I Became a Swordsmanship Instructor in a Romance Novel

Finally, the dreadful and gruesome battle had come to an end.

The Sanctuary lay in ruins.

Mountains of monster corpses piled high,

Their blood dyeing the river crimson.

Amidst this horrific scene, Zeke’s sword pierced the chest of an old man.

The Ancient Bard. In Zeke’s words, the *real* final boss.

“Is this… truly… the end…?”

The Saintess surveyed the surrounding devastation with vacant eyes.

Zeke, who had his eyes closed, slowly opened them.

He raised both arms triumphantly towards the sky.

“Yes! It’s over! It’s finally over! I killed that damn bastard!!! We did it!!! We won!! Saintess!!”

Zeke roared, unable to contain his excitement.

The Saintess’s gaze slowly shifted towards him.

His long black hair, reaching his waist, was roughly tied back.

His clothes, a patchwork of monster hides and carapaces, were tattered, torn, and full of holes.

Thick blood oozed from the countless wounds that riddled his body.

Who could call this the appearance of a victor?

She imagined her own reflection wouldn’t look much different.

Yet, unlike him, she couldn’t bring herself to smile.

Zeke had always said, as if by rote:

Once we defeat this guy, the darkness that has engulfed the Dave Continent will lift.

And a new life will dawn, a bright future awaits.

The Saintess had clung to his words, enduring this gruesome journey.

She truly believed that by killing the Ancient Bard, something would change.

But what remained in this land?

A blackened earth where even if new life were to sprout, it would soon wither and die.

A riverbed, parched and cracked.

Rain that fell from the sky sizzled upon contact with skin, burning and melting it away.

The remaining mountains and seas were still teeming with monsters hungry for human flesh.

‘Nothing has changed… Is this… the end…?’

The number of surviving humans had dwindled to a mere thousand.

And of those, only a dozen or so remained in good health.

Nothing had changed.

A sense of betrayal welled up within the Saintess.

Countless times they had fought each other tooth and nail during their journey.

When he was easily tempted by women who coveted his strength and wealth, she had to intervene.

When he ripped the wings off an angel and demanded she cook it into a dish called “chicken.”

When he succumbed to his madness and killed a young girl who had shown signs of recovery through her divine power.

When he massacred those who had been brainwashed, claiming they were beyond saving.

They fought bitterly, swords clashing, yet the Saintess understood.

She knew that this man was the only hope for the Dave Continent.

She had trusted his words, believing that everything he did was to restore this land.

But…

‘This… is salvation…? What, where, how has anything been restored…?’

Zeke, with a gleeful expression, examined the notebook left behind by the Ancient Bard.

“Hah, every damn thing we went through is written here… This bastard, he was really determined to screw me over, wasn’t he? The ability to manipulate reality just by writing… The constantly shifting terrain… My incredibly bad luck, it was all because of his power.”

Flip. Flip.

His fingers flipped through the pages with a lighthearted air.

“Still… With this, we can go back… All I have to do is add, ‘The hero returned to his homeland, Earth,’ at the end…”

As Zeke muttered to himself, the Saintess quietly approached him and extended her hand.

“Hmm? Ah, Saintess. Take a look at this. I think we can definitely return to Earth with this.”

Without a shred of suspicion, Zeke handed the 《Ancient Bard’s Notebook》 to the Saintess.

Crack

The Saintess immediately clenched her hand, attempting to rip the notebook apart.

Zeke, sensing her intentions in a split second, grabbed her hand.

“What do you think you’re doing? Stop messing around and give it back.”

“No.”

“Give it back.”

Zeke’s face hardened as he realized the Saintess wasn’t joking around.

“You want to go back?”

“Yes.”

“Who said you could?”

“……?”

Zeke was taken aback by her sudden words, but more than that, he felt a profound sense of disappointment.

His one and only companion, who knew how much he yearned for Earth, how much he had told her about it…

Could she really change her stance so easily at the very end?

Zeke stared intently at the Saintess, as if asking if she truly meant it.

“You can’t go.”

“What?”

“Barely… barely a thousand humans are left alive… Contrary to your words that everything would be resolved once we defeated the Ancient Bard, nothing has been solved. And if you were to disappear in this situation… I don’t know what will happen to the rest… Nothing has been resolved yet. Do you really think I would let you leave like this…?”

The Saintess stared at Zeke with empty, emotionless eyes.

“Zeke Clayman… You are not going back to Earth.”

* * *

Zeke wondered if this was all a dream, a delusion conjured by his own mind.

“……Sol… la…?”

“It’s not Solla now, it’s Lillie! Didn’t I tell you that doesn’t matter right now? Damn it! If you don’t infuse mana quickly, Soi Spoon is really going to die!! If you want to save her, scrape together whatever mana you have left in your balls and squeeze it out!!!”

“Uh… uh…”

Zeke looked at the Saintess with bewildered eyes, then hurriedly channeled mana from his fingertips and poured it into Soi.

As he did, a sliver of color returned to the pale girl’s face.

Zeke’s body was at its limit, but unlike before, when all hope seemed lost, the possibility of saving her, however slim, allowed him to squeeze out even a single drop of mana.

“Hah, damn human… Anyway, keep it up for now.”

The Saintess, with trembling hands, untied the pouch from her waist and turned it upside down, emptying its contents onto the ground.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

From the upturned pouch tumbled a cascade of glittering stones.

Gems of various sizes, from the size of a fingernail to the palm of her hand, poured out endlessly.

They were an enormous number of magic stones.

“If anything had gone wrong, this child’s death would have been certain… But as expected, it had to be you… Or maybe it’s just damn luck… You were really lucky.”

Before arriving here, the Saintess had encountered a being named Teeth on the outskirts of the Lyios Mountains.

A being who had the potential to grow into a monstrous entity, brimming with malice and bloodlust.

She shuddered to imagine what kind of butterfly effect his involvement in this chaos would have caused.

However, his existence had ironically provided a chance to save Soi.

Teeth was originally meant to be the one responsible for Soi Spoon’s descent into darkness. The loan shark, Lodren.

He was supposed to kidnap and brutally murder Soi Spoon’s mother, turning her into a vengeful spirit and leading her to join Lost Hope.

A wicked woman who would manipulate nobles and royalty at will, plunging the capital into chaos. The 《Mud-Caked Queen》.

But due to Zeke’s intervention, Lodren had transformed into a being obsessed with capturing monsters and hoarding their magic stones.

Currently, defeating him in her weakened state was close to impossible.

But she, too, had once witnessed the end of the world alongside Zeke.

Using the magical tools she had prepared beforehand, the Northern Sword, and the command of the Black Wolf Knights, she had barely managed to steal the pouch of magic stones from Teeth’s waist.

Teeth, as if the pouch held some ancient treasure, lunged at the Saintess in a frenzy.

But in the end, he was blocked by the Northern Sword and forced to relinquish the pouch.

The magic stones he had accumulated from countless slain monsters fell into the Saintess’s hands.

Leaving the Black Wolf Knights to deal with Lodren, she had rushed here.

The magic stones she had emptied from the pouch lay piled at her feet.

The Saintess closed her eyes, extended her hands forward, and chanted in a clear voice.

“Oh, Light… We were born from the source, so we wish to return to the source and become the source.”

A spell of deconstruction and restoration.

In an era devoid of healing magic, the miracle of the only being possessing divine power was about to unfold.

Pure white light flowed forth, unhindered.

The Saintess’s divine power washed over the piled magic stones.

But as if rejecting her power, the stones retained their solid form.

Shhhhhhhk—

The Saintess poured even more divine power, beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

The light intensified, so bright that she could no longer keep her eyes open.

As she persistently channeled her power,

The magic stones on the ground began to soften, merging and fusing together.

A single, solid, cubic magic stone emerged.

Soi’s new heart.

“……Zeke.”

The Saintess, her eyes half-closed, called out to Zeke.

“Quickly… place this… into her chest…”

And with that, she lost consciousness.

Thud.

Zeke hesitated for a moment, then, heeding her words, carefully picked up the glowing white magic stone.

He glanced at the collapsed Saintess with a complicated expression, then placed the cubic stone into Soi’s chest.

Color returned to Soi’s pale cheeks, and a faint breath escaped her lips.

Her eyes remained closed, but the furrow in her brow, etched with pain, signaled that she was alive.

“……She’s alive.”

Zeke let out a deep sigh of relief.

His gaze then fell upon the unconscious Saintess.

“But… what about her…?”

He cautiously placed a hand over her heart.

Thump.

Thump.

Slow, but steady.

Her heart was beating.

Her shallow breaths and the gentle rise and fall of her chest indicated that she was merely unconscious.

‘Why is she suddenly here…? No, how did she even…?’

Thanks to her, they had averted a crisis, but Zeke couldn’t make sense of this sudden turn of events.

Just then.

“Lady Lillie!!!”

A group of knights with dark hair charged towards them, their swords glinting menacingly.

Their eyes were fixed on the man who dared to touch the chest of Lady Lillie, the Princess of the Ira family of the North.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

“……How dare you lay a hand on Lady Lillie!”

“All units, eliminate this scoundrel and rescue the Lady!”

Zeke frowned and tilted his head.

“What the… What the hell is going on…?”