Bernoa's Memories
As expected, Celia was there.
“Olivia~!”
She called out in an unusually sweet, coquettish voice.
Yeah. The answer was obvious enough.
Berna dangled from her hand—soaked in blood from head to toe.
“Just as promised, I've caught a Four Heavenly King~!”
Ah, for fuck's sake.
“So.”
Haah. That idiot Berna. I should've just killed her when I had the chance. Not a single one of the Four Heavenly Kings has ever been anything but a headache in my life.
“Marry me!”
I'd said it half as a joke. But a mage's promise weighs as heavy as a thousand gold pieces.
My life is completely fucked.
Third Corps Fortress
BOOM. KA-BOOM!
Massive mana shells roared from the mana-stone cannons and smashed into the Third Corps fortress, tearing into the demons. It was pure, one-sided slaughter. Demons struck by the shells simply burst where they stood, spilling blood and guts until they were nothing but heaps of meat.
The Third Corps had once been under Berna's command. With her bound to Olivia, they could not mount a proper defense against the Ashtar army's surprise assault. Driven by raw demonic instinct, they charged without strategy and were cut down for it.
“How dare you filthy demons raise a hand against Ashtar.”
“Ho. Your Grace is rather impressive yourself.”
“And you, Lady Natalia, are as sharp as ever.”
At the front, the Ashtar Duke and Natalia of the Light Sword carved through demons with their blades. They had not committed the infantry, but the press of demons still coming at them was thick enough that they held a defensive line and simply kept firing.
Bang! Bang-bang!
In front of the Ashtar gun batteries—resupplied with the kingdom's potions—the demons died without pause. The whole place had become a vast proving ground for new weapons.
“And you're running a full-scale trial of the new armaments as well.”
“If not now, when else would we ever use them?”
He had a point. If not now, when would they get a proper chance to put them through their paces?
The gun batteries advanced in ordered ranks, firing as they closed on the Third Corps fortress. They possessed formidable power on the attack as well.
“We've nearly finished cleaning this up. Why not push with the mage corps and the knight order? At this rate we won't take much more damage—and Seto could still take the field.”
This was not ordinary ground. This was the Demon King's domain, the very heartland of the Four Heavenly Kings. The aerial monsters that had been entrenched in the mountain range alone suggested Seto's hand might already be involved.
“And Berna… hmm.”
“You need not worry about Berna.”
Natalia waved a hand. Berna would not be coming here no matter what.
“Berna?”
That Olivia had stepped in. There was no world in which she lost. More likely she would bring Berna's head back on a platter. What was certain was that Berna would not be moving.
The Ashtar forces, locked in battle, had not seen it—but Natalia had. Two enormous meteors had already fallen on the castle.
My guess was right after all.
That Olivia really was the person she knew. She would not lose. If she could throw meteors like that, she could already call on her old strength—so Berna was no longer a problem. Pector would have had something to say about it as well. That left Seto as the real threat.
“Would that girl—obsessed enough with Lord Eldacrad to force her way into the mausoleum—ever leave Crad Castle?”
“Ho. You have a point. Right now Seto is the greater concern. Commit the mage corps and the knight order.”
Against a Third Corps already being massacred without resistance, the Ashtar mage corps and knight order surged forward.
Saint Bernoa's life began in an orphanage.
She never knew who her parents were. By the time Bernoa first became aware of herself as a person, she was already living there, day after day among children just like her. Even so, she must have come from noble blood somewhere; she was cleaner and more refined than any of the other children, the breeding of an aristocratic line so clear in her that anyone could see it at a glance. The other orphans followed her, and the director doted on her. The orphanage sat near the royal capital, so there was little fear of bandits. Most days were spent reading fairy tales with the children, playing, eating, and sleeping together. Someday, when she was a little older, she might be adopted or strike out on her own—but for now she simply lived those peaceful days to the full. She thought they would go on forever.
Then the war broke out.
Until then the Demon King's army had been little more than small-scale raids and plunder. Suddenly they invaded the kingdom in force. One day, deep into the long war, Bernoa found the orphanage director sighing over the ledgers.
“Of all times for the orphanage budget to run short…”
The royal house had always managed the orphanage welfare funds directly. Once full-scale war with the Demon King's army began, the entire treasury poured into the fighting and the orphanage's stipend shrank. Worse, as the war dragged on the budget kept falling while the number of orphans kept rising. It made sense. Half a year passed after the invasion before the kingdom's forces, under imperial support, managed to reorganize; until then noble armies across the land were shattered and the death toll climbed. Of course the orphanages filled. The director's sighs grew daily. The orphanage grew poorer. Food and clothes for the children ran short. The once-kind director, worn down by the struggle of keeping the place afloat, began to take it out on the children.
“It's hard enough running this place without you lot making my life hell! Just stay quiet for once!”
They had only been playing the way they always did. They had not even been difficult. Still the director vented on them—sometimes even striking Bernoa across the face.
Then one day, clergy arrived from the Holy Kingdom to support the kingdom. Among them, a high-ranking priest visited the orphanage. They had come to raise kingdom priests who could stand against the Demon King's army in the great war to come.
“I have a good feeling about this child.”
The Holy Kingdom priest sensed divine power in Bernoa and decided to take her. At first she meant to refuse. She had heard the path of a priest was long and harsh. Better to stay at the orphanage and care for the children—or, someday, become an adventurer and send help back. But the director, already at the end of his strength, sold her to the Holy Kingdom clergy.
“I'll sell you this child.”
Well. That was not so bad either. If the sacrifice of one person brought in money, so be it. The Holy Kingdom paid the price and took Bernoa away.
At first she traveled all the way to the Holy Kingdom itself, studied the doctrines of the Goddess Church, served the Goddess, and learned miracles so that she might become a priest. Whether because she threw herself wholly into every task, the Pope took notice of her.
“This child has the makings of a Saint.”
In the end she was dispatched as the kingdom's Saint. At first her work was tending the wounded at kingdom army camps and stepping forward to purify monsters. Before long the Empire's Ashtar forces arrived to support the kingdom army directly.
“Long live Lord Eldacrad!”
“Long live Ashtar!”
Victory piled on victory. To restore his house's fortunes, Eldacrad, head of Ashtar, threw his full support behind joint operations and in short order drove the Demon King's army from the kingdom's territory. Even the kingdom forces began to praise Eldacrad, calling him the rising star of the Empire; the kingdom itself even explored a royal marriage to forge a connection with him. And Bernoa was reassigned from the kingdom to Ashtar.
“I am Saint Bernoa, sent from the kingdom to deepen friendship with the Empire's House Ashtar.”
They had already fought side by side in joint campaigns, yet the Saint held no military command except in true emergencies. Until then she had only ever watched Eldacrad from afar. At last Bernoa met him. Eldacrad possessed the flawless looks and physique of a born hero, a man who seemed to radiate light from his very body.
Perhaps this man is the Hero himself.
Bernoa was certain.
This man is my light. My god.
She fell for Eldacrad at first sight—or rather, it felt as if fate itself had drawn her to him. Nothing else could explain the pounding in her chest.
“For the Saint I will prepare a separate annex at my Ashtar manor. Live comfortably there with the servants.”
Eldacrad was kind as well. She had never known her parents' faces, had grown up in an orphanage only to become the director's outlet for rage, and in the Holy Kingdom had endured bloody torture and training under the name of being reborn as a priest. Starved for affection, Bernoa was drawn ever deeper by Eldacrad's kindness. In the war she threw her life into the fight for his sake.
“Great Purification.”
Blinding light closed the wounds of the Ashtar army. Despite being outnumbered by the Demon King's forces, the Ashtar army won several frontal battles thanks to the Saint's great miracle. An army of thousands—sometimes tens of thousands—was tempered by the Saint into an elite force and, under Eldacrad, became an army that never lost.
Then one day, just as she was winning Eldacrad's trust, Bernoa witnessed a scene that shattered her.
“Why must you keep leading the army yourself? You have so many excellent generals under you.”
“How could I rest at ease while sending only my subordinates?”
He had a fiancée.
She was the daughter of a noble house from a neighboring territory—someone who had stood with him since before he even became head of the family, through the hardest times. They whispered sweet words of love to each other constantly. The rapidly shifting situation of Ashtar had kept them from formal marriage, yet they were husband and wife in all but name.
How… how can this be?
Bernoa tasted despair. This man had been her prince on a white horse, her light. Who could have imagined it would come to this? How could Lord Eldacrad already have a fiancée?
No—she had half-known. The soldiers themselves had talked about the fiancée.
—Think the Saint will end up his wife?
—Are you stupid? Saints can't marry.
—Besides, he already has a fiancée.
—Man's got more luck with women than anyone alive.
—Hahaha, our lord really is something else.
Even among the soldiers those words circulated. Given the average marriage age among nobles, he should already have been wed long ago. Especially for an Ashtar house struggling to restore its fortunes, marriage into another noble family was the natural way to grow stronger. And Eldacrad was the hero of Ashtar—of the Empire itself. It would have been stranger if such a hero had no fiancée.
Even so, she wanted to try at least once. Eldacrad's renown already filled the Empire and the kingdom. What was one small stain—marriage to a Saint? And they were only engaged. A broken engagement might stir gossip in noble society for a little while, but it would hardly prevent another marriage. So she decided to throw herself against the wall.
“My lord. I love you. Please—marry me.”
“That is impossible.”
He shook his head as if he had already known.
Ah. So it really was impossible. Still… not yet. One more try.
“My lord, why is it impossible?”
“You and I cannot marry.”
His refusal was absolute—far too absolute.
“Why?”
“First, I was already engaged before I ever met you. Second, you are a Saint. A Saint cannot marry.”
Did he love her that much? Still… not yet. Not yet. She resorted to the worst measure of all—words a Saint should never speak.
“If only you will decide it, my lord, I will do anything! I can renounce the office of Saint! Ashtar is already entering its golden age under you—so a mere engagement, at a time like this—”
“To me you are an advisor, and something like a friend. But I love my fiancée.”
He would not betray the woman he loved.
With those few words, the Saint crumbled.