WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Romance Fantasy’s Pushover Crown Prince Is No More ◈
Chapter 43: Saintess (2)
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[ A Saintess is about to be born in the Empire. ]
[ Go to the Empire at once and prove your Divine Power. ]
“Eh?”
One week before the Heavenly Mandate Proclamation, Mirne received a message she had never expected.
“A Saintess is going to be born in the Empire?”
This was a development that had never existed in the original story.
‘The Saint Candidate who was supposed to compete with me... What was her name again?’
She could not remember very well.
To begin with, that person had barely been covered in the original story.
All Mirne remembered was that they had parted ways over differing views within the Church.
Nothing had been said about that person afterward.
There had not even been a struggle between Saint Candidates over the position of Saintess.
In the original story, Mirne had simply become the Saintess naturally.
‘No, wait. Had we met once?’
Her memory was hazy.
‘...That time, someone asked how I believed in God, right? Were we different?’
Mirne racked her brain, but that was all she could recall.
Still, that had nothing to do with what was happening now.
The story had strayed far too much from the original.
Flustered, Mirne immediately contacted Saint Valerian.
“Hello, Saint. It’s Mirne.”
“Mirne, I was waiting to hear from you. As it happens, something has occurred...”
Strangely enough, Valerian also brought up the matter of the Saintess.
He said the Empire had decided to announce a Saintess and that he was very sad because he had no choice but to go.
Mirne agreed with him and made the faintest suggestion that she wanted to come along.
More precisely...
“I’m free then, so I’ll pray for your safe journey, Saint.”
She mentioned that her schedule was open.
“If you’re free... how would you like to go to the Empire with me?”
The Saint eagerly took the bait.
After that, nothing was difficult.
“Dad! I’m going to the Holy Kingdom!”
“...All right. Go ahead.”
All she had to do was hurry to the Holy Kingdom.
Perhaps because she had Teleportation magic and the help of Spirits, she reached the Holy Kingdom quickly despite traveling alone and in secret.
‘It would’ve been even better if Silphiner had been here.’
There was no Spirit better than a wind Spirit when it came to traveling.
But that Spirit was currently contracted to the Crown Prince.
‘Will I ever be able to get Silphiner back?’
Hoping for that distant day, Mirne arrived at the Holy Kingdom and immediately said,
“Saint, I think it would be better if I went in secret.”
“You are about to become the Holy Kingdom’s Saintess. Is there any need to enter in secret?”
“I haven’t become the Saintess yet... Besides, they invited someone from the Holy Kingdom. It would be awkward if I simply came along.”
“That is reasonable. But you must not leave my side. That is the condition.”
“Okay!”
She asked him to hide her identity, then entered the Empire with him.
From then on...
“If Divine Power is divided in two, what will become of me? What will become of the Saintess? We may belong to the same Church, but if our beliefs differ... how will God endure?”
The Saint continued to mutter incomprehensible things.
It only happened now and then, and none of it had existed in the original story.
‘When something unexpected like this happens, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’
Mirne decided to watch the situation for now and simply remained by the Saint’s side.
That attitude did not last long.
The Heavenly Mandate Proclamation proceeded without incident.
Then, the moment the Empire’s Saintess was officially announced...
[ The Empire’s Saintess has been born. ]
[ The Divine Power of the Romper Church is about to split. ]
[ Romper descends upon the Saint’s body! ]
Brilliant white messages filled Mirne’s vision.
‘Descends? What is this supposed to mean?’
It was an incomprehensible situation.
While Mirne panicked over how wildly the story had diverged from the original...
Swish.
‘The Crown Prince?’
In an instant, the Crown Prince seized Mirne and Valerian by the neck and used Teleportation to move them to a mountain far from the center of the Empire.
‘...?’
It was absurd Mana control.
Teleporting two or more people normally required controlling the Mana of the other people as well to set the coordinates.
The chances of failure were extremely high, and it was not something that could be done in an instant like this.
Yet the Crown Prince had done it as easily as if he were knocking down a sandcastle.
As if he were mocking them for calling something like this difficult.
This was not the time to be impressed, though.
“Saint! Please calm down!”
“I want you to become a complete Saintess, not some divided and torn half-Saintess... I want you to become a Saintess who can wield God’s Divine Power in its entirety!”
Saint Valerian, his body filled with brilliant white Divine Power, looked like a judge continually pouring forth white flames.
Wings made of Divine Power shone brilliantly, lighting up the surroundings.
White light poured from the Saint’s eyes as he ignored Mirne’s words.
“Crown Prince, you are ruining everything. How dare you divide Divine Power?”
He glared at the Crown Prince and continued.
Slash!
The Crown Prince swung his sword without hesitation instead of answering.
The Zweihander was drawn so quickly that it was impossible to tell when it left its sheath.
It carved a red diagonal line across the Saint’s body.
“Argh!”
The heat was intense enough for flames to rise from every cut.
It would not have been strange for him to faint from the agony at any moment.
Whoosh!
White threads pouring from the Saint’s body stitched the wounds shut.
“What are you doing?!”
As though he had never been cut, his body returned to perfect condition.
It was ridiculous regeneration, enough to be called a miracle.
Seeing that, the Crown Prince commented calmly, “I swung to split you in half, but you’re tough.”
His attitude suggested that he had expected as much.
++++++
‘Holy Knights have always had that cockroach-like image.’
They were tanks with poor attack power but tremendous defense and regeneration.
That was the usual image of a Holy Knight, and the Saint seemed to be that type as well.
[ As the Empire’s Saintess has been born, Romper is splitting apart. ]
[ Romper beneath the sun, and Romper above the Holy Kingdom. ]
[ It will take time for the two to separate. ]
The messages that followed as I analyzed the Saint’s condition made the situation clearer.
‘So that was what it meant by splitting apart.’
Normally, a god would not split apart just because a Church divided.
But the heart of this matter was the Saintess’s religious belief.
The Saintess believed that humans accumulated Divine Power through prayer, and that Divine Power became God.
That was practically the same as denying God.
Come to think of it, Rowena suited the villainess role quite well.
‘A Saint Candidate who denies the way God exists.’
Mirne would have had no such beliefs.
Naturally, they had no choice but to stand opposed, and it made sense that Rowena would be called a villainess.
‘Interesting.’
Muttering that to myself, I swung my sword again with all my strength.
There was no need to show off complicated techniques in this situation.
Valerian felt like a tank wrapped head to toe in Divine Power.
“Crown Prince!”
He swung a mace that seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and an enormous amount of Divine Power rushed toward me along its path.
Bang!
The Divine Power struck the path my sword had already carved and was broken apart.
‘It feels like he still can’t use this body properly.’
I was supposedly fighting at full power, but it did not feel like I was.
It was like putting a beginner behind the wheel of an F1 car.
‘How did I kill the Northern Grand Duke? How did I cut him down?’
I wanted to draw on the Crown Prince’s strength more fiercely, more destructively.
“You are ruining everything! This disaster happened because you created an Imperial Saintess! It is all your fault!”
The Saint shouted triumphantly, wearing an expression that said he had the upper hand.
“You sound like the Northern Grand Duke.”
He looked exactly like the Northern Grand Duke, who was dead and gone now.
Come to think of it, that bastard had said something similar.
What had happened to him after that?
As I thought about it for a moment, the Saint showed signs of moving.
I reacted at once and swung my sword to the side.
Crimson flames shot forward.
And in their path was...
“Crown Princeee!”
Bang!
Mirne.
There was no way Mirne, who had been standing still, could react to the attack.
The one who reacted in her place was, predictably, the Saint.
He looked as though God had descended into his body.
I thought that if I sent flames at Mirne, he would protect her with Divine Power.
‘Some humanity remains because he blocked it with his body.’
It was pathetic humanity.
If he was human, he should remain human. If he was God, he should remain God.
“Hoo.”
After a short breath, I began openly targeting Mirne.
Until then, it had been a stupid clash of strength against strength.
The moment I realized Valerian would stand in front of Mirne and block attacks with his body, I changed my approach.
If I linked together the thousands, tens of thousands of sword strikes etched into my memory to cut down Mirne...
“Stop! How can you do something like this?!”
Saint Valerian shouted a line that sounded as though it belonged in a play and took the attack head-on.
The Zweihander’s distinctive, unpredictable swordsmanship pierced straight into Valerian’s body.
I gripped the middle handle at the ricasso and swung hard.
Then, the instant he tried to block the blade...
Slash!
I gripped the main handle and changed the blade’s direction.
Normally, I would have needed to shift my balance throughout the process to handle a greatsword.
But the Crown Prince’s absurdly powerful body easily ignored such trivial requirements.
How many times had I cut the Saint like that?
Behind the Saint, who was clumsily trying to swing his mace, I saw Mirne standing still.
‘But why isn’t Mirne doing anything while the Saint gets beaten like this?’
To be precise, she was not doing nothing.
She was only shifting her position enough to avoid me.
But Mirne could not shake me off.
All she could do was move awkwardly, and every time she did, the Saint covered the openings in her movements.
It felt like dancing a dreadful waltz.
‘He really is stubbornly refusing to die.’
Despite all his furious shouting, the Saint only endured the blows in a helpless state.
The only thing sustaining him now was his ridiculous regeneration.
Even when I aimed for his neck, it reattached at the same time it was cut.
The protagonist protection was so excessive that it was absurd.
‘Is this going to be nothing but a meaningless battle of attrition? The original protagonist is here, and the story still keeps unfolding like this?’
I did not mind.
The longer the battle continued, the more I could feel this body awakening.
Sol Velos.
Unlike the first battle, the power said to have swallowed the sun was stirring far more intensely.
‘Just a little more, a little more.’
As time passed, the body awoke.
At the same time, the Crown Prince’s memories, which had been blurry and hidden beneath the surface, slowly began to rise.
-It may be meaningless, but isn’t it still better than doing nothing?
A memory gently surfaced.
The Crown Prince had been looking at someone and swinging his sword over and over.
‘Who was that? The Emperor?’
Where was the Emperor, anyway?
Was he some kind of MacGuffin, or had something truly happened to him?
Questions began to rise in my mind, but only for a moment.
“Please stop fighting!”
Mirne’s cry, like that of a tragic heroine, rang out.
“...Ha.”
That cry affected only me, stopping my body for an instant.
Through Mirne’s cry, the Saint gained strength, and the explosively increased Divine Power bound my body.
Was this the trope where a knight grew stronger while protecting a princess?
It did not matter.
“This much is nothing.”
Crack.
This was not the first time I had killed a male protagonist.
I had also experienced events occurring in ridiculous situations.
“Burst.”
Before the Saint’s mace could reach me, I activated magic faster than him and made it explode before my eyes.
Bang!
I condensed the flames I had poured out with every sword swing and detonated them.
‘It probably won’t hurt him much, but at least I stopped one cheap trick.’
I had not wanted to waste it so pointlessly. Just as I felt disappointed...
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
“W-What is this...?”
Valerian began to bleed.
‘After regenerating so stubbornly all this time, suddenly? Has he finally run out of Divine Power?’
Several possibilities flashed through my mind.
Then...
Fwoooosh.
I felt Divine Power slowly filling my body.
It was faint, but it was clearly power moving in the opposite direction from Romper’s current Divine Power.
‘Right. You aren’t the only one with a Saintess.’
Rowena’s Divine Power was settling into me.
I knew instinctively.
This was the power that could kill the Saint.
‘The Saint raised his weapon against me, so the Pope won’t be able to escape responsibility either.’
The Saint would die here.
And afterward, the Pope would not meet a peaceful end either.
‘Mirne, I’ll turn you into the Saintess of a fallen Church.’
It was time to kill a god.
Footnotes:
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