Side Story: Hoping to Stay by Your Side Someday
Year 1228, Crad Castle
Whooooshhhhh!
A summer shower poured down over Crad Castle, where the Ashtar army had only just finished establishing its garrison. It was the first rain in a long while, and it seemed to wash away the exhaustion of the endless battles that had stretched on for so long.
For everyone except one.
“Ugh… uhhh… uhhh…”
Bernoa, the Saint of the Kingdom who had been dispatched to Ashtar, had finally sunk into a deep sleep after far too long—yet it did not last.
What unfolded before her dreaming eyes was an unbroken chain of nightmares she could not comprehend.
“Ah. My Demon King. So you were the lord after all.”
In a future not far from now, she would be captured by Seto and tainted by the Demon King through his hand. And she would be reborn as the Fallen Saint Berna.
“Aaaah, the power overflows! The Demon King’s power!”
“From this moment on, you are the Fallen Saint Berna. There is plenty of time. Exterminate the humans of the lands liberated by the Ashtar army, and kill the false lord so that my worries may be put to rest.”
From there, the wheel of fate had slipped out of place.
The Fallen Saint Berna slaughtered or corrupted countless humans with her own hands, just as the Demon King willed. And the true lord she had adored so desperately—she lured him into the Demon King’s castle, trapped him, and killed him.
“You seem to be under some misconception. The Demon King is the true lord! With my own will alone I swore love and loyalty to him! You are nothing but a defeated remnant. So you will die by my hand right here! The only lord is the Demon King himself!”
With her own hands.
“Ah… uhhh… hnnngh… aah…”
Bernoa thrashed in the bed, tears streaming without end. She had tried to stop it. Yet her fallen self had still killed her lord.
And the years rolled on again.
The Demon King was slain by the mage of the Hero Party. Then someone came to challenge her head-on—someone who had committed countless atrocities herself. The granddaughter of the lord: Olivia Lapa Ashtar. She was a woman who carried the soul of the Hero Party’s mage. With overwhelming power, Olivia beat Berna half to death.
“Is that how you drove Grandfather to his death?”
After taking the thrashing for what felt like forever, Berna barely escaped with her life. Somehow, even though it was not her own body being struck, Bernoa felt the pain in her back, throughout her entire frame.
Berna tried to corrupt Celia, Olivia’s close attendant—but she was no weakling either.
“With this, I can marry Lady Olivia!”
Kraaaaaaack!
Celia seized Berna’s face and slammed it full-force into the earth of the Demon Realm. In that instant, Bernoa’s whole body shuddered violently. It felt as if her skull had cracked open.
“Aaaagh… uugh… hiiik!”
In the end, Berna was captured by Ashtar and executed by the lord’s son. That, at least, was the story known to the outside world.
The truth was that the ill-tempered Olivia, using the lord’s memories and will she carried, along with the Demon King’s residual power, had taken the unstable Berna under her command and delivered her punishment.
To the Fallen Saint: become the Saint of the Empire’s thoroughly corrupted Goddess Church.
It was the worst possible sentence.
“If you didn’t like it, you shouldn’t have betrayed us.”
With Olivia’s mocking laugh ringing in her ears, Bernoa felt a deep surge of rage and snapped her eyes open.
“Hah!”
Bernoa awoke lying in a bed. Only a plain ceiling greeted her. Nowhere was that detestable Olivia to be seen.
“Th-that was… a dream? No. It was far too vivid to be just a dream.”
Biiiiiing
A sudden ringing filled her ears; her entire body throbbed with unbearable pain. Cold sweat poured down her skin, and she could still clearly feel the sensation of having killed her lord with her own hands. She used a miracle to ease the needle-like agony stabbing through her flesh.
Once her body had steadied somewhat, Bernoa picked up a hand mirror. No ashen hair, no crimson eyes from becoming a demon. Dark violet hair and brown eyes looked back at her.
“Was that truly something I experienced? No, that can’t be. It’s too strange.”
Her whole body was soaked through with sweat. This was no ordinary dream. It was far too vivid to simply dismiss.
Could that really have been me? Or… which one is me? Did I regress?
Among the saints of ages past, there had been those who spoke of regression, or proposed theories about parallel worlds. Perhaps she herself had returned to the past. Or perhaps that Fallen Saint Berna was a version of herself from a parallel world.
A chill ran through her.
That would mean she had killed her lord with her own hands. Horrifying. Utterly horrifying.
As that dreadful sensation took hold of her body, Bernoa suddenly shot upright from the bed.
“Then… where is my lord?”
Whether she was Berna or Bernoa no longer mattered in the slightest. She wanted to see her lord. Driven by that single desire, she rushed out of her room and sprinted toward the lord’s office.
And when she reached the office, what she saw was—
“So if we disperse the troops and…”
Eldacrad. The lord of Ashtar, Eldacrad. The man she loved. Her true lord—was alive.
The man she had killed after convincing herself he was a fake because the true lord did not love her—he was right there, breathing.
Yes. She loved the true lord after all.
Bernoa ran to him with all her strength.
“My lord!”
“Be… Bernoa?”
“My lord! My lord!”
Bernoa threw herself into his arms with everything she had. Whether from the dream or something else, it felt as though decades had passed since she last held him. That could not have been a mere dream. She must have truly lived it.
“Wh-what is the matter, Bernoa?”
Eldacrad gently pushed the Saint away. He had a wife, after all; he could not behave like this with the Saint.
“Ahem. Saint. The lord has a wife. This is most improper. And for one in the position of Saint to act so irreverently…”
The lord’s aide, Kyle, was also present in the office. Realizing Kyle was there as well, Bernoa’s face flushed red.
“I… that… well…”
“…Have you been crying? What on earth happened?”
Eldacrad was puzzled. Bernoa, crying? A Saint weeping—that had never happened before.
“Actually… I… that is…”
Bernoa shot Kyle a meaningful look, silently urging him to leave. This was not something she could say in front of anyone else.
“Kyle, step outside for a moment. It seems she has seen something strange again.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Sensing something was off, Eldacrad sent Kyle away.
“You need not speak if you do not wish to. But if it was enough to make you cry, I doubt it is something that can simply be ignored.”
Yes. She had no choice but to speak. She had briefly considered following the future as it was—letting herself be captured by Seto and dealing the Demon King a blow—but only if she remained alive could she pass on information about the Demon King in advance. She had to tell him.
“If I speak honestly… will you promise not to be angry?”
“Hm. Is it something that would make me angry?”
What could possibly have the Saint trembling like this as she spoke? She looked like a frightened puppy; it was almost pitiful.
“You might cast me aside, calling me a filthy woman, a whore.”
Eldacrad’s brow furrowed. What in the world was she saying? It made no sense.
“You are a Saint. How could a Saint ever be called a whore? Have you sold your body?”
“No.”
Of course not. Then what could it be?
“Then have you given your affection to many men?”
“N-no… well, that might be true.”
That might be true? The meaning only grew more opaque. What was certain was that her appearance had not changed in the slightest, yet a strange atmosphere clung to her. And her eyes looked at him as though she were gazing at a dead man.
“What do you mean by that?”
Bernoa told Eldacrad everything she had experienced. He listened carefully. The Saint’s words were far too earnest to dismiss. Still, he had never expected to hear from her own mouth that he would die—killed by a fallen Bernoa, no less.
“My lord, I am a filthy woman. Cast me aside. And stop advancing any further from here. Tend to internal affairs instead.”
At her words, Eldacrad’s expression tightened. Yes—after hearing it all, he roughly understood. The Saint was the most sacred woman of the Goddess Church. He had occasionally heard that saints with divine power could glimpse the future. Looking at Bernoa now, he could vaguely sense that nothing she said was a lie.
“How strange.”
“Pardon?”
Yes, he understood everything she had said. And yet—
“So what do you want me to do about it?”
What exactly was she asking of him? Was the Saint weeping so bitterly over events that had not even occurred yet?
“My lord, it was not a dream! I truly—!”
It was real. This was no time to brush it aside lightly.
“Yes. Even I can see that you are different somehow. But even if you truly did regress… so what?”
“My lord.”
Of course he could say such things so easily—he had not lived through it himself.
“It is not something that has happened yet, is it?”
“That is…”
That much was true as well.
“If it is the truth, then we simply change it.”
His expression held not the slightest trace of anger. Even though she was the one who had done wrong, he spoke as if comforting her. Simply because the present him had not experienced it, he said they only needed to change it.
“My lord…”
He was a fool. What if she betrayed him again this time?
“That is enough. I will not forgive you if you leave my side over something that has not even happened yet.”
“…I understand.”
This was why. This was exactly why she fell for him. Because he never imagined she would betray him. Because he simply assumed she would always remain at his side as the Saint. That was how she had walked into the trap. Perhaps even then he had known and let it happen—he was that much of a fool. And perhaps that very trust was what had made her fall for him.
I’m a fool too.
Why had she done something so stupid?
“Then you know nothing of this creature called the Demon King?”
“No. It may be something Seto created.”
Whether it had been a dream or a regression was still unclear. What was certain was that the present her felt no loyalty whatsoever toward the Demon King—whether because she had never met him, or because knowing the future had steeled her will never to be swayed again.
Yes. If anything remained, it was a faint flicker of anger toward Olivia, the granddaughter of Lord Eldacrad. The fact that she carried Noah—the one who would kill the Demon King—played a large part, but either way, it irritated her a little.
But not now. Both Olivia and Noah would not even be born for decades yet.
Right now, Seto was the urgent problem.