Book 1: Chapter 20: The Lonesome Sword’s Secret

“Hey, uh, would you mind letting me go first?” Bella was currently being ‘embraced’ from behind by Kriss and could feel the beauty’s elasticity. She was somewhat overwhelmed by the feeling.

“I can’t move. My entire body feels numb. Can you help me out of the water?”

Based on her speech and actions, Bella didn’t think that Kriss was lying, but this girl might have been a bit too naive, telling someone she had just met that she couldn’t move her body. If Bella had any hostile intentions towards her, Kriss would be done for.

Even Kriss herself didn’t know exactly why she told Bella the fact that she was unable to move her body. Perhaps it was because she was charmed by how dashing Bella looked when she threw herself at the deep-sea serpent to save Kriss and didn’t think further about why Bella just happened to be in the right place to save her.

“Are you really unable to move?”

“Yes. Can you bring me to land first? My body will recover from that monster’s poison pretty fast.”

As Kriss had personally asked her, Bella couldn’t say no. She turned around, picked up Kriss in a princess carry, and walked towards the shore. The water here was only around a meter in depth, and it wasn’t very hard for Bella to move while carrying someone in her arms. She took advantage of this time to carefully study the beauty in her arms.

It seemed that Ivy hadn’t lied to her. Kriss was indeed much more beautiful than Ivy, so much that it seemed as if the two of them weren’t even on the same level. Kriss had a devilish figure that was very well-proportioned, without a single unnecessary gram of fat. At a glance, Kriss’s height was about the same as Bella’s, as was her chest size.

Using the knowledge that she had gained as a fashion designer on Earth, Bella determined that Kriss’s body was very likely to have met the ‘golden ratio’. Within Bella’s party, even Dolores, who had the best body amongst them, was not as decked out in the figure department as Kriss.

What made Bella unable to remove her sight from though was Kriss’ face. It was possibly the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen. For a moment, Bella even suspected that Kriss wasn’t a human. After all, Bella had never seen a human girl with violet eyes before. Dolores had mentioned that violet irises were a trait of high-tiered demons that humans were unable to imitate.

Not all demons had violet irises but those who had were most definitely either a demon themselves or had some sort of close relationship to them. One such case was 【Dark Creator】 Mystica, who also had beautiful violet irises.

Apart from this, Kriss’s perfect appearance gave off some sort of mysterious aura that was attracting Bella to her. The only other person about whom Bella had felt something similar to was Dolores: It was a kind of exotic blend of dark and light that as she was a mix-blood of demon and angel.

However, according to all intel, Kriss was just a normal human. How did she obtain such an outlandish aura that should be impossible for a human?

Bella carried Kriss out of the water. It originally shouldn’t have taken much time at all, however, Bella had purposely slowed her pace down greatly. She couldn’t help it: Kriss’ body that felt like top-grade silk was too addicting, and she couldn’t bring herself to let Kriss go a second before she had to.

As for why Bella was walking so slowly while carrying her, Kriss didn’t feel anything wrong with it. It had been a while since she had been able to relax without any worry. After transmigrating to this world, all she did was train her swordsmanship as well as deal with her father’s incessant promoting of suitors for her.

Kriss didn’t want to get too close to anyone from this foreign world as she had already suffered too much heartache in the previous worlds she had been to. Besides, the suitors that her father introduced were only those who wanted her for her beauty and not to have a proper and romantic relationship.

Kriss had previously overheard the female palace servants gossiping amongst themselves about how the Empire’s other princesses and noble maidens would call her a bad omen behind her back. It seemed that silver hair was viewed as a sign of bad fortune by humans. Her body’s original owner had black hair but it was changed when Kriss’s soul fused with her body due to some special reasons.

Even her father, the emperor, initially thought that Kriss had been cursed or possessed by a demon and had gotten the Church of Light’s three cardinals to check. If it wasn’t for the fact that they had guaranteed Kriss was not a demon nor had any relationship with them, Kriss probably would have been handed over by her father to be burned at the stake by the Church.

In the three years after, Kriss broke ties with all the friends of the body’s previous owner, not wanting to be hurt anymore. To not be treated as an ornament, she used several of the powers that she had gained from her previous worlds to easily beat a number of the empire’s renowned swordsmen.

About a year ago, Kriss single-handedly slew a powerful monster and received the title of ‘Hero’ from the Gabriel Empire (Swordsmen) and finally managed to escape the fate of becoming one of her father’s political pieces.

However, that wasn’t the end of it. The emperor, knowing that he could not force Kriss, had arranged for suitors to personally pester her to marry them. Kriss nearly went crazy dealing with the large number of them and had almost let her dark side take over. There was a deep secret hidden within Kriss’s spirit that she had not let anyone know.

To not repeat the tragedies of her past few lives, Kriss decided to flee. She pretended to agree to a suitor’s invitation for an outing and purposely chose a location near the Alva duchy. It was infamous for being unstable due to being a place of constant warfare between humans and beastmen. It wouldn’t be that strange for someone to go missing in this region.

As expected, the party was ambushed by evil beings of unknown origin not too far from the duchy’s capital, and Kriss used the ensuing chaos to make her escape. In her rush, she had not been able to take a map, so she had no choice but to wander the forests where no one could find her.

On her way, Kriss had run into multiple beastmen raiding parties and defeated all of them. If one were to make a count, her kill count since yesterday wasn’t much lower than that of Bella and the others at the watchtower, having killed at least several thousand beastmen.

What happened to Kriss later was exactly what happened to Bella and the others: she was soaked in blood and had come to this river head to clean herself and hadn’t noticed her clothes drifting away with the current. When Kriss finally realized this, she looked high and low for her clothes, not noticing the stealthily approaching deep-sea serpent.

In the split second when she had suddenly come face to face with the deep-sea serpent, her human instinct from her last life took over and she froze in fear, forgetting to summon her various famous blades from her ‘exclusive space’. Fortunately for her, Bella was in the right place at the right time and had spotted the serpent, or Kriss would have been in trouble.

Bella carried Kriss to a large and flat rock in the grass by the river head. The body of a deep-sea serpent lay beside it, the very same that was killed by 【Shadowless Demon】 Tanpur earlier. There were no visible wounds on the serpent but its serpentine eyes were opened wide as if it had not died peacefully. To Bella who knew that this serpent was smothered by Tanpur using his shadows, she could understand why this deep-sea serpent had not passed on peacefully.

Seeing the terrifying torment suffered by the deep-sea serpent before its death, Kriss was a little afraid while Bella was rather unfazed. Tanpur had controlled himself this time. All of Bella’s subordinate evil suzerains were rather sadistic in the way they killed their opponents. If Bella didn’t have a use for this serpent’s corpse, it would probably have been shredded into tiny pieces.

Bella placed Kriss on the flat rock and was about to stand up when her hand was grabbed by Kriss who had regained a bit of strength.

“Sister, can you help me with something? I can’t find my clothes.”

“You should have arrived in this area with an adventuring party, right? Where are they? I’ll…”

“No. I came here alone. There’s no one else!”

Kriss straight up denied Bella’s suggestion even before she finished her sentence. It had taken her so much work to escape, and it would have all been for naught if she were to return now.

Although Bella was curious as to why Kriss had denied her suggestion, she decided not to ask the reason after seeing the resolve in her attitude. All Bella could do right now was to put on her clothes immediately, go back, and ask Nosha and the others to see if they had any extra clothes.

“What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

Bella had just walked a short distance to retrieve her clothes and saw Kriss’s excited eyes staring at the clothes in her hands. Following her gaze, she discovered that Kriss’s line of sight was focused on her underwear.

This was the underwear that Bella had designed herself not Kriss’s which she had fished out of the water earlier. She couldn’t understand why Kriss was so excited. From their short amount of contact, she could determine that Kriss was a ‘softie’ and not a pervert who would fawn over underwear, unlike that naughty loli Noesha.

Kriss couldn’t hide the excitement in her heart. This was the first time she had seen something from her homeland, Earth, in another world. Even though it was only similar in design with different materials, the style was definitely that of Earth’s.

“Sister, can you tell me where you got that piece of clothing?”

“This? I designed this myself! I’m a part-time tailor. Do you want a set too? I’ll give you a discount if you order now!”

Kriss thought for a while and agreed to buy a set from Bella. As she didn’t know much about her, she couldn’t very well ask if she was a transmigrator. After all, she had never run into another transmigrator in all her previous worlds. It would be best to save the question after they knew each other better.

___

Not too far from the stream, the several hundred strong adventuring party had already met its end. Apart from the few that managed to escape, the rest were massacred by the ghouls and bone-breakers who had encircled them from behind. Currently, a large number of ghouls were doing cleanup work in the area.

Not far from the scene, three evil suzerains were holding a meeting. Beside them was a special zombie awaiting the suzerains’ decision. This zombie was the commander of the zombies that had been summoned by Bella previously, and its intelligence was much higher than the others.

“Those two little boys ran too fast, or else I would have dragged them back to my dungeon and played with them, hehe! It has been a while since I’ve caught such tender meat. It’s getting really boring with nothing to play with in my dungeon.”

“*cough* *cough* It was quite unexpected for those two to have transportation scrolls on them.”

Adrian and Clement felt a chill run down their spines when they heard Maltz talking about his strange fetishes again. After being reborn, Maltz’s sadistic fetish hadn’t changed, but rather, its degree had entered a completely new level, having a hobby of taking human males and… fortunately, Maltz didn’t have any interest in evil beings.

“Oh yeah, this zombie commander wants to seek asylum with our esteemed Demon King. He was summoned by the Demon King Bella herself, so I don’t think there are any problems.”

“No problem, but the Dark Sanctuary doesn’t accept weaklings, unless…”

“Lord Suzerains, I have an important piece of information that I am willing to provide. I just plead for my lords to put in a few good words for me to her majesty, the demon king, so that I may be able to serve her with my life. This is an honor that I have been seeking for my entire life.”

This zombie commander was once a human after all, and he knew how this kind of thing worked. He knew that this was a great opportunity for him. Evil beings had their own aspirations, and most of them were to serve under a strong demon king.

“Speak. If it’s important enough, you don’t even need to go through us. Esteemed demon king will hire you herself.”

“It’s like this: In the forest here…”

“Are you sure? There’s really something like this! Clement, go and report to the evil army’s supervisor, 【Midnight Witch】 Mercedes, and ask her for further instructions. Venerated demon gods and demon kings are still currently on an outing. Don’t report this to them for now in case it ruins their mood.”

After hearing this zombie commander’s report, Maltz and Adrian were surprised. If its words were to be believed, there was another mysterious and evil power hidden away in this forest.

The Dark Sanctuary’s evil suzerains were dead set on eliminating this other force as different evil forces would often fight amongst themselves. To find another evil realm, they had outstretched their hands into the territory of their respected demon kings… They felt that if they didn’t retaliate immediately, they would be ashamed to call themselves Demon King Bella’s subordinates.

Bella was still attending to something else that was quite interesting. So while Bella still didn’t have a clue, her subordinates had already planned to start a war in her name. No one knew that the largest border conflict between evil forces to take place in the history of the Coristel Continent was about to begin.

___

Back to the river head. Bella was using a blade with serrated sides to dissect the deep-sea serpent’s corpse while Kriss sat beside her, occasionally conversing.

Kriss and Bella had already exchanged information about themselves, not mentioning the fact that they were transmigrators, of course. Bella also didn’t mention that she was a demon king while Kriss had even told Bella her identity as a hero.

From the fact that Kriss was so unnaturally interested in the underwear that she had designed, Bella could almost completely confirm that Kriss was a transmigrator. She also purposely shifted the topic to clothes and fashion. Kriss didn’t suspect anything and didn’t hide her true opinions during the conversation.

After they talked for a while, Bella was finally at ease. Based on the conversations in her previous life, as a fashion designer, with female models as well as the various female-oriented topics that they had discussed, Bella could basically confirm that Kriss was a female in her past life as well.

Fortunately, Kriss was a girl before. If she was like Bella… It would have been rather awkward as they were still conversing in the nude. As her train of thought reached here, a shiver ran down Bella’s back. It wasn’t that she had something against males as she was one before she had come to this world. It was just that even though her gender was changed after the transmigration, her sexual orientation had not.

Maybe because she trusted Bella, Kriss didn’t hesitate to give Bella a demonstration of her ‘cheats’. She gestured to the air in front of her with her right hand, and a door appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

After opening the door, the sight inside shocked Bella to her core. The pseudo-dimension within was much larger than what Bella had previously guessed, and it seemed as if the entire space was filled with swords.

None of the swords in here were normal, and each one of them gave off a strong air and a different aura.

Countless famous blades formed a giant sword formation. At the center were nine special swords that floated upright in the air. Seven of them were arrayed in the order of the 7 Compass Stars{1}. For the other two, one floated above and one floated below the other seven.

The pure-white blade above the seven-star formation gave off a very strong holy and righteous aura. Bella guessed that it was a sword that had slain demons. The dark-black blade below was completely different. It gave off a sinister and bloody aura. This was definitely a blade that had slain countless gods.

Bella estimated that the seven swords in the middle were already on par with her twelve demon king blades, and the other two had already exceeded them. The current serrated blade in her hands, the ‘Bonecutter’, was something that Kriss had just randomly taken out from her collection, but it would definitely be one of the best blades on the Coristel Continent.

What Bella couldn’t understand was that around half of Kriss’s blades clashed with her identity as a hero, giving off evil and bloody air, especially that dark-black blade. It was definitely a weapon that belonged in the hands of an evil final-boss.

The hilts of the swords in there had been modified to better fit the slimmer hands of a female. Bella was able to infer that these swords weren’t simply collected by Kriss after defeating opponents. These swords were very likely all useable by Kriss by herself.

It was quite unthinkable that a hero would use so many evil weapons. Seeing the size of her collection, Bella had a suspicion that this wasn’t the first alternate world that Kriss had transmigrated to, and most likely, not the second or third either, or else, it would be hard to explain such a large collection of swords that could stand at the top echelons of weapons on the Coristel Continent.

Fortunately for Bella, Kriss was a ‘softie’ and didn’t like too much publicity unlike some other certain types of MCs from light novels… if they had such a powerful cheat, they would have conquered the world long ago.

Bella was also glad that she didn’t have to fight Kriss, at least for now. Kriss’s cheats were already levels above those of Lisha’s. It was hard to be a villain these days. Each hero’s cheats were stronger than the other’s. Bella sent her condolences to all the demon kings before her, having to fight with such cheaters all the time.

Even now, Bella was questioning existence. She couldn’t be sure if there were any heroes with cheats stronger than Kriss. The only thing she could do right now was to find a way to make sure that Kriss wouldn’t end up as an enemy. Even if Kriss couldn’t become an ally, Bella was focused on making sure that she stayed neutral.

—TL NOTES—

{1} the Big Dipper

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