Chapter 71
The following dawn.
It was before heading out for training at the clearing.
The largest room in the royal dormitory.
Lydia stood by the open window in her room, arms crossed and already changed into her training clothes, gazing up at the sky.
“….”
It wouldn’t matter if she headed out a little late.
Arti and the others were used to training by now. They could manage on their own.
‘Morgan must be exhausted. She seems to be sleeping soundly.’
So Lydia looked out the window.
“….”
Her tightly tied golden hair swayed.
Beyond the window, the dawn sky was a blend of blue and black. The stars that had appeared the night before still shone in their places, and the cool ‘autumn breeze’ brushed her cheek.
That was right.
Autumn.
Autumn had arrived before she knew it.
The leaves hadn’t fallen yet, but she could feel the oppressive heat weakening. A chilly breeze had begun to blow at dawn and in the evenings.
Even though it was only September, and the second semester had just begun.
For some reason, she found herself lost in thought for a moment.
Lydia’s eyes gazed wistfully into the distance. Her blue eyes held more light than the black eyes from her previous life, enough to see even the faint glow of dawn.
“….”
No…
Maybe it was because she was a Sword Master.
“….”
The ‘Library of Memories’ had appeared in her dream again the night before.
So she’d slowly gone over Morgan’s route. But thanks to the information Carla had openly shared with her, she could skip the stage of having to guess.
Come to think of it,
she’d already cleared the routes of two heroines.
‘…In only half a year since coming to the academy.’
In terms of the original game,
this was the point where the chaotic first-semester tutorial ended and the main game began. In the game, all you had to do was click through each day.
Building relationships with the heroines, academy exams, training methods, dungeon exploration, and so on…. It was also the time to try a bit of everything and forge your own path.
“….”
‘It took more than two hours of game time to get this far….’
A slow pace for an eroge.
A traditional RPG route that drew you into the protagonist’s feelings.
As a result, the game platform’s reviews were full of complaints.
-Did they make the opening drag on to stop people from speedrunning refunds?
-When do we finally get to the sex scenes….
-I came to play an eroge, so why am I getting a traditional hero’s journey?
-Why do we have to wait for the heroines, who are adults by modern standards from the very first year, to mature even more? Isn’t this a bit too cautious?
And so on.
All sorts of complaints and criticism followed. From the perspective of someone who’d bought an eroge, they were fairly reasonable points.
The game company took those complaints to heart.
So they released an emergency patch that let players access the erotic scenes from later in the story early. They promised a forced CG unlock for players who’d played for more than ‘two hours.’
But perhaps to avoid spoiling the story,
they’d bleeped out some of the heroines’ risqué lines.
What a ridiculous situation.
Lydia could still remember it.
“….”
『Aria: Ah! □□— □□□!』
『Mave: Ugh…! □□□□….』
『Morgan: ■■■■■■■.』
It looked like dialogue from some kind of cursed game.
It had become a meme all over the internet. In her previous life, Lee Dae-yoon had learned about <Chronicles of the Holy Sword Hero> through one of those memes.
And after playing the game,
she quickly understood why they’d taken the story so seriously.
It was full of traps that were shocking if you went in blind.
“….”
‘For an eroge, it seemed oddly committed to the story…. I never imagined it would be packed with humiliation events, destruction events, and NTR events.’
It had the vibe of a game made by people who’d played their share of humiliation games.
When a classic-game-style event popped up on the street, a merchant would leer and drop his pants; use a high-performance consumable that affected a certain stat, and your character would fall into depravity….
Even worse, once the conflict with the Black Temple began in earnest, the cultists’ horrific acts of humiliation began too. Reading text that hinted at all kinds of inhuman endings left her mind reeling.
And Lee Dae-yoon had been reborn as one of the heroines in that world after saying one wrong thing.
“….”
Simply put,
everything in this world was dangerous.
All sorts of unreasonable restrictions held back the protagonist’s side, while the enemies broke through them as if it were child’s play. That was why she had to be suspicious of all the ‘players’ controlling the weak Arti.
Every last one of them.
And when all of that became reality,
she saw just
how cruelly it could take shape
through her work with the Ember Knights.
That was why Lydia trained Arti and the others so hard.
So that no matter what trials came their way, they could grow a few steps faster than those trials arrived. So they wouldn’t be dragged along by the story created by those sinister people, but could live new lives of their own.
…She herself was already strong enough.
She tried to help them by becoming their liege.
Unlike the ‘incompetent princess’ in the original.
And at the original story’s real starting line,
the beginning of the second semester of first year, Arti and the others were already unmatched at the academy. They’d grown at breakneck speed, even acquiring their endgame equipment.
That was Lydia’s achievement.
“….”
Lydia looked at her hands. They were the proud hands of a swordswoman, covered in calluses. A masterpiece in which beauty and strength coexisted.
“…Hmm.”
No,
she tried to look.
But she couldn’t see below.
Because of her enormous breasts.
She had to move her hand slightly to the side to see. It was a field of view she hadn’t known back when she was a man. Sometimes it still caught her by surprise without warning.
They really were bigger than she’d ever imagined.
Even after living in this body for more than eighteen years, there were times she wondered what she was supposed to make of it.
“….”
‘This unnecessarily sexy figure was part of why I became so obsessively determined to get stronger. It weighed on me, knowing this body was designed to be helplessly preyed upon by someone.’
Anyway.
Lee Dae-yoon had become Lydia.
She’d grown used to life as a woman.
And at the same time, she’d become capable.
Unlike the incompetent princess in the original.
“….”
Lydia clenched her fist.
‘I….’
am different from the incompetent princess.
I am a new ‘Lydia de Gallia.’
I am the only princess who can save this country.
“…Phew.”
Even if she was a madwoman who mistakenly believed her previous life had been that of a man.
This path
couldn’t be wrong.
Lydia thought so as she watched the dawn.
Before long, sunlight faintly peeked over the horizon. By now, Arti and the others would have arrived at the clearing and be looking around for her.
“…I should go.”
*
After dawn training ended,
when they entered class in the Department of Swordsmanship,
Lydia and the others sensed a subtle unease and impatience in the air.
The new cadets from Gallia approached Lydia and the others. Every one of them pleaded with Lydia, who wasn’t running for student council president.
“L-Lady Lydia! Are you really not planning to run for student council president?”
“That’s right.”
“We’ll support you with all our hearts. Please don’t worry and hurry up and run…!”
“I appreciate your resolve, but I have no intention of running.”
“At this rate, we’ll lose to those Republic people….”
“We weren’t competing for the student council presidency in the first place, so how could we lose?”
“Well, that’s true, but….”
Lydia spoke firmly.
“The kingdom hasn’t lost to the republic just because I didn’t run for president. Nor has the republic defeated the kingdom. It simply means that those who are interested have parted ways with those who aren’t.”
“Th-that….”
“Besides, this standoff is merely the result of Lady Carla’s one-sided misunderstanding. Do not let personal feelings toward the Republic cadets influence you into acting rashly.”
“…Yes.”
The Swordsmanship Department was dominated by cadets from the kingdom’s aristocratic faction. Many had a worldview rooted in conservative values, keeping their distance from the republic for political reasons.
That was why they’d reacted so sensitively to the standoff between Lydia and Carla (even though it was a lie).
Dominic, in particular, came from a prominent family in the aristocratic faction. He muttered,
“Even so, if you don’t run in the election, I feel like the reformists will look down on us….”
“….”
The reformists.
An emerging faction in the kingdom that was pushing for diplomatic ties with the republic.
They mostly enrolled in the Department of Magic rather than the Department of Swordsmanship, which valued traditional ideals. However, most were children of minor nobles or merchants, so their influence was negligible.
Lydia summed up the situation, making her point clear.
“They are students at the academy, nothing more. Even you, the scions of traditional noble families, are troubled by this. I doubt the reformist cadets, whose position as children of an emerging faction is so unstable, are plotting some sort of scheme.”
“….”
“Do not project excessive suspicion onto the other side. Protect the peace of this moment.”
“Yes, understood.”
The first-year cadets from the Department of Swordsmanship accepted this and dispersed.
Lydia looked at Arti and the others who had followed her.
“We were delayed for a moment. Let us head into the training grounds now.”
“….”
“….”
“….”
“….”
Arti, Aria, Mave, and Morgan looked at Lydia and shook their heads. Whatever rhetoric she’d learned, her knack for leading people around by the nose was an art.
“Sometimes, I’m glad Lydia is our captain.”
“If she were the leader of some suspicious faction, I think she’d quickly gather more and more followers and command them….”
“I’m glad Lady Lydia is a true Gallian royal.”
“…Hmph.”
Lydia smiled wryly.
“You flatter me.”
Then she turned around again to head to class.
Just like that,
amid the unease of countless cadets, the academy’s student council presidential election began.