Chapter 69: These Heroines Are Too Crazy

Every heroine in [Tales of Love and Swords] was written to be hard to get.

Both the winning and losing ones.

Even in the dating sim adaptation, you could spend a hundred hours with a girl and get nowhere if you didn’t know her quirks.

Nobody expected the elegant swan of Soron that is Mariella to have a humiliation kink.

Nobody expected a fierce, independent lady like Prussia to have a thing for being pervertedly looked at by her love interest, or a hungry eye for wounds on men. Alpis had told Adonis exactly how Prussia was drooling all over his body after the duel, and how she wouldn’t stop staring.

Minerva was cold, aloof, and dominant, and also controlling and clingy in ways she’d never admit.

You could only win these women if you’d read every line written by this author who hated happiness.

Mother Euphemia was the hardest of them all.

She was one of the most popular characters in the novel, thanks to her beauty and maturity. For months, men on the forums argued about how to romance her in the dating sim without the story’s hints. Nobody ever managed it. Worse, even after reading the novel, nobody understood how Lloyd Halcyon had won over such a loveless beauty.

But a jobless bum like Gordon did.

He knew the best way to romance Euphemia, even now that she’d locked him in a dungeon for looking at her chest.

... Tap. Tap. Tap.

The cell was dark, damp, and smelled of old hay.

Adonis whistled a cheerful tune and paced from one wall to the other, counting the stones.

Eleven steps, turn... eleven steps, turn.

There’s also a weird pink-eyed rat cautiously watching the man that took its "apartment" it seems.

Then a bright light poured down the stairs.

Sword Sister Rita came first, followed by a handful of nuns and armored guards. Behind them, carried like she weighed nothing, came an ivory chair. They set it down in front of the bars, and Mother Euphemia sat in it with her arms folded under her fertile, bountiful breasts.

Her long hair glowed like moonlit silk, her pointed ears were elegant, and her celestial red eyes looked at him like one would look at a stain on their carpet.

Adonis grinned and strolled up to the rusted bars.

"Ooooh. Beautiful Euphemia is back."

A guard’s sword left its sheath. "How dare you—?!"

Euphemia raised one sylph-like arm.

The guard stopped like a puppet with cut strings.

"Does the prince have a habit of insulting women?"

She asked a little sternly.

Adonis whipped his golden locs back and chuckled.

"Since when is the truth an insult, Beautiful Euphemia?"

The guards nearly burst.

"Holy Mother, we don’t care if he’s a prince! Addressing you so crudely is an unforgivable sin!"

"He’s too lustful and too arrogant. He isn’t worth saving! Let us kill the wastrel right now!"

Adonis clutched his chest and took a deep, trembling breath full of theatrical sorrow.

"Well said. Truly. Hurry up and do it."

"..."

"After all, my father hates me and my mothers shun me. A man like me will never make anything of himself, not even on holy ground. So please, don’t waste time. Kill me before I spawn little bastards even worse than I am."

He dramatically pressed his neck against the bars so the guard could reach it.

... no one moved, thought. Not out of mercy, but to them this man has certainly gone insane.

Sword Sister Rita felt an unfamiliar discomfort that made her eyes narrow at the Fifth Prince.

’This man...’

She’d spent centuries on battlefields as a mercenary for more empires than she could count.

She’d seen men grovel and beg for their lives.

... To see one so eager to die is strange, so strange, that he looked like a dog begging for food. With those golden locs, all she could picture was a barking, slobbering golden retriever.

Yet Lady Euphemia stayed silent.

’This is odd. He sounds so sure of his death. Hershant calls this boy a trickster god, but this doesn’t feel like one of his tricks. It feels like a genuine cry for help.’

As if he’d condemned himself so thoroughly that he no longer believed he could be saved.

’How sad. The royal family has clearly rejected him. Perhaps another highborn could be used against the crown. Perhaps... I should actually help him.’

Her celestial eyes narrowed.

"If it’s death you want, I can grant it. But tell me why you desire it so much. How can a man who has achieved nothing be so eager to leave this world?"

And she went quiet.

Adonis took a few steps back and gave her a flat, stone-faced side-eye, like he wanted to hit her pretty face.

’Why the hell isn’t she mad yet?’

He cleared his throat and went back into character.

"Simple! My life is miserable! Or are you so myopic and stupid that you can’t see I’m a worthless nobody?!"

He threw his shackled wrists into the air and marched around the cell like a madman.

"I sleep with prostitutes every day, without protection! I wear cheap clothes because the King cut off my allowance! And now I have to sit here while a woman who knows nothing about feelings questions my reasons for being depressed?! Perhaps I should slap you first, ma’am!"

Euphemia’s face didn’t change, not a wrinkle from a frown, nor a vein from anger on her smooth, heart-shaped face.

... Huuufff! She only took a deep breath.

But that’s more than enough to make every guard around her stumble back, Sister Rita included.

Adonis peeked at her with one lifted brow.

’Still not mad?! Dammit. No wonder she’s one of the hardest routes to unlock.’

He pointed at her.

"You want more? Another reason I want to die is the reality of a woman like you wasting her virginity! And the virginity of every smoking hot nun in this church! So many maidens ripe for the picking, and you tell them to be celibate?! If it weren’t for my lovely prostitutes, I’d have died of depression!"

Lady Euphemia stayed unfazed.

Though her eyes looked like they wanted to draw the sacred sword at her side and butcher him to pieces.

Behind her, the nuns and guards were no longer angry as they were now terrified.

’Is he insane?!’

’How can he be this bold? Does he want the Holy Mother to slaughter all of us?!’

’Please, someone make him stop—’

... Still so much silence.

Lady Euphemia was yet to say a word.

Worse, Adonis was now bothered by something else, there hadn’t been a single notification from the system.

’Does this mean I’m so insignificant to her that she feels nothing when I act like this?’

He started to sweat.

’That’s not how she was in the story!’

Dinnnnnnnngggggggg!!

The notifications arrived all at once, like a dam breaking.

[Euphemia is deeply saddened by the Host’s depression.]

[Euphemia wants to save the Host!]

[Euphemia is obsessed with saving the Host!]

[Euphemia finds the Host’s problematic nature arousing and has decided the Host’s suffering is a sacred calling!]

[Euphemia’s obsession with the Host is increasing.]

(+99 more...)

Adonis turned pale and froze mid-march.

’Eh... how crazy is this woman about me? Did I overdo it?’

... Gulp! System, how bad is it?"

[The system does not have a crazy meter. However, if it had to estimate, her obsession with saving the Host is currently in the thousands region.]

All this time Adonis ranted and insulted her, Euphemia’s flat eyes weren’t angry at all. Inside her head, they were blowing up like joyful fireworks.

’Oh, he’s so sad. So lonely. Hershant says he’s harmful, and perhaps he is, but maybe he’s only like this because of the harsh world he was forced to live in. He doesn’t believe anyone can save him. Fuuuu~ then I must be the one to show him he’s wrong. First, redemption. Then a new family. A warm one, full of people who’ll never abandon him. And if that’s not enough...’

She thought about it seriously.

’Perhaps I could lay down my four-century virgin fruit and be his wife for a few years. Yes, yes that’s perfect, we could have a huge family. Two hundred children, give or take. Then, when he dies, I’ll return to the Church.’

She shook her head and shut the pink gates between her fair, long legs tight at the thought.

’But that might take too long. Hm. Then I could simply give him the happiest decade of his life, and kill him at the very peak of it. That way he won’t be depressed in the afterlife.’

That’s the truth about Euphemia.

One of the five craziest heroines in the novel.

... Mother Euphemia.

... Goddess Aphrodite.

... Claire Falsbane.

... Immortal Demon Empress Zinnia

... and the Reverse Witch, Persephone.

She was untouchable in looks, but if you knew her mind, you knew she had a savior complex, and she felt extreme ecstasy from turning people’s lives around for the better.

That had always been Adonis’s gameplay.

Make himself miserable enough that she’d see a wounded lamb she needed to save.

But he’d miscalculated.

Because the system’s notifications were delayed, he’d looked so miserable, so unsaveable, that Lady Euphemia was now deathly obsessed with him.

The holy mother bit her lower lip.

’Ohhh~ my sweet golden goose. He’s so broken, so wounded. I can’t wait to give him the best life possible. The ecstasy I’ll feel from saving this filth will make my fruit explode. ??’

There were literal white hearts floating in her eyes.