Two Saintesses, Two Heroes
The reception room, bathed in a lavish spill of warm sunlight, was almost extravagantly ornate.
Beyond the open windows, a garden of full-bloomed white roses cast a subtle, intoxicating fragrance, and Mikhail Lumen—the Hero of Radiance—sat deep in a crimson velvet sofa, leisurely tipping a teacup.
One of the Empire’s highest-ranking heroes and a man of striking good looks, Mikhail had met countless women in his time.
From the most celebrated noble daughters of high society to beautiful female adventurers who roamed the battlefields—
Not one of them had failed to fall for his fame, his power, and his smooth tongue.
To him, women were flowers in a garden, always within reach the moment he stretched out a hand.
That was why, even on the brink of his first meeting with the Radiance Church’s famed “Saint,” he still carried an inward sneer of easy confidence.
A woman wrapped in the thin packaging of holiness would, he was certain, prove to be just one more among the many he had already handled.
Then came the soft click of heels, and the heavy doors swung open.
Mikhail turned. There stood a woman in pure-white vestments.
Hair so white it seemed to drink the light and shine, skin so translucent and smooth it looked as though it might show the blood beneath—Arselia.
“Forgive me for keeping you waiting, Hero.”
Arselia gently folded her hands and smiled.
It was a smile as warm and benevolent as a spring breeze, yet laced with an untouchable mystery.
It was an aura utterly different from the calculated smiles of noble daughters or the rough charm of adventurers he had known until now—something uniquely her own.
Mikhail realized, with a start, that he had forgotten even to breathe. He hastily put on a friendly smile and rose to his feet.
“Not at all. The garden beyond these windows is so beautiful I lost all track of time.”
He stepped closer and lightly kissed the back of her hand.
The faint fragrance rising from her smooth skin teased at his reason.
“At last I behold the grace bestowed by the Lord of Radiance. To meet in person the God’s proxy, His most exalted daughter—it is an infinite honor, Saint.”
That a hero of Mikhail’s renown was only now meeting the Saint of the Radiance Church was because the Church’s strict final selection trials had only recently concluded.
Until now he had fought across the battlefields with temporary priests assisting him; this meeting finally completed the perfect Party of Radiance.
Mikhail’s gaze lingered on Arselia’s crimson lips and the soft line of her face.
He wrapped himself in a show of reverence, yet deep in the eyes of a man who had conquered so many women, an unmistakable possessiveness and filthy desire were slowly lifting their heads.
And in that brief glance, Arselia saw straight through to his true nature.
Even a renowned hero praised across the continent was ultimately the same.
Just another male who could not master his base lust and would kneel at her feet.
Swallowing the rising mockery, Arselia decided she would bind this pathetic male completely.
Keeping her true thoughts locked away, she tilted her body shyly to one side.
Then, as she lifted the teacup, she let her slender fingertips tremble ever so slightly—as though the tension of standing before so famous a hero had made her fumble.
“Ah—”
A short cry, and the still-warm tea spilled helplessly across her pure-white vestments.
The thin, luxurious silk drank the moisture at once and clung mercilessly to her skin.
In an instant the wet fabric revealed the milky translucence of her flesh and the silhouette of delicate lace underwear beneath.
The voluptuous curves that had been hidden under the vestments were now blatantly exposed.
Arselia’s cheeks flushed scarlet; she gathered both hands to her chest in a frantic attempt to cover herself, her expression one of helpless shame and embarrassment.
Yet the arms she pressed together only made things worse.
Her already enormous breasts, crushed between the tight press of her arms, were squashed lightly and forced upward by the pressure until their full volume seemed ready to burst free.
The size of those fruits, straining past the boundary of the cloth, was so sensual it could paralyze the eye of anyone who looked.
That unreal volume, too much for two hands to hide, quivered dizzyingly with every shallow breath she took through the wet silk.
Mikhail’s gaze locked onto them by pure instinct; his heart began to hammer as though it would explode.
He had prided himself on embracing countless beauties, yet the destructive physical allure this Saint radiated was on another level entirely.
A silhouette obscenely carnal, set in brutal contrast against her holy atmosphere.
And the overwhelming volume of her body, revealed without her meaning to—nothing he had ever experienced with any other woman could compare.
A fierce hunger for conquest and a thirst he had never felt before gnawed mercilessly at his reason.
His breathing grew steadily rougher, filling the quiet of the reception room.
Mikhail no longer possessed the presence of mind to maintain the composure of a top-rank hero.
The arrogant coolness that had sustained him sank swiftly beneath that crushing thirst.
“I am so sorry, Hero. What disgraceful thing have I done…”
Arselia clutched her chest and hung her head; clear tears trembled on the tips of her lashes.
When Mikhail, reason already gone, instinctively laid a hand on her shoulder and stepped closer, she finally lifted those wet eyes to him and whispered faintly,
“Hero… if it is not too great an imposition, might you escort me just as far as my chambers so that I may change? I seem to have grown so tense that my legs will not hold me.”
The sight of her trembling while she cradled her crushed breasts was more than enough to stir a predator’s instincts.
Mikhail, eyes lost in pure rapture, nodded.
As he led the way toward the bedroom, the corner of Arselia’s mouth—unseen by him—curled into a grotesque smile.
Every trace of the shyness and embarrassment of moments before had vanished.
From the angle he could not see, her expression was that of a hunter who had perfectly trapped her prey: bewitching and ice-cold.
She might not equal the rival who had once competed with her to the very end for the position of Saint—the woman said to have been the most beautiful in the Church’s history—
but for rolling the foolish, arrogant hero before her around on the palm of her hand, this face and this little performance were more than enough.
Even one of the Empire’s most renowned heroes had ultimately knelt before her body.
Everything was unfolding exactly according to her perfect plan.
At the same hour, Zick was walking into the vast lobby of the Imperial Hero Management Bureau headquarters, his steps as heavy as if lead weights hung from his feet.
He had only just gathered new party members and was about to begin proper hero work in earnest—
when, with the worst possible timing, a summons from the Bureau had arrived.
Crossing the wide, gleaming marble lobby toward the central desk, he was recognized at once by the receptionist who had been sorting a stack of papers; she looked up.
“Ah, Sir Zick. You’ve arrived just in time. I’m sorry to drag you in when you must be so busy.”
“Hello. I was a little startled, to be honest—the summons came so suddenly. What’s this about?”
“It’s a matter the Director herself has called you in for. You’ll need to go up to her office right away—alone, without the rest of your party.”
Zick had been nodding lightly; at those words his thoughts locked up completely.
Alone… to the Director’s office.
The moment the phrase brushed through his mind, the nightmare of the last rank evaluation flashed past like a lantern show.
He remembered the catastrophe when he had lost control of his authority and exposed Director Elena’s most private underwear preferences to the entire Bureau.
Zick swallowed dryly and asked with the desperate urgency of a man ready to seize the receptionist’s hands.
“I don’t suppose I could say I’m leaving this very second to go hunt some magical beasts, could I? If she’s still angry about the evaluation, the second I open that door my life might be over.”
His tearful, almost pitiable begging finally broke the receptionist’s composure; she let out a soft snort of laughter.
“Don’t worry, Sir Zick. This isn’t revenge. We simply need an official statement regarding the recent attack in the Slums. You can go up with an easy mind.”
Only then did Zick’s face crumple with the relief of a man who had just aged ten years. He pressed a hand to his chest.
His heart was still hammering, though, and the thought of meeting Elena’s icy gaze made his knees threaten to buckle.
Wiping his sweat-damp palms roughly on his trousers, he headed for the Director’s office on the Bureau’s top floor.
Standing before the massive door of deep mahogany, he found his breath catching in his throat.
Zick drew a deep breath, carefully knocked, and stepped inside.
Director Elena, reviewing documents at her desk, looked more deeply etched with overtime fatigue than usual.
Her neatly buttoned uniform and jet-black hair still projected severity, yet the faint dark circles visible behind her glasses had softened her customary sharpness.
That very weariness, however, blended strangely with her cold beauty and produced a lethal air of decadence.
The white nape of her neck, glimpsed through slightly disordered strands of hair, was dizzyingly alluring.
At the sound of the door closing, Elena slowly raised her head.
“You’ve arrived…”
She had just opened her mouth to greet him when—
Thud!
With a resounding crash Zick’s body shot into the air; an instant later both hands planted firmly on the floor and he stood upside down.
This was no ordinary handstand.
He held his center of gravity on both hands and stretched his lower body straight up into the air.
His head was bowed so low it nearly brushed the floor—the ultimate form of apology, the absurdly extreme Grand Bow that only the most grievous sinners performed.
With his core muscles drawn to their absolute limit, Zick’s unmoving body radiated a bizarre majesty right in the middle of the Director’s office.
“For my carelessness and rudeness during the last evaluation, and for the enormous damage I inflicted upon the Director’s precious privacy—I am deeply, profoundly sorry! Director! I beg you, take my life!”
Zick’s thunderous apology, dredged up from the depths of his lungs, filled every corner of the office.
It was a voice so over-earnest it bordered on madness.
Faced with Zick begging forgiveness in that perfect posture of contrition, Elena dropped the quill she was holding; her silver-rimmed glasses slid down her nose from the sheer shock.
She stared at him blankly with eyes full of pure disbelief, then pressed her temple and asked in a trembling voice,
“Hero Zick. I have a mountain of questions I would dearly love to ask, but let us settle this first. What exactly is the meaning of that strangely upright posture you are currently holding in front of my eyes?”
The only sounds in the room were Zick’s labored upside-down breathing and Elena’s deep sigh, crossing each other.
“This is the ultimate great bow of my homeland—the Grand Bow! When one’s life hangs by a thread, one pours into it the spirit of utter seriousness and bone-deep repentance, and even the enemy who murdered one’s parents will grant forgiveness!”
Zick roared the explanation while still inverted, eyes wide; Elena had to bite her lip with desperate force to keep from bursting into hollow laughter.
“I understand. So unless this is a hallucination brought on by overwork, stop that grotesque bow at once and sit properly. If you collapse from blood rushing to your head in my office, it will only give me a headache.”
At her command Zick finally flipped lightly through the air and landed perfectly.
Then he sat primly in the chair before the desk, hands folded neatly in his lap.
With the storm of the apology show over, a strange silence settled between them—the quiet of a proper interview finally beginning.
Seated, Zick still looked painfully tense.
The calm, heavy silence flowing from behind Elena’s silver-rimmed glasses pressed down on him.
He carefully slipped a hand into his coat and drew out the thick bundle of papers Reno had thrust at him just before he left.
It was a prepared Q&A script Reno had written on the spot the moment he heard about a one-on-one interview.
Zick laid the script secretly on his knees and dipped his head just enough to peek at the first line.
The instruction read: make the most pitiful, wronged face possible in order to stir the Bureau’s sympathy.
Zick desperately tried to read the room and awkwardly furrowed his brow.
But there was something he had overlooked.
There was no way the clumsy act of cheating would escape the eyes of Elena, who stood at the very summit of the Bureau.
Watching him roll his eyes busily over the script on his knees, she felt laughter rising inside, yet she merely cleared her throat and rustled the documents.
“Well then, Hero Zick. Would you please give a detailed statement of everything you witnessed and experienced regarding the attack that occurred in the Slums last night?”
The moment Elena’s question landed, Zick gulped and rapidly scanned the next section of the script.
Then, exactly as he and Reno had arranged, he began a carefully rewritten statement for Bureau records—stripping out every suspicious current directed at Noah.
“Well, you see, Director. We were doing volunteer work in the Slums when some thugs decided we looked like easy targets and attacked us, because the security there is so poor. There were quite a few of them and it was dangerous, but my party and I managed to drive them off together!”
Zick’s statement, built on the script, was clear and well-structured.
Every time he finished a paragraph he pretended to wet his throat while flipping to the next page of the script on his knees; Elena, fully aware of the tearful cheating show, pretended not to notice and listened attentively.
When the statement ended she set down her quill and spoke in a heavy voice.
“I understand the circumstances of the incident. Hero Zick, first allow me, on behalf of the Bureau, to offer a deep apology for this affair.”
The earlier playfulness had vanished from her eyes; in its place stood the gravity and sense of responsibility of the highest authority.
“Even if the Slums were a place we could not touch because of internal-affairs interference, the fact that we failed to protect a hero fighting the Demon King’s forces is clearly negligence on the Bureau’s part. As the institution that exists to support heroes, we deeply apologize that such a thing occurred inside a safe zone. Going forward we will cooperate with the Imperial government and work to restore proper security to the Slums.”
The polite yet firm apology left Zick briefly dazed.
The script on his knees told him to seize the momentum and demand additional budget, but he quietly closed it and slipped it back into his coat.
Then he shook his head, speaking not from the script’s flow but from his own sincere heart.
“No, Director. We are grateful that the Bureau is looking out for us and intends to set the Slums’ security right. But I don’t believe a hero is simply a being meant to be protected by the nation or the Bureau.”
Zick’s eyes shone with quiet light.
“A hero is someone who takes up a weapon to protect others who cannot raise a sword themselves or who have fallen into crisis. If danger exists, it is a hero’s place to endure it and stand against it. So you need not overprotect us. We have the strength to protect ourselves, and we are ready to protect others as well. You can trust us a little more.”
It was an answer filled with the honest honor and conviction that belonged to Zick himself—something that had never existed in Reno’s meticulous calculations.
Elena’s eyes widened slightly, as though she had received a fresh shock.
She had seen countless heroes come to the Bureau every day to clamor for more subsidies or to insist on their privileges while filling their own pockets.
Yet the strange man before her was speaking of the noble duty a true hero ought to carry.
This man… his spine is far straighter and sturdier than I thought.
A faint smile that seemed to forget her fatigue touched Elena’s lips.
“An excellent mindset. It has been a long time since I saw a hero who is truly heroic, like you, Hero Zick.”
She drew the documents on her desk toward her.
“Since we have finished the official statement, let us move on to the matter of formal compensation. Although this was not an official mission, the fact remains that you responded to a surprise attack and even safely rescued a kidnapped party member. That is an outstanding achievement for a Rookie Hero. The Bureau is not stingy with heroes who have rendered meritorious service, so if there is any reward you desire, please speak it.”
Zick sank into thought for a moment, expression serious.
Most heroes would have chosen this moment to demand huge subsidies, rare artifacts, or high-quality equipment.
“In that case, Director… I would like to request that.”
The request Zick seriously put forward was something completely outside Elena’s expectations.
She stopped the quill in her hand, eyes wide, unable to hide her surprise.
“Is that truly enough? Given that a hero was attacked inside a safe zone, the Bureau is prepared to offer far greater compensation simply for the sake of its own face. You may ask for top-tier artifacts or a massive subsidy if you wish.”
Elena proposed it again, as though she could not believe it, but Zick firmly shook his head and smiled with absolute conviction.
“No. For our party, that is the most heroic reward of all—far better than any flashy compensation.”
Holding fast to his request to the end, he rose from his seat and offered a clean bow that said he had no further regrets.
Then, with his characteristic confident stride, he opened the door of the Director’s office and stepped out.
The moment Zick left, the adjutant who had been waiting anxiously in the corridor hurried inside.
He had watched so many heroes use the Bureau’s failings as an excuse to demand outrageous compensation or to line their own pockets that he had been fretting over what troublesome demand might come this time as well.
Catching the strange look on the Director’s face, the adjutant carefully asked,
“Director, did Hero Zick make some unreasonable demand?”
Elena let out a long breath and straightened her glasses.
“No. Quite the opposite, actually.”
When she quietly recited the request Zick had left behind, the adjutant’s face too flooded with shock.
“You mean that was truly all? He abandoned every monetary benefit and equipment support?”
“Yes. Even in the very seat where he was meant to demand compensation, all he thought about was the work he himself ought to do.”
Elena stamped the documents on her desk with her seal of approval and gave the order.
“Accept it immediately and process it. Let’s assign the personnel who happen to have free capacity to this.”
“Yes, ma’am! Understood!”
Once the adjutant withdrew, Elena rose and walked to the window beside her desk.
In the courtyard below, the party members who had come out earlier and waited anxiously were greeting Zick.
When he broke into a broad grin and announced that the interview had gone well,
Gerard gruffly clicked his tongue yet still gave Zick’s shoulder a relieved thump, while Drake chuckled and slapped his back heartily.
Noah welcomed him with a gentle smile as well.
They were a bizarre combination that should never have fit together, yet the bond they displayed looked firmer and warmer than that of any other hero party.
Elena leaned against the window, chin in hand, and quietly watched until they vanished from sight.
A strange sense of anticipation lit the eyes behind her silver-rimmed glasses.
Perhaps that boy will stir up a new storm in a landscape filled only with those blinded by privilege and profit.
With her quiet monologue, a new day at the Hero Management Bureau finally began.