Saintess Sistina
Violet demonic energy seeped through the chamber in slow, creeping wisps. At the very edge of a massive throne, a small girl with black hair and crimson eyes sat dangling her legs in the air.
Her name was Bercella. A high-ranking demon, she had inherited the throne as the fifth Demon King after her predecessor fell to the Hero.
Her residence — Demon Castle Kutranux — was a realm beyond human reach, crawling with every manner of powerful monster. It was a place so terrifying that most adventurers could not even set foot at its gates. And yet Bercella trembled with dread.
"Nnh... so they never found the Hero after all..."
Bercella muttered, biting down on her lower lip. The memory of the day her father, the previous Demon King, was cut down before her eyes was still painfully vivid.
The Demon King is always slain by the Hero. And once peace settles over the world, a new Demon King appears once more. It was a history that had already repeated four times over.
The moment she took the throne, she would have to wait for the day a Hero came to kill her. Bercella found that fact unbearably terrifying.
Of course, the Demon Kings before her had not simply sat still and accepted their fate. They had prepared in their own ways — fortifying the castle's defenses, replenishing their ranks with powerful monsters, and more. But none of those methods could ever stop the Hero.
The Hero was a being who appeared for one purpose alone: to slay the Demon King, blessed by the Goddess herself. No matter how mighty the high-ranking monsters the Demon King deployed, no matter what traps and barriers they prepared, none of it meant anything against that power.
And so the fifth Demon King, Bercella, concluded that meeting the Hero with force was meaningless. The scheme she devised instead was to find him as quickly as possible — before he could grow strong — and kill him.
She infiltrated the human realm with monsters under transformation magic, and uncovered how Heroes came to appear in this world.
The churches serving the Seven Goddesses would gather for a regular council, and through an oracle, they would select a Saintess. The Saintess thus chosen would receive a revelation from the Goddess and find the Hero who had appeared in the world. That was the process by which a Hero was born.
The Hero was not strong enough to face the Demon King from the start. A seemingly unremarkable young man from some rural village could, in truth, be the Hero. But once that Hero began to adventure and accumulate experience, he would grow stronger at a terrifying speed no ordinary adventurer could match. Strong enough, in time, to defeat even the Demon King.
Bercella had no confidence she could win against a Hero who had grown that far. So decades ago, she sent a high-ranking demon named Xavier — known as the Lord of Deceit — into a human village.
Xavier entered the church as an apprentice priest in the guise of a young boy, won the humans' trust, and eventually rose all the way to bishop of a diocese. And now that a Saintess had even been chosen from Bishop Xavier's own diocese, Bercella had believed that finding the Hero was only a matter of time.
But no matter how much time passed, there was no word. The Saintess had failed to find the Hero.
She could have waited a little longer. Bercella, however, lacked the patience. In the end, she ordered Xavier to kill the Saintess — hoping the next one would find the Hero more quickly.
That very evening, after I had persuaded Saintess Sistina in the back alley behind the general store, I hurriedly prepared to leave the village.
With no way of knowing when Bishop Xavier's plan would be set in motion, staying at the church any longer struck me as a dangerous gamble. Even knowing he meant to kill the Saintess, I had no means of stopping him as I was now. In that case, the best option was to run.
Fortunately, Sistina agreed to the escape even more readily than I had expected. She had wanted to quit being the Saintess from the start, so once she had a solid reason, there was nothing left to hesitate over.
With her consent secured, we decided to make our move that same evening. Having been a beggar, I had nothing in particular to pack, so I slipped out of the church in secret and waited at the village entrance.
After a short wait, Sistina appeared in a long hooded robe, just as she had when we met in that back alley.
"Did I keep you waiting long?"
"No, I just got here myself."
Sistina still looked uneasy somehow.
"The money for the carriage..."
At my question, she quietly nodded and briefly showed me a money pouch that looked quite heavy.
"Then let's go."
I hurried her along toward the carriage stand.
The carriage rolled slowly through the deep darkness.
I had figured we would need money, but I never expected them to gouge us this hard just for leaving at night — and it was not even a listed surcharge. The coachman had dug in his heels and refused to make a night run; we had only barely managed to buy him off. Thankfully, Sistina's funds were enough to cover it.
Our destination was a city called Kubel. I knew next to nothing about this world's geography, so Sistina had chosen where we were going.
Kubel was a trade city, also known as a free city. The reason she had picked it, she said, was that there was no church there.
"This feels strange."
The carriage was built so that no one could see inside from the outside, so Sistina pulled off the stuffy hood she had been wearing the whole time and spoke.
"It's a matter of life and death. Can't be helped."
"That's true. Now that I've run from the church, I'm not the Saintess anymore."
Sistina's expression turned bitter. She had gotten what she wanted and left the role behind — but she had not wanted to leave it like this.
"Looking back on it now, Bishop Xavier's attitude was strange."
"How so?"
"Well. Because I wasn't receiving any revelations, he came to my house once. He pressed me about whether I was praying properly at home, and suggested I go back to the holy site for Saintess training again. It felt like he was pushing me."
"That... must have been difficult."
Bishop Xavier must have been truly desperate.
Sistina looked at me as she said it.
"Tina?"
"It'll be a problem if my identity gets out."
Well, if Bishop Xavier found out the Saintess had suddenly vanished, he would not just sit on his hands. If she wanted to live without trouble going forward, changing her name was the smarter move.
"Once we arrive in Kubel, what will you do, Tina?"
I asked, switching to the new name without missing a beat. Tina answered with an awkward look, still unused to being called by it.
"I'll have to find work. Kubel has plenty of jobs, so it should be fine. What about you, Yunoa?"
I wanted to say I wanted to become an adventurer — but then I remembered how insanely expensive the swords at the weapon shop had been. I would need basic gear and some sword training just to even darken the guild's doorstep. Thinking about it that way, even adventuring in this world was a job you needed capital to start.
Well, not much I could do about it. Might as well earn some money doing whatever came my way.
"I'll have to find work too."
"I figured as much."
"And then I'll save up and become an adventurer."
Some dreams, after all, you just cannot let go of.
The free city of Kubel.
The moment Tina and I arrived, we wished each other luck, exchanged a brief farewell, and went our separate ways. We had fled together because we each had our own reasons for leaving the church, but that was no reason to stick together in a new city.
Yunoa found himself regretting that he had let a beauty like Tina slip away.
That walking beside a beautiful woman required ability to match was a self-evident truth — and yet Yunoa entertained such thoughts without knowing his place.
All that remained to him now were a few silver coins and a worthless body.
The moment I was alone again, the Narration mercilessly hurled its venom at me.
"Well, that's how it is."
It did not particularly bother me. It was exactly as the Narration had said. It was practically a personal attack, but strictly speaking, none of it was wrong.
My life before reincarnating into this other world could be summed up in two words.
NEET. Hikikomori.
So the means I had chosen to escape reality had been reincarnating in another world. I just never thought it would actually happen.
I had thought that if I came to another world, I could live a cheat life where everything would fall into place just by breathing. But living here was just as hard. No — with so many things that could actually kill you, it might have been an even scarier, harder world.
At first I could not accept that, and I could not keep my temper when the Narration tore into me. Whenever I tried to do even a little better, it would invariably show up and hammer it home: Remember. You were always just worthless trash.
But after exhausting myself cleaning the church every day and sleeping in an uncomfortable warehouse, it dawned on me eventually. The things the Narration had said were uncomfortable truths. It had taken me a long time to accept and acknowledge that myself.
Still, I had accomplished one thing since coming here, hadn't I? The Narration had helped, but I was the man who saved the Saintess's life. I think I am allowed to take pride in that.
"Alright then. Let's start by earning some money, whatever it takes."
I stretched and looked out at the lively streets of the free city of Kubel spread before my eyes. A lot had happened, but somehow it felt like I had only just arrived in this other world.
Yunoa abruptly took time to reflect on just how much of a waste he had been.
But thinking about it changed nothing at all.
"Yeah, I know."
I just have to do something, that's all.
With that, I stepped into the streets of Kubel — already vowing that someday, I would make that Narration spit out words of praise for me.