Lyra patted her chest and guaranteed it with a radiant smile.
Freya nodded and continued walking forward.
The road ahead was shrouded in mist, and the enemy was hidden beneath the light.
But at least for this moment, she was not alone.
The sunlight stretched their shadows, weaving them together.
After returning, Freya took a leave of absence from the Central Academy and returned to the House Dale estate with Lyra.
Grandpa Aru had long since prepared after-dinner desserts and light tea in the library for them to enjoy.
After serving them, he bowed and withdrew from the library.
Lyra grabbed a small cookie and began to eat, not forgetting to ask Freya about the legend of the Holy Sword while she chewed.
Freya found a copy of the Miscellaneous Records of the Temple, opened it, and handed it to her.
The Holy Sword.
Legend has it that in the ancient era of the Aurora Continent, the Goddess of Light, Tifiluna, and the God of War, Lucamori, teamed up to fight the Evil God of Darkness, Cyrus. The goddess condensed her power of light onto Lucamori’s sword to create it.
This sword eventually cleaved through the body of the Evil God Cyrus, successfully destroying him.
After the War of the Gods, the God of War, Lucamori, ascended from a human to a god and vanished from the Aurora Continent along with the other gods.
“Cleaving the body of an evil god…”
Lyra chewed on those words as she munched on her cookie.
Her red eyes stared at the brief yet epic description on the page, her gaze drifting as if she were seeing that earth-shattering battle from the distant myth through the text.
“That sounds pretty exhilarating.”
Her tone did not sound like pure admiration; rather, it carried a sort of… complex emotion that bordered on longing.
Freya did not miss the subtle change in her expression.
Picking up her teacup, she asked nonchalantly.
“You seem to be paying special attention to the God of War, Lucamori?”
She was referring to how Lyra had just read the record about the war god’s ascension from human to deity almost word for word.
“Huh? Am I?”
Lyra snapped out of it, blinked, and stuffed another cookie into her mouth.
She mumbled, “I just think… going from a mortal to a god is pretty incredible. Plus, he was a swordsman. How cool is that!”
She tried to hide it with an exaggerated tone, but Freya could feel the unusual weight behind that focus.
“Ascending from human to god is extremely rare in the history and legends of the Aurora Continent. It is almost viewed as an unrepeatable miracle,” Freya said slowly, her fingertip brushing over the name ‘Lucamori’ on the page.
“The versions promoted by the Holy Temple and the Imperial Family usually emphasize the Holy Sword’s light attribute and the goddess’s blessing. The records regarding the God of War himself are actually quite vague.”
Lyra shrugged, seemingly losing interest in the topic.
She turned to pick up another, thicker volume regarding the Holy Temple’s successive guardians and the ritual protocols for the Holy Sword, flipping through it casually.
But when she flipped to a page illustrating an ancient War Dance Ritual, her fingertip paused for an imperceptible second.
Freya saw everything but did not press further.
She turned her attention back to the copies of several ancient scrolls spread out before her.
These were unofficial histories and miscellaneous notes accumulated by House Dale over generations—records that had not been fully adopted by the Holy Temple or had been lost to time.
Some of them involved different interpretations of the nature of the Holy Sword and the God of War’s power.
“…Although the light of the Holy Sword originates from the mercy of the Goddess Tifiluna, its matchless sharpness and its ability to sever karma actually inherit the divine nature of ‘Judgment’ and ‘Destruction’ from the God of War, Lucamori…”
One note, written in wild handwriting, stated exactly that.
‘Does that mean it can sever everything?’
“…Some heretical theories suggest that the Holy Sword is not a pure creation of light. Its core is the power of ‘Balance.’ Only when light and darkness are intertwined can it judge good and evil and destroy wickedness. This theory was denounced as blasphemy by the Holy Temple…”
Another, even older parchment recorded even more shocking content.
Light and darkness intertwined? Power of balance? Judgment and destruction?
These words made Freya’s heart race slightly. She thought of her own Mana Heart Crystal —
It was not purely of the light or dark attribute, but an extremely rare, highly compressed, and stable mixed energy core capable of resonating with and balancing various elemental magics.
Could it be…
In her past life, Ross stripping her of her crystal was not just for Irina, but for the Holy Sword?
Was it for some ritual that required a special ‘energy core’ to ‘balance’ or ‘trigger’ the Holy Sword’s true power?
This guess was even bolder than before, and even more horrifying.
If the essence of the Holy Sword’s power was not the pure light preached by the Holy Temple, and the high-ranking members of the Imperial Family and the Holy Temple knew this—even searching for a suitable ‘key’ or ‘sacrifice’…
She felt a chill crawl up her spine.
“Boss — “
Lyra’s voice interrupted her thoughts. She pointed to a passage in the book.
“Look at this. The Holy Temple’s ‘Stigma Trial’… it requires candidates to meditate before the Holy Sword (replica) under specific stellar alignments to sense the Holy Light. Then, a corresponding ‘Stigma’ will emerge on their body. This thing sounds a lot like…”
“Like what?” Freya pressed.
“Like some kind of… contract brand, or a manifestation of power resonance.” Lyra curled her lip.
“The Black Market has some shady forbidden arts that use similar things to mark ‘possessions’ or to test affinity for a certain power.”
She paused, her red eyes looking at Freya with a hint of undetectable worry.
“Boss, do you think that crybaby… could she have done this too?”
Irina?
The Stigma Trial?
Freya’s heart tightened.
When she was trapped in the dungeon in her past life, in her blurred consciousness, she seemed to have seen something faint—like golden patterns—flash across Irina’s arm or neck.
At the time, she thought it was a magic accessory or an illusion caused by the light.
Thinking about it now…
If Irina had already passed a certain level of the ‘Stigma Trial’ and proved her ‘affinity’ for the Holy Sword’s power, then her value in the eyes of Ross and the Holy Temple would be entirely different.
Combined with her greed for Freya’s Mana Heart Crystal…
“It’s possible,” Freya’s voice was somewhat tight.
Lyra closed the book.
As if remembering something, she snapped her fingers.
“I remember now, Boss. I think I saw that crybaby holding a book.”
“A book?” Freya arched an eyebrow.
In her memories of her past life, Irina was not exactly someone who loved to read.
“Yeah. The cover of that book didn’t look like our script. It looked like a foreign—no, alien language. And it didn’t look like some ancient text. It looked like… a story booklet?”
“A story booklet?”
“Yeah, a story booklet.” Lyra nodded, having reached that conclusion.
The scene shifts to Irina’s room.
Irina was lying on the bed, and beside her was the story booklet Lyra had seen earlier.
“That hateful Freya. Does she really think she’s some protagonist young lady who can look down on people?”
She punched the bed hard, and her poor pillow became the target of her venting.
“Why would a high-quality, rich, and handsome guy like Ross look at you? Why? Only someone like me is worthy of him, worthy of becoming his Crown Princess Consort!”
She believed that with her ‘Gold Finger’ of being a transmigrator who knew the plot, she would definitely become the female lead!
As it turned out, Irina was not the real Irina. Her soul had long since been replaced by ‘another person.’
A Soul of Another World —
In her original world, she was an eighteenth-tier actress, as obscure as one could be. Her acting was terrible, and she had been scolded by directors more than once or twice.
Yet, she always dreamed of flying to the top of the branches and becoming a phoenix, latching onto a wealthy CEO to become a pampered socialite.
Once, she had scrounged a romance novel from her assistant.
The novel was titled The Adventures of a Magical Girl.
It told the story of the adventures of a young lady named Freya, born into a magical family in a Magic Kingdom.
From her mother’s death to her later arguments and eventual reconciliation with her father, to fighting alongside her classmate who was the Crown Prince, their feelings for each other grew until they married into the Imperial Family, where she became the noble Crown Princess Consort.
She was obsessed with the male lead of the book—the Crown Prince. She believed that if she were in the book, His Highness the Crown Prince would definitely choose her.
Perhaps the heavens had heard her plea, because when she woke up, she had traveled to the world of the book.
However, she didn’t transmigrate as Freya. Instead, she became an ordinary girl in a small town: Irina.
Fortunately, she awakened the rarest light magic and was spotted by a magic teacher from the Central Academy who happened to be traveling nearby.
She was admitted to the Central Academy as an exception.
To her, this was definitely unexpected!
She believed that since she came to this world, she was definitely the female lead!
Absolutely!
Holding onto that thought, Irina soon fell asleep.
In her dream, she became Ross’s Crown Princess Consort, wearing a foolishly happy smile.
Time passed quietly in the library.
There was only the rustle of turning pages and the occasional sound of a pen scratching across paper.
The butler, Aru, had quietly slipped in once to replace their cold tea and add some snacks before disappearing silently again.
Outside the window, the sky gradually shifted from the bright afternoon to a golden-red dusk.
“Boss!”
Lyra suddenly let out a low cry, pointing to a book she was reading titled Internal Summary of Temple Records (Internal Circulation Edition), published in recent years.
“Here! Three years ago, the Holy Temple reported an ‘abnormal resonance of the Holy Sword (replica).’ The specific cause was not made public, only saying it ‘might be related to close contact with a specific high-purity mana source.’ Afterward, they strengthened the seal and storage of the replica. In that same year, the Holy Temple secretly expanded its scope of searching for and registering ‘individuals with special mana constitutions’…”
High-purity mana source… special mana constitution…
Freya was almost certain this was related to the Mana Heart Crystal.
Three years ago was exactly when her Mana Heart Crystal had stabilized and her talent began to emerge.
Had she been targeted since then?
“And here — “
Lyra flipped to another page.
“About two years ago, a low-ranking priest responsible for the daily maintenance of the Holy Sword (replica) mentioned in his notes that ‘His Highness’s’ (referring to the Crown Prince) recent meditation resonance seemed to encounter an ‘invisible barrier.’ The response of the Holy Light was not as pure as expected… The note was later crossed out, but the ink is still there.”
Ross… hit a bottleneck? The Holy Light response was impure?
Freya remembered the demonstration that morning.
Although the replica’s light was grand, with her keen perception, she had indeed detected a tiny hint of instability deep within that light—like a grain of dust mixed into the purest water.
At the time, she thought it was a limitation of the replica itself. Now, it seemed…