Chapter 01
“Save the world with love!”
That was the last thing Milona heard from the god she met before crossing the river of the dead, after the world had ended.
Day three.
Milona, who had woken to the sound of children’s laughter outside her window and greeted a new day, was finally able to admit it.
“Let’s give up and accept it. I’ve come back…”
It wasn’t a dream.
Impossible as it was, Milona had truly returned to the spring three years before the world’s destruction.
To be precise, she had been made to return.
“If this is real…”
Lying in bed, Milona began to accept reality. She grabbed her disheveled short hair from the pillow with both hands and let out a groan.
This didn’t make sense.
It couldn’t be happening.
More than the fact that she had returned to the past, she couldn’t believe what she was now supposed to do.
“How am I supposed to save the world with something like love?!”
Milona recalled the day of destruction—a past event for her, but one that hadn’t happened yet.
It was the moment just as a peaceful, ordinary day was about to begin.
But then, darkness suddenly rose from the imperial capital where the Emperor resided, swallowing everything in an instant. The world was destroyed.
At the time, Milona had just watched it happen. She couldn’t even think of running away.
If it had been something that came with a warning, she might have struggled. But it happened suddenly, in an instant.
“I died before I could even feel the fear of dying! How am I supposed to stop something like that? With love? Love? What kind of nonsense is that? At least pretend it makes sense! Does this sound reasonable to you?!”
Milona cried out as if lashing out at the god who might be listening somewhere. She caught her breath and sat up.
Her hair, which she had roughly yanked at with both hands, was a tangled mess.
But she had no time to care about that. Because in her violet eyes, something else was reflected—something that troubled her heart even more than the absurd divine request.
“If the temple sees this, it’s going to be a huge pain…”
On the backs of both her hands, a faint glow emanated from the mark of Light.
It was a stigmata.
In the Lisias Empire, which occupied half the continent, no saint had been born for nearly thirty years.
Fortunately, the High Priest’s power was strong, so the temple’s influence remained on par with the Emperor’s. But the absence of a saint—a symbolic figure—was a painful loss for the temple.
So what would happen if it became known that someone had appeared bearing not one but two stigmata?
It wouldn’t just be a little bothersome.
“Love, destruction, whatever—I’d be dragged in and never see the world again until I died. Ah! But then the world would end anyway, so I wouldn’t be locked up for long. Ha. Ha. Ha.”
Milona looked at the stigmata, which glowed faintly but commanded an overwhelming presence, and let out a long sigh.
Well, at least it helped her accept the fact that she had returned. If that was the god’s intention, then it had succeeded.
“I’ll hide it! They say nothing a god does is without reason, but still, hiding it is the right call!”
Sometimes, in adventure tales told by traveling performers or bards passing through the capital, you hear stories of heroes who save the world from the Demon Lord with the temple’s help. But those are just stories.
Besides, the enemy the hero faces in those stories is the Demon Lord.
If Milona had been tasked with defeating the Demon Lord—who was protected by darkness—she might have needed the temple’s help.
No, she definitely would have.
Because the Demon Lord, who wielded darkness, and a priest blessed by light are polar opposites.
But Light didn’t tell Milona to defeat the Demon Lord. It told her to save the world.
And the method was love.
The only small mercy was that it at least told her who to love.
“So what if you told me! Hey, God, are you listening? I’m just a back-alley ownership transfer specialist! How am I supposed to meet the Emperor! And how am I supposed to love him?!”
If God was listening to Milona, He would probably smile and say:
But he’s not the Emperor yet.
Duke Wade Li von Ponti.
The late Emperor’s youngest son and the current Emperor’s full-blooded younger brother.
And two years from now, he would kill his own brother, seize the throne, and turn the continent into a blood-soaked battlefield.
A warmonger who, after usurping the throne and waging war day after day until there was no one left to fight, would open the door where Destruction was sealed and bring about the end of the world.
[That boy’s heart is parched. He appears to have everything, but in truth he has nothing. He has lived his whole life feeling a hunger and thirst without reason. That is why my twin, Darkness, was able to lead him to Destruction.]
That’s what Light had said, asking her to fill the man’s dark heart with love and prevent the world’s destruction.
But if one person was the cause of destruction, couldn’t a god just snap their fingers and fix it?
And yet love?!
Not just any noble, but the Emperor’s brother and a Duke of the Empire—how?!
When Milona politely argued that God should just handle it Himself, His answer was even more absurd.
[But… well… saving the world with love is more beautiful, isn’t it?]
…
At that moment, Milona truly, honestly, sincerely thought she’d be fine with hitting God and dying right then and there… Actually, since she was already dead and meeting God, she thought she’d be fine even if it meant soul annihilation.
“‘But’ what?! Not even a third-rate romance novel would pull that! You crazy—! Agh! Anyway, dear God!”
They say even the Emperor gets cursed behind his back, but Milona had personally seen God with her own eyes before returning.
Unable to bring herself to curse Him outright, she awkwardly corrected herself.
She had never been particularly religious, and now, after meeting God in person, she found herself in an even more absurd situation—one that made it even harder to develop any faith.
Milona let out a long sigh, got out of bed, and walked toward the mirror.
Then she began the confirmation work she had been doing for the past two days, unable to accept the fact that she had returned.
Black curly hair lightly brushing her shoulders. White, smooth skin that was unusually fine for a roughly raised child.
Neatly arched eyebrows, thick eyelashes, and beneath them, pale violet eyes sparkling like dewdrops on morning violets.
A rounded nose tip and red lips.
A fairly tall stature for a back-alley girl, with long limbs and good proportions.
The fact that she had grown this well despite not eating or sleeping properly was surely thanks to the blood of the parents she had never known.
They must have been beautiful.
Looking at her reflection, Milona once again confirmed that she had traveled back in time.
“No scar on my cheek. Both eyes are fine. The burn mark here is gone too…”
Up until this point, by sheer luck, she hadn’t suffered any wounds that left major scars. But her job—a self-proclaimed “ownership transfer specialist,” or in simpler terms, a thief—meant that she would accumulate quite a few injuries in the future.
The scars on her face and neck, in particular, were so noticeable compared to the ones she could hide with clothes, gloves, or shoes that sometimes she hated looking in the mirror in the morning.
Well, in the back alleys, scars like that weren’t uncommon, so she had still gone to work with a smile.
“I was pretty even with the scars, but definitely look better without them. Okay, let’s think of this as a down payment.”
Muttering to herself while deliberately ignoring the stigmata on the back of her hands reflected in the mirror, Milona stretched the corners of her mouth into an exaggerated smile.
“With such a grand down payment, I have to deliver. Since when have I ever refused a job after considering the terms? Ha. Ha. Ha.”
She did consider the terms.
Extremely so.
Not the difficulty or the pay.
What Milona always prioritized above all else was her own safety.
She had never owned anything but her own body, and she had known from a very young age that her life was precious.
So, in order to live long and happily, she did her absolute best to protect herself.
Thanks to that, her danger-detecting instincts sharpened immensely. Eventually, she reached a point where she could avoid dangerous requests based on feeling alone.
Of course, that instinct wasn’t 100% accurate, so she still got quite a few injuries… but she never died from them! The only time she died was because of the sudden, unexpected destruction!
“Th-That’s right! Even my instincts couldn’t handle that! Compared to facing a disaster like that, dealing with people is better… right?”
Her instincts, which worked hard for her safety and survival, were sending strong signals that this job was very, extremely dangerous.
But she couldn’t avoid it.
It was an unexpected divine request… though she had never actually agreed to it! But now that she had been brought back according to God’s will, it was something she had to do.
Besides, the rewards for this job were world peace and her own life.
If she refused, she’d die. And compared to dying, taking a risk was definitely better.
“Let’s not overthink it. They entrusted this job to me, so I’ll handle it my way. Staking the pride of the Lisias Empire’s best ownership transfer specialist, I’ll steal ‘love’ for sure!”
Because the reward—her survival—was guaranteed.
And if she succeeded, maybe, just maybe, when she died again a very, very, very, very long time from now and met God again, He might say, Good work, want to make a wish? If that happened, she’d ask to be born as the only daughter of a rich family next time, living a life of spending money like water and being happy forever.
Lightening her tangled thoughts, Milona met her own eyes in the mirror and nodded.
“Then the first thing to do… is go to work!”
For Milona, it was only the morning of the third day since the world had ended and she had returned with a bizarre divine request.
But for her boss, who had no idea the world had ever ended, it was just the morning of another day where an employee who had already been absent without leave for two days was about to skip again.
If she didn’t go to work today, she’d be killed by her nasty boss’s hands before she could even die in the destruction.
Hoping that her boss’s mood was very, extremely, wonderfully good today, Milona hurriedly began to get ready for work.
