With a stubborn jerk, Prim shook off Abel Noct’s hand.
Indeed, for a brief moment her heart had truly stirred.
But for some inexplicable reason it stilled again.
“Shrimp-headed idiot! If you think this princess is going to ‘merge’ with you for battle, dream on!”
Prim explained it that way.
She glanced at the approaching Julius Noct and convinced herself inwardly: It has to be merging with the person I like for this divine art to exert its greatest power!
If it’s with people who mutually despise each other, it’ll probably backfire.
This is my first experience with it. I don’t want it to be such a terrible situation!
So, absolutely not!
“Then just sit nicely in the spectator seats and watch.”
Abel said as he prepared to ‘save the world alone’. However, his cloak was yanked by Prim, nearly choking him to death.
“Take me with you!”
Prim said, her face flushing red.
Abel furrowed his brows.
“If you’re coming, then keep up. What are you standing there for?”
“This princess twisted her ankle! I can’t walk!”
“Cast a healing spell on yourself.”
“I can only do buffs. I don’t have heals!”
“With breasts that big, you’re telling me you have no milk?!”
“I’m very useful! Without me helping you, you definitely can’t beat this thing!”
Alright, Abel gave in.
According to the game settings, this princess’s damage-amplification abilities were indeed outstanding.
But she genuinely had no healing.
Not knowing any healing spells as a cleric was essentially Her Highness the Princess’s only flaw in strength.
Finally, amid Her Highness the Princess’s grumbling curses, Abel had no choice but to bend down and hoist the unreasonable princess onto his back.
After entrusting Julius with rescuing the wounded and clearing out the mutated ‘monsters’, Abel sprinted toward the interior of the arena.
The longsword in his hand gleamed with a chilling, eerie light.
Although he carried Prim on his back, the buffs she provided made his body feel lighter than ever.
His blade rose and fell, sword light flashing brilliantly.
Along the way there was not a single foe who could withstand even one blow.
Watching the pair bicker and banter as they left, Julius revealed a playful expression.
He then took over command of the scene, ordering the surviving kingdom knights to begin evacuation and rescue operations.
***
Riding on Abel’s back and looking down from above at this vulgar man she detested, Prim felt an immense sense of superiority and inner satisfaction.
Ah, twisted ankle?
No, no—she had faked it. The purpose was to secure this high-and-mighty vantage point and satisfy her shattered vanity.
Although the facts proved Abel was right, the royal family’s pride still lingered in her heart.
“Well, Julius’s little brother, your swordsmanship is actually quite impressive! No wonder Lord Julius recommended you for the knight commander position. Who knows, you might even be stronger than those commanders in the kingdom!”
Abel could not be bothered to reply.
Along the way, more and more mutated monsters in civilian clothing appeared.
Although he cut them down one by one with ease, his brows furrowed tighter and tighter.
Especially when he thought about how some of these people could have been saved.
He could not help mocking the chattering Prim.
“Your Highness, many of the people here could have been saved originally.”
“Who—who knows if what you said is all true!”
As Abel had expected, the noble princess was still stubbornly denying it, even with such a painful truth right in front of her!
“The Goddess Festival is the kingdom’s most important sacrificial ceremony. If we rashly interrupt it and it turns out to be a farce afterward, even I couldn’t cover it up!”
Abel snorted.
“So in Your Highness’s eyes, the lives of the citizens are completely less important than the kingdom’s face, right?”
“…I-I didn’t mean it that way… It’s just…”
Her voice lowered.
“I didn’t expect so many people to die.”
Abel did not want to continue the topic with her. This woman always had all sorts of excuses.
After all, in this otherworld’s feudal society, ordinary people’s lives were probably nothing more than abstract numbers to those in power.
Better to focus on the task at hand.
“Your Highness, fighting like this is endless. There are too many people eroded by Divine Pollution.”
Abel stopped in his tracks, gazing at the ‘mutated entities’ pouring in endlessly, and spoke softly to Prim on his back.
Prim’s delicate brows furrowed slightly as she asked, “What do you plan to do?”
“We’re accelerating. Hold on tight!”
The moment the words left his mouth, Prim felt a howling gale whip past her ears.
A storm rushed in, scattering the girl’s pink hair and nearly flinging her off. The scenery before her blurred into streaking lines!
Too… too fast!
Is this man really that powerful?!
At this speed her body would feel wrong!
“Planning to charge straight through?”
Prim had barely spoken when she sensed something wrong.
Although he had increased his sprinting speed, his direction was not toward the center of the arena—he had turned around and was running the other way?
“What?”
Her mind could not keep up.
“You took the wrong path! Turn around quickly. This leads to the weapons warehouse! The monsters are over there!”
“I didn’t take the wrong path. You don’t honestly think I can defeat that Surtr guy with this shabby little sword in my hand that’s already full of nicks, do you?”
Ugh. Prim glanced at the cheap kingdom-standard longsword in Abel’s hand.
Even with her thick skin she felt embarrassed suggesting he use this junk to save the world.
“…There are indeed quite a few good items in the weapons warehouse, but to confront that kind of monster it’s still not enough, right?”
Abel casually sliced down two ‘infected entities’ that came howling and lunging, explaining, “Come on, Your Highness. Doesn’t the winner of your Goddess Festival get a mysterious grand prize package?”
“What?”
Prim never disappointed when it came to disappointing others. Facing Abel’s words, she tilted her neck again and wore a very ‘wise’ expression. “The winner’s reward? What’s that?”
“…The Third-Type Holy Armor Angel Sutis. It’s the reward the church and the royal family prepared for the competition’s victor. Actually, this festival is also a ceremony to select the hero.”
“…Angel Sutis? What’s that?”
Prim felt her brain short-circuiting again; all these terms were completely unfamiliar.
She lay draped over Abel’s back, her pink hair whipping wildly in the wind of their high-speed dash.
Abel continued sprinting through the half-collapsed corridor with Prim on his back.
Behind them rose and fell endless roars—those “monsters” eroded by Divine Pollution still surged from every direction.
“It’s a secret weapon developed by the Chronos Church to counter Divine Pollution.”
Abel kept the explanation brief, making a sharp turn to dodge a falling stone slab overhead.
“As royalty, you really don’t know anything about it?”
“I… of course I don’t know!”
Dissatisfaction at being questioned filled Prim’s voice. “Such a confidential matter—how could Father possibly tell a girl like me? But you—”
She paused, staring suspiciously at the back of Abel’s head.
“A wandering knight roaming everywhere—how do you even know about this kind of secret?”
Abel had his excuse ready.
“When I was traveling the continent, I saw it in the records of some ancient ruins.”
“Ancient ruins?” Prim grew even more confused.
“But earlier didn’t you say today’s attack was launched by the heretics of the ‘Demon King Cult’? How did it suddenly involve ancient documents and some ‘Angel Armament’?”
“…Things changed.”
Abel chose to say no more.
Any further explanation and his transmigrator identity would be impossible to hide.
Fortunately, they had already charged to the entrance of the weapons warehouse—
The three kingdom knights originally guarding the place had now become indescribable monsters.
Their armor looked as if it had melted and re-solidified, fused with their skin. Their limbs were twisted into unnatural angles.
The most horrifying part was their faces—features displaced, mouths split to the ears, eye sockets blazing with silver flames identical to Surtr’s.
“God’s Apostles…” Abel murmured the term under his breath.
This was game terminology, referring to mutated entities deeply polluted by divinity who still retained partial human form and combat instincts.
In the game they were elite monsters, the kind with shield bars.
“They… they’re Captain Harvey and the others…” Prim covered her mouth and cried out in shock.
She recognized the family crest on one of their armors.
The three apostles turned their heads simultaneously, their silver-flaming gazes locking onto the pair.
Yet the battle ended in mere seconds.
From his back Prim witnessed everything. This man’s strength was simply too terrifying!
These elite royal knights had not been weak to begin with, and after mutating they had clearly grown even stronger—far beyond the civilian mutations. Yet none could withstand even two moves from him.
Even if Prim was extremely displeased with this vulgar man, his strength was undeniably outrageous!
Abel sighed and directly discarded the longsword in his hand, now broken in two.
The pair pushed open the heavy warehouse doors.
The interior space was far larger than imagined. Row after row of weapon racks displayed every kind of armament, from standard longswords to finely crafted heavy armor.
This was the kingdom’s backup storage for prizes for Goddess Festival winners and outstanding performers.
But Abel’s gaze skipped straight past these ordinary items and locked onto the deepest part of the warehouse.
There stood a stone platform bearing a coffin roughly two meters long.
The coffin body was forged from some kind of white metal, its surface etched with complex ancient runes that now emitted a soft milky-white glow.
Sutis’s Holy Coffin.
Abel did not hesitate. He strode forward and lifted the lid of the Holy Coffin, however—
It was empty inside?