I Won’t Become the Heroine of a Harem Novel!

Clank.

The sound of the helmet’s latch coming off, metal against metal.

I roughly stuck the blood and oil-soaked longsword into the ground, lifted my helmet slightly to reveal my nose and mouth, and let out a shallow breath.

“Hoo….”

Flushed cheeks with heat. Beads of sweat, poured out in full, mixed with the bloodstains on the breastplate and trickled down.

I didn’t have the heart to wipe it off. It would just turn red again in no time if I did.

More than that, water, water was what I needed first. After all the running around in armor, the heat had built up enough to make a boiling pot jealous.

“Haah….”

I brought the water pouch at my waist to my lips and gulped, settling the feverish body temperature.

The water inside the pouch was lukewarm at best, so it wasn’t much help… but still, it was better than nothing. A hundred times better.

“Hoo… this, really isn’t easy….”

The party members, exhausted, slumped onto the rocky ground, letting out deep sighs.

“Those damn orc-like quest board bastards. What? They’re probably just about ten goblins at most? Where do they get ten?”

“They’ve always been like that. Haven’t seen them handle a job properly.”

A middle-aged man in chainmail checked his dented shield, cursing, while the rugged-looking archer next to him shrugged, trying to placate the man.

“Says he’s learned to write, yet he’s stuck in the quest board office all day rummaging through documents. Those guys, gather them all up and lock them in the dungeon for a week! Then they’ll know how tough adventurers have it, while they sit comfortably with their bellies full…”

The middle-aged warrior continued grumbling, his anger unabated.

He kept blaming the quest board staff for their negligence towards the adventurers’ dangers.

It was a justified anger, but not one I particularly sympathized with.