Chapter 5

All right, I’ll be honest.

The Hero is a little strange.

No, he’s really strange!

The Hero Dietrich, who fought alongside me five hundred years ago, was just an ordinary boy who happened to be able to wield the Holy Sword, right?

But the Hero of this era, Richt… How should I put this?

He treats me as if I’m more precious than anything else in the world, using every bit of free time he has to take care of me.

Of course, the Princess of Total Victory is a hero who saved the world, so I suppose it’s possible that a Hero from a later generation might worship me.

But there’s a limit to worship and respect!

The imperial palace maids also treated me with sparkling eyes and the utmost courtesy, but they didn’t fuss over every little thing like Richt did or feed me personally so I wouldn’t have to lift a finger!

Whenever I was burning with a fever and groaning in bed, I’d open my eyes and find the Hero sitting beside me.

Not once did he leave my side whenever I regained consciousness.

Even in the middle of the night, when everyone else was asleep, he stayed awake, watching my condition and placing a cool, wet towel on my forehead.

The imperial palace maids seemed to think it was only natural for the Hero to take care of the Princess of Total Victory with such devotion.

But that wasn’t the case.

The Goddess only grants the Hero the Holy Sword and several abilities meant to defeat the Demon King.

His emotions and behavior remain exactly the same as they were before he became the Hero.

In other words, the way Richt treats me, the princess, is entirely his own choice.

After learning that he was a member of the imperial family, my doubts only grew stronger.

Because if you spend even a few hours with Richt, you can immediately tell that he’s someone who has been served devotedly by his subordinates from the moment he was born.

In other words, he had spent his entire life in an environment befitting his noble bloodline.

So why did he lower himself only for me and, ugh…

It’s not a pleasant way to put it, but why does he act like my personal footstool?

I really couldn’t understand it.

After gulping down some cold tea, I turned my head and looked at the Hero sitting beside me.

I’d dismissed all the attendants, so there were only four people in the room now:

The Emperor, the Pope, the Princess of Total Victory, and the Hero.

If there was ever a time to ask the question I’d been suppressing deep inside, this was it.

“Hero, you’re hiding something from me, aren’t you?”

He answered calmly.

“I haven’t hidden anything. There are simply a few things I haven’t had the chance to explain yet. I only put them off because they weren’t particularly important.”

There was no way they weren’t important.

Just looking at the faces of the people sitting across from me, I could tell this was an extremely serious matter, and they’d all been keeping their mouths shut about it!

I stared at him intensely and urged him to confess everything already.

The Hero then dropped another massive bombshell, as casually as if it were nothing.

“The Princess and I are currently bound by a Subordination Contract. The Princess is the master, and I am the subordinate.”

“A-A Subordination Contract? That’s forbidden magic! Who put forbidden magic on the Hero?! The Demon King?”

“The person who first established the Subordination Contract was Hero Dietrich. He pledged his soul, and the Heroes of later generations…”

“Dietrich, you lunatic! What the hell did you do while I was gone?!”

“Princess, calm down! No, please, compose yourself! Of course, I completely understand why you’re angry enough to lose your mind, but please!”

“Your Holiness, explain it to me. Quickly, before I die of frustration!”

Managing forbidden magic was one of the Pope’s duties passed down through the generations.

I didn’t think I’d get a proper answer by asking the Hero, so I asked someone who could give me an objective explanation.

“Sigh… All right, so this is what happened…”

This was the story that came from the Pope, who was sweating profusely.

After the Holy Sword was destroyed, Hero Dietrich was forced to fight the Demon King alone.

He desperately searched for a way to strengthen his forces, and eventually, with the tacit approval of the Pope at the time, that lunatic even resorted to forbidden magic.

“The Subordination Contract was a means for the Hero to gain tremendous power. Hero Dietrich designated you as his master and offered his soul. And he became stronger.”

The effects of using the forbidden magic had been remarkable.

After entering into the contract, Dietrich became completely immune to mental attacks such as illusions and hypnosis.

It would have been wonderful if he’d managed to save me, but unfortunately, Dietrich failed to defeat the Demon King and died in his fifties.

The immense responsibility was passed on to the next Hero.

“For the sake of clarity, let’s call him the Second Hero. The previous Hero died while still bound by the contract. Therefore, the Second Hero was already bound to the Princess’s soul from the moment he was born. He also carried your mark on his body.”

“Mark? If you mean the mark of the Princess of Total Victory, do you mean wings?”

“Yes. There was a wing-shaped mark on the baby’s back.”

Normally, the way to find the Hero was to have people try drawing the Holy Sword one by one.

But there was no Holy Sword anymore, so…

Ah!

“Dietrich deliberately pledged his soul. That way, you’d be able to find the reincarnated Hero.”

“Exactly. It was a strategic decision. The Goddess also gave an oracle that a baby with a wing-shaped mark on their back would be the Hero.”

I had been one of the stronger Princesses of Total Victory throughout history.

It wasn’t only because I possessed a large amount of holy power.

The princess candidate training I’d received since childhood had truly proven its worth on the battlefield.

But Dietrich…

Well, because of the environment he’d grown up in, where he’d barely even been able to properly learn how to read, he had gone through absolute hell.

After seeing my success as an example, it was obvious what he had been thinking.

“The Second Hero was the second son of a merchant family. Hero Dietrich emphasized the importance of early education and left behind dozens of pages of instructions in his will. With his parents’ consent, the boy began his education at the age of five.”

“He must have become strong quickly.”

“The greatest teachers on the continent taught him.”

And when the Second Hero turned fifteen, the Pope revealed the secret to him.

The Hero’s soul was bound by a Subordination Contract, and the only way to break it was to defeat the Demon King and rescue the Princess of Total Victory.

“The Subordination Contract can only be terminated by the master. And because it’s forbidden magic, you need to perform a special ritual to terminate the contract without complications.”

Apparently, the Second Hero also discovered that if he offered parts of his body in addition to his soul, those body parts would become stronger as well.

“He offered more?”

“Yes. His head, one of his vital points…”

“Whew. This Hero and that Hero… What were they thinking, recklessly doing things like this without considering what would happen later?”

In any case, the Second Hero had gotten exactly what he wanted.

He became the owner of the toughest head in the world.

The problem was that even after making all those preparations, he still couldn’t defeat the Demon King.

“Eventually, as the generations progressed, the Heroes offered more and more parts of their bodies to the Princess. The more they placed under the contract, the stronger they could become.”

All right.

I more or less understood the situation now.

The only thing left was to find out how much of his body the Hero of this generation, Richt, had offered under the Subordination Contract.

The answer came not from the Hero, but from Emperor Payton.

“Everything.”

“When you say everything… Surely you don’t mean…?”

“Yes. From the top of his head to the tips of his toes. That man belongs to the Princess of Total Victory. His soul as well, of course.”

I turned my body and met Richt’s gaze as he sat beside me.

His shining blond hair and crystal-clear blue eyes were striking enough to resemble a cloudless sky.

He was such a handsome man that anyone passing him on the street would turn around to look.

He took my right hand and gracefully bowed.

I felt his lips lightly touch the back of my hand before pulling away, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

Goddess.

Isn’t this a little too much?

If you felt sorry for the Princess of Total Victory who was going to be dropped into a world five hundred years in the future, you could have just sent down a few bags of gold.

Why did you have to give me a Hero who was the Emperor’s cousin and a Grand Duke?!

And then there’s his family member, the Emperor.

Why didn’t you stop this reckless Hero?!

Surely he knew how dangerous forbidden magic was.

Aaaah!

Earlier, Her Holiness Celestia had casually made an excuse that she’d tried to stop him.

In other words, the Emperor had known about it and still hadn’t stopped his younger cousin.

After I attacked him with a look that clearly demanded an explanation, he clasped his hands together and began speaking.

“Princess, I was the youngest among the former Emperor’s children. I had five older siblings in total, including my elder sisters and brothers.”

Emperor Payton calmly revealed that all of his older siblings had died fighting on the battlefield.

Those born during periods when there was no Hero had a difficult time avoiding military service, no matter how high their status was.

And apparently, over the five hundred years of fighting against the Demon King, regulations had also been established.

“To become the heir of a noble family, you must either contribute to the Demon King subjugation effort or have experience fighting on the front lines.”

“What exactly does contributing to the subjugation effort mean?”

“There are many ways. Developing and supplying new weapons, for example, or donating funds for the Demon King Subjugation Army’s expeditions. If your territory’s main industry is agriculture, you could also sell wheat or rice for military rations at close to cost.”

There were many different ways to contribute.

But Emperor Payton’s older brothers and sisters had chosen to go to the front lines themselves.

And because they feared the imperial bloodline might die out, the only one who survived was Payton himself, the late-born prince whom the Empress had given birth to in her mid-forties.

He eventually became Emperor.

“I held funeral after funeral until I was sick of them. I thought I wouldn’t be able to bear it if my cousin Richt died as well. Then I heard that he could become stronger simply by entering into the Subordination Contract. I bet everything on the method that would give my Hero brother the lowest possible chance of dying.”

The gamble between the Hero and the Emperor had actually succeeded.

They had defeated the Demon King and safely rescued the Princess of Total Victory.

The problem was that one more task had been added to my list.

Breaking the Subordination Contract placed on Richt.

As quickly as possible.

The sooner, the better!

Every form of forbidden magic had restrictions and side effects.

And normally, the greater the benefit the caster gained from forbidden magic, the more severe its restrictions and side effects were.

Until now, the subordinate’s highest priority had been to rescue the master, so the restrictions and side effects had probably been relatively mild.

But now that I was back, things were different.

Honestly, I had no idea how the Subordination Contract would affect things from this point onward.

One thing was certain: the subordinate would act to ensure that the master didn’t have to do anything herself.

But somehow, I had a feeling that wasn’t all there was to it.

So the first thing I needed to do was terminate the contract.

And, of course, I was the only one who could do it because I was the Hero’s master.

I really felt like cursing.