Chapter Six: Thunderstorms and Rescues
THE rain was tenacious and persistent.
Wringing out the last drops of my mana, I had cast an enhancing spell on myself. With the strength the buff provided me, I carried the emperor further into the cave, before sitting at the entrance and assuming a lookout position.
My body was a little limp, overheated as if I had been sprinting with all my might under a blazing sun. I couldn’t feel the limb between my fingers and my shoulders—my arms were utterly numb—but the exhaustion would likely vanish once I got some sleep.
There was no sign of the Order. “They might have finally realized who they tried to shoot down… A little late, if you ask me,” I muttered.
I glanced over at the emperor sleeping inside. After my treatment, he had blacked out. He slumbered under a black rag, which was the one and only viable garment I had; I wore just my underclothes as I perched in front of the cave. Despite the spring season, the moist, mountainous environment contributed to a chill so cold that I couldn’t endure on willpower alone for long, unfortunately.
I wasn’t exactly undressed for no reason. Human skin would stand out like a bright light even within the limited visibility of the rainy forest, so if I waited half naked near the cave entrance, I would act as a beacon without spending any mana. After so much time had passed, I was more worried about the emperor’s men failing to find him than the Order discovering us.
“Your Majesty…” I mumbled to myself. As I watched his peaceful, sleeping face, I recalled the cutscene that showed up at one point in the video game I played in my previous life. The art had depicted a shameful fool of an emperor who’d abandoned his duty as ruler of the Orient Empire.
“Lies. All lies…” I whispered with conviction. The man before me was not an emperor who would forsake his country. He had desperately flown to save me, someone who was neither his vassal nor even a citizen of his country. He must’ve had his own reasons to behave as he did in the plot, or perhaps there was some discrepancy, just like how Sai was meant to be the Evil Priestess yet was not.
But…if he truly is fated to walk on the path of ruin, then—
“Your Majesty… I shall dedicate everything I have to your sake. The life you saved, my knowledge of a previous existence, my mana… Everything,” I vowed solemnly.
✦ ✦ ✦
🐦🐦🐦
THE next thing I knew, I heard a man’s voice echoing from afar. “There’s a girl!”
Adorned in attire that fluttered in the air and armor of foreign origin, a group of men approached me. Then, startled, they hurriedly retraced the way they had come. Shortly after, from beyond the veil of rain, a military officer arrived. His hair was as long as Princess Kaguya’s from the Japanese folktale. Water seeped into his clothes as he walked. His ceremonial armor and garb were exquisite, yet he spared not a lick of concern about the dirt on the ground as he kneeled on one knee before me.
“I am the General of the Left Wing, direct subordinate of His Majesty, the Emperor of Orient. My name is Yukinari Kiriya. Are you perhaps Lady Sai?”
I rose to my knees, facing him, before bowing deeply. “We have been expecting you, General. I am Sai Cutrettola, the former governor of the Cutrettola lands in Centoria. His Majesty is inside.”
He probably already knew everything there was to know, because after wrapping me in his cape, he marched into the cave.
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Chapter Seven: Memories of My Previous Life and an Unwelcome Visitor
IN my previous life, I had lived in Japan during the Heisei era, around the start of the twenty-first century. That “me” was a complete stranger, a person different in thought and appearance, and she hadn’t passed on any of her personality to me. The best way to explain how I conceptualized it would probably be so: imagine if, one day, a fishy shaman without mana came up to you and said, “This was who you were in your past life.” To me, hers were the memories and existence of a someone else.
In that stranger’s memories was knowledge about Sai—myself—and my world. The reality that I lived in was identical to the setting of a video game I played in my previous life. It featured five nations on a continent. The main story was free and centered around Centoria, while those of the other countries could be unlocked with in-game purchases. I had been a casual player, so I had only engaged with the Centoria arc.
As for Centoria, it was a kingdom relatively similar to what one would find in Western fantasy. Thinking back, it probably shared many traits with the historical, landlocked countries of eastern Europe in my past life.
In contrast, the Orient Empire, northeast of Centoria, was ruled by emperors who descended from their deity, Amawashi, literally the “heavenly eagle.” The nation had been influenced by foreign civilizations that originated on another continent across the sea, and it was a unique melting pot of Japanese, Chinese, and Dutch culture in an approximate ratio of five-to-four-to-one respectively.
In the Centoria arc, Emperor Haruka had been a fool. Some people started to root for him when his character art was first announced without further details, and I vaguely remembered those fans grumbling about it later, stating things like “Why the heck did they have to waste such a gorgeous character design on this idiot emperor?”
But it was evident that Emperor Haruka, at least the one I knew, was an entirely different person. Similarly, my former fiancé Alexei, for example, was a brave, gentlemanly hunk according to the narrative. And I, too, had been such a vicious, vile priestess that one had to look twice at the character profile to confirm I was really just a side character. Perhaps the correlation between the game’s plot and reality was minuscule.
If I ignored all other events and considered only the destination, in the end, the Evil Priestess’s house was burned down in every single route. “I” had done exactly that over and over during my initial and all following playthroughs. That the house I grew bored of destroying would become my abode in my next life had likely never crossed my mind.
Anyway. The point was, although the scenery along the way differed depending on the story path, Sai was the Evil Priestess who had no family, would witness her house set on fire, and die young. There had been no route in which the Foolish Emperor Haruka rescued her. And the chance of such an event being part of the pay-to-play content was also very low. Given the time I had lived in, I definitely would have seen spoilers posted on social media if that had been the case.
Which meant that my future, for better or worse, was a blank page.