No to Being the Suffering Heroine!

Swish!

Sticking my hand inside my clothes, I wiped off the blood on my body, while my dizzy head was tortured with unanswered questions.

What should I do about Amy?

This was a dilemma like no other.

For starters… killing her was out of the question.

We had gotten along fairly well as party members up until now. Would I really off someone just because she might know my identity?

That couldn’t be something I could do.

People might think I’m just going around killing anyone, but I had my own solid standards.

In this world where law and morality crawled on the ground, I had created my own line to adapt and survive. One could call it my murder standard.

Well, it’s not really a grand ideology.

It was just a simple principle: return kindness with kindness, enmity with enmity, and malice with malice. Quite simple, don’t you think?

In reality, everyone I had killed up to now had either been a criminal deserving death from the start or those who had openly swung weapons at me.

There were indeed those who had mistakenly attacked me while trying to get too close without any real intent to kill, but…

Shh…

Let’s just gloss over those cases.

In those cases, instead of delivering a finishing blow, I treated their wounds with my own money. I even apologized.

Anyway, unlike the scoundrels who deserved to be killed, Amy was not a criminal, nor had she attacked me with harmful intent.

So, according to my standards, she was someone I couldn’t kill.

That was the most troublesome part.

It would have been perfectly solved if I could just silence her and toss her among the countless dead adventurers, but I couldn’t do that conscience-wise.

Really, what should I do with her…

Hmm…

‘…For now, let’s see her reaction when she wakes up.’

After a sigh-laden contemplation, I decided to postpone the conclusion.

I figured waking up Amy was the priority.

I needed to confirm whether she had sensed my identity or if she was still oblivious. To find this out, she needed to wake up from her dreamland first.

Thus,

“Amy, wake up. This isn’t the time to sleep.”

I trudged over to Amy, shaking her shoulders back and forth…

“Ugh…”

With her merely mumbling in her sleep, I poured a bucket of water over her head.

Just to wash off the rotten blood covering her face.

“Ugh, huh? W-What!? Cough! Cough!”

The effect was immediate.

As she was jolted awake by the sudden dousing, Amy’s eyes flew open, and she coughed up a storm.

“Are you awake? How are you feeling? No pain anywhere, right?”

I took out a handkerchief and gently wiped her face while asking with concern.

“Cough, wheeze! W-Why are you pouring water on someone’s face and acting so calm…?”

Amy stared at me incredulously, her brows furrowed in disbelief.

Maybe the way I woke her up was a bit too extreme? She could’ve just woken up when I shook her shoulders!

I shrugged and retreated a step back, carelessly tossing the bloodstained handkerchief to the cave floor.

“…But, where exactly is this place? What happened to the corpse giant…?”

Amy, after spitting out the water she had swallowed, looked around in confusion.

Her face was mixed with both confusion and shock. Too natural to be an act.

…Could she really not have sensed anything?

It was too early to be sure. Not yet.

“Ugh, my shoulder…Ah, right! I remember! I was definitely attacked by Gerda’s dagger…!”

Was the water that flowed down her face hitting her injured shoulder? Amy winced and clutched her left shoulder in pain.

So she remembered getting attacked by Gerda.

“Where’s Gerda? That damned woman, where is she!?”

“She’s dead.”

“D-Dead…?”

Amy asked back with a stupefied face.

“Yeah. Friede finished her off.”

That seemed to surprise her. Amy turned to glance at Friede who was quietly sitting behind me.

“…Wait, so does that mean that she’s my savior?”

“Uh…I suppose you could say that?”

I trailed off, offering a vague answer.

If we thought about it, Gerda’s target was fundamentally just me, so Amy’s life wouldn’t have been in danger…

‘But I can’t tell her that outright.’

To explain that Gerda’s goal was me, I’d also have to explain why she was after me, and that was a secret I needed to take to the grave.

So, Gerda had to be remembered simply as a raider or traitor.

“Ugh…Why her, of all people?”

Amy sighed, looking utterly dismayed. It was clear she didn’t want to express gratitude to Friede.

“W-Wait, I don’t need any thanks. After all, it’s just a bonus thing, right?”

Friede shook her head, making it clear she wasn’t expecting any gratitude anyway.

“Ugh…!”

Was it possibly that tone that pricked her pride?

Amy bit her lip, furrowing her brows, and finally managed to squeeze out a thanks in a small voice. Grateful for the fact that she had at least been saved, whatever the reason.

Friede smiled faintly but nodded, clearly satisfied.

◆◆

After Friede finished explaining how she had brought us here after dealing with Gerda…

“Let’s spend the night here and…join the Paladins in the morning.”

I stretched my stiff body, announcing our future plans.

That plan was basically just to report the story, stripped of its substance, to the Paladins and rent a cart to go back.

Honestly, if I could, I’d love to forget reports entirely and head back to the city instead, but that wouldn’t be a wise decision.

By now, the Paladins would have surely confirmed the total annihilation of the ruins defense team and the death of the corpse giant.

If I turned around and went back now, I might find myself treated as a traitor involved in the priests’ deaths.

So, I needed to meet the Paladins to be cleared of suspicion before leaving.

Those who had betrayed couldn’t even dream of approaching the Paladins. Just being able to return to them would somehow partially prove my innocence.

Moreover, among the surviving adventurers, there were those who would witness me engaging in battle with the Abyss Priest.

Since it was just before dawn, they probably wouldn’t have seen my face, but they could at least recognize my armor or voice, so they would testify to my innocence.

Probably.

“It’ll still take a while to go back. Hah, and I thought this would be a simple request. What a hassle.”

Amy grumbled while handing me a potion from her bag.

“Yeah, right? Just like last time, it’s like I’ve been cursed or something. Seriously.”

I felt the same urge to grumble.

A Vengeful Spirit Spider followed by a Corpse Giant. If I hadn’t figured out how to utilize both forms of power, I’d have surely met my demise against those monsters.

Thanks to Brunhilde’s stats, I barely managed to defeat them; if I were just an ordinary adventurer, even ten lives wouldn’t have been enough.

If I were exploring a mid-tier or deep-tier dungeon as a member of the hero party, it wouldn’t be an issue, but here I am, just a regular adventurer, dealing with consecutive disasters.

This was some next-level bad luck.

“Cursed or something…? Are you saying that you’ve been afflicted by a demon’s curse?”

Amy tilted her head, seemingly taking the word “curse” literally.

Well, in a world where demons and curses exist, it’s not a far-fetched idea.

“No, it’s not like that. I just feel like I’ve been having an unusually bad streak lately.”

“Really…? I actually feel like I’ve been quite lucky.”

Amy seemed to have a slightly different opinion from mine.

“During the last dungeon exploration, I made it out safely, and this time we won against some nonsense undead, didn’t we? Plus, even after being attacked by a party member right after that, I survived. Doesn’t that count as some heavenly luck?”

“Hmm…”

That felt more like bad luck than heavenly luck in my book.

No matter what request I take on, things always get terribly tangled, and somehow surviving from that is not exactly what I’d call luck.

If I had true heavenly luck, there wouldn’t have been any mess to begin with.

“That’s not all. Think about it. All the other adventurers either died or ran away, yet we defeated both the monster and the Abyss Priest, didn’t we? With this much merit, we should expect a pretty decent reward!”

Ah, I almost forgot to mention that part.

“If we report to the Paladins, we can at least expect some gold coins—”

“Um, Amy. About that…”

I clicked my tongue in frustration, about to deliver the news I hadn’t gotten around to sharing.

“We probably won’t get anything. I never planned to report it, to begin with.”

“…What? Why not?”

Amy’s expression twisted bizarrely, like she’d just seen someone shred winning lottery tickets.

“Even if we report, they probably won’t believe us. We don’t have any evidence to back it up.”

That wasn’t an unreasonable thing to say. If we had been resting at the scene, things might have turned out differently, but thanks to Friede, we were now far away from the corpse giant’s remains.

The Paladins would’ve already discovered the scene long ago, and now, if we went back and swaggered, claiming we took it down, who would believe us?

To the Paladins, we were just a run-of-the-mill adventurer party.

For me, it was a major relief.

Being known as the adventurer who took down the corpse giant? That kind of fame was way beyond my capacity. At least not at this stage.

To rank up from a regular adventurer to silver, I’d need both reputation and achievements, but there was definitely a limit to that.

Raising my rank to silver had to be done slowly and naturally; suddenly jumping up would be a terrible mistake.

Exceptional records would inevitably attract a lot of attention.

And that was dangerous. Very dangerous. Especially in this country.

In this country, the Hero Hervor, Heid Gardarick Hervor took a liking to “collecting” talents as party members.

Not recruiting, but collecting.

There simply wasn’t a more sinister term to describe that bastard’s actions.

In the background setting of the original game that I was possessed into,
Just as Gunther from the game had been the villain who stole the protagonist’s early party members, Heid was another villain targeting mid to late game party members.

So according to the protagonist’s monologue in the novel…

If the protagonist party’s reputation sunk too low, they’d get their party members snatched away by Gunther, and conversely, if their reputation was too high, Heid would snatch them away too, right?

So, my reputation couldn’t rise too high either.

At some point in the mid-story, defeating a corpse giant was no big deal, and Heid wouldn’t have cared less about it; but at this point, we were still relatively early in the story.

Even if they’re supposed heroes, they wouldn’t have become superhumanly strong yet.

In this timeline, a twenty-year-old knight who single-handedly took down a corpse giant was definitely a valuable target for Heid to “collect.”

This meant I had to keep the fact that I took down the corpse giant a secret—a necessity if I didn’t want to become his trophy or puppet.

“Evidence? What do you mean you don’t have any? If you showed them the Abyss Priest’s corpse or your swordsmanship…”

Thus, I shook my head, cutting off Amy’s arguments.

“Well, I did bring back its head, but in the rush to save myself after we were attacked by Gerda, I ended up tossing it aside.”

That was what Friede had told me.

“And the attacks I showed before… are not something I can use freely, you know? At least not right now.”

Utilizing the fact that Amy had no idea about “Power”, I spun a blatant lie to deceive her into acceptance.

◆◆

Amy sighed as if she had just realized the golden chest in front of her was actually a Mimic, but in the end, she did relent to my argument.

In reality, I hadn’t taken down the corpse giant entirely on my own.

Since I was adamant about keeping the secret of the kill, there wasn’t much she could argue against that.

“Ha… What a pity. I wonder how many spellbooks that money could’ve bought.”

Seemingly unable to suppress her disappointment, she kept sighing heavily.

Anyway, after observing Amy’s reactions from our conversation, I finally reached a conclusion.

Either Amy hadn’t caught on to my true identity, or she was a brilliant actress with enough talent to succeed in theater.

…Can that be considered a conclusion?

Honestly, I’m not so sure… But for now, I felt a bit relieved.

That said, I couldn’t completely lower my guard, so I’d have to keep an eye on Amy for the time being.

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