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A girl of breathtaking beauty, like a goddess out of myth, slowly rose to her feet.
Her skin was a milky white with the faintest blush of rose; a plain white sheet, wrapped about her body like a toga, served as her only garment.

Her small, pale face was adorned with large sapphire-blue eyes that glittered brilliantly. Her long, straight hair was a golden blond tinged with pink, shining fantastically beneath the light of my magic art.

With slender, graceful limbs and perfectly balanced proportions, she radiated such an aura that none could help but be captivated.
She was—

“The peerless beauty, the unparalleled Shrine Maiden Princess, Clara. That is my name—kyah!”

“…excuse me, Coppelia, could you not put words into my mouth like some kind of dramatic narration?”

I gave a quick jab of warning to Coppelia, who was—as always—getting carried away, then turned my gaze back toward the “me” that Eliza had transformed into.

“…Honestly, I don’t think I’m anywhere near that beautiful, though?”

In the eerie atmosphere of the underground cavern, her beauty took on a bewitching, otherworldly quality. Compared to her, the silly, half-asleep face I saw staring back from my mirror each morning seemed utterly ridiculous.

Even though it was the same face, just with a different soul inside, the contrast was staggering. I pointed this out, but—

“No, the resemblance is perfect. Even my observation apparatus can’t tell you two apart.”
“No, that’s not true. If you ask which is more beautiful, it’s Jill, without question.”
“Indeed, My Princess is a class of her own.”

They instantly shot down my self-deprecation—obviously out of favoritism.

Eliza narrowed her eyes, watching our reactions with the air of someone looking down from a lofty height. Then, turning her gaze to me alone—

“—First, allow me to offer you my deepest gratitude. Thank you for gifting me freedom and a future.”

Her clear, resonant voice echoed through the vast cavern as she bent at the waist with unhurried grace.

…What does she mean?

I blinked in confusion, my reaction apparently amusing her; Eliza chuckled softly, her smile never fading.

When she straightened again, I noticed she seemed taller than before—not only her features, but even her stature had grown. Our eyes were now at the same level (discounting the height from my heels).

The only visible difference was the color of her eyes, but even that was so slight it could almost be dismissed.

“To me—to Eliza Barbara Farias that I was, the titles of ‘Next Saintess,’ ‘Heir to the Saintess,’ or ‘Shrine Maiden Princess’ held a special meaning.”

Eliza continued in a lilting, almost sing-song voice:

“They were the ever-anticipated final goal. The very reason my bloodline was chosen—for that one purpose alone—as Dolly Kadmon. Eliza’s entire being—her personality, her abilities, her lineage—existed solely for that. It was the crystallization of all the hopes of the priestesses and clergy who gathered in the Holy Land. And yet—”

With a faint smile, she placed a hand against her chest and went on in an even, detached tone:

“No matter how I longed for it, it was always a dream forever out of reach. I knew it well: Eliza’s power could only ever amount to ‘remarkable talent,’ nothing more. No matter how much I struggled, I could never reach the absolute brand of the ‘Saintess.’ At best, I was a counterfeit, a cheap imitation.”

“—Tch.”

Cestlavie clicked his tongue in irritation.

Come to think of it, Cestlavie himself had once been a priest lauded as a child prodigy in his own time, the focus of great expectations. Perhaps, in this place, he alone could truly understand Eliza’s inner turmoil.

Just then, Coppelia—who had been all giddy and playful a moment ago—tugged on my sleeve with a surprisingly serious look on her face and whispered:

“Lady Clara, Lady Clara, I say. I have a major discovery. According to my measurements, that fake Clara Eliza only has a D-cup. The real Lady Clara has an F-cup. Her breasts simply don’t measure up to yours. She’s just a bargain-bin knockoff—residual effect of base-model flat-chested Eliza!”
“…Um, we seem to be in the middle of an important conversation right now, so could you please save the spot-the-difference game for later?”

I tried to chide her, but unlike her usual flippant self, Coppelia actually looked earnest as she pressed on:

“No, this is critical. As I mentioned earlier, my observation system is currently reading ‘That’s also Lady Clara.’ Which means there’s a very real risk I could end up ignoring my actual will and automatically obeying that fake’s commands. To prevent that, I need hard, logical evidence that the current Lady Clara and that other Clara are distinct entities. That’s why I have to find any clear discrepancy I can!”
“Why is it that you’re usually so flighty and unreliable, yet when it comes to things like this, you suddenly turn absurdly rigid and by-the-book!?”
“Well, don’t look at me… That’s just how I was programmed.”

We thought we were keeping our voices low, but in the stillness of the underground cavern, it seemed Eliza heard us clearly.

“Fufu. It doesn’t matter. Beyond any shred of doubt, Clara is me, and I am Clara. The name Clara Adelheid. The title Shrine Maiden Princess. And that useless tin maid over there as well. All of it—I will be taking for myself.”

Eliza’s lips curled—not in a smile, but in a mocking sneer.

“You sure have a lot of nerve. In the end, you couldn’t beat Jill, so now you’re just trying to take her place to wallow in your own self-satisfaction, pathetic!”

Brandishing his talisman, Cestlavie leveled a glare and cutting words at Eliza.

“Yes. that’s right. Eliza Barbara Farias is defeated. Victory belongs to Clara Adelheid, the Shrine Maiden Princess. —I’ll say it again. Clara, it’s your… no, it’s my victory. I shall become you, who possesses everything I desire, and with that, the Order’s dream of the Second Coming of the Saintess’ will be made complete.”

Eliza hugged herself as if to cradle her own body, wearing an enraptured smile. But then, that smile deepened further, twisting into something uncanny, tinged with madness.

“—But we don’t need two ‘Claras,’ do we? That’s why I will take your name, your achievements, and your very future itself, as the true Shrine Maiden Princess Clara. Don’t worry—I’ll lead the Order far more splendidly than you ever could. Which means you are unnecessary. And it’s better if there are no witnesses, isn’t it? That’s why I went to all the trouble of luring you to this forsaken place where no one comes. Now then—let’s begin the finale!”

As Eliza’s resounding voice echoed, the pools of waste fluid all around began to bubble. From within them crawled forth grotesque aberrations—monstrous, half-human half-beast abominations, along with maid-uniformed stone golems identical to the earlier models—clambering one after another onto the shore.

“Now then—disappear in peace.”

Eliza laughed lightly, hand to her lips, as if in delight.

“Don’t screw with us! The only one disappearing is you, impostor!!”

Unable to contain his fury, Regulus was the first to snap, unleashing a condensed wave of raw mana with no chant, no circle—just pure destruction. It was an attack unique to demons, born of their vast reserves: an attribute-less mana wave, devastatingly fast and powerful.

“Darkness, enshroud.”

The moment Eliza chanted the Spell, a wall of darkness manifested around her, swallowing the mana wave like a black hole—silent, without recoil, nullifying it entirely.

“—What!?”
“…So you can’t change attributes after all. But still… that’s impressive. To nullify a demon’s offensive magic with only a shortened incantation. And besides—”

“Watch out! Regu—!!”

I shouted, but there was no time. Before Regulus could even process what happened, Eliza was already before him in an instant, closing the distance like a blink—her leg snapping up in a crude, almost careless kick.

“—GUUOOOAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!”

It was the clumsiest kick imaginable, yet it carried the force of a cannon fired point-blank. Regulus’s body was hurled through the air as if weightless, slamming into the far wall nearly ten melts away.