TPVW 06

Chapter 6

3. There’s a Reason You’re Told Not to Do Something

After spending several days in the imperial palace, I returned to my room and threw myself onto the bed.

“Ugh, I’m tired!”

I feel like my head is going to explode from receiving so much information all at once.

I thought that once we defeated the Demon King, a leisurely life of doing absolutely nothing would be waiting for me. But instead, it turns out there’s a mountain of things for the Princess of Total Victory to deal with—almost as many as there were during the Demon King subjugation itself.

The fact that the Heroes have entered into Subordination Contracts with me throughout the generations is an extremely confidential secret known by only a handful of people.

I was told that fewer than ten people in total, including those in the central temple and the imperial palace, knew about it. Aside from them, only the party members who had fought alongside the Heroes during the Demon King subjugations were aware of it.

Surprisingly, even though it was forbidden magic, the contract wasn’t a curse, so neither mages nor priests could detect it.

That’s how the secret had been preserved for hundreds of years.

Good grief. What a headache.

Apparently, terminating the contract required either the Imperial Court’s Chief Mage or someone with power equivalent to a High Priest. The temple said they would contact me once everything was prepared.

There were so many major things I needed to learn about that we hadn’t even had a chance to discuss what I was going to do with my own life.

I’m staying in the imperial palace as a guest for now, but I can’t live like this forever.

Normally, after completing the Demon King subjugation mission, the Princess of Total Victory would return to her homeland.

But I don’t have a home or even a country.

After thinking things through, I figured the central temple would probably take responsibility for me from now on.

However, as long as the Hero and I were bound by the Subordination Contract, I needed to avoid places crowded with people as much as possible until we resolved this.

The central temple was out of the question. Thousands of people came and went there every day.

The imperial palace was out too, since it was filled with countless officials and servants.

If I wanted somewhere where it would be easy to keep the secret and where the Hero would be safest, then the Grand Duke’s residence was obviously my first choice!

Looks like I’ll be becoming a guest of the Grand Ducal family before long.

Ah, the Hero, who hadn’t left my side for even a moment over the past few days, was currently away dealing with the aftermath of the Demon King subjugation.

The other party members had somehow been handling his duties for him, but they were reaching their limits, so he had gone over for a little while to make the final checks.

That’s why, when I returned to my room, Her Holiness Celestia had accompanied me all the way to the door.

Good grief. I’m wearing a dress, so if I lie down any longer, it’ll get wrinkled.

It’s pretty, but this blasted Dress No. 387 is surprisingly uncomfortable.

Time to change.

After I finished dinner, Hero Richt returned with an exhausted expression.

When I asked whether he’d eaten, he said he’d been too busy going through documents and had just grabbed a sandwich.

“You worked hard, Hero.”

“Did anything happen while I was gone, Princess?”

“What could possibly have happened in just a few hours?”

I’d simply changed into comfortable clothes, asked the maids for some paper and writing supplies, and written down everything I could remember about the Holy Sword.

Paper-making had made tremendous advances over the past five hundred years.

The paper in the notebooks the maids had brought me was smooth and brilliantly white.

More than anything, I was surprised by how light it was despite being so sturdy.

I wondered if it was especially good because it was a luxury item used in the imperial palace, but they told me it was an ordinary notebook that anyone could buy in a store.

Long live technological advancement.

“Are you more or less finished with the paperwork?”

“Everything I needed to see is finished. The rest is someone else’s responsibility.”

So he really did only go there to do the bare minimum.

Even if they pushed him to do more, I doubt he’d go back.

Her Holiness Celestia had told me that once Richt realized his master’s holy power had weakened, his vigilance would become even stronger.

The reason the Subordination Contract was forbidden magic was because the subordinate could be controlled according to the master’s every action.

It was suffocating, but there was a reason I was staying inside this room without going anywhere.

It was for my safety.

If I, the master, died, Hero Richt would die too.

That’s because that lunatic Dietrich had pledged his soul.

However, the fact that this Subordination Contract was forbidden magic wasn’t without reason.

If the subordinate died, the master suffered no consequences whatsoever.

In other words, even if Richt died, I would remain perfectly fine.

It was an incredibly easy contract to abuse and utterly unfair to the subordinate!

Seriously, who came up with this thing?

“I should’ve taught him never to sign contracts carelessly.”

“Who are you referring to?”

“Dietrich.”

Wait.

Now that I think about it, Richt caused an even bigger problem than Dietrich, didn’t he?

That guy only pledged his soul, but this guy pledged his entire body too!

I wanted to smack him on the back a few times out of sheer frustration, but I couldn’t exactly do that since he was the Grand Duke.

Perhaps realizing what I was thinking, he quietly spoke.

“I don’t regret it. Not then, and not now. The other Heroes feel the same way.”

“I can understand how you feel, but you can’t possibly know what the previous Heroes felt, can you?”

“There are diaries.”

Apparently, there was a room where records left behind by the Heroes throughout the generations were kept.

They were allowed to enter when they turned fifteen, and after reading the records, the Heroes would make their own choice.

How much of their bodies they would pledge to the Subordination Contract.

“In the end, I didn’t die, and I rescued the Princess. That means this method was the right one. And…”

“And?”

“It was written in the records that Flur would somehow take care of everything.”

Oh.

So, in other words, every Hero, starting with Dietrich, had recklessly done whatever they wanted because they trusted me to fix everything somehow?

What would they have done if I had turned around and treated the Hero like a slave?!

I tried to hold myself back, but I just couldn’t anymore.

Time for a little lecture.

“All right, Hero. Repeat after me. The Princess of Total Victory is not omnipotent.”

“The Princess of Total Victory is not omnipotent.”

“Gambling will ruin your life!”

“Gambling? I’ve never gambled even once in my life.”

“When you were fifteen, you did something that people in this world would call gambling!”

He protested with an expression full of dissatisfaction, but it was useless.

“If I suddenly decide to be malicious and say, ‘Give me your house! Give me food! Give me clothes! Buy me jewelry!’ and then refuse to terminate the contract forever, your life as a Hero would be completely ruined! Do you understand?”

“A house, food, clothing, and jewelry. If those are the only things you want, that would be extremely easy.”

Richt calmly listed the estates owned by the Grand Ducal family, the chefs they employed, the clothing designers they had invested in, and the jewelry stored in their treasury, completely turning my argument upside down.

“I can give you anything you want, Princess.”

He smiled brightly as if to say that he had more than enough resources and ability, so there was no way his life could ever be ruined.

And his smile was so ridiculously handsome that it only made me even more irritated.

“It should take about a week to finish dealing with everything related to the 100th Demon King subjugation.”

“Then the party will disband too.”

“Yes. Everyone is looking forward to returning to their normal lives.”

I heard that Grayson, the oldest member of the Hero’s party, was the eldest son of a prestigious Count’s family and the father of two children.

He’d finally be able to spend more time with his children.

The mage, Miles, said he would return to the Mage Tower and continue his research under his master, the Tower Master.

Teira, an elemental spirit user and healer, was practically bouncing with excitement at the thought of returning to her hometown.

“Doesn’t the Hero need to return to his territory too?”

“The Grand Duchy is being well managed by my capable vassals. And it isn’t very far from the capital. It takes only two hours by train.”

“What is a train?”

“A massive means of transportation that carries people and cargo. In your era, Princess, you probably would have called it an iron horse.”

“Oh, that thing! We were experimenting with one by attaching mana stones to it.”

It had been about three times the size of a six-passenger carriage.

It consumed an absurd amount of the budget, so I think the research was eventually discontinued.

“So in this world, airships fly through the sky and trains run along the ground.”

“Yes. His Majesty and Her Holiness told you about many issues earlier, but to be honest, if you don’t want to do them, you don’t have to.”

“Huh?”

“You fought the Demon King for five hundred years, Princess. There isn’t a single person on the continent who doesn’t know how much you sacrificed to defeat the Demon King.”

He spoke quietly.

“When you want to sleep, sleep. When you want to eat, eat. You can live a life where you leisurely stroll through the park.”

“Because the Princess’s duty is over now?”

“Yes.”

The Hero whispered a sweet proposal.

He understood exactly what I wanted because he had dreamed of the same thing while fighting through battles drenched in blood.

“But I already told everyone that I’d think of a solution.”

“Do you really think we haven’t been doing anything all this time?”

He continued calmly.

“We searched through every piece of information we could find, and countless scholars devoted themselves to researching the matter, but no particularly effective solution was found.”

“In other words, you think digging through ancient books is a waste of time.”

“It would probably be faster to receive the Goddess’s Holy Sword by going to one of the four destroyed temples and carrying bricks myself.”

That was a fair point too.

The Hero asked me whether there was anything making me uncomfortable and where I wanted to live and what I wanted to do from now on.

“If you want to remain in the imperial palace, Princess, we’ll prepare a separate palace residence for you. Her Imperial Majesty asked me to find out because she needs to prepare the budget.”

“L-Live in the imperial palace?”

No.

Absolutely not!

I wasn’t in a position to be picky about where I lived, but even after terminating the Subordination Contract with the Hero, I wanted to avoid living in the imperial palace as much as possible.

I’m not a Princess of Total Victory who was born into royalty.

I’m from a commoner’s village.

There’s no way I can spend the rest of my life following difficult and exhausting etiquette rules.

Even Princess Vivian, who had actually been born as the king’s daughter, absolutely hated that blasted etiquette!

After hearing what I said, the Hero suggested a small annex on the Grand Duke’s estate in the capital.

It was a single-story brick house without expensive porcelain, paintings, or other elaborate decorations.

Apparently, it had been furnished to feel comfortable and cozy.

Since I’d heard that the main Grand Ducal residence was similar to the imperial palace, I immediately insisted on the annex for the sake of my mental well-being.

And I had a few days to spare before Dr. Riephat, who would be teaching me about the modern world, arrived.

The five-year-old Crown Prince had recently started taking lessons, and the Hero asked whether I’d like to attend them together while I was staying in the imperial palace.

I accepted.

The lessons were designed for a child, so they would be easy for an adult like me, but he said they would help me learn basic general knowledge.

Apparently, they would teach things like currency denominations and market prices, which sounded incredibly useful.

After all, I only knew the money and prices from five hundred years ago.