A Glitch in the Saintess's Faith
An awkward silence hung in the air between the Saintess and me.
Standing before me, Astoria gripped my sleeve with trembling fingertips.
I'm sorry, but I have to play dumb.
Even though her face and body were completely invisible due to the rendering glitch, preventing me from reading her expression, I could feel her anxiety radiating off her.
Normally, it would be unthinkable for someone as high and mighty as a Saintess to practically beg the third son of a marquis just to have a word...
But this world was built for the female lead, Alice. Perhaps that was why the situation unfolding before me completely defied all standard aristocratic common sense.
"I don't particularly have anything to discuss with you, Saintess," I said.
"Do not lie to me. Just a moment ago, you clearly made my form visible to others...!" she pleaded.
Her grip on my sleeve tightened.
The fabric strained under her fingers.
Saintess Astoria was likely clinging to me out of a desperate hope to reclaim her original appearance.
Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly explain that we were living in a game world built on a buggy engine, let alone reveal that I had reincarnated here from the real world.
My only option was to feign ignorance and brush it off.
"I cannot say. Perhaps you merely saw a momentary mirage?"
"That is impossible! I saw my own face reflected in your eyes with my very own eyes...!"
Great. I had gotten myself tangled up with a troublesome one.
Astoria's voice was filled with absolute certainty. She had even forgotten her usual polite address of "Brother" in her urgency to demand an explanation.
"You looked surprised as well, Brother...!"
Well, yes. I hadn't expected an invisible woman to be such a breathtaking beauty.
Objectively speaking, she was so gorgeous that it made no sense for her to be plagued by a rendering glitch.
Anyone would have been stunned.
Gently, I tried to pry her fingers off to save my sleeve from stretching any further.
"Saintess, I believe there has been some misunderstanding. I do not know how to undo your invisibility, nor did I do such a thing."
I lied through my teeth without batting an eye.
In truth, I knew a few other ways.
I could create a device that generated massive lag, forcing the game engine to reload and re-render everything in the world.
Or I could use reverse engineering to dig into the code and patch the problematic assets.
There were plenty of methods worth trying.
But my interlocutor was a high-ranking figure from the Holy Kingdom of Valentia.
If I suggested such bizarre methods, I might get arrested for blasphemy.
Or worse, I could be interrogated as a heretic.
"My current state is a trial bestowed upon me by the Lord," Astoria began, as if reading my thoughts. "In exchange for granting me immense holy power, He took away my physical form."
She spoke softly, her voice carrying a heavy weight.
"I always believed that a Saintess had no need for a beautiful appearance. As long as I possessed a noble heart willing to sacrifice for all..."
Her voice trembled, and her hand slowly fell away from my sleeve.
Had catching a glimpse of her own face been that shocking to her?
Astoria sounded as if she were on the verge of tears.
"I lived my life believing that such a heart... would be enough."
"Is that so?" I replied, nodding calmly.
To me, her condition wasn't a matter of divine equivalent exchange or faith; it was just a simple rendering bug.
Besides, I wasn't much of a believer anyway.
"Do not dismiss it with such a brief reply! I am asking how you, Brother, managed to restore the form that the Lord Himself took from me...!"
"...Did I really do that?"
"Brother!"
When I continued to play dumb, Astoria raised her voice in frustration.
It must be incredibly frustrating for her.
She seemed like someone who had suffered immense discomfort and sorrow from living as an invisible ghost.
Even so, I couldn't let cheap sympathy prompt me to confess that I knew how to fix it.
She is the Saintess of the Holy Kingdom of Valentia. Getting involved with someone like her will only bring trouble to my family.
Even if this was a game world, I now had a family here.
My older brothers who taught me swordsmanship, and my parents.
To avoid bringing shame to the Baskerville name—often hailed as the Sword of the Empire—it was best to keep my distance from the Holy Kingdom, their political rival.
If she were just a high-ranking priest, building a connection might have been beneficial, but a Saintess was a different story.
"...Very well. It seems you intend to keep feigning ignorance no matter what I say."
Astoria strained to lift herself onto her tiptoes, trying to glare at me from up close.
"Sigrid."
"Yes, Saintess," a voice replied.
At Astoria's call, the heavily armored female knight stepped up beside me.
She was one of the guards who had been protecting the Saintess at the entrance of the social hall earlier—the very one who had shouted at me.
"You remember, don't you? My form was briefly revealed after this gentleman handed me a certain coin."
"Yes, without a doubt. I, Sigrid, swear it upon my life and honor as a knight."
"Brother, no matter how much you try to deny it, too many people witnessed my appearance."
Backed by her knight's testimony, the invisible Saintess nodded, her veil fluttering with the movement.
Was she wearing a smug expression right now?
Even without seeing her face, I could easily guess what was running through her head.
"What exactly was that coin you gave me earlier that allowed my form to be seen?"
"Did I do that?"
"Yes, you did. It was clearly a single coin, but now it has split into a silver coin and a bronze coin."
Astoria carefully held out the glitch coin I had given her as she spoke.
The overlapped coins, which had glitched into a single entity, had re-rendered and split back into two separate coins.
"Could it be... that you are an apostle sent by the Lord to watch over this world, Brother...?"
"*Cough, hack...!*"
Feigning ignorance was getting increasingly difficult.
If the Saintess was jumping to conclusions like that, she must genuinely believe I was some divine agent sent by her god.
I had to clear up this misunderstanding immediately.
"No, absolutely not. I simply had the chance to read some texts from the East... and merely replicated what I saw there."
Granted, a highly suspicious message had popped up right before I reincarnated into this game.
But considering the absolute authority and weight the Lord held in this medieval fantasy world, letting her mistake me for some messianic figure would be disastrous.
"I didn't actually expect it to work," I quickly improvised. "And even then, it was only a temporary fix."
Since I was a reincarnated Korean who used my knowledge of game glitches to solve the issue, calling it "Eastern knowledge" was a fitting excuse.
"I see. Indeed, I have heard that the third son of the Baskerville family rarely leaves his estate..."
The Saintess raised a hand to where her chin would be.
Even though she was invisible, the movement of her veil and gloves made her gestures easy to read.
"...It is not entirely surprising that you possess knowledge unknown to us. Yes, I understand."
"Has that satisfied your curiosity, then?"
"No. Could you perform the same miracle once more?"
Despite my sweating efforts to deflect, Saintess Astoria made a direct request.
She wanted me to overlap the coins again to trigger the rendering refresh glitch.
"...Only this once. Repeating it too often could cause adverse effects."
I let out a deep sigh and hung my head.
Overlapping items like this ultimately overloaded the memory, which could negatively impact the game world.
Bugs and glitches were double-edged swords; abusing them could lead to irreversible consequences.
"Yes, please... I beg of you."
Astoria's voice was desperately earnest, her words slow and pleading.
"..."
I reached into my leather pouch, repeatedly picking up and dropping the silver and bronze coins, rapidly equipping and unequipping them.
This should make her visible for slightly longer than before.
If I tried the same trick and her invisibility didn't lift, I risked being branded a fraud.
Just this once.
After this, my involvement with the Saintess would end. I would lock myself back in the estate and focus on finding a way to escape this romance fantasy game.
Just as I thought that, I passed the leather pouch containing the glitched coins into the Saintess's hand—
"...Ah, ahaha. It really is my face."
Staring at her temporarily revealed face in a mirror, the Saintess let out a soft, breathless laugh.
She was so beautiful that even the harshest critic couldn't call her plain. Why on earth had she been cursed with a rendering bug?
If this truly was the will of the Lord, it felt incredibly cruel.
Her skin was a delicate, porcelain white, and her hair and eyes sparkled like pure, brilliant gems. She was utterly mesmerizing.
For the brief five seconds her form remained rendered, I lost my train of thought and could only stare at her.
How much time had passed?
"...Thank you, Brother Theodore."
Having faded back into invisibility, Astoria wiped away her tears and offered her gratitude.
"You are too kind," I replied politely.
I bowed formally to the Saintess.
After all, the difference in status between the third son of a marquis and the Saintess of the Holy Kingdom of Valentia was vast.
But then,
"Since fate has brought us together, would you care to dance? Just the two outcasts."
"Pardon?"
As if status meant nothing to her, Saintess Astoria delivered a line straight out of a classic romance fantasy novel.
"It is your first social debut. Surely it is better than leaving without dancing with a single noble lady?"
No matter how absurd romance fantasy worlds could get just to make the main characters stand out,
"...To be honest, I have never danced with anyone either! I might be a bit clumsy!"
This proposal sounded entirely out of place.