Chapter 3

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I sat inside the carriage, thinking about all the things I had to do. Since I had left voluntarily, Duke Babelloa’s wife would likely celebrate and proceed with Lennox and Sheria’s marriage. But who knows? The duchess might attempt to eliminate me completely to get rid of any possible future trouble.

Hmm. It’s possible. I nodded to myself, remembering what she had done to Meldenique. That meant that before opening the stationery shop, I would need to recruit some knights to protect me.

First on my checklist of things to do to avoid death was to go and meet Dominic, the empire’s finest swordsman and a renowned hero. In the somewhat creaky carriage, I recalled what I knew about Dominic, the hero who dwelled in a sword.

The great young knight Dominic had saved the empire at the age of seventeen. In the distant past, epic tales and chronicles about him spanned the entire empire. It had happened nearly a thousand years ago. Monsters banished from the spirit realm had summoned demons, seeking to conquer the human world and throwing the entire empire into chaos.

At the darkest hour, a young knight suddenly appeared on the battlefield. He figured out a way to seal the demons: he would sacrifice himself, sealing himself and the demons together inside his magic sword.

Thus, Dominic’s sacrifice brought peace back to the empire. Unfortunately, Dominic had to endure a thousand years trapped in the sword. He eagerly awaited someone who would break the seal, releasing him from his prison.

In the novel, Lennox was the one who acquired Dominic, and he was praised all the more for it. There was even a daring secret uprising aiming to crown the one who summoned and released the great hero from that ancient sword as emperor. That was how powerful a symbol Dominic was. If things continued like this, there was a chance Dominic would become a true hero and guardian of the empire once again, but...

Well, too bad. He’s mine now. I hummed to myself. If I summoned Dominic, the strongest knight in the history of the empire, it wouldn’t be easy for Hildegard to kill me. It didn’t matter at all to me whether this destroyed my unfaithful fiancé’s glorious future.

My survival came first, right? In the meantime, my carriage had finally reached the slums. Looking out at the desolate area, I smirked inwardly.

I knocked on the carriage window. “I’ll get out here.”

“Pardon?”

The horseman stopped the carriage at my words, but he seemed quite puzzled. Ignoring the neighing horse, he stood in front of the carriage window and whispered to me with an uneasy look on his face.

“My lady, are you really going to get out here?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“But this cemetery is the eeriest place in the slums,” he muttered.

Clearly, it wasn’t a place a noblewoman would visit in the middle of the night. But I just grinned at him and glanced outside the carriage window. From the cold nipping at my cheeks to the weeds that could ruin a dress...

“It’s perfect.”

The horseman cocked his head in confusion at my words. “I’m sorry, what?”

This was originally a communal graveyard in the slums, but due to a widespread rumor that this place was haunted, it had been deserted. And if my memory serves me right, Dominic’s magic sword should be stuck in the ground in front of the largest tombstone in this cemetery.

“I am aware that this is a communal graveyard in the slums.” With that nonchalant response, I paid the horseman and got out of the carriage.

He stared at me in awe, and I gave him a quick wink.

“I-it’s already evening,” he stuttered. “Th-there might be g-ghosts. Please be careful.”

Even as the horseman urged the horse forward, he didn’t hide his concern. Glancing at the swiftly retreating carriage, I shrugged and picked up my modest luggage from the ground.

I died and possessed this body, so why would I be afraid of ghosts? Technically speaking, I was also a ghost. I walked into the communal graveyard, holding my luggage in both hands.

With each step I took, a chill seeped through my dress, but having already experienced death once before, the cold was hardly a concern. I casually looked around, enjoying my grim-looking surroundings.

I wonder where you are, Hero Dominic. No one would have thought that the sword sealing the hero would be stuck in a communal graveyard. Perhaps that was why the male protagonist, Lennox, took so long to discover the sword and free Dominic in the novel.

Even after the discovery, it took a long time for him to break the seal on the sword. People tended to think that great things had to be achieved the hard way. However, the easiest and simplest solutions were the best sometimes.

In fact, there was nothing complicated about summoning Dominic and signing a contract with him. To break the seal and free him, you just needed to pull out the sword. That was all, but even after learning of its location, Lennox struggled to figure out how to summon the knight.

After a quick moment of silence for his fate in the novel, I walked through the chilly, deserted graveyard. By the time I finally reached the largest tombstone, I had done a few laps around the place and my fingertips had grown cold.

There it is. A moss-covered sword was stuck in the ground in front of a large slab of rock that was chiseled to form a tombstone. Ignoring the moss, I placed my hand on the hilt of the sword. I may have just imagined it, but it felt as though a mysterious power briefly flowed through my hand.

Without much more thought, I pulled out the sword. I had to strain a little, but it eventually emerged from the ground. The next thing I knew, a bright white light began to fill my vision. It was so bright that it blinded me for a moment.

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. In front of the tombstone, a young man, much taller than me, had appeared without a sound.

Did I do it? I handed him the sword I was holding. He accepted it with a disapproving look, and the sword vanished from his hand.

“Who are you?”

When I heard his hoarse voice, I knew that the summoning had been successful. The person standing in front of me matched the description of Dominic as portrayed in the novel—a handsome man with black hair and sapphire-blue eyes. He was an attractive young man with soft-looking hair, but his sharp nose and dignified gaze gave him a slightly rebellious aura.

He certainly resembles the Dominic depicted in the original book. Convinced that the man in front of me was indeed him, I said, “I am Meldenique Babelloa. Just call me Mel. You are Dominic, the Sword of Heroes, right? The great hero who sealed the demons?”

His expression, which had initially seemed intrigued, turned cold. “So you know who I am. What did you summon me for, Mel?”

“Sign a contract with me,” I said.

As soon as Dominic heard the word contract, he seemed to lose interest and flopped down in front of the large tombstone. “A contract... How boring. How predictable. You want to use me to fulfill your selfish desires, I suppose.” Dominic had a surprisingly cynical personality.

I shrugged at him and answered, “You’re right.”

“You do not deny it?” he asked, perplexed.

“No.”

It was true, after all.

My straightforward response seemed to catch Dominic off guard. “All right... What is your wish? I shall decide whether or not to sign this contract after I hear it.” He spoke with a bewildered look on his face.

“Please protect me,” I responded without missing a beat as if I had been waiting for this moment. I needed him to protect me from Hildegard.

“Of course. I will risk my life to protect my contractor. And? What else do you want?”

That was the only condition I had for this contract.

“Other than that...” I tilted my head. Did I need anything else? “Nothing in particular.”

“Nothing else? Why? You said you wanted to fulfill your selfish desires.” He seemed at a loss for words. This was probably because most of those who had summoned him so far had wanted to conquer the continent. But I just wanted to live a simple life.

“That’s right. That’s why I asked you to protect me.”

He stared at me, baffled, before asking more questions. “What’s with you? Protect you? From whom? Are you just being vague to hide the fact that you actually want to conquer the empire?”

“No, I don’t need an empire.”

In response to my firm answer, he raised an eyebrow and looked at me. “Th-then... what is it that you want?”

Suddenly, I realized that I had forgotten to mention something. There actually was something else that I wanted.

“To be honest, I am pretty ambitious,” I told him.

He laughed cynically at my words as if he knew I would say that.

Staring straight at Dominic, I repeated what I had said to the maid earlier. “I’m going to open a stationery shop in front of the academy. You will be my knight, protecting me and my shop.”

If I was going to have someone protect me, it might as well be the strongest knight. I flashed him a bright smile. The seventeen-year-old boy stared at me before nodding vigorously.

“A stationery shop? Ah, I think I get it.”

I was glad to see that, in all the time he had been around, he had learned what a stationery shop was. I looked at him with sparkling eyes filled with hope.

“So you plan on starting a new empire and calling it ‘Stationery Shop.’ What a terrible name. Is that the best you could come up with?”

What’s he talking about? Had he gone crazy after being trapped inside the sword for so long? I just wanted to be the owner of a stationery shop, not the ruler of an empire!

Of course, I did want my stationery shop to influence kids across the continent. However, Dominic’s skills were almost entirely battle-focused with a little basic magic, so he was not a particularly savvy businessman. So even if I wished to be a business mogul, Dominic wouldn’t be able to help me with that. All I wanted from him was to keep me alive.

I smiled brightly at him as I replied, “A stationery shop is like a general store. The difference is that it sells food, school supplies, and miscellaneous items specifically for children. Sounds fun, right?”

“Fun?”

“Yup.” I nodded vigorously at him. “This should be a very easy task for you. You’ve always wanted to get out of that sword, right?”

Indeed, Dominic’s dream was to escape from the sword, and there was only one condition for him to do so. All he had to do was fulfill his contractor’s wish.

“I know that if you perfectly fulfill your contractor’s wishes, you can escape that sword and become a real human again,” I said.

Dominic frowned as he questioned me. “How do you know that?”

He was pretty sharp. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell him I had read about it in a novel. I quickly changed the subject.

“It doesn’t matter how I know about it. The important thing is that if you protect me and my stationery store well, you’ll be able to escape from that sword.”

My strategy worked. Despite having lived for over a thousand years, the young hero was rather naive and eager to escape confinement, so he nodded vigorously.

“I suppose you are right. It seems like an easy enough contract to fulfill. It’s a bit of a shame, though...” He looked at me with a hint of regret on his face before suddenly springing to his feet.

Well, he did enjoy breaking things in the novel. I guess he’s bummed about that.

“Anyway, I look forward to working with you, Mel.”

Seeing the joy on his youthful face, I felt satisfied too. With that taken care of, I began explaining my plan.

“I already have a location for the shop.” I rummaged through the purse I had firmly clamped under one arm and handed him a small apron.

Dominic stared at me, surprised.

“Now, put this apron on, and let’s start by making some toffees.”

Just like that, the hero Dominic took the apron from me in a daze.

“Why aren’t you putting it on?” I asked him.

“Is this really the right place to do so? We are in a graveyard, you know.”

Oh. Right. I had gotten carried away and forgot that making toffees in a communal graveyard would definitely violate food hygiene regulations.