The Princess Knight is Too Strong

I had to admit it.

The fact that I had been under a very big misunderstanding.

This place was not simply a world inside a game.

This was not a 2D world made of sequences of images and text on a monitor, where the outcome of wars and the fate of humans are determined by idiotic binary choices.

There are no happy endings, bad endings, normal endings, or erotic scenes.

This bone-chillingly obvious fact took me three wasted years to realize.

Piiiiiiiiiiiiiii.
A dull ringing resonated in my head.
Opening my eyes, I quickly lifted my face from the soggy mud.
As the mud was disturbed, the acrid scent of blood rose up.
Two years ago, I would have vomited up everything I’d eaten for lunch, but surprisingly, I felt nothing.
Just as I was about to become bitter again at the thought of having crossed the point of no return so many times.
-Craaaaaack…!!
The sky split open “once again.”
“…Fuck.”
I muttered a small curse, then steadied myself on the ground and stood up.
This was already the third time in this battle.
The Demon King’s Army 2nd Corps Commander, Aslaksha of the Distant Sky.
It was his doing.
-Kwaaaaaaaaaaaang!!!!!
Through the crack in the sky, a pure white wind blew in.
Let me correct myself. There was something slightly off about the expression “blew in.”
A hammer in the form of wind was slammed down.
There was no distinction between the kingdom’s army and the Demon King’s army.
No, if anything, it seemed like more of the Demon King’s forces were swept away this time.
For two years, I had learned military science from Sir Scabbard.
And it took less than a year to realize that those two years of effort were a completely useless waste of time.
Military science was originally predicated on the assumption that the opponent was a human army like one’s own.
But the Demon King’s Army were not human beings.
To the Demon King’s Army, military strength had no meaning.
For them, soldiers were consumables that could be plucked from the ground like turnips, no different from trash fish fry that could be spawned again at will.
Undead.
An army outside common sense that needed no operations, tactics, strategy, or supplies.
The kingdom in the original game that held out against these crazy bastards for a year must have truly been the strongest military power in this central continent.
As the wind subsided, people’s voices began to echo.
“Ah, aaaaagh.”
“Mom, Mom.”
“Arm, my arm. Where’s my arm.”
“Khuk, kek, kek, kek.”
“Send me home, I want to go home…”
Screams, cries, and delirious mutterings from all directions.
If there was a hell in this world, this place would surely be it.
…Now, we must retreat.
Although Sir Scabbard had asked us to hold out as long as possible to buy time for the operation’s success…
‘This is the limit.’
The tide of battle had already turned, and morale was at rock bottom.
It was never a battle we could win in the first place, and the purpose of this fight was to trade human lives for time to increase the chances of success for the separate unit.
Now what matters is how to retreat.
I took out a small wooden cylinder with a short string attached to its end from inside my garment.
Then, pointing the lid of the wooden cylinder toward the sky, I pulled the string hard.
-Fiiiiii….
The contents of the cylinder flew out with a feeble sound and burst with a puff in the sky.
A black billowing cloud, signaling retreat, spread finely across the sky.
-Crrrrrrrr….
The split sky slowly closed as if time were rewinding.
It meant Aslaksha had withdrawn.
He was a being who rarely showed himself on the battlefield like this. This offensive was rather an exceptional case.
And… the cause was probably me.
That part was just like the original. The mere participation of a single human—me—boosted the kingdom’s army’s morale and made them fight fiercely against the Demon King’s Army.
And the Demon King’s Army’s response was immediate. Their goal would be to somehow kill or capture Princess Knight Evangeline to dampen human morale.
As if to prove this fact, for nearly a year, the Demon King’s Army had blatantly deployed corps commander-level forces to the battlefields where I was and launched aggressive offensives.
“…But even so, I didn’t expect them to deploy two corps commanders in a single battle.”
-Grrraaaaaaaa!!!!!
Beyond a distant hill where humans appeared the size of pen nibs.
Among what appeared to be reinforcements from the Demon King’s Army, something that looked like a pitch-black beast roared fiercely.
A body twice as large as other monsters and a jet-black mane that could be distinguished even from a distance.
A beast-type monster said to be the third strongest in close combat among the Demon King’s Army corps commanders.
The Demon King’s Army 8th Corps Commander, Balisterd of the Black Fang.
“This is insane.”
Aslaksha and Balisterd.
Two of the most formidable individuals among the Demon King’s Army corps commanders in terms of single-entity combat power.
It seemed they had come determined to capture me this time.
“…Like hell I’ll let them.”
Muttering as if to urge myself on, I threw away the straight sword in my hand.
This thing is useless now anyway.
-Clang.
The tattered straight sword with its blade broken in half hit the armor of a fallen corpse.

I bent down and picked up a spear that was haphazardly strewn on the ground.

It was a massive halberd about 2 meters long, but I could effortlessly lift it with one hand.

The blood of royalty.

The blood of rulers, mixed with the lineage of a chosen hero.

That was the very reason Evangeline could become superhuman.

When I raised my head, the form of the black beast had noticeably grown larger.

In the brief moment I bent down and straightened up, it had covered that much distance.

It would take 8 seconds, no, 7 seconds to reach where I was standing.

‘…I can’t retreat.’

Beads of sweat formed on my hand gripping the halberd.

Two years ago. Right after going to war, there was one thing I realized first.

The weight of life.

The weight of lives resting on my shoulders.

At first, I simply didn’t want to be taken against my will, having suddenly become a woman.

But just once.

With just one battle, the moment I finally realized the weight carried by the name Princess Knight Evangeline.

I realized there were things that had to be protected, things that took priority over hymens and happy endings.

-Bulge.

Blue veins bulged on the back of my hand gripping the halberd.

I never intended to win against a corps commander-level opponent in the first place.

The goal is to buy even a little more time.

To allow as many people as possible to escape from here.

I can only retreat after everyone else has fled.

‘…I wonder if the original Evangeline felt like this too.’

Just before swinging the halberd, such a thought suddenly crossed my mind.

“…How is Evangeline’s condition?”
“The treatment has been completed successfully. Once she recovers sufficiently, she will open her eyes.”
“…Thank you. You may go now.”
Karl didn’t even glance at the military doctor who stood up and bowed to him.
It wasn’t that he was negligent by nature. To be precise, it would be more appropriate to say he didn’t even have the presence of mind to look at him.
Karl’s gaze slowly turned toward the bed.
One sleeve of the patient gown visible over the neatly laid blanket was empty as if cut off.
After giving the retreat order, she had successfully eliminated the 8th Corps Commander by launching a counterattack against him as he recklessly pursued their forces, or so he heard.
Two years since the Demon King’s Army’s invasion began, despite receiving the good news of the first successful elimination of a corps commander-level enemy, Karl couldn’t smile at all.
Even if they could kill the Demon King himself, not just a corps commander, if it cost his daughter’s life, who would be happy?
“I shouldn’t have allowed it after all.”
Karl muttered in a tight voice.
On that day when the Demon King’s Army simultaneously invaded the Kingdom and the Holy Nation.
When his fourteen-year-old daughter said she would willingly go to the battlefield to protect the kingdom, Karl firmly insisted that he could never allow it.
However.
The continuous news of defeats that never seemed to end, the Demon King’s forces pouring in like a flood.
And in front of Eva, who asked every day to be sent to the battlefield, Karl eventually had no choice but to grant her request.
In fact, until the very last moment of sending her off, Karl agonized repeatedly.
Is it really right to send her? Should I change my mind and stop her even now?
But in the end, Karl couldn’t break her stubbornness.
Repeating to himself, as if to convince himself, that no father in the world can win against his daughter.
But that was an excuse.
No matter what lies he told himself, no matter what excuses he made.
The fact that he had sent his young daughter, who was about to have her coming-of-age ceremony a year later, to the battlefield would never change.
In the end, Karl at that time was a king of a nation before being a father with a daughter.
It was the result of weighing his feelings as a father who couldn’t send his daughter to a dangerous battlefield against the benefits—strengthening combat power, boosting morale—that could be gained by sending her to the battlefield.
Needless to say, Eva’s own strong desire added an extra hand to that scale.
“…Is this the result of that choice?”
-Rustle.
Stroking the empty left sleeve with his fingertips, Karl muttered quietly.
The messenger said—she gave her arm and took his neck.
“My daughter’s life and the nation’s survival. All things that should never be casually placed on a scale.”
He knew in his head, of course.
That if Evangeline had not gone to the battlefield, the kingdom would be in an even worse crisis than it is now.
That there had been countless battles in the past two years that could be won because she was there, battles that would have been lost if she had not been there.
But.
“…I can’t do this anymore.”
Karl slowly shook his head, his gaze lowered.
“I can’t let you be in danger any longer…”
-Touch.
Five delicate fingers came to rest on Karl’s hand, which had been stroking the empty sleeve with his head bowed.
“…Fa, ther.”
“…Eva?”
Karl jerked his head up.
Evangeline, who had regained consciousness without him noticing, was lying in bed, reaching out with her other arm and firmly holding his hand.
“…”
Hollow eyes that had seen the battlefield, hell, were staring at Karl.
The Evangeline that Karl knew was no longer there.
There was only a commander who carried the weight of life on her shoulders and wanted to enter hell again.
Fumbling with her parched lips, she spoke in a rusty voice.
“Let me go.”
A simple sentence without any rhetoric mixed in.
However, Karl didn’t have the confidence to tell her no.
‘God.’
Karl just muttered resentfully in his heart.
‘What on earth am I supposed to do?’