episode_0057

I slipped my hand into my clothes, wiping away the blood that had stained my body, while my mind, still a little dizzy, was consumed by unanswerable worries.

What should I do about Amy?

I’ve never faced a dilemma like this before.

First of all… killing her was out of the question.

I’ve been getting along fairly well as a party member so far, and it wouldn’t be right to kill her just because she doesn’t know my true identity.

That’s simply not an option.

Even if it might seem to others like I’m just going around killing people left and right, I had my own firm set of principles.

Having been transmigrated into a world where law and morality crawl on the ground, I had established my own standards to adapt and survive in this world. You could call it a standard for murder.

Well, it’s not some grand philosophy or anything.

It was simply about repaying kindness with kindness, enmity with enmity, and taking life for a life. Quite simple, isn’t it?

In reality, everyone I’ve killed so far has either been a criminal deserving of death from the start, or they have blatantly wielded weapons against me.

Sure, there have been cases where individuals inadvertently provoked me or were misunderstood as bandits and ended up meeting my blade, but… let’s just overlook those cases.

In such instances, instead of swiftly ending their lives through a confirmed kill, I used my savings to somehow provide them with treatment. I even apologized.

Anyway, unlike the scoundrels who deserved to die, Amy wasn’t a criminal, nor did she attack me to harm me.

So, according to my standards, she shouldn’t be killed.

That was the most troubling part.

Sealing her mouth shut and tossing her among the countless corpses of the Eastern Expedition adventurers would have been a perfect solution, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to do that due to my conscience.

Really, how should I deal with this woman…

“…For now, let’s see how she reacts once she wakes up.”

After a sigh-laden moment of contemplation, I ultimately postponed reaching a conclusion.

First and foremost, I judged that waking Amy up took precedence.

Whether she had figured out my true identity or was completely clueless, I needed her to wake up to confirm it.

Therefore,

“Amy, wake up. It’s no time for sleeping.”

I walked alongside Amy, shaking her shoulders back and forth…

“Ugh….”

Without any sign of waking up, I poured a bottle of water over her head.

To wash away the dried blood on her face.

“Huh? Ugh! What the, water!? Cough!”

The effect was remarkable.

Suddenly hit by a deluge while sleeping, Amy woke up, coughing violently.

“Up already? Anywhere hurting?”

I took out a handkerchief, gently wiping her face, and asked with concern.

“Tsk, ugh. No, pouring water on someone’s face, so carelessly…”

Amy looked at me as if bewildered, furrowing her brows.

Perhaps my method of waking her was too forceful? Well, she should have gotten up when I shook her shoulders.

I shrugged lightly and stepped back, casually tossing the blood-soaked handkerchief onto the cave floor.

“…More importantly, where are we exactly? The titan’s corpse…?”

Spitting out the water she had swallowed, Amy looked around, her head cocked to one side.

A face mixed with puzzlement and confusion. It seemed so natural, almost too much for an act.

…Did she not notice?

I couldn’t be sure. Not yet.

“Ugh, my shoulder… Oh, right. I remember now. I was definitely hit by Gerda’s dagger…!”

Was it the water running down her face that touched her injured shoulder? Amy clutched her left shoulder, wincing in pain.

She remembers being attacked by Gerda, it seems.

“Gerda? Where is that damned woman!?”

“She’s dead.”

“She’s what…?”

Amy mumbled with a dumbfounded expression.

“Yeah. Freida took care of her.”

That statement seemed quite unexpected. Amy turned her head quickly to look at Freida, who was sitting quietly behind me.

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

“Well… you could say that, couldn’t you?”

I slightly blurred the end of my sentence, offering a vague response.

Strictly speaking, Gerda’s target was always me, so Amy’s life was never really in danger, but…

‘I can’t just tell her that outright.’

Gerda’s purpose was to explain the fact that she was the target, but revealing the reason she targeted me would have been a confidential matter to be taken to the grave.

Therefore, Gerda had to be remembered simply as a mere plunderer and betrayer.

“Ugh… of all people, her…?”

Amy sighed with a disgusted expression. She seemed unwilling to express gratitude to Freida, as if it were killing her.

“N-no need for thanks. After all, I did it as a favor…”

Seeing her expression, Freida said, shaking her head. It was as if she hadn’t even expected thanks in the first place.

“Ugh…!”

Did that tone touch her pride instead?

Amy bit her lip, twisted her brow, then reluctantly expressed her gratitude in a begrudging tone, acknowledging that she was thankful for being saved, regardless of the circumstances.

Freida chuckled and nodded, saying it was fine if she knew.

◆◆

After Freida finished explaining that she had dealt with Gerda and brought us here to hide,

“We’ll spend the night here today… and join the knights in the morning.”

I stretched, relieving my stiff body, and informed them of our future plans.

The plan, if you could call it that, was to find the knights, report the whole story, and then just borrow a carriage and return.

In my heart, I wanted to just leave, forget about reporting or anything, and escape from the forest back to the city, but that would have been an unwise move.

By now, the knights would have confirmed the annihilation of the defense team at the ruins and the death of the giant corpse.

So, we had to meet the knights to confirm our innocence. Those who betrayed the priests wouldn’t dare to show their faces near the knights. Just by returning to the knights, our innocence would be partially proven.

Moreover, among the surviving adventurers, there would be those who witnessed me engaging in combat with the Abyss Priest, even if only briefly.

Since it was just before dawn, they might not have seen my face clearly, but they would have recognized my armor and voice, enough to testify to my innocence.

Probably.

“To go back, it seems like it’ll take a bit more time. Ugh, I thought it would be a simple request, but this is turning into quite the ordeal.”

Amy grumbled as she took out two bottles of potion from her bag and handed one to me.

“I know, right? Just like last time, it feels like we’ve run into some serious trouble. Seriously.”

I felt exactly the same way, wanting to grumble about it.

First, the spirit spider, and now a corpse giant. If we hadn’t realized how to utilize both sides of the Yang-Chi technique, we wouldn’t have escaped death. It was only thanks to Brunhilde’s skills that we managed to bring it down. If I were just an average adventurer, I would have needed at least ten lives to survive.

It’s one thing if you’re exploring mid or deep-level dungeons as part of a hero party, but to experience disasters like this back to back while living the life of an ordinary dungeon explorer, I never expected it.

Misfortunes never come singly.

“Infected by ‘ma’…? Are you saying you’ve been cursed by demons?”

Amy asked, tilting her head. It seemed she was taking the word “ma” quite literally.

Well, in a world where demons and curses exist, it’s a reasonable assumption.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just that lately, it feels like I’ve had particularly bad luck.”

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

Amy seemed to have a different perspective from mine.

“During the last dungeon exploration, we made it out unscathed, and this time, we emerged victorious against those absurd undead creatures. Even after being attacked by a party member immediately after, I survived. That’s good luck, pure and simple.”

“I’m not so sure about that…”

That seems more like bad luck than good luck.

No matter what request we take on, the situation always ends up terribly tangled, and barely surviving from there doesn’t seem like good luck at all.

If it were truly good luck, things wouldn’t have gotten tangled up in the first place.

“And that’s not all. Think about it. Other adventurers either died or ran away, but we managed to defeat both that monster and the Abyss Priest. With that kind of achievement, we could expect a hefty reward, don’t you think?”

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that.

“When we report to the Holy Knights, we can at least expect a substantial sum of gold—”

“Um, Amy. About that…”

I conveyed the embarrassing news to her, unable to speak.

“She probably won’t believe it. She never intended to report in the first place.”

“…What? Why not?”

Amy’s expression contorted oddly, as if she had just witnessed a fanatic exchanging a winning lottery ticket for toilet paper.

“There’s no point in reporting if no one will believe us. Besides, there’s no evidence to begin with.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable statement. If we had been resting at the scene, it might have been different, but thanks to Freddy, we were far removed from the giant corpse.

By now, the Holy Knights would have discovered it, and even if they came boasting that we killed it, there was no way anyone would believe them.

To the Holy Knights, we were just another run-of-the-mill party of Eastern adventurers.

For me, it was truly a stroke of luck.

Being known as the Eastern adventurers who felled the giant corpse was something I couldn’t possibly handle. At least not in my current state.

To ascend to the rank of Eastern adventurers, a certain level of reputation and achievement was necessary, but it had to be within reason.

The ascent to Eastern status should happen gradually, naturally, without suddenly revealing hidden strength and skyrocketing.

An overly prominent record was bound to attract a lot of attention.

That was dangerous. Very dangerous. Especially in this country.

In this country, Herbor, the hero of Herd Gardaric, had a hobby of “collecting” such talents as party members.

Not recruiting, but collecting.

There was simply no better word to describe the unscrupulous behavior and actions.

This was the backdrop of the original game in which I was transmigrated.

Just as Gunter in the game took away the protagonist’s early party members, Heid also aimed to take away mid-to-late game party members.

So, according to the soliloquy of Kim Seungwoo in the novel…

If the party’s reputation is too low, Gunter takes away a party member, and conversely, if it’s too high, Heid does. Probably something like that?

So, it was imperative that my reputation didn’t become too high.

It was around the middle of the original story, so it wouldn’t have been a big deal for Haid to show interest in taking down a corpse giant, but…

Right now, it’s still early in the story. Even if they are called heroes or a hero party, they haven’t become superhumanly strong yet.

At this point, a 20-year-old knight who single-handedly subjugated a corpse giant would have been worth collecting even to Haid.

So, I had to keep the fact that I took down the corpse giant a secret. Unless I wanted it to become his collectible or turn into a doll.

“Why is there no evidence? If you show the corpse of the Abyss Priest or your swordsmanship…”

That’s why I cut off Amy’s rebuttal with a shake of my head.

“Well, I did cut off its head, but we were in a hurry to rush over after seeing Gelda being attacked, so I threw it away.”

I spun a lie to make her believe, taking advantage of the fact that she didn’t know about “Kangwan” and that the attack I showed her… wasn’t something I could use at will. At least not right now.

◆◆

Amy sighed as if she had realized that the golden chest in front of her was actually a mimic, but in the end, she conceded to my claim.

Actually, when you think about it, I didn’t really subjugate the corpse giant all by myself.

Insisting on keeping the subjugation a secret, she couldn’t really argue with me.

“Sigh… That’s too bad. How many spellbooks could I get with that money?”

She seemed unable to contain her regret, sighing continuously.

Anyway, after observing Amy’s reactions throughout our conversation, I finally came to a conclusion.

Either Amy hadn’t noticed my true identity, or she possessed such a genius talent for acting that she could succeed as an actress right now.

…Can I really call this a conclusion?

Honestly, I’m not sure… Anyway, for now, it seemed like I could relax.

But I can’t let my guard down completely, so I’ll have to keep an eye on Amy for a while.