Isabella frowned at the word “Holy Maiden.”
It lasted only a moment. As if to prove that her epithet, the Flower of High Society, was no empty boast, she immediately returned to her usual composed expression.
"My lady, is something the matter?"
However, Dante apparently had not missed that fleeting instant. He addressed her in a worried tone, checking on her condition.
"It is nothing."
Isabella smoothly brushed off his words as though it truly were nothing.
Even so, she could not conceal her bitter smile.
The words “Holy Maiden” did not carry a particularly welcome resonance for her, so such a reaction was understandable.
Before her regression, when Isabella had been obsessed with the Second Prince, the very person who tormented her had been the Holy Maiden.
It had been closer to assassination than being condemned and made to drink poison, but in any case, the Isabella of the first playthrough had died as a villainess.
Not because she had truly been a villainess, of course, but because she had been thoroughly framed.
The Isabella of the first playthrough had simply possessed somewhat greater desires and liked the Second Prince, who was a good young man. She had not been the sort of villainess who viciously tormented others.
And the person who had turned such an Isabella into a villainess, then ultimately poisoned her to death.
In a sense, for Isabella—a villainess-type protagonist following the plot of a regression story—the Holy Maiden was the woman who could be considered the true final boss.
Of course, the current Isabella did not know for certain that the Holy Maiden was behind the attempt to poison her.
More precisely, she was in that exact state where she had plenty of suspicions but no physical evidence.
"This is troublesome."
Professor Luke tapped his skull with a bony finger.
The blue flame burning in his eye sockets gradually dwindled, then vanished from within his skull as if it had gone completely out.
His was a white skull whose lack of facial muscles made it impossible to read any expression, but there was one thing I could tell.
"If the Holy Kingdom learns of this, they will surely try to take Miss Iris away."
This skeleton was extremely annoyed right now.
"Is that so?"
Iris tilted her head, sounding as though she had no idea what he meant, and Professor Luke nodded at her words.
"Although the Holy Kingdom is a place with a peculiar flexibility, to the point that it does not reject the existence of other gods despite believing in the One God, but rather acknowledges them…"
Professor Luke, his empty eye sockets still devoid of flame, moved his jawbone and continued.
"They believe that selecting a Holy Maiden is an authority and prerogative granted exclusively to the One God."
It could be seen as an arrogant claim of the Holy Kingdom’s superiority, but it was not exactly wrong.
Even in the setting of Dawnstar Academia, the One God was the only god capable of selecting a Holy Maiden, so in a sense, their claim was an indisputable fact.
Moreover, every Holy Maiden throughout history had awakened holy power through the divinity of the One God, so even the apostles of other gods did not particularly deny their claim.
And so, the next part of Iris’s storyline, as I remembered it, went like this.
Asdel reported Iris’s existence as an awakened Holy Maiden to the Holy Kingdom, and the Holy Kingdom once again sent an envoy to the academy to bring Iris back to their homeland.
The problem arose there.
Up to that point, it followed the typical plot of a Holy Maiden story’s protagonist. But the real issue lay with the envoy the Holy Kingdom dispatched to the academy.
Because that envoy was none other than the Holy Maiden who had poisoned Isabella.
Of course, in the playthrough where Iris was the protagonist, Isabella had been erased from existence, so the poisoning never occurred.
Still, since they were the same person in the setting, this woman called the Holy Maiden filled the villainess role in Iris’s route.
Her role was to fiercely envy and oppose Iris, the new Holy Maiden who threatened her position.
Viewed that way, that woman ultimately took on the position of final boss in Iris’s main story as well.
"Miss Iris, I apologize, but could you keep the fact that you awakened as a Holy Maiden hidden for the time being?"
Professor Luke quietly spoke, pressing a bony finger against his hard teeth.
It was a side of Professor Luke I had never once seen in the game.
His tone was as glib as usual, but the blue flame in his eye sockets had yet to return. The pressure created by that contradictory sight kept anyone from carelessly opening their mouth.
In that suffocating silence, the person who spoke was—
"May I know why?"
—only Iris herself, the person concerned.
Seeing her stare directly at him, Professor Luke brought a bony finger to his chin and tapped it. Tap. Tap.
"The Holy Kingdom is an organization that displays a certain degree of flexibility. Well, it is not as though there was never a time when they ran wild while riding on the authority of the gods… but at least the present-day Holy Kingdom is different."
Professor Luke casually pointed at himself with his thumb, as though the fact that an undead like him held a professorship at the academy was proof enough.
At the same time, familiar blue flames of mana flared up inside his extinguished eye sockets and restored him to normal.
"The present-day Holy Kingdom recognizes faiths in other gods even while serving the One God, and it has allowed even an undead like myself, who falls outside its doctrine, to exist upon this land. But… even that Holy Kingdom has one thing—"
Professor Luke raised the index finger of his bony hand as he continued.
"—that it will not relinquish."
"Is that the Holy Maiden?"
Professor Luke nodded his skull, indicating that Iris had answered correctly.
"But is there not already a Holy Maiden affiliated with the Holy Kingdom?"
The hand that rose belonged to Isabella.
Perhaps because she had personally uttered the words “Holy Maiden,” the enemy from her previous life, a dreadful displeasure briefly crossed her clear red eyes.
It might have been a simple question.
But I could not entirely dismiss the thought that she might have brought it up for another reason.
After all, she knew better than anyone who would make the most displeased expression if the Holy Kingdom learned that Iris had become a Holy Maiden.
"The Holy Kingdom already has a Holy Maiden, so would they really need to obsess over a new Holy Maiden merely because another one awakened elsewhere?"
"Certainly, that could be the case."
Professor Luke nodded, saying Isabella’s answer might be right as well.
However.
"The problem is that the Holy Kingdom’s love for Holy Maidens is truly exceptional."
The mechanical quality in Professor Luke’s voice, flowing from his open jawbone, was steeped in utter exasperation.
What could I say? He sounded like someone who had been put through the wringer quite extensively.
Had something involving a Holy Maiden, or the Holy Kingdom, happened in Professor Luke’s past?
Well, neither the game nor the art book had ever revealed anything about Professor Luke’s past, so there was no way I could know.
"Besides, there has never been a precedent for two Holy Maidens in the same era. So we do not know how the Holy Kingdom will act."
"Th-then… what if Ris is not a Holy Maiden connected to the Holy Kingdom…?"
The next person to cautiously raise a hand was brown-haired Haede.
Professor Luke responded by vigorously waving his bony hand, as though the suggestion were absurd.
"Oh, no. That cannot be."
His mechanical voice was filled with resolute certainty.
His attitude made it clear that Haede’s answer could never be correct.
"The only god in this world with a rank high enough to interfere in the mortal realm to the extent of creating a Holy Maiden is the One God."
At his words, Isabella, as well as Dante and Dolnesia, who had only been listening beside her, widened their eyes.
Not because the scale of the conversation had suddenly grown larger, but because of Professor Luke’s attitude toward the gods.
He spoke of gods as nothing more than individual entities, entirely indifferently and without a trace of reverence or faith.
If anyone from the Holy Kingdom had seen it, they would not have been wrong to rebuke him for blasphemy. Yet Professor Luke simply continued talking as though it were none of his concern.
"There is also Yggdrasil, the World Tree, which possesses the same rank, but she cannot create a Holy Maiden in this form. And… there is one more being of that rank, but."
Professor Luke shrugged his shoulder bones.
"If Miss Iris were that god’s Holy Maiden, the very fact that all of you are standing here in your right minds would be impossible to explain. Besides, that being is currently unable to move."
That was true.
In Dawnstar Academia, besides Yggdrasil, the only god on the same level as the One God was the god of the Abyssal Mother Cult, one of the game’s final bosses and its main villain faction.
And naturally, that god could not move right now.
There was the issue of the game’s plot, but more importantly, it was sealed away by someone whose name had become tiresome to even mention.
Because of that, the god could not intervene in the story, and that was also why the cult of fanatics was so desperate to offer human sacrifices.
They wanted to awaken it from its seal through human sacrifice. Just another tiresomely common cliché that was painful to even bring up by now.
Then, in his usual glib tone, he added,
"Ah, if you are taking Professor Silves’s general education course, ‘History of Divine Thrones: Records of the Immortals Who Tuned the World,’ remember this part. It may appear on the midterms."
Ah, so Professor Silves was not dead.
He had not shown his face until all the incidents were over, so I had assumed he had already departed this world.
I had not expected him to be alive.
Still, something was strange.
He had explained this and that, but this was not at all like the Professor Luke I had seen in the game.
Why was this skeleton, who had not said a word even when Iris awakened as a Holy Maiden in the game, suddenly so talkative today?
His attitude was odd.
It was as though he did not want the Holy Kingdom to take Iris away.
"And."
The blue flames in his eye sockets dwindled until they were no more than dots.
"Honestly, it is a bother, too."
"……"
"And do you think I would meekly hand over someone—no, a talent—who deflects a Sword Master’s attack with a single flag to those religious zealots? Absolutely not. Not even if they poured holy water into my eyes."
My face crumpled completely at those words.
Fuck.
He had seen everything.
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