Chapter 36: The RoFan Female Lead is Strong (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 36: The RoFan Female Lead is Strong (6)
#5 Holy Kingdom Correspondent, Codename Boradori.
"I denounce [Name]!"
This is a scene that frequently appears in RoFan novels when the villainess is being brought down. It is an act that effectively ends the opponent's life.
Of course, being a RoFan, it usually meant social execution, not an actual killing.
Well, if they had committed a truly serious crime, they might be dragged to the guillotine. However, while the typical RoFan villainess might harass the heroine, they rarely go as far as sending assassins.
That’s why, even when denounced, the opponent rarely put up a desperate, violent struggle. They would look for an opening, and if they could refute the claims, they might even manage to turn the tables.
In the original work, the Cardinals did exactly that—they tried to step back and wait for an opportunity following the denunciation by Daisy and the Pope.
They failed and ended up in prison, but at least there wasn't some massive, violent collision during the process.
However, execution is a different story.
It meant they were going to be killed right then and there.
Opportunities be damned; if the Cardinals gave up here, they would simply die.
They say a cornered rat will bite a cat. But these Cardinals weren't rats; they were cats, and they were currently inside their own home.
"Kill those who have deceived His Holiness with wicked tricks and reclaim the Pope!"
They fought back desperately, mobilizing the Holy Knights to push forward.
The majority of the Holy Knights seemed confused, but those who had shared in the Cardinals' dirty deeds charged at us without hesitation, intent on killing us.
That was a while ago.
In a half-delirious state, I struggled like a dog alongside the RoFan leads.
The silver lining was that, being RoFan leads, they were damn good at fighting.
Asran, in particular, seemed to have improved even more than the original descriptions I remembered—perhaps because he had been humbled not only by Ellen but by Adam as well.
"Ugh!"
However, he had only improved his skills; he wasn't at the level of performing miracles yet.
Though he struck down wave after wave of Holy Knights, the faction within the Holy Kingdom that supported reform—including the RoFan party—was far too small.
After the continuous series of battles, Asran’s sword was knocked away, landing at our feet.
He immediately snatched up a sword from a fallen Holy Knight to hold the front line, but it was clear he wouldn't last much longer. For a swordsman of Asran’s caliber to lose his grip on his weapon meant he had reached his limit.
I was in the same boat. I had scraped the bottom of my mana pool long ago, to the point where my heart was beginning to sting.
It was at that moment, as defeat loomed before our eyes.
"..."
Daisy, who had been quietly staring at Asran’s sword, picked it up from the ground.
"Daisy?"
I knew Daisy had boosted her close-combat stats quite a bit, but martial arts and swordsmanship are two different things.
Adam had been pushing hard for her to transfer to the Swordsmanship Department based on her combat record. I knew that the Head Professor of the Swordsmanship Department, the Sword Emperor, had actually tried to push the transfer through after becoming interested in Adam's recommendation, but he had given up because Professor McGregor, the Head of the Magic Department, had been dead set against it.
So, Daisy shouldn't have learned how to use a sword.
Or so I thought.
"O Goddess. Grant me strength."
But for a RoFan heroine, formal swordsmanship didn't matter.
With just a single short prayer, a light more brilliant than even the Sword Emperor’s Aura Blade coalesced around the sword.
"...That’s actually possible?"
My jaw dropped as I watched the radiantly glowing blade.
Of course, divine power isn't a destructive force like Aura, but with that much light, it would certainly draw enough aggro...
"O Goddess, your first servant beseeches you."
"...Huh?"
While my attention was caught by Daisy’s aggro, the Pope had somehow moved in front of her. He reached out a small hand, touched the sword Daisy was holding, and began to offer a prayer to the Goddess.
"O Goddess."
"O Goddess."
"Wait, what? What? What?!"
It was growing.
The pillar of light gathered on the sword was rising toward the sky, massive and magnificent.
"..."
"..."
"..."
The chaotic battlefield fell silent.
The Cardinals, who had been screaming in rage. The Holy Knights of both the Cardinal and Reform factions, who had been shouting as they fought. And the RoFan party, who had been fighting for their lives in the middle of it all.
Everyone was forced to stop fighting and look toward a single point.
"...Just how big is that thing going to get?"
The moment the pillar of light—which was looking less like a sword and more like a tower—stopped growing, the world was dyed in white.
"Is that the Holy Sword from the legends?"
"No, that's just a cheap mass-produced sword..."
Asran’s muttering was distracting, but my focus was immediately pulled back by the voices that followed.
"On behalf of the Goddess, I ask you."
"On behalf of the Goddess, I ask you."
Daisy and the Pope asked the same question simultaneously. In response, the massive pillar of light flickered, asserting its overwhelming presence.
"Wow..."
As if the Goddess herself were acknowledging Daisy and the Pope as her proxies, a divine light that defied description began to envelop the world.
"O Goddess..."
"Ah."
The Saintess and the Pope had come together; miracle joined miracle to complete a scene straight out of mythology.
At that, every servant of the Goddess fell silent.
Even I, who lacked faith, felt a surge of religious devotion just by looking at it. If Daisy asked me to join right now, I was ready to become a faithful servant of the Goddess. Who could say no to someone holding that?
Honestly... if the Demon King were here right now and Daisy threatened him with that sword, wouldn't he convert to the Church of Light?
I didn't know the actual power of that sword since it never appeared in the original work, but the impact alone was sufficient.
If even I, a proponent of the 'Useless Goddess' theory, felt this way, imagine how the people of the Holy Kingdom—who actually believed in her—felt.
"Aah..."
"Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me..."
"The sinner is here."
"O Goddess..."
Every Holy Knight dropped their sword and pressed their forehead to the ground. Some trembled in fear, confessing their sins and seeking atonement.
"..."
It was the same for everyone else. Only a few high-ranking sinners, like Cardinal Sergio, who had already crossed the point of no return, could only gape in helpless shock.
"Where did you say the will of the Goddess lies?"
Daisy’s cold voice echoed through the world.
If there were a comment section right now, it would be flooded with "Unnie, you're so cool!" Just seeing it in person made my heart race.
I feel bad for the male leads, but if she confessed looking like that, even a GL Drift would be possible. I wonder if my boss would be happy that Prince Ellen got dumped? Well, I'm glad that's not actually happening.
Anyway.
"This is the will of the Goddess."
Daisy swung the sword emitting that brilliant light, and the Holy Kingdom arc—brought forward by two years—reached its finale.
—So, that’s what happened...
In private, she was Violet, but in an official capacity, she was Boradori.
And I wasn't just Adam; I was Boradori’s superior.
Therefore, it was standard to demand formal speech when she was in her Boradori persona, but this time, I couldn't bring myself to say anything even though she was speaking informally.
—A hell of a lot happened. I'm so exhausted...
I stayed silent at the slumped voice of Boradori—no, Violet. I felt like if I said, "But isn't this a disaster you brought on yourself?" a talented employee would quit on the spot.
Fine, I'll admit it. She did work hard. She finished a three-year storyline in about a week.
—And now they're trying to make me a Cardinal!
"How did it even come to that...?"
It was starting to get scary. Had it even been a month since summer vacation started?
I had used Teleport repeatedly to get back to the Royal Palace in a little over half a day to make sure Prince Ellen didn't cause trouble. The RoFan party would have taken a carriage to the Holy Kingdom.
And yet, I wake up to find my junior colleague about to be slapped with the title of Cardinal of the Holy Kingdom.
—I don't know... I told them there's no way the Pope can just appoint someone like that. Daisy said it seemed fine, and when I asked if that even made sense, the Pope said the Goddess gave a divine revelation that Daisy should be allowed to do whatever she wants...!
Is this what they mean in manga when they draw those swirling eyes? She was half-insane and rambling, but the content was serious.
"The Goddess said she can do whatever she wants?"
—That's what they say!
It seemed the useless Goddess in the heavens really liked Daisy’s grand cleanup. Come to think of it, even in the Bible, the Monkey Wrench of Nazareth normalized a temple with a single whip. To the Goddess, Daisy must have looked like that.
A proxy who would normalize the broken Holy Kingdom! Everything she did was bound to look adorable.
—Save me!
I wanted to cut the communication right then and there, but I couldn't.
"Uh, well. Good job."
—Don't just say 'good job,' save me!
"The Captain says he'll compensate you handsomely."
—I don't need money, just save me right now!
"Just because someone becomes a Sword Master doesn't mean they can teleport with a sword... even a Sword Master's grandfather couldn't do that..."
—Aaaaaagh!
It was true. Even the Sword Emperor could split the sky or the sea, but he couldn't tear through space to teleport.
—At this rate, I'm going to become a Cardinal!
To anyone else, it might sound like a joke, but the horror was that it could actually happen. Most of the Holy Kingdom's Cardinals had been dismissed and were currently rotting in the dungeon.
The massive pillar of light created by the Pope and Daisy didn't actually possess physical force proportional to its size. Well, if divine power had that kind of destructive power, everyone would have been priests instead of knights.
However, within the Holy Kingdom, it was a strike more feared than the Sword Emperor’s blade.
The Sword of Condemnation.
That was the name given to the strike Daisy delivered, according to Violet. A strike that stripped a condemned sinner of all their divine power—effectively a death sentence for a clergyman.
If the users hadn't been the Pope and the Saintess, it wouldn't have been strange for them to be branded as wicked heretics.
But because of who the users were, and because everyone in the Holy Kingdom had seen that brilliant light, the Pope and the Saintess became not heretics, but divine executioners sent by the Goddess to cut down all the corrupt sinners.
Thanks to that, the number of Cardinals in the Holy Kingdom dropped from twelve to two.
They had to pick ten new Cardinals, and in the current situation, if the Pope and Daisy wanted to parachute someone in, the reality was that no one in the Holy Kingdom could stop them.
"But if you become a Cardinal, can you still come back to the Academy?"
—Aaaaaagh!
I guess she can't.
I couldn't bring myself to turn off the communication device, which was now emitting screams rather than human speech, so I just set it aside in a corner for a moment.
I summarized what I had heard and reported it to the Captain.
Summary:
The Saintess our Prince fell for has conquered the Holy Kingdom with a sword.
And our agent is about to become a Cardinal.
The end.
"...Stop joking around."
The Captain’s face contorted at my brief summary.
"I'm not joking."
It was a short summary, but there was no more accurate way to put it.
"Please, just tell me it's a joke..."
The Captain pleaded with a rare, tearful expression.
"I left the communication device on in my room. Do you want to hear it for yourself?"
"No..."
One can flee from reality, but one cannot change it.