Chapter 6

3. There’s Always a Reason You’re Told Not to Do Something

After returning to the room in the imperial palace where I had been staying for the past few days, I threw myself onto the bed.

“I-I’m exhausted!”

I’d heard so much information all at once that I felt like my head was going to explode.

I thought that once I defeated the Demon King, I’d be able to spend the rest of my life lounging around and doing whatever I pleased. But apparently, the Legendary Princess had just as many responsibilities piled up as she had during the Demon King subjugation.

The fact that the Heroes of each generation had entered into a subordination contract with me was an extremely classified secret known to very few people.

I was told that, counting both the temple and the imperial palace, no more than ten people knew about it. Other than them, only the party members who had fought alongside the Heroes during the Demon King subjugations were aware of it.

Surprisingly, although it was a forbidden art, the contract wasn’t actually a curse, so neither mages nor priests could detect it. That’s why the secret had remained hidden for hundreds of years.

Ugh. What a headache.

I needed either the Imperial Chief Mage or someone with power equivalent to that of a High Priest to perform the contract termination ritual. The temple had promised to contact me once they finished preparing for it.

There were so many major matters I had to learn about that we hadn’t even gotten around to discussing anything concerning my actual life.

For now, I was staying in the imperial palace as a guest, but I couldn’t live like this forever.

Normally, a Legendary Princess who had completed the Demon King subjugation would return to her homeland, but I didn’t have a home—or even a country.

After thinking it over, I figured that the Central Grand Temple would probably take responsibility for me from now on.

However, as long as the Hero and I were bound by the subordination contract, we needed to avoid places crowded with people as much as possible until it was resolved.

The Central Grand Temple, where thousands of people came and went every day, was absolutely out of the question. The imperial palace, which was likewise filled with officials and servants, was also unsuitable.

If I had to choose a place where it would be easy to keep the secret and where the Hero would be safest, then the Grand Duke’s residence would undoubtedly be my first choice!

Looks like I’ll soon be staying as a guest of the Grand Duke’s household.

Ah, the Hero, who hadn’t left my side for even a moment these past few days, was currently away dealing with the aftermath of the subjugation.

The other party members had somehow been handling his duties for him, but they were reaching their limit, so he’d gone over for a little while to make the final checks.

That’s why, when I returned to my room, Her Holiness Celestia had escorted me all the way to the door.

Good grief. I’m still wearing a dress, and if I lie down any longer, I’ll wrinkle it. It’s pretty, but this blasted dress number 387 is surprisingly uncomfortable, so I should change first.

After I finished dinner, the Hero, Licht, returned with an exhausted look on his face.

When I asked whether he’d eaten, he said he’d been too busy going through documents and had just grabbed a sandwich.

“Good work, Hero.”

“Did anything happen while I was gone, Princess?”

“What could possibly have happened in just a few hours?”

I’d simply changed into comfortable clothes, asked the maids for paper and writing supplies, and written down everything I could remember about the Holy Sword.

Paper-making had advanced by leaps and bounds over the past 500 years, so the paper in the notebooks the maids brought me was smooth and brilliantly white. More than anything, I was surprised by how light the paper was despite being sturdy.

I wondered if it was especially good because it was a luxury item used in the imperial palace, but they told me it was an ordinary notebook that anyone could buy at a store.

Long live technological advancement, indeed.

“Are you more or less finished with the paperwork?”

“Everything I needed to look over is finished. The rest is someone else’s responsibility.”

So he really had gone there and done only the bare minimum.

Still, even if someone tried pushing him to do more, I doubted he’d go back.

Her Holiness Celestia had told me that once Hero Licht realized his master—the owner of his contract—had become weaker in divine power, his vigilance would grow even stronger.

The reason the subordination contract was considered a forbidden art was because the subordinate could be controlled according to every little action of the master.

It was suffocating, but there was a reason I was staying inside my room without moving.

It was for my safety.

If I, the master, died, Hero Licht would die as well.

Because Dietrich, that damned fool, had wagered his very soul on the contract.

However, there was a reason this subordination contract was a forbidden art: if the subordinate died, the master suffered absolutely no consequences.

In other words, even if Licht died, I would remain perfectly fine and alive.

It was a contract that was incredibly easy to abuse and utterly unfair to the subordinate!

Seriously, who came up with something like this?

“I should have taught him never to sign a contract without thinking it through.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Dietrich.”

No, wait.

Come to think of it, Licht had caused an even bigger mess than Dietrich, hadn’t he?

That guy only wagered his soul, but this guy had wagered his entire body!

I wanted to smack him on the back a few times out of sheer frustration, but I couldn’t because he was the Grand Duke.

Noticing what I was thinking, he quietly said,

“I didn’t regret it then, and I don’t regret it now. The other Heroes feel the same way.”

“I understand that’s how you feel, but you can’t possibly know how the previous Heroes felt, can you?”

“There are journals.”

Apparently, there was a room where the records left behind by generations of Heroes were kept.

They were allowed to enter it once they turned fifteen, and the Heroes after Dietrich would read the records and then make their choice.

How much of their own body they would wager on the subordination contract.

“In the end, I didn’t die, and I recovered the Princess. So that means this method was the right one. And…”

“And?”

“The records said that Pluur would somehow take care of everything.”

Oh-ho.

So, in other words, every Hero, starting with Dietrich, had gone ahead and recklessly done whatever they wanted because they trusted me to fix everything?

What would they do if I suddenly turned around and treated the Hero like a slave?

I tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t anymore.

Time for a little lecture.

“All right, Hero. Repeat after me. The Legendary Princess is not omnipotent.”

“The Legendary Princess is not omnipotent.”

“Gambling leads to ruin!”

“I’ve never gambled even once in my life.”

“The thing you did when you were fifteen is what people in this world call gambling!”

Even when he protested with a deeply dissatisfied expression, it was no use.

“If I decided to be mean and said, ‘Give me a house! Give me food! Give me clothes! Buy me jewelry!’ and then refused to release you from the contract forever, your life as a Hero would be completely doomed. Do you understand?”

“A house, food, clothes, and jewelry. If that’s all you want, that’s incredibly easy.”

Licht proceeded to list off the residences owned by the Grand Duke’s family, the chefs they employed, the fashion designers they had invested in, and the jewels stored in their treasury, completely turning my argument upside down.

“I can give you anything you want, Princess.”

He smiled brightly, as though he had more than enough ability to provide all of it and there was no possibility of his life becoming hopeless.

And because his smiling face was far too handsome, I became even more irritated.

“It should take about a week to finish everything related to the 100th Demon King subjugation.”

“The party will disband as well, then.”

“Yes. Everyone is looking forward to returning to their ordinary lives.”

I heard that Grayson, the oldest member of the Hero’s party, was the eldest son of a prestigious count’s family and the father of two children.

He’d probably be able to spend plenty of time with his children now.

The mage, Miles, said he would return to the Mage Tower and conduct research under his master, the Tower Master.

Tera, the spirit mage and healer, was excited about returning to her hometown.

“Shouldn’t you return to your territory as well, Hero?”

“The Grand Duchy is being managed well by my capable retainers. It’s not particularly far from the capital, either. It only takes two hours by train.”

“What is a train?”

“A massive means of transportation that carries people and cargo. In the Princess’s era, it was probably called an iron horse.”

“Ah, that thing! They were experimenting with it by embedding mana stones into it.”

It had been about three times the size of a six-passenger carriage.

The amount of money it consumed was no joke, so I think the research was eventually discontinued.

“So this world has airships flying through the sky and trains running across the ground.”

“Yes. Earlier, His Majesty and Her Holiness told you about various matters, but to be honest, if you don’t want to do them, you don’t have to.”

“What?”

“You’ve spent 500 years fighting the Demon King. There isn’t a single person on the continent who doesn’t know how much you’ve sacrificed to defeat him. You can sleep when you want to sleep, eat when you want to eat, and live a life where you leisurely stroll through the park.”

“Because the Princess’s duty is over now?”

“Yes.”

The Hero whispered the offer like a sweet temptation.

He probably knew exactly what I wanted because he’d also dreamed of the same thing while fighting through battles drenched in blood.

“But I’ve already said that I’d look for a solution.”

“Do you really think we’ve just been sitting around doing nothing all this time? We searched through countless materials and had numerous scholars devote themselves to researching it, but there was no particularly promising solution.”

“So, basically, you think digging through old books is a waste of time.”

“Frankly, I would probably have a better chance of receiving the Holy Sword from the goddess quickly if I went to one of the four ruined temples and carried bricks.”

That was a fair point, too.

The Hero asked whether there was anything making me uncomfortable and where and how I wanted to live from now on.

“If you’d like to remain in the imperial palace, we’ll prepare a separate palace for you. Her Imperial Majesty the Empress asked me to inquire because she’ll need to allocate a budget.”

“I-I would live in the imperial palace?”

Absolutely not!

I wasn’t in a position to be picky about what I got, but even after the subordination contract with the Hero was dissolved, there was one thing I wanted to avoid above all else: living in the imperial palace.

I wasn’t a Legendary Princess born into royalty.

I came from an ordinary commoner’s village.

There was no way I could spend the rest of my life following difficult and exhausting court etiquette.

Even Princess Vivian, who had actually been the king’s daughter, had hated that ridiculous etiquette!

After listening to me, the Hero asked whether I would like a small annex at the Grand Duke’s residence in the capital instead.

It was a single-story brick house without expensive decorations such as porcelain or paintings, and apparently it was furnished to feel comfortable and cozy.

He said the main Grand Duke’s residence was similar to the imperial palace, so I immediately voted for the annex for the sake of my mental and physical well-being.

And I had a few days to spare before Dr. Riepart, who would teach me about the world and its knowledge, arrived.

The five-year-old Crown Prince had recently started taking lessons, and they asked whether I would like to attend them with him while I was staying at the imperial palace.

I accepted.

The lessons were designed for a child, so they would be easy for an adult like me, but I was told they would help me learn general knowledge.

They would teach me things like the units of currency and market prices, so I thought they would be extremely useful.

After all, I only knew about the money and prices from 500 years ago.