Fake Saint of the Year: You Wanted the Perfect Saint? Too Bad! - Ch. 21.1

[Hikineet]

Thanks for the chapter.

 

[Gtcvenkai]

good lord. Now I have to know if the story ends there or theres some shenanigans still going on afterwards.

pls tell me that just not how it end

If you want to find out more, you can read the WN which is fully translated. If you are too busy, I'll include a summary once again in spoiler tags.

Spoiler: How the WN goes

As Elrise's funeral is taking place, an ominous dark cloud was forming over the capital. Many of the higher ups realize what it is and start preparing. What happened was that the curse no longer had a vessel and manifested fully as pure mana. It then took a form and started attacking the capital. The heroes go to engage it and fight hard, but being pure mana, their attacks do little, and even Saint powers were ineffective. The heroes then realize what "Witch's" goal is: to destroy Elrise's corpse and parade it around to crush any remaining hope people had left since even dead she was pretty much still a beacon of hope for the entire world. On the other side Niito is giving Elrise a much needed talking about how they needed to care more about how people really felt and that its not something they can put as "not their problem". While Elrise herself is falling into despair because she's dead already but can hear the people's screams for her through the monitor Niito pulls his final card. Give the remaining fragments of soul he still has over to Elrise and grant her a few hours of life back. Elrise takes it and returns to the other world.

The Witch is literally inches from smashing Elrise's corpse (and Vernel who's in front of it) when suddenly a super laser blasts the Witch and sends it flying. Elrise is back and declares "Looks like I have some unfinished business" and proceeds to have what is basically a DBZ tier battle with the Witch. The narration also notes that since Elrise's soul is now complete, she also gained a MASSIVE power boost. Like she's dozens of times stronger than she was before. But, even then, the Witch is actually an enemy that can match her. Leila who is watching notices its the first time she's EVER seen Elrise struggle. The reason being, the Witch is pure mana, Elrise lacks a way to actually destroy mana. So she tries various methods like full sending her most powerful attacks, condensing it, and then finally launching the thing into space. Nothing works. Elrise exhausts her mana so she goes into super circulation mode to refill it and finds the regular bad feelings that go along with it, but she's used to it and is more or less immune, what she ISN'T immune to is something funny that got mixed in: Love, Determination, and Hope. Scum she can handle, Hope, she can't. Elrise was panicking cause the feelings of hope was purifying her, like her inner dialog was becoming more proper and stuff. Fearing for her self, she gathers all the positive feelings and throws it at the Witch ala spirit bomb. Witch is seriously harmed, and Elrise realizes that the positive feelings were canceling the negative ones that the Witch is made up of, Elrise, with the help of Vernel in love interest fashion, helps her gather even more hope and they destroy the Witch finally.

Elrise relaxes for a moment but her body gives out. Her intense battle burned up the last few hours she originally got from Niito and as her body shuts down, she's panicking again because she's dying AGAIN in Leila's arms and Leila just gives a look that she's probably gonna cut her own throat after Elrise dies. Then comes in a special turtle (major character not yet revealed) who transfers the remainder of its life span to her remarking that its lived a thousand years already and Elrise deserves it much more. Elrise revives with a bonus 100 years of life.

After an epilogue about what various characters are doing, the story ends with a lost girl about to be beset by a bunch of predators only for the sky to split in golden light and the Great Saint to descend from it. "You are safe now".

 

[StormSen]

That's some handwave, what happened after Elrise admitted she was a fake?

She only whispered it to one guy. Everyone else still thinks she's the real saint.

 

[StormSen]

Not sure if they will explain it in the future ...

Almost all of that is spoiler. This is info that doesn't appear until much later in the story. Although it seems fairly low key background info, it affects the pacing of the story, and the evolving way that the reader sees the MC.

For those who are impatient, the official English version of the LN is out through vol 3 (with (the final) vol 4 due out in a couple of months). Very worth a read, IMO.

 

[okkokko]

Almost all of that is spoiler. This is info that doesn't appear until much later in the story. Although it seems fairly low key background info, it affects the pacing of the story, and the evolving way that the reader sees the MC.

For those who are impatient, the official English version of the LN is out through vol 3 (with (the final) vol 4 due out in a couple of months). Very worth a read, IMO.

And for those even more impatient, the pre-pub of the last volume was completed yesterday on j-novel.club.

 

[Magicmist]

A good sweet might have tears of joy as a side effect. Although Leila's tears are more bittersweet.

 

[Coldlight]

Leila, has the concept of "breaking the cycle" never occurred to you?

For a scumbag, I'm a little bit surprised the protagonist didn't even think of taking advantage of Leila's state of mind. Make her more emotionally dependent on him or something. Then he has a fanatically loyal servant at his disposal. Then again, I guess he really only has eyes for Eterna. And he's even feeling a bit of guilt about Leila!

 

[Carn109]

Leila really got the short end of the stick

 

[Elmithian]

Not sure if they will explain it in the future by prior to Elrise actually performing the duties of the Saint, trade between cities was extremely dangerous and only the absolute necessities would could travel between them. It's mentioned that the only standing cities at the time were literally walled off fortresses as just stepping outside of them meant you were very likely to encounter a demon that will rip you apart. Demon infested territory were also barren wastelands that could not grow anything so even if humans could reclaim an area they'd have to spend a ton of time and resources to repair the damage and fortify it against future demon attacks. The fact is food was essentially just as basic as basic gets. Like I'm talking vegetable straight from ground into mouth basic. It was so bad even royalty starved. The novel stresses that Elrise being what she is, is a god given miracle. Territory that demons that controlled were taken back when in the past it took generations of saints to even contest for in only a few minutes. Land that would've taken decades to recover were just magically restored and by the time the story starts proper, trade between cities was abundant because by that time, encountering a demon on the road was a super rarity on the account that Elrise pretty much wiped out 99% of them. Elrise didn't just save the world at this point, she returned it back to a thriving ecosystem single handily.


This is going into spoiler territory so I'll put that bit in a tag. However what isn't a spoiler is Elrise's imagined version of it. Based on Elrise's knowledge of the game she knows for certain the curse goes to whomever makes the fatal blow on the witch. Since she knows she's not a suitable vessel for the curse, it'd die with her so no witch would be born. She plans to reveal the truth of the saint as she's dying to the knights and then shuffle on to the afterlife so she can view the resulting happy end as if it were a game CG. She also imagines that after she reveals she's a fake that they'd ditch her body where it fell, maybe spit on it a few times but she'd like to imagine she was pleasant enough that they would toss her in a shallow hole if only to get her corpse out of sight. She then imagine that they would celebrate the real saint Eterna and everyone is smiles and happy.

As for what happens:

Spoiler: What really happened

Elrise does die after doing what she set out to do. She kills the witch and the curse transfers to her. She had to do this because plan A just got shot through the heart. Elrise reveals the truth to her knights and the "hero" party present and then she dies, all while Leila was sobbing her eyes out. Elrise's soul then goes back to earth where Niito shows her the aftermath of her death in which everyone was in utter despair. Leila is practically in a coma from crying until her body was shutting down, Vernel tried to kill himself a few times and was resorting to starving himself because the dark power was keeping him alive. Eterna refuses to even touch anything remotely saint related because in her eyes, she's completely unworthy of anything after Elrise's accomplishments. The church was also informed of the truth but refused to revealed she was a fake and instead granted her a new title "The Great Saint", they state that there was no way they can say that she's a fake after she did far better than any legit saint before her. As for her corpse, it was preserved in pristine condition and a grand tomb was being constructed for her while legions of followers go to her preserved corpse to pray, mourn and pay respects.

...you evil, genius bastard. I love what you did. Let's see what the reactions are going to be for the manga only readers once the story reaches that point.