Before She Was a Saintess
Hero Lee Yu-seong, who had just made a killing in Marinella Kingdom, was stretched out lazily inside a carriage, resting as he rode toward Sword Waterfall.
Then he suddenly thought of the holy knight who had joined the hero’s party. The overwhelming prowess that had driven the knight commander into a corner. The stance, the expression, that never wavered even while blocking a killing technique.
Even that would have been hard for him to pull off. But something else lingered in his mind.
She was unbelievably pretty. Maybe I should try seducing her.
Lee Yu-seong imagined himself defeating the Demon King in spectacular fashion, then proposing before the king, and wiped away the saliva gathering at the corner of his mouth. By now, the saintess and the holy knight were probably waiting for him at Sword Waterfall.
After a while, the sky began to darken. Soon, the familiar road came into view beyond the window. They were not far from Sword Waterfall now.
"Huh? Why’s this thing suddenly acting up?"
The horse pulling the carriage whinnied sharply and veered back the way they had come. The driver tried to calm the panicked animal, but it was no use.
An enormous mass of miasma was approaching Sword Waterfall in a perfectly straight line.
It had been five years since he’d been summoned to this world, but he had never felt miasma this powerful before.
What the hell is this? I should run.
The saintess and the holy knight would probably run on their own, right? Still lying in the carriage as it turned around, he decided he would catch up later.
A little while later, Lee Yu-seong saw a domain glowing even in the night.
Domain Declaration? Are these idiots insane? There are only two of them. They’re fighting a monster like that?
Dust scattered from far away. Even at a glance, the high-ranking monster was more than a hundred meters long and at least three meters wide. It looked like a fully grown basilisk. Even from this distance, the ground trembled as if an earthquake had struck.
Lee Yu-seong jumped down from the wildly fleeing carriage. He had never intended to join the fight from the start. His calculation had been simple: if they could win against the monster together, then he would join in.
He moved closer until he could barely make out the saintess and the holy knight with his own eyes. Watching the basilisk charge at terrifying speed, Lee Yu-seong felt his knees weaken. Its black, glossy scales made him doubt whether his aura would even work.
Then there was an explosive sound, and the holy knight and the beast collided. Seeing the holy knight calmly stop the charge, Lee Yu-seong let out an involuntary gasp of admiration.
At that level, she could probably stop a running KTX all by herself. Insane.
The basilisk’s tightly packed scales, possessing a density and weight utterly beyond steel, had enough resistance to block aura to a certain degree. He suspected its weight might be comparable to steel despite being much shorter in length. The path the beast had carved through the earth was gouged so deeply it looked like a dry drainage ditch.
But Lee Yu-seong still did not rush in. The buffed holy knight and the monster traded blows, but not a single attack landed cleanly. Even if he joined now, defeating that monstrous beast seemed impossible. Unless a mage slammed it with curses and every spell under the sun, all they could hope to do was wound it.
When the saintess lifted the domain, Lee Yu-seong smiled. It looked like the holy knight and saintess had decided to abandon the village and flee. He had grown fond of the people of Sword Waterfall, in his own way, but this was surely not the real world he had lived in, was it?
He intended to catch up with the retreating saintess and holy knight, then leave with the Holy Sword a little later. As he settled into that modest little plan, Lee Yu-seong was dumbfounded.
No, why aren’t they running? Has that woman lost her mind? Does she want to die?
An anxious feeling began to gnaw at him. He had liked the holy knight, who was both strong and pretty. As time passed, the holy knight’s injuries only piled up. Now, at a glance, they were clearly severe. Lee Yu-seong fretted miserably, wavering as he wondered whether he should help now after all.
Only just before the holy knight was about to be swallowed did Lee Yu-seong regret it. If he had rushed in and fought beside her from the very beginning, would the outcome have changed? Breath caught in his chest at his own foolishness, he could not bear to look and turned his head away.
Then, all at once, light flashed brilliantly, and chains pouring radiant light up from the ground began to bind the basilisk tightly. A massive pillar dropped from above to pin the chains in place so the creature could not struggle free.
The saintess used Temenus! Isn’t that an incredibly hard skill to learn? How did she...? No, wait. Was this her plan all along?
It was the saintess’s highest-ranked skill, capable of restraining even the Demon King for at least a full minute if it landed. The drawback was that it took more than five minutes just to recite the prayer while canceling every buff, making it rather impractical. In that brief span, the holy knight—who had held out without a mage or hero for so long—looked even more impressive.
I should’ve joined from the start. Lee Yu-seong clicked his tongue and flopped down where he stood. Even with his eyes closed, the image of the beautiful holy knight finishing off the basilisk kept floating before him.
At this point, if he went back to the village, he might only be suspected of having stood around and watched, so he decided he would sleep rough and go in the next morning.
"Welcome. I’m Lee Yu-seong, the Hero of the Sword."
Saint Irene was oddly displeased with the Hero of the Sword. It wasn’t because of his appearance. It was his look, the sort found among people from the eastern nations. Black eyes, black hair. The hero’s Eastern features were still a little unfamiliar, but he was handsome enough.
The hero had arrived at Sword Waterfall the morning after the basilisk had been slain. She did not think that if he had come even one day earlier, Hilde wouldn’t have been injured like this.
Why don’t you go scrub the dirt off yourself, you disgusting bastard.
Common yellow earth from around Sword Waterfall had clung to the back of his clothes in patches. She wasn’t sure whether he even knew there was a little leaf stuck in his hair.
It was obvious he had come today only after being too scared to help and merely watching yesterday. Irene had already held back the urge to tell him to get lost more than a hundred times.
The saintess looked at Hilde lying in the bed. Every time her divine power rose, she’d cast healing on her, but the injuries were still there. The inside of her body was probably even worse.
"Hello. I’m Irene Sermilt, the saintess."
"Haha. I heard you achieved a great feat yesterday. Congratulations."
Irene smiled with her stomach churning. In the end, this was still a hero too. He must have had reasons that made some sense, at least. Anyone could see it had been impossible to deal with that monster. One’s own life was the most precious thing in the world.
Shut your mouth. The saintess swallowed the words that had climbed all the way to her throat, not just once but more than two hundred times, in her head.
Hilde opened her eyes. For some reason, she felt as if she had slept for a long time and all her fatigue had vanished. Irene’s warm divine power still lingered pleasantly inside her body.
"Did you sleep well, Hilde? Are you feeling all right?"
Irene came over carrying an apple and a paring knife. Hilde suddenly found the sight funny. It felt strangely out of place, seeing Irene—who was always only ever pulling pranks—look like she’d come on a hospital visit.
Hilde nodded and watched the saintess peel the apple. Then she took the knife and apple away from her. The saintess was terrible at peeling fruit. Thick chunks of flesh were still clinging to the skin.
Irene’s cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. Then she kept shooting sidelong glances at Hilde, as if to see how well she could do it. But Hilde swiftly rotated the apple, stripping away the peel and slicing it neatly into bite-sized pieces. The saintess stared, mouth slightly open in admiration at a feat almost like sleight of hand.
"You’re good at peeling fruit. When did you learn that?"
"My mother taught me. I used to peel them for her sometimes when she was cooking."
After a brief pause, the saintess picked up a fork and speared a slice of apple toward Hilde. At Irene’s soft "ah," Hilde had no choice but to open her mouth.
There came a knock at the door. The saintess frowned for some reason.
"Come in."
At Irene’s words, a young man with familiar black hair and black eyes entered. His face was so Korean that it stirred a strange sense of nostalgia. Since most of the continent looked more like Westerners, it was a little surprising.
"Hilde, this is the Hero who arrived this morning."
Hilde tilted her head, catching the sharper edge in Irene’s tone. It was a change only she, who had stayed close to Irene for years, could notice. There was something odd in the air.
"Hello. I’m Hilde Sermilt, the saintess’s personal holy knight and guardian from the Central Temple of Senium."
Up close, the hero was inwardly amazed by Hilde’s soft voice. She was incredibly, incredibly beautiful. Her voice was lovely too. He wanted her.
After a brief pause, the hero barely managed to gather his thoughts and speak.
"It’s nice to meet you, Lady Hilde. I’m Lee Yu-seong, the Hero."
Then he went on, looking crestfallen.
"If I’d arrived just one day earlier, I wouldn’t have left you to carry such a burden alone. I’m truly sorry."
Lee Yu-seong bowed his head and apologized to Hilde. Hilde was puzzled. No one had known that a basilisk would appear yesterday. How could arriving late be Lee Yu-seong’s fault?
"It’s all right. In the end, everyone did their part anyway. It’s not the hero’s fault either."
Lee Yu-seong was impressed. No matter whose fault it wasn’t, people naturally tended to blame others when they were suffering. Thinking she must have a kind heart, he made one decision. First choice for a bride.
Lee Yu-seong looked into Hilde’s eyes. For a moment, his mind was lost in those blue eyes and could not find its way out.
"Lady Hilde, could it be that you..."
Hilde was puzzled by the way he dragged out the sentence, but she stayed silent. However, seeing the saintess’s cheeks redden and the hero hesitate, she felt a wave of disgust. She had already guessed what was coming next.
"Do you happen to have a boyfriend?"
Hilde nearly dropped the fork she’d been using to take a bite of apple. Plenty of people showed interest in her, but that wasn’t the kind of question a hero should ask the first time they met.
She was flustered for a moment, but her expression remained calm. It wasn’t as though she couldn’t understand, having been a man in her previous life.
"No."
"Then, perhaps with me..."
Hilde hurriedly cut him off.
"I’m a lesbian. Thank you, but I’m truly sorry."
At the shocking declaration, Lee Yu-seong and Irene were both deeply thrown off. In truth, Hilde was not a lesbian. Nor did she want to date a man.
She simply didn’t feel like dating anyone yet.
Maybe later, if someone she liked came along, but right now, she felt no such emotion at all.
"Ah, uh... I see. I’m even more sorry."
Lee Yu-seong was thrown into complete confusion. A lesbian?
But they would be traveling together for at least the next few years.
If he tried hard enough, wouldn’t he eventually get somewhere?
The hero was more focused on dating Hilde than on defeating the Demon King.
Hilde was stirring soup over a campfire.
By the next day, her body had fully healed, so there was no longer any need to stay in the village. Irene’s healing was remarkable.
If one of my arms or legs got cut off, would she regenerate it too?
At dawn, she headed straight into the cave at Sword Waterfall with the hero and pulled out the Holy Sword. The sword did come free, which meant the hero had to be real. She hadn’t expected it to take three hours because the blade would come out so slowly, little by little.
Since it took longer than expected to draw the Holy Sword, they had lunch before departing. The villagers thanked them by checking all their equipment for free and giving them a fair amount of money and food. She had intended to refuse, since the royal family was already providing support, but it felt rude to ignore their sincerity, so she simply had everything moved into the carriage.
Now, after passing through a few more cities, they would reach the magic tower in the north, Scotie. Even riding in a carriage all day, it would still take a week, but she didn’t mind at all. She’d been fighting nonstop lately and was already sick of it.
Still, she worried about the road ahead. Even while the hero and his companions were just beginning to gather, dangers like this had already occurred. It was the sort of unpredictable variable that only appeared at the highest difficulty. At that setting, no one could know what would happen, or where, or when. If things went badly, a high-ranking demon under the Demon King’s direct command might appear before they had even finished assembling.
That won’t happen, right? It really won’t, right?
Hilde’s expression darkened. She handed the soup to the saintess and the hero, then ate in silence herself.
"Lady Hilde. Are you worried about something?"
Hero Lee Yu-seong asked cautiously. After the lesbian remark, he had become strangely careful. Since talking about games to himself felt awkward, he brought up something else.
"We’re about to head off to meet the mage, and I can’t help worrying about a lot of things."
"Why are you worrying? Can’t you just go meet them and join up?" Irene said, sounding puzzled. Hilde thought about it for a moment. Well...
"I just... hope they’ll be a good person."
Hilde said it offhandedly, but for some reason, Lee Yu-seong’s stomach lurched.