CH 63

“See for myself?”

“Indeed. It is what we found in the dungeon.” The man opened the large wooden box next to him and carefully took out what was inside.

“What might that be?”

“I’m not sure either… but it has a peculiar shape.”

“Peculiar, you say? I’d say it just looks like a large bird’s egg, no?”

“What are you saying? Anyone can see that it’s a square piece of rock.”

“Hold on now, you two. Are you talking about that bumpy fruit?”

The onlooking officials each observed the object lifted by the envoy and ended up astonished; the man was most definitely holding onto a single object, yet it appeared differently to everyone else.

“Wh-what is going on?”

As the others began to be struck by surprise, the man took a step forward with a smile. “Your Majesty. If I may ask, what does this look like to you?”

“…What is that?” The emperor asked.

“That we do not know either. All we do know is the sentence written on the stone slab we discovered along with this object: It shall awaken at the touch of the strongest of all.” The man took another step closer and held out the object before Estian. “Which is why we wish to offer this to Your Majesty.”

The man’s eyes flashed with anticipation as he said, “No matter how much I think about it, you are the only one to awaken this object, Your Majesty, so please, accept this.”

Cecile and the officials who were watching things play out thought this: ‘Who the heck would be mad enough to take something so suspicious?’

But while everyone was looking at the envoy who was holding out an obviously suspicious item, a commotion was occurring at a door of the inner palace.

* * *

“Move, move aside, all of you!”

The soldiers guarding the door wonderingly turned their heads at the sound of an explosion and the voice of a woman came soon after.

“Who’s she?”

“Looks like a maidservant?”

They saw a woman running towards them from the end of the long corridor they were standing in. Wearing the uniform of a maidservant, the woman charged over wildly like a starved boar that had found prey. 

Her clothes made it easy for the soldiers to identify her as an outsider; the attendants in the palace did not wear maid uniforms with so many frills to the point of being excessive, after all. Regardless, the guards clicked their tongues and issued a warning to the unauthorized visitor. “Stop, young lady. You cannot go inside.”

The guard gestured for the woman to stop, presuming her to be a maidservant that had lost her way, but she did slow down despite his warning.

‘Something’s off?’

The moment the guards were starting to feel alarmed, the charging maidservant cried out, “Holy…!”

“…!”

For a moment, the guards doubted their own eyes.

The maidservant’s fist was suffused with a clear, blue light, emanating such power that they could literally feel it from afar. Very rarely, the commanders of each imperial knight order would spar unrestrainedly, during which spectators might sense their power, compressed to the extreme, for fleeting moments… And right now, the maidservant’s hand was charged with that kind of power.

“It’s an atta-…!”

“…-Shit!”

Even before the guards could raise the alarm, the maidservant’s fist was launched before them. With a tremendous slam, the shimmering marble floor of the corridor was smashed in an instant and they were sent flying along with the debris. After blasting away the guards in a single blow, the saintess cried out, “I’ll be a dog if I ever write a gimmick like this again, a dog! The hell with the saintess’ technique being named Holly Shit! Even fossils wouldn’t play a gag like this!”

The saintess looked at her fist. It was no wonder the barrier of the holy kingdom was broken by her punch. She had forgotten she had put in such a setting. The saintess looked back on the path she had run across. Although it was not clearly visible from this side of the corridor, the door around the end of it was actually destroyed… and the guards had fallen in front of the door over there as well.

It went without saying that she had taken down every guard on the way here. All of them had fallen before even properly seeing the saintess. If one were to only look at her combat ability, she was less of a saintess and more of a knight commander.

‘Right. I did heap settings on the saintess because of the plot being blocked at the time, but…’

In the first place, the saintess was an improvised character meant to help the protagonists overcome their crisis in the latter part of the story, which was why she ended up writing this character without any consideration for plausibility. Furthermore, the author gave her a stupidly powerful ability, thinking that no one would quibble over the setting of a supporting character like this, an ability that went by the name: Holy Shit!

“Oh, how humiliating…” She lamented.

The saintess swore to never insert such worthless internet humor into her writing again and began dashing through the inner palace. She had to be there for what was going to happen from this point on.