As a female knight, Lillian had long since reached marriageable age... Back home, her family had always fretted over her marriage.
Unfortunately, Lillian was stubborn and refused to lose. She had never been moved by their concerns.
She firmly believed that even without relying on or attaching herself to a man, she could still become a great knight.
To prove it, ever since the announcement of the national tournament, Lillian had been preparing for months. She had set out for the capital of the Elnes Kingdom from her hometown thousands of kilometers away, using the journey to hone her martial skills.
How could this happen...
At last, today she had successfully reached the stage of the national tournament. She was about to pass the Kingdom Tournament's preliminary rounds and enter the second-stage trials.
This shouldn't have happened...
Lillian had performed extremely well in the preliminaries. She had not hurried to enter the second-stage trials, instead taking her time to fight through one elimination match after another, striving to perfect her knight's secret technique.
This isn't... This isn't what I wanted...
Everything had proceeded in an orderly fashion... slowly drawing closer to the goal in her heart.
This isn't the Kingdom Tournament! It isn't!
The difficult yet fulfilling feeling had captivated Lillian... She savored the sweat she shed on the arena. Sparkling in the afterglow of the setting sun as it splashed across the stone platform, it formed little patches of light—the most beautiful painting in the world.
What exactly happened?!
"Woman, prepare to die—!"
"Bastard!!"
Amid the furious, bloodcurdling roars, Lillian finally broke through her limits and completed the knight's secret technique she had painstakingly trained for an entire year. She had successfully cut down a professional who had gone berserk with bloodlust beneath her Knight's Sword.
The severed head