The Revived Princess and Situation Report
I was swimming through a river.
Paddling along, doggy-style.
I can’t swim in rivers or seas with currents. In my previous life or this one, I’ve never once swum in flowing water. For that matter, I never learned swimming at all. But doggy paddling just came naturally.
I aimed straight for the opposite bank. Just a little more. Just when I was about to reach it, something flew at me from the front. Someone’s knee.
“Kyapi!”
My vision spun. No, I spun across the water’s surface, rolling all the way to the opposite bank.
“Your world is over there! Why are you swimming this way?”
Clutching my aching face, I glared across the river. Great-Grandmother stood there, arms crossed, glaring back.
“Great-Grandmother. Why are you here?”
“It’s not strange for me to be here. But you mustn’t come this way. Now, go back.”
I see, so the other side must be the world of the dead. In other words, hell.
“Sorry, but I don’t belong in hell.”
“You killed a ton of people.”
“I only struck down invaders. Nothing wrong with that. And it’s not like I’ve killed as many as you. Over here it’s overflowing with voices of resentment.”
“… I see.”
“Now, return.”
Great-Grandmother waved her hand lightly. Fine, I’ll head back.
“I won’t take after you, Great-Grandmother. I’ll take after Mother.”
“Hey, come here!”
I dashed away from Great-Grandmother.
She had inherited too much of the Divine Dragon’s blood, so her body never showed age. Which also meant she had no chest. Her height matched that too. Not quite a loli, more like an elf-like build. My goal was Mother’s glamorous body type.
“Geez, it’s not like I chose to end up this way. Take care of the country, alright?”
“Eliminate all external enemies and there will be peace.”
“That’s the spirit. Wipe them all out. I give you permission. Oh, and the Emperor—I’ll punish him here too, so I’ll be staying a little longer.”
What a bloodthirsty Great-Grandmother I’ve got, I thought—then I woke up.
“Uwah! She woke up, even though the sleeping drug should still be working!”
A clone jumped up from a chair, taking a fighting stance.
“So you used experimental number 127, huh? That wasn’t safety-checked.”
Number 127 was born from research into creating artificial magicians: the artificial creation of a mana circuit. It was still in the basic stages—an outgrowth of my own ability to add mana circuits to myself.
The difference is that this method can be done to others. Up till now, it was too dangerous to attempt on anyone but myself. Normally, one can adjust their own mana circuits to a degree. I can adjust mine quite a lot. That works only because I use my own mana, avoiding rejection reactions. Well, since clones are made from my mana, they don’t have rejection reactions either.
“Well, I’m you, right? Even if the main body dies, they’ll just call it an accident, so it’s fine, fine.”
God, I hate these things. Flat-chested, cheeky, always looking for a chance to kill me.
“What’s this? The main body’s cranky? Not enough calcium?”
“You’re picking a fight with me while I’m hooked up to an IV? Want me to erase you?”
“Geez, every time I worry you jump straight to that. So, why are you in a bad mood?”
As expected, the clone had caught on that I was seriously pissed.
“Report first.”
“Alrighty~”
I got the report in about ten minutes. If I hadn’t learned that one fact, I probably would’ve made the same moves myself.
“What about the clones made later?”
“Since the main body was unconscious, memory transfer stopped at the moment you collapsed. So I don’t know anything. Only that Big Brother’s a pervert.”
That much was true. My brother’s a siscon pervert. I’m worried about his future. Even now, he’s clearly eyeing me. Maybe the reason I don’t have a fiancé is his fault. Not that I needed one.
Still, it ticked me off. Teth definitely knew and didn’t tell me. I’ll wring him out later and squeeze some payment out of him.
“So, why are you mad?”
“Because thanks to the Holy Church, this world is heading straight toward destruction.”
That religion’s never done anything worthwhile.
Idiots. They should know history. They’re survivors of the Papal Magic Dynasty. Even if they steal the Goddess’s power, they can’t win. Not when the Spirit King lost on this very planet.
The Goddess, the Demon King, and the Spirit King—these three exist on equal footing. Their power is nearly the same. So who wins when they fight? That depends on the battlefield.
In Hell, the Demon King can’t be stopped—his attacks pierce all defenses, whether physical or magical.
In Heaven, the Goddess’s divine wall is impenetrable—there she is absolute defense.
On this planet, the Spirit King rules infinite mana, wielding endless offense and defense.
So the battlefield decides victory. And yet, even fighting here with that advantage, the Spirit King couldn’t kill the Evil God.
That was the fate of the Black Iris [me]. Honestly, I could have ended up the same way… Actually, when I become an Evil God, by all calculations I should be able to kill Teth. Did that idiot even think about that?
Well, Evil Gods have a fatal weakness. I’d never lose anyway. Against me, they’re a joke—by the time I’ve had my bath and dried off, I’d have finished them. They’re basically my natural prey. Father might even stand a chance too… but he’s getting old.
Lately he’s been grumbling about slowing down. That’s probably why he lost to the Empire. In his prime, Father was terrifying—he could’ve crushed even the strongest adventurers across the continent. I should think up a re-strengthening plan for him.
Back to the point: I could win even while being careless. But if I did, Arland would suffer collateral damage.
I don’t want to burden our people any further. I want them to stay the same purehearted folk who blush when called muscle-brained idiots.
The reason they blush is because they take it as a compliment—“trained your brain into muscle.” In Arland, “muscle-brain” is praise. Soldiers even laugh and call each other that.
I started that, but it took on a different meaning. My bad.
Anyway, the Pope has to go. That one’s a matter of justice. Leave him loose and he’ll cause disaster.
First, the current state.
The war with the Empire—we’ve already paved the road to victory. What we’re doing now is just kicking the corpse.
The Granzur Empire grew through endless victories. But those victories were soaked in blood, gained through constant usurpation. The conquered peoples, stripped of rights and made second-class citizens, never loved the Empire. Its unity is brittle.
That’s why the Empire kept insisting Arland was a nation of demons, an external enemy that had to be crushed. The bloated Empire needed enemies to smash, or it couldn’t hold itself together.
This invasion of Arland was meant to be their crowning glory. But they lost. At that point, the Empire was finished.
An unprecedented invasion force, the largest in continental history—defeated. Once the people learn this, the myth of endless victory crumbles. All the suppressed resentment will boil over.
First to move will be the independence factions. And there are plenty of them.
The central human nations look down on Arland. They fear us, but still sneer. Now that the mighty Empire lost to “mere” Arland, factions will rise, thinking they can break free.
And my clones struck right there—sowing chaos across the Empire, wrecking its information control.
“How cruel of you.”
“Oh, come on. Our thought patterns come from you. You’d do the same thing.”
“… Yeah, true.”
Left alone, the Empire might recover in ten or twenty years. Not easily, but it was possible. So I’m making sure it isn’t.
And it’s delicious. By absorbing the Black Iris [me], I can now use the Spirit King’s full power.
Until now, fragments of the Evil God had polluted most of that knowledge and authority, leaving it unusable. Thanks to Takuto purging them, I now grasp this planet’s peril.
The Spirit King’s authority is absurdly strong, practically invincible. But I won’t rely on it. Because it can’t beat the Evil God. And I’m still human. Even with Spirit King powers unleashed, my body isn’t strong enough to wield them. Honestly, not even someone freakish like Father could. Humans just can’t.
But every spirit across the world must have felt the Spirit King’s power open up. More than ever, I’ll need those bonds. With their aid and the people’s, we can destroy the Evil God. Of course, I’ll need Takuto too—he was chosen by the Holy Sword. That blade is the ultimate anti–Evil God weapon. He can’t use it well now, but at full power it can slice through dimensions.
Alright. First, destroy the Empire. That’ll buy us time. Next, the Holy Empire… eh, they can sit and watch. I’ll topple the Empire and plunge this land into warring-states chaos. Then the central continent will be too busy to touch Arland. With the Empire in ruins, they’ll have their hands full.
In the meantime, I’ll launch satellites and build a continental surveillance net. No second surprise attacks. And without a second chance… Arland can’t be destroyed.
As for why the other countries don’t move, I can guess. Fools, all of them. Let them waste their brains on nonsense. Their future’s sealed.
—This way—
“Hm?”
A voice was calling me.
—This way—
What, does the Empire keep a Predator around or something?
For now, I’ll ignore it and re-contract with the spirit watching me by the bed—
Wait. It turned into a humanoid form!? What the heck… up until now they were just balls of light!
What do you think about this chapter?
