Fragment
The castle was burning. It was a scene I had seen countless times before. I had failed yet again this time.
I watched it through a vision in the underground shrine.
Many people died. I swore over and over that I would save them next time. But that oath crumbled away so easily. Now all that grew was futility.
(Why am I so powerless?)
Another question I had asked myself countless times.
If I were stronger, I could have gone to defeat the demon king myself instead of relying on others. But as a woman nearing middle age, training my body would only get me so far.
I did try taking up the sword once, but I could barely lift it, much less wield it properly. To be honest, I’m not very physically strong to begin with.
…I know, more excuses.
I would sink into self-loathing, thinking that if I were more active like my daughter Alexia, who enjoyed swordplay and horsemanship, things might have been different.
Sadly, I had no talent for magic either. As a follower of another god, I could not use recovery magic, the blessing of the great god.
Why did my goddess make her followers so weak? I looked up bitterly at the statue of the goddess.
A roar thundered from beyond the door. The demon king must be approaching. Ruin was near.
I drank down the prepared poison and bid farewell to this failed world.
When I opened my eyes, little Alexia was there beside me.
I hugged her small body tightly.
“I’m already eight years old, it’s embarrassing,” Alexia said, but she still gently hugged me back with her little hands.
She had no idea what had happened, and was confused, but she kindly embraced me back with her small hands.
With my love for this child as my driving force, I always start over the world. Otherwise, I would have given up on the world long ago.
But what I can do is merely parasitize someone.
As a prophet, I attach my own mirage like a shadow to the chosen individual and observe their fate.
I can show a false appearance, and I can convey words. However, I never actually engage in battle.
Of course, the knowledge I’ve acquired so far has been provided: information about the future, weaknesses of the monsters, relatively safe paths, necessary supplies, and more. It’s not entirely useless, but it’s almost as if I’ve done nothing compared to those who risk their lives in battle.
And, as a matter of course, just because I nominate someone doesn’t mean that person will inevitably become a hero. There are people who refuse, of course.
“I don’t want to do that. It’s a nuisance,” they say.
I can’t blame them. It’s natural not to want to.
All the heroes I’ve guided have met untimely deaths. Becoming a hero doesn’t mean they gain some kind of power.
By using the virtual image called “Prophet” and bestowing the honor of “hero” upon them, I am merely forcibly assigning them the fate of “defeating the Demon King.”
This cursed power first activated when the Demon King’s army attacked this castle and the Demon King himself broke through the barrier and came to the temple.
The Demon King took Alexia’s life right before my eyes, and then he killed me.
I remember being profoundly shocked by Alexia’s death, more so than my impending death.
The next time I opened my eyes, I was back in a world from ten years ago. I held the young Alexia close, weeping. Alexia, not understanding what had happened, looked bewildered but gently hugged me back with her small hands.
I pledged in my heart that I would never let this child die again.
I understood what had happened to me. When I inherited the role of a shrine maiden from my mother, I also inherited the records of the previous shrine maidens, along with their powers.
[World Revision]
A powerful ability bestowed by the god of this country to his chosen oracle bloodline, in order to preserve them and oppose the demon king – the ability to alter the world.
The oracle cannot die except by old age. Only when she dies by other means will this ability activate.
And time will rewind on its own to a point where the cause of death can be eliminated. A miracle known only to the gods, it seems.
This power had been used not just against the demon king, but also in various other situations.
Rebellions by retainers, betrayal by my husband the king, assassination attempts – there were many examples of it activating even in peacetime.
However, those did not really require using [World Revision] over and over.
Only against the demon king did it become necessary to repeat it countless times.
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The first [World Revision] I performed was forming an allied army to oppose the demon king’s forces. I thought that moving nations would be more likely to defeat the demon king than relying on a lone hero.
I persuaded my husband the king and convinced the surrounding nations, and we began preparing to deal with the demon king’s army early on. Since I knew the invasion routes and attack patterns from experiencing them once before, we were able to establish a perfect defense.
Thanks in part to that, the allied army fought well and succeeded in repelling the demon king’s army.
But no matter how many times we drove them back, the demon king’s army would soon attack again. By gathering activated demons under them, they reinforced their forces and launched attacks repeatedly without pause. Eventually the allied army became exhausted, and when the frontline nations fell, the allied alliance quickly collapsed. My second death came.
For the second [World Revision], I considered having the allied army take the offensive. I realized that just defending was futile, and we needed to strike at the enemy stronghold.
But politically, this did not go over well. A distant expedition to the demon king’s territory would require an enormous budget. There would be almost no territorial or monetary benefits even if we won. On top of that, the demon king’s army was not yet a direct threat at that point. The expedition plan was scrapped, and we ended up allowing the demon king’s invasion.
Seeing the demon king’s army invading the kingdom, I took poison.
In the end, from the third [World Revision] onward, I returned to the traditional method of searching for a hero. If the nations would not move, then I had no choice but to defeat the demon king with a small elite force. Luckily, there were many promising talents among the younger generation, and I had high hopes for the swordmaster Leon, the holy maiden Maria, and the sage Solon.
Especially Leon – his family lineage and abilities were impeccable, making him the top candidate for hero.
However, when I actually sent him into the demon king’s territory, he could not adapt to the adventurer-like journey because of his noble upbringing, and he could not properly respond to attacks from betrayal of who were supposed to be his allies – being betrayed by people who were supposed to protect him, and such.
In the end, he lost his life only three months after beginning his journey.
The next candidate was Maria. I had some reservations about making a clergyperson into the hero, but her personality was admirably bad, and she was skilled at controlling people.
As expected, Maria steadily progressed in her journey. She utilized her companions well and not only dealt with the demons’ attacks, but could even exploit their weaknesses. However, her party members could not truly trust each other wholeheartedly, and the party gradually unraveled. When they encountered a powerful demon, the party fell apart, and Maria lost her life about a year in.
The third candidate was Solon. He had a difficult personality, and I thought he had a lower chance of success compared to Leon or Maria, but he was gifted with magical power and intellect. By giving him the information I had gained from my experiences so far, he was able to make excellent use of it to penetrate deep into the demon king’s territory, even making it to confront the demon king directly.
However, the gap in power between him and the demon king was overwhelming, and in the end he died in despair.
After that, sometimes I would try guiding the same person to get a better result, other times I would guide a completely different person. I did try putting Leon, Maria and Solon in the same party once, but they just fought against each other, and it didn’t turn out very well.
As I repeated these trials and errors countless times, my mind became worn down. I became desensitized to people’s deaths, easily accepting even my own.
“It doesn’t matter, since I can just redo it,” I thought.
The heroes I had guided until now were all people from the royal capital, but that hadn’t worked out, so now I looked to talent from the rural regions.
The candidate this time was a boy named Ares.
I had heard about him in the previous [World Revision]. There were rumors of a gifted youth excelling at the sword and magic in a remote village called Talis. Thanks to his feats, the villagers had managed to escape the demon king’s army. He seemed very promising.
I decided to send the prophet’s mirage towards Talis Village. The mirage can become a doppelganger of the target person and move about. I would transfer it from person to person until it became the doppelganger of the one who would become the hero.
However, the trouble was there were absolutely no people headed towards Talis Village. The direct route had become quite dangerous from demon attacks. Still, I was determined to bet on Ares this time, so I released the prophet’s mirage.
In the end, it took nearly a year for the prophet’s mirage to reach Talis Village. I had to take quite the roundabout route, finally arriving by becoming the doppelganger of a wandering merchant.
Ares was probably in his mid-teens now. Chestnut brown hair and brown eyes. Despite his age, he had a well-trained physique. He had an alert look about him and clearly gave off a different air compared to the other villagers.
I immediately began observing him.
While helping out with work around the house, he trained hard with his sword every morning and evening. When it rained, he would read magic tomes, and he met with the church priest regularly to learn about the god’s miracles. He had good relationships with those around him too.
He was an ideal person.
His swordsmanship probably didn’t compare to Leon’s, and his magic was nowhere near Maria or Solon’s of course, but I believed that intellectual, flexible mentality of his was the most necessary element for defeating the demon king.
That’s why I decided to make Ares the hero.
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