princesses of Victory, who possessed enormous amounts of divine power, was usually that of a healer.

In other words, once the previous Princesses found the Hero, they generally operated from the rear.

I had been a somewhat unusual case.

Looking at the bloodstains covering their clothes and armor, I could guess just how fierce the battle must have been.

“I am Fleur, the Princess of Victory. You’ve all worked so hard.”

My throat tightened for a moment, but I swallowed down my emotions and said what I had wanted to say for so long.

“Let’s go home now. Home. I’m so sick and tired of this damned battlefield.”

The knights, covered in blood and dust, raised their weapons and shouted.

“We wonnnnnnnnn!”

“Waaaaaaaah!”

The victory cries I had longed to hear echoed in every direction.

The longest Demon King subjugation campaign in history had finally come to an end.

I boarded the airship named after me, the Fluria, while being carried in the Hero’s arms.

A total of four airships had been deployed for this campaign.

Each could carry five thousand people, meaning a total of twenty thousand members of the subjugation army had taken part in the assault on the Demon King’s Castle.

“What month is it?”

“It is March, the beginning of spring.”

The area around the Demon King’s Castle, located at the northernmost edge of the continent, was cold enough in early spring to resemble the middle of winter in the central regions.

And yet, somehow, the inside of the airship was warm enough that I didn’t even need a cloak.

At a glance, the floor of the airship was spotless, without even a speck of dust.

I could probably walk barefoot without a problem, yet for some reason, the Hero showed no sign of putting me down.

It wasn’t until we reached a room with a sofa that I was finally able to put my feet on the floor.

Teyra saw what I was wearing beneath the cloak and hurriedly brought me shoes and clothes, finally freeing me from having to walk around barefoot.

“I’m sorry, but we only have military uniforms and military boots. We’ll arrive at the capital tomorrow afternoon, so please bear with it until then.”

“The capital?”

“The Fluria and Viviana are both airships belonging to the Groxdel Empire.”

A country name I’d never heard in my life suddenly came up.

If five hundred years had passed, then surely new countries had appeared on the continent during that time.

But then, the people in the room suddenly began glancing nervously at me and signaling to the Hero.

Licht, the Hero, furrowed his brow and let out a long sigh before speaking again.

“Four hundred and seventy years ago, the Kingdom of Eterna, Princess, your homeland, disappeared, and the Groxdel Empire was established. Three neighboring royal families joined forces to establish the empire.”

“Groxdel is currently a great power occupying one-third of the entire continent. All of us are from Groxdel.”

My country was gone.

They were telling me that my homeland no longer existed.

This is a big problem, isn’t it?

That means I’m stateless!

Normally, once the Princess of Victory completed her duty of defeating the Demon King, her homeland would provide her with various rewards.

In the Kingdom of Eterna, the royal family had promised to pay me a pension for the rest of my life so that I would never have to worry about making a living.

I’d endured everything relying on that.

And now they were telling me my country had fallen.

Where is the justice in this, Goddess?!

Perhaps feeling sorry for the Princess of Victory who had lost her country, the Hero’s party brought me some food from somewhere and told me to at least eat something.

I happened to be hungry, so I quickly picked up a spoon.

There were some dishes I’d never seen before, but I had spent several years on the battlefield.

I wasn’t a picky eater.

I simply put everything into my mouth and chewed.

Once my stomach was reasonably full, I unleashed a mountain of questions.

What had happened on the continent after I entered the Demon King’s Castle alone?

I’d thought ten years at most would be enough.

So why had it taken five hundred years to defeat the Demon King?

“A lot of records were lost, so we don’t know the exact circumstances of that time either. However, apparently the Demon King was overwhelmingly powerful, even compared to all the Demon Kings who had appeared before him, so humanity continued suffering defeat for a very long time.”

Even though his power had been cut in half by the seal, the Demon King had still been incredibly powerful.

Some of the weaker monsters had fled into the mountains, reducing the size of the Demon King’s army, but even defending against them had been difficult.

The most devastating event was that the Demon King personally attacked the royal castle of the Kingdom of Eterna, which had been at the heart of the subjugation army, dealing it a massive blow.

Most of the royal family died fighting.

Only Princess Vivian, the heir, barely survived.

She went on to raise disciples and leave behind countless research materials.

“The person who played the most important role in founding the empire was the Hero Dietrich. Under his mediation, the heirs of the two countries—a prince and a princess—married and became the first Emperor and Empress.”

Dietrich, who had become one of the empire’s founding heroes, was granted the surname Selburn along with the title of Marquis.

He never married, went on several more subjugation campaigns, and died in his fifties.

Afterward, successive reincarnations of the Hero repeatedly challenged the Demon King, but continued to fail.

It was only with the seventh Hero, Licht, that they finally managed to cut off the Demon King’s head.

“This subjugation was exactly the hundredth attempt.”

“The previous attempt was five years ago, when the Hero was nineteen.”

So that meant Licht was twenty-four now.

If I excluded the five hundred years I had spent sealed away, the Hero was older than me.

It cost an enormous amount of money to bring tens of thousands of soldiers all the way to the Demon King’s Castle.

The reason there had been relatively few attempts compared to the five hundred years of the seal was probably because it took time to gather the necessary military funds.

“The Selburn Marquis family was inherited by Albiera, who was the younger sister of the Hero Dietrich. It is now one of the continent’s long-standing noble families, with a history spanning hundreds of years.”

“Albiera… The one time I met her, she was about six years old.”

She had loved drawing.

But because we were in the middle of a war and supplies were scarce, she couldn’t get paper or paints, so she drew pictures on the dirt with a twig.

That little girl I had known had apparently grown up to become the greatest genius painter on the continent.

They said the reason people in later generations knew what I looked like was because the portrait Albiera painted of me still existed.

“The full-body portrait looks almost identical to Princess’s current appearance. Ah, except for the length of your hair. The portrait shows you with short hair.”

“But we weren’t even together for a full day.

I can’t believe it.

How did she manage to paint it?”

“There is a replica in the museum in the capital. The original is kept by the Selburn Marquis family, but of course, they’ll show it to you.”

“Excuse me, Hero. What exactly is a museum?”

At my question, everyone’s eyes except those of the Hero Licht and the mage Miles widened like saucers.

“Tsk. You all must have slept through history class.

There were no museums in the era when the Princess lived.

The first museum on the continent was established three hundred years ago.

Princess, a museum is a place where valuable objects such as portraits, ancient pottery, and jewelry are put on display so that everyone can see them.”

Thanks to Miles’s brief explanation, I understood immediately.

So the world five hundred years in the future really had all sorts of things.

Apparently, anyone could even enter a museum regardless of their social status, as long as they paid a small admission fee.

“Oh, and there are libraries too! Entire enormous buildings filled with books.”

“Can anyone go there and read the books?”

“Yes. The admission fee is about the same as the price of two sandwiches.”

“Books are expensive, though. You’re saying that’s all you have to pay?”

“Paper has become cheaper. Printing technology has also advanced.”

Museums.

Libraries.

We had only talked for a short while, yet there were already so many things I knew nothing about.

Still, at least the world five hundred years in the future seemed to be a little easier to live in than the world I had known.