I Became a Swordsmanship Instructor in a Romance Novel

Zeke twitched his eyes as if questioning whether that was truly the best answer she could offer.

“You can’t speak?”

“…….”

Zeke stared at the Saintess, maintaining a brief silence.

Ten years of intertwined animosity.

That tedious time made Zeke reconsider.

‘…No, surely if she didn’t intend to speak, she would have found another way to avoid it. But she said she can’t speak.’

Suddenly sensing something odd, he asked again.

“Did you just say you can’t speak, not that you won’t?”

As if confirming his suspicion, the Saintess faintly nodded.

Zeke didn’t think she was lying.

Even though they met in a new world, in new bodies, their tiresome connection remained.

He could tell just by looking at her eyes whether she was lying or not.

Zeke carefully observed her.

The Saintess, her lips sealed as if frozen, glared at Zeke.

Her lips twitched incessantly.

He felt a distinct sense of déjà vu.

‘Ah, this. It’s that.’

Compulsion.

Although he had now broken free from almost all of it, he recalled the time immediately after his possession when he couldn’t even speak properly.

Even when he stabbed Soi, it was an intangible force he couldn’t overcome.

Zeke nodded.

“I understand your situation. Then, can you nod or shake your head in response to my questions?”

The Saintess’s body stiffened once more.

‘Even this doesn’t work….’

It seemed impossible to extract any proper information from her at the moment.

To hear her story, he would have to help her break free from the compulsion, just as he had.

Zeke pondered how he had managed to escape the compulsion.

‘Hmm, I just lived my life and it kind of resolved itself…. What’s different between me then and now?’

He met various children, built new relationships, and trained them….

But, it felt like something else, not just these individual actions.

‘Come to think of it, when I lost my mind with the sword, wasn’t the compulsion completely gone? At that time, I could freely use the mana residing in my body….’

The time when Duke Eustia first encountered the Lost Hope bastards.

Back then, he could speak quite freely.

Zeke’s lips curled into a smirk as he stroked his chin.

“……As expected, it’s that.”

The Saintess suddenly shuddered at a chill that ran down her spine.

Ten years of experience set off alarm bells.

‘…Shit. I don’t think that’s it.’

Whenever he smiled like that, it always foreshadowed an unpleasant future for her.

“Yes, that’s it. I’ll make you a body that can withstand even the most fluent speech. My conversation with Karen yesterday was quite timely.”

“Ka, Karen!?”

Suddenly, his mention of her maid’s name startled her.

The tension that had been gripping her loosened.

“Well, let’s set aside other matters for now. I’ll grant your admission to the Knight Department. That’s what you came here for, after all. And the necklace…. Hmm, I’ll return it after seeing your performance.”

“No, you bastard!”

Ignoring her curse, Zeke looked towards the door behind him and said,

“Your seniors are waiting outside, so go and greet them.”

As Zeke shot mana to push the door open, four girls and a boy tumbled in with a crash.

It was Selena, Iriel, Soi, Yuri, and Rosnante.

* * *

A little while ago,

As soon as Selena and the others learned that Zeke was meeting with the Princess Ira of the North,

they immediately headed towards the instructor’s waiting room.

The staff member in charge of security spotted them and tried to inquire about the purpose of their visit, but their intimidating aura made him swallow his words and grant them access.

Even though Ramielli claimed there were no barriers of status, their parents weren’t without social standing.

Finally arriving at the instructor’s waiting room.

The students huddled together in front of the antique door.

“Is this it?”

Iriel whispered to Selena.

“Yeah, this is it.”

Selena nodded slightly.

They pressed their ears against the door, focusing on any sounds coming from inside.

“……Hmm? I can’t hear anything.”

Even when she focused her mana on her ears, she could clearly hear sounds from other rooms, but the instructor’s waiting room, where Zeke and Princess Ira were, was eerily silent, as if it were empty.

“C, could it be? Have they already gone somewhere with that Northern Princess…?”

“……Wait. There’s a mana barrier here.”

At that moment, the child who always strained her ears to hear every sound from Zeke’s next-door room,

Yuri Gilbert, spoke.

“A mana barrier? How can you…?”

“I’ll try to unravel it.”

Yuri focused mana in her eyes. A blue-tinged mana barrier came into view.

It was an overwhelmingly solid and robust wall that made her feel intimidated every time she saw it.

A technique she couldn’t even attempt to replicate.

‘But, I can at least make a tiny pinhole.’

Just like finding an opening in swordsmanship.

It was the task she had dedicated herself to the most since the day she entered the Yohaiden mansion, until just yesterday.

Now she was a pro at piercing mana barriers.

No, she was so skilled that she could be called a master of eavesdropping.

A chuckle escaped Yuri’s lips as she examined the mana barrier.

‘Brother, you’ve changed the formula, haven’t you?’

If she had known this would happen, she wouldn’t have questioned him when that suspicious woman entered his room yesterday.

After hearing it, it turned out to be just a long talk about a strange training method, so she could have just let it slide.

She had lost her reason at the thought of it being a woman and revealed her ability to pierce the barrier.

‘But do you think I’ll give up?’

Yuri gritted her teeth and got to work.

Searching for the weakest points in the mana barrier.

Memorizing all the weak points she found, and testing for gaps that could be breached.

Narrowing down the possibilities and carefully pushing a thread-like strand of mana, almost invisible to the naked eye, inward.

It was a delicate task that required utmost caution, as she couldn’t afford to be caught by Zeke.

Yuri’s hands moved swiftly.

She was so focused that she completely forgot about the others who were watching her with their mouths agape.

“……Did she receive some special training from Zeke alone…?”

“I guess so….”

“Ugh…. Th, th, this sticky feeling of obsession is just….”

Transparent beads of sweat formed on her smooth forehead,

and as the sweat trickled down her cheeks and dropped from her chin,

finally.

“……I did it!”

Yuri couldn’t help but exclaim.

At that moment.

Boom!

Suddenly, the door was pushed open, and the children near the door all tumbled down.

As they looked inside through the open door, they saw a black-haired, black-eyed girl looking down at them with a bewildered expression.

They lowered their heads.

Embarrassed.

* * *

In truth, the Saintess had come here thinking she would explain the entire situation.

However, her body abruptly stopped, refusing to allow her to reveal that specific information.

She felt a sense of despair.

‘I haven’t fully regained my freedom….’

Unlike her previous regression, where she was forced into formal behavior and speech like an actor in a play, she had gained some freedom and thought she would be able to speak, but it wasn’t the case.

Fortunately, her ten years of experience hadn’t gone to waste.

Zeke seemed to have grasped her situation immediately.

‘But seniors…?’

As Zeke gestured with his eyes towards the back, the door burst open,

revealing the sight of the children sprawled on the floor.

The Saintess’s eyes widened.

Soi, whom she had seen yesterday, and her other children, reunited once again.

Her feet moved involuntarily, drawing closer, as she etched each of their faces into her memory.

After her regression, when she saw the notebook being rewritten with a completely different story, she initially tried to intervene.

The emergence of monsters in this world.

The North became a shield against monsters instead of foreign enemies.

The existence of mages.

Settings and stories she had never written were reshaping the world as if they possessed their own power.

And the existence of such power meant that this world could once again be on the path to destruction.

However, the moment she decided to give up on intervening was when Selena evaded death.

Originally, Selena was supposed to die at the age of twenty.

At the very beginning of the story.

Knocked unconscious by a goblin’s club.

Dragged away by her ankles, her head smashing against a rock on the ground.

In the novel she wrote, the four girls, excluding herself, were all destined to die at the age of twenty.

It was a condition to maintain the balance of the world, to prevent the emergence of terrifying enemies that would destroy it.

The children had willingly accepted the Saintess’s proposal, saying that whether they died in the Dave continent or this new world, it was ultimately the same.

This world was built upon the foundation of their sacrifice.

However, she couldn’t simply demand sacrifice.

So she promised to grant each of them one wish before they turned twenty.

For Selena, the love of her family.

For Soi, an ordinary commoner’s life.

For Iriel, wealth and glory.

For Yuri, a life where she wouldn’t even remember her obsession with the sword.

Among them, Selena was the first to die.

But somehow, even without Selena’s death, the world remained intact.

Causality remained unchanged.

At that moment, the Saintess offered a prayer of gratitude to God.

To the world that had spared her child.

For the opportunity to bring back the lives she had given up on.

They were here, in front of her, just as they were before.

Not as the villainesses from her novel or lifeless corpses, but in their own vibrant colors.

Tears, emotions that had long dried up, were welling up within her.

Her eyes began to glisten with tears.

Then, as she turned her head, her gaze fell upon a boy with golden hair.

Rosnante.

He was staring at her with wide, trembling eyes.

“……Idiot. Bastard.”

The tears vanished instantly.

It felt as if a ten-year-old weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

‘Ha, that feels good. Damn it. Why did I write such a character…? Thinking about how I couldn’t do anything because of the compulsion, it’s infuriating. Can I just hit him now?’

“I, idiot…?”

Rosnante’s eyes wavered in confusion at the curse he was hearing for the first time.

And the girls’ eyes wavered along with his.

‘How did she know!?’