Chapter 1

Prologue

Standing in a field filled with blood and noise on all sides, its ground densely covered with corpses, I wondered.

When will this battle finally end? Can we defeat that formidable enemy?

What must we do to win?

The Goddess had chosen me and commanded me to save the world, and now I had reached the moment when I had to move forward for the sake of victory.

“What about the kid?”

“We mixed sleeping herbs into his food. Once we confirmed he was asleep, we put him in the wagon.”

“And the Holy Sword?”

“We tied it up with him using ropes.”

“Good. Let’s begin.”

I spread my wings and flew into the sky. Although it was a dark night, the bright moon hanging overhead illuminated the countless soldiers densely filling the vast field.

I took a deep breath and shouted at the top of my lungs.

“Everyone! Retreat!”

At my command, which spread through the cold northern wind, the army began to move like a massive wave.

The soldiers slowly withdrew, tears streaming down their faces.

I faintly heard someone screaming desperately behind me, but I resolutely turned away.

The Goddess’s Cloud, a treasure of the Central Grand Temple draped around my body, fluttered in every direction. This dress-shaped treasure had the ability to restore holy power.

After taking a deep breath, I flew forward with all my strength.

Toward the Demon King’s Castle in the distance.

My name is Fleur Madel Eterna, and I am leaving tens of thousands of soldiers behind to fight the Demon King alone.

I am the Princess of Total Victory.

This is what common knowledge in my world says.

“What do we do if the Demon King appears?”

“The Hero and the Princess of Total Victory must join forces and defeat him.”

To put it very simply, the people capable of defeating the Demon King are the Hero and the Princess of Total Victory.

The weapon they must use in battle is the Holy Sword bestowed by the Goddess.

I was born in a small village near the capital of the Eterna Kingdom.

My parents ran a large general store, so we were among the wealthier families in the neighborhood, but we were still commoners.

The only difference between my family and our neighbors was that my mother and I were descendants of the first Princess of Total Victory.

The First Hero was a man, while the First Princess of Total Victory was a woman. Therefore, the title of Princess of Total Victory was passed down through the maternal line, from mother to daughter.

On the other hand, the only person capable of wielding the Holy Sword was the First Hero. His soul was reincarnated in different regions and different bodies in every era.

Moreover, he had no memories of his past life, so he himself would not know that he was the Hero until he drew the Holy Sword.

The Princess of Total Victory, however, was chosen by the Goddess from among the countless descendants of the First Princess. That made it possible to gather candidates in advance.

In order to gain even the slightest advantage in the battle against the mighty Demon King, the Pope and the leaders of each nation chose education.

The candidates who could become the Princess of Total Victory were taught everything necessary for battle: martial arts, tactics, survival skills, medicine, techniques for controlling holy power, and more!

Whether they had talent or not, someone who had spent years learning and practicing was obviously better than someone who knew nothing.

There was no guarantee that the Hero would be born into a family where he could learn combat techniques and survival skills from a young age, so the princesses were prepared in advance.

My homeland, the Eterna Kingdom, was founded by Eterna, the First Princess of Total Victory.

Naturally, the kingdom had the greatest number of princess candidates among the descendants of its founding queen, and it also provided the most rigorous princess training.

When I was five years old, signs of the Demon King’s resurrection began appearing across the continent.

Unfortunately, the temple had still been unable to find the Hero of the current era, which meant the burden placed on the Princess of Total Victory grew even heavier.

Originally, the Eterna Kingdom enrolled princess candidates in a girls’ school in the capital, where they studied various subjects from the age of eight to nineteen.

But I was an unfortunate princess candidate born in an era when no one knew when the Demon King would begin wreaking havoc!

While my friends were playing, I was stuck studying under an elderly knight and a priest sent by the royal palace.

For the record, I wasn’t the only one studying. My mother took the lessons with me, so I wasn’t particularly lonely during class.

My mother would tear at her hair every day, complaining, “I graduated from school more than ten years ago. Do I really have to do this again?”

The year I turned twelve, the Demon King fully resurrected and launched a massive invasion.

A lot of things changed.

First, among the upperclassmen at school, the princess candidates like me graduated early and returned to their respective families.

Princess candidates were born with holy power.

Even the candidate with the weakest holy power could instantly heal wounds as severe as a deep laceration.

Because doctors and healers had to be continuously dispatched to the front lines, the remaining student princess candidates were graduated early to fill the vacancies.

The subjects we studied also changed.

Instead of music, art, and literature classes, we went into the forest with the knights and received practical training by hunting small monsters.

Our literature teacher, who had also been a princess candidate like us, would endlessly weep as she treated her students after they returned with wounds covering their arms and legs.

The following year, the Crown Prince of the Eterna Kingdom was killed in battle while stopping the Demon King’s army from advancing south.

His younger sister, Princess Vivian, became the heir to the throne.

Princess Vivian, who was exceptionally skilled at crafting artifacts, barely had time to hold her brother’s funeral before she began gathering every bit of silver she could find. She even threw all the silver tableware used in the royal palace into the furnace and melted it down.

Silver was the mineral most compatible with holy power. Tens of thousands of arrowheads coated in silver and imbued with holy power were supplied to the front lines, finally managing to halt the Demon King’s army.

Of course, this was only possible because even those with barely enough holy power to fill a chestnut were mobilized for weapons production.

My classmates and juniors spent more time holding weapons than pens.

On my fifteenth birthday, I became the Princess of Total Victory.

I was chatting with my friends in the dormitory when a pair of wings made of holy power suddenly unfolded from my back.

The knight stationed there to protect the princess candidates immediately carried me on his back and ran toward the royal palace audience chamber.

The king, who had been sitting on his throne, sprang to his feet the moment he heard the knight’s cry.

He then slowly walked toward me and stared at me standing with my feet on the floor before his expression crumpled.

“Princess of Total Victory, please do not break. Until the day we achieve victory.”

I had suddenly been brought before the royal palace—and the ruler of an entire nation at that—so my mind was completely blank.

But I felt that I had to say something.

Gathering every ounce of strength I had, I shouted,

“Yes!”

The old man, who had lost his children and subordinates to the Demon King, lifted the corners of his mouth into a faint smile.

My holy power, which had been merely average among the princess candidates, overflowed like seawater the moment I was chosen by the Goddess.

I was immediately transferred to the Central Grand Temple, where I received special training from the Pope and the High Priests.

Healing and recovery were abilities even low-ranking priests could easily use, but techniques that used holy power to attack enemies required the level of holy power possessed by a high-ranking priest.

The temple was desperately searching for the Hero, but no one had yet succeeded in drawing the Holy Sword from its sheath.

The Princess of Total Victory, who was traditionally supposed to provide rear support, was forced to attack directly.

After learning a frightening array of holy-power techniques for an entire month, I went to the battlefield under the protection of the Allied Knights, an elite force composed of the strongest knights gathered from across the continent.

We fought countless battles for a year.

Finally, word came that the Hero had been found.

Everyone was excited at the prospect of turning the tide of the war. But the Hero the High Priest personally brought back was a skinny twelve-year-old boy who was even shorter than me.

He had been born into a poor farming family and could barely write his own name and numbers.

The brown-haired, blue-eyed boy was gripping the Holy Sword tightly with both hands because its weight was too much for him.

The young Hero, Dietrich.

We changed our strategy to one of holding out until the Hero grew older.

Everyone did their best to raise Dietrich, feeding him, clothing him, and teaching him.

The person who spent the most time with him was me, the Princess of Total Victory. We were also the closest in age, and we always fought together.

We repeatedly advanced and retreated for four years.

With reinforcements gradually arriving from the rear, the Demon King Subjugation Army had grown to thirty thousand soldiers and advanced all the way to the northernmost edge of the continent, right before the Demon King’s Castle.

Although the Hero was only sixteen despite the passage of time, I, the princess, was twenty and had reached the peak of my holy power.

The problem was that our enemy, known as the Demon King of Despair, possessed the strongest power of any Demon King in history.

Dietrich suffered severe injuries while fighting one of the Demon King’s clones.

I was able to heal his physical injuries, but the shock had also damaged his soul, leaving him unable to move.

The Demon King’s true body was inside the Demon King’s Castle. And the closer we got to the Demon King, the stronger the monsters that made up his army became, while their rate of reproduction also increased.

We had fought endlessly to make it this far. We couldn’t retreat now without gaining anything.

I decided to use the sealing technique I had learned at the Central Grand Temple.

The plan was to use the entire army of thirty thousand as bait to lure out the enemies protecting the Demon King’s Castle, then charge in alone and seal the Demon King’s soul.

It was a tactic used by the Princess of Total Victory and Hero five generations ago. It was said to reduce the Demon King’s power by roughly half and disrupt the command structure of his army.

Naturally, the little Hero threw a fit, crying and insisting that I couldn’t do it, so I ordered them to put him to sleep, tie him up tightly, and bring him along.

And that was why I was flying forward with all my strength right now to carry out the plan.

After taking care of every insignificant enemy that came rushing at me with holy power, I repeatedly punched and kicked my way forward until I finally encountered the Demon King’s true body.

I slammed my clasped hands down with all my strength, as though in prayer.

“Gah!”

A black soul burst out of the Demon King’s body.

I quickly grabbed it with one hand, slammed it against the floor, and planted one foot firmly on it.

The body that hurriedly fled belonged to the Hero.

Hundreds of chains descended from the sky and bound the Demon King’s soul.

A sharp scream scraped against my ears.

Five years at the shortest, ten years at the longest.

Sixteen-year-old Dietrich would need several years to defeat the Demon King.

The moment the Demon King’s head fell, the seal would also be broken.

The only drawback of this technique was that the caster—the Princess of Total Victory—would also be sealed together with the enemy.

In other words, I wouldn’t be able to escape the seal until the Demon King died.

So, my little Hero, hurry up and come rescue your princess noona.

Let’s hold hands and go home together, to our beloved home.

The Demon King’s soul, which had been rampaging endlessly beneath my feet, suddenly shattered with a crack.

The chains of holy power binding me disappeared, and sensation gradually returned to my entire body.

I forced open my heavy eyelids, and my vision slowly cleared.

I was standing in the center of an old hall filled with acrid dust.

When I raised my head, I saw a man standing at the entrance.

Blue eyes resembling the sky, yet hair as dazzlingly golden as sunlight shining beneath the sun.

When our eyes met, he quickly approached me.

The man knelt on one knee before me and respectfully greeted me.

“Princess of Total Victory, I am the Hero, Richt.”

He had a face I had never seen before.

Yet his soul was that of the Hero I knew so well.

Looking at the unfamiliar Hero standing before me, I realized.

It had taken humanity much longer to defeat the Demon King than I had anticipated.

My family, friends, and comrades-in-arms had all departed into the distant passage of time.

Leaving only me behind.