Chapter 01
Fortunately, they arrived before I was properly hit.
I must have been tensing my entire body the whole time, because every part of me ached.
I relaxed and leaned back against the soft sofa inside the carriage.
Ever since I woke up this morning, I had been staring at the buzzing window that blocked my view with a strange expression.
[(Congratulations) Saint Verification Complete! (Congratulations)]
Congratulations! You have become the 4th Saint.
Name: Diane Irenne / 5 years old
You are the Saint who has appeared after 300 years. For the peace and prosperity of the Empire, fill up the <Good Deeds Gauge>.
Failure to do so will result in death.
Current Value: 0/1000
What the hell is this…?
To make things worse, the status window was decorated in cute pastel colors.
Pop! Pop-pop!
Tiny fireworks burst above the sparkling pop-up window in celebration.
If its purpose was to annoy me, it had already succeeded.
Is this some kind of children’s game? What’s with this ridiculously childish interface?
The funny thing was that the moment I first saw the status window, I also remembered that this world was the setting of a novel.
A Saint… wasn’t she destined to have her head cut off after failing to satisfy the tyrant emperor?
At first, I wanted to deny it somehow, but after seeing the wounds on my body mysteriously heal, I gave up.
The old scars from before hadn’t disappeared completely yet, but they had faded enough that they would probably be gone soon.
Fine. Everything up to this point was one thing.
But the last sentence bothered me.
I’ll die?
I’m already destined to die, so why emphasize it?
I couldn’t help letting out a hollow laugh.
As miserable as this life was, I still didn’t want to die.
In my previous life, I grew up unloved and alone. I had no friends and no family. I simply drifted from one part-time job to another, barely surviving each day.
Before I ever found any happiness in life, I was hit by a truck.
When I opened my eyes, I was here—in another world.
An abandoned orphanage hidden deep in the mountains, where no one ever came looking.
I no longer wanted to live, but I didn’t want to die either, so I just kept dragging myself through each day.
The orphanage director often said that my emotionless eyes disgusted her.
Ash-gray hair and violet eyes weren’t common, but because I retained the memories of my previous life, my eyes looked like those of a world-weary adult.
No one wanted to adopt a child like that.
My emotions gradually dulled, and every wound quickly hardened over with calluses.
Before I knew it, I had become someone who couldn’t make any expression at all.
Even though I was only five years old, the director especially hated me because I didn’t act like a child.
Shouldn’t she be happy if I don’t cry?
If I cried, she’d just beat me for being noisy anyway.
Then one day, after enduring all of that, I woke up in the morning and saw the status window.
Its layout looked similar to the game systems I had seen a few times at internet cafés in my previous life.
The only unfair part was that I didn’t realize this world was inside a novel until I awakened as the Saint.
More importantly—
So I had a family name.
Nearly five years after being reincarnated into this world, I finally learned the surname attached to my name.
Diane Irenne.
The Saint who had appeared after 300 years.
So what?
Would anything really change?
Even if I went to the temple, they’d probably exploit my holy power until there was nothing left of me before throwing me away.
The novel never seemed to describe it in detail.
But that had always been the unspoken rule of the world I had lived in.
If you’re useless, you’re abandoned.
Of course.
Then why…
…was the knight standing before me looking at me as if he were about to burst into tears?
