Chapter 1

Prologue

Standing in a field filled with corpses, with blood and noise raging in every direction, I wondered.

When will this battle end?

Can we defeat that mighty enemy?

What do we have to do to win?

The Goddess chose me, telling me to save the world. And now, I had reached the moment when I had to move forward toward victory.

“What about the kid?”

“We mixed sleeping herb into his tea. We made sure he fell asleep, then put him in the wagon.”

“And the Holy Sword?”

“We tied him up with the sword as well.”

“Good. Let’s begin.”

I spread my wings and took flight into the sky. It was a dark night, but thanks to the bright moon hanging in the heavens, I could clearly see the countless soldiers filling the vast field below.

I drew strength from my stomach and shouted in a loud voice.

“All troops! Retreat!”

At my command, which spread through the cold northern wind, the army began to move like a gigantic wave.

The soldiers slowly withdrew, tears scattering from their eyes.

I faintly heard someone screaming in protest, but I resolutely turned away.

The Goddess’s Cloud, a treasure of the Central Great Temple, fluttered around me. This dress-shaped treasure had the ability to restore divine power.

After taking a deep breath, I flew forward with all my strength.

Toward the Demon King’s Castle visible in the distance.

My name is Fleur Madel Eterna, and I was leaving behind an army of tens of thousands to fight the Demon King alone.

I am the Princess of Victory.

The common knowledge of the world I lived in was simple.

What do you do when the Demon King appears?

The Hero wielding the Holy Sword and the Princess of Victory join forces and defeat him.

To put it very simply, the people capable of subjugating the Demon King are the Hero and the Princess of Victory.

The weapon they must use in battle is the Holy Sword bestowed by the Goddess.

I was born in a small village near the capital of the Kingdom of Eterna.

My parents ran a large general store, so we were one of the better-off families in the neighborhood, but regardless, our social status was that of commoners.

The one thing that distinguished my family from our neighbors was that my mother and I were descendants of the first Princess of Victory.

The first Hero had been a man, while the first Princess of Victory had been a woman. Therefore, the title of Princess of Victory was passed down through the maternal line, from mother to daughter.

On the other hand, the only person capable of wielding the Holy Sword was the first Hero. His soul was reborn in different regions and different bodies throughout the ages.

Furthermore, he had no memories of his past life, so he himself did not know that he was the Hero until he drew the Holy Sword.

The Goddess, however, would choose one among the many descendants of the first Princess of Victory. This meant that it was possible to gather candidates in advance.

To gain even the slightest advantage in the battle against the mighty Demon King, the Pope and the leaders of various nations had chosen a method that was rather straightforward:

Education.

Candidates who could potentially become the Princess of Victory were taught martial arts, tactics, survival skills, medicine, techniques for controlling divine power, and everything else necessary for battle.

Whether they possessed talent or not, someone who had spent years learning and practicing was bound to be better than someone who knew nothing.

There was no guarantee that the Hero would be born into a family where he could learn combat skills and survival knowledge from a young age, so they prepared the Princess in his place.

My homeland, the Kingdom of Eterna, was founded by Eterna, the first Princess of Victory.

Naturally, the kingdom had the greatest number of Princess candidates among the descendants of its founding monarch, and their princess education was also the most rigorous.

When I was five years old, signs of the Demon King’s resurrection began to appear across the continent.

Unfortunately, the temple had yet to find the Hero of the current age, which meant the burden that the Princess of Victory had to bear grew even heavier.

Originally, the Kingdom of Eterna enrolled Princess candidates in a girls’ school in the capital, where they studied various subjects from the age of eight until nineteen.

But I was an unlucky Princess candidate born in an era when no one knew when the Demon King would begin rampaging!

While my friends were playing, I had to study under an old knight and a priest sent by the royal palace.

For the record, I wasn’t the only one studying. My mother studied alongside me, so my lessons weren’t particularly lonely.

Although my mother tore at her hair every day, complaining that she had already graduated from school more than ten years ago and now had to do all this again.

The Demon King completely resurrected and began his full-scale invasion in the year I turned twelve.

Many things changed.

First, among the upperclassmen attending school, the Princess candidates like me graduated early and returned to their respective families.

Princess candidates possessed divine power from the moment they were born.

Even the candidate with the weakest divine power could heal a wound as severe as a deep gash in an instant.

Since doctors and healers had to be continuously dispatched to the front lines, the remaining Princess candidates who were still students were graduated early to fill the vacancies.

The subjects we studied also changed.

Instead of music, art, and literature classes, we went into the forest with knights and underwent practical training in hunting small monsters.

Our literature teacher, who was also a Princess candidate like us, endlessly wept as she treated her students who returned with injuries scattered across their arms and legs.

The following year, the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Eterna was killed in battle while stopping the Demon King’s army as it advanced south.

The Crown Prince’s younger sister, Princess Vivian, became the heir.

Princess Vivian was exceptionally skilled at creating artifacts. She didn’t even have time to properly mourn her brother before she began gathering silver.

She melted down everything, even the silverware used in the royal palace, throwing it all into the furnace.

Silver was the mineral most compatible with divine power. Tens of thousands of arrowheads coated in silver and infused with divine power were supplied to the front lines, barely managing to halt the Demon King’s army.

Of course, this achievement was only possible because everyone, even those who possessed barely enough divine power to fill a chestnut shell, was mobilized for weapon production.

My classmates and juniors spent more time holding weapons in their hands than pens.

On my fifteenth birthday, I became the Princess of Victory.

I was talking with my friends in the dormitory when a pair of wings made of divine power suddenly spread from my back.

The knight who had been stationed there to protect the Princess candidates carried me on his back and ran toward the royal audience chamber.

The moment the king sitting on the throne heard the knight’s shout, he sprang to his feet.

Then he slowly walked over and looked at me, who was standing with both feet planted on the floor.

His expression twisted painfully.

“Princess of Victory, please, do not let yourself break. Until the day we achieve victory.”

I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t think straight after suddenly being brought before the royal family, and more importantly, the ruler of an entire nation.

Still, I felt that I had to say something.

Gathering every last bit of strength in me, I shouted,

“Yes!”

The old man who had lost his children and subordinates to the Demon King pulled up the corners of his mouth and gave me a faint smile.

My divine power, which had been merely average among the Princess candidates, began overflowing like seawater the moment I was chosen by the Goddess.

I was immediately transferred to the Central Great Temple, where I received special training from the Pope and the High Priests.

Healing and recovery were techniques even low-ranking priests could use with ease, but techniques that used divine power to attack enemies required the level of divine power possessed by a high-ranking priest.

The temple was desperately searching for the Hero, but no one had yet succeeded in drawing the Holy Sword from its sheath.

The Princess of Victory, who was traditionally supposed to provide support from the rear, was now forced to fight directly.

After spending a month learning brutal divine-power techniques, I went to the battlefield under the protection of the Allied Knights, an elite force made up of the strongest knights gathered from across the continent.

A year passed as I fought countless battles.

Then, at last, word arrived.

They had found the Hero.

Everyone was excited at the thought that we might finally be able to turn the tide of the war.

But the Hero whom the High Priest personally brought to us was a skinny twelve-year-old boy who was even shorter than me.

He had been born into a poor farming family and could barely write his own name and numbers.

The brown-haired, blue-eyed boy tightly gripped the Holy Sword with both hands because its weight was too much for him.

The young Hero, Dietrich.

We changed our strategy to holding out until the Hero grew older.

Everyone did their best to raise Dietrich, feeding him, clothing him, and teaching him.

I was the one who spent the most time with him. We were closest in age, and we were always fighting together.

For four years, we repeatedly advanced and retreated.

Little by little, reinforcements arrived from the rear, and the Demon King subjugation army grew to thirty thousand soldiers.

At last, we advanced all the way to the northernmost edge of the continent, right in front of the Demon King’s Castle.

Although years had passed, the Hero was only sixteen.

I, however, was twenty, and my divine power had reached its peak.

There was only one problem.

Our enemy, known as the Demon King of Despair, possessed the greatest power of any Demon King in history.

Dietrich had suffered a severe injury while fighting one of the Demon King’s incarnations.

I was able to heal his physical injuries, but his soul had also been shaken, leaving him unable to move.

The Demon King’s true body was inside the Demon King’s Castle. And the closer we got to the Demon King, the stronger the monsters making up his army became, while their rate of reproduction increased as well.

We had fought relentlessly to make it this far.

There was no way I could retreat after gaining nothing.

I decided to use the sealing technique I had learned at the Central Great Temple.

The plan was to use all thirty thousand soldiers as bait, drawing out the enemies protecting the Demon King’s Castle while I charged in alone and sealed the Demon King’s soul.

It was a tactic used by the Princess of Victory and Hero five generations ago. It was said to reduce the Demon King’s power by roughly half and throw the command structure of his army into disarray.

Naturally, the little Hero cried and protested desperately, insisting that we couldn’t do it.

So I ordered them to put him to sleep, tie him up tightly, and take him away.

And now, I was flying forward with all my strength to carry out the plan.

I destroyed every insignificant enemy that came at me with divine power, punching and kicking my way through them.

Eventually, I encountered the Demon King’s true body.

I brought my hands together as if in prayer and slammed them down with all my strength.

“Guh!”

A pitch-black soul burst from the Demon King’s body.

I quickly caught it with one hand, slammed it against the floor, and firmly stepped on it with one foot.

The Demon King’s true body, which hurriedly fled, was the Hero’s responsibility.

Hundreds of chains descended from the sky and bound the Demon King’s soul.

A sharp scream scraped against my ears.

Five years at the shortest, ten years at the longest.

For sixteen-year-old Dietrich to defeat the Demon King, he would need several years.

The moment the Demon King’s head was severed, the seal would be broken.

The only drawback of this technique was that the Princess of Victory who cast it would also become sealed together with the enemy.

In other words, I couldn’t escape the seal until the Demon King died.

So, my little Hero, hurry up and come rescue your princess big sister.

Let’s hold hands and return home together.

Back to our beloved home.

The Demon King’s soul, which had been thrashing endlessly beneath my feet, shattered with a crack.

The chains of divine power wrapped around me disappeared, and little by little, sensation began returning to my entire body.

I forced strength into my heavy eyelids, and my vision gradually cleared.

I was standing in the center of an old hall filled with acrid dust.

When I raised my head, I saw a man standing at the entrance.

Eyes as blue as the sky.

Yet the hair that shone beneath the sunlight was dazzling blond.

Our eyes met, and he quickly approached me.

The man knelt on one knee before me and respectfully greeted me.

“Princess of Victory, I am the Hero, Licht.”

It was a face I had never seen before.

And yet, his soul belonged to the Hero I knew so well.

Looking at this unfamiliar Hero whom I had never met before, I finally realized.

It had taken humanity far longer than I had expected to defeat the Demon King.

My family, my friends, my comrades-in-arms—

They had all departed into the distant passage of time.

Leaving only me behind.