No to Being the Suffering Heroine!

BAM!

The head of the corpse giant slammed into the ground as it slid down, leaving its massive body to helplessly topple forward after losing its head.

With a flood of black blood gushing out, the wind barely escaped through the gaping cut in its throat, producing a sound that was not even a groan.

Did we win?

I guess we can say we did. At least, this much.

Thud.

I looked at the twitching body of the corpse giant, like an old man hit by a truck, and sat down with a thud, gasping for breath.

Huff… hack… huff…!

The recoil from The Great Margin. I had no strength left to stand up.

It felt like every last bit of moisture and energy had been drained from my body. Maybe I had gotten accustomed to it after using it a few times, but it wasn’t to the point of completely losing consciousness…

Haa… I’m really going to die…

It wasn’t something I could just brush off casually. To be honest, I felt like lying flat on the ground right now.

If I lay down like this, I’d probably fall asleep right away, but I was barely holding on.

“Hilde! Are you okay?!”

Amy burst through the bushes, running towards me.

“Did you take it down…?”

On the side, Gerda had started mumbling a resurrection spell, oblivious to the situation… Fortunately, the corpse giant lay there, its body limp, showing no signs of getting back up.

Well, after I severed its head and body, it wouldn’t try to resurrect itself, would it? Unlike high-level undead that transcended physical limitations, this one was just abnormally large. At its core, it wasn’t any different from a revenant.

“Haa… Haa… I’m okay, just a bit tired.”

I managed to turn my head and respond as I looked at them.

“And… it seems like I did take it down. Somehow.”

Truth be told, it was quite an impressive accomplishment for me. I had defeated a monster that would normally require several knights to take down, almost all by myself.

I suppose I had gotten a step closer to Brunhilde’s true power now.

Of course, even so, I still had a long way to go to catch up to Brunhilde completely.

If it hadn’t been for Friede distracting that Abyss Priest, I wouldn’t have been able to avoid defeat this time.

If that old man had been bombarding me with attack magic using the corpse giant as a shield, I wouldn’t have had a clue how to respond.

…Speaking of which, I wondered what happened to Friede.

It had been quite a while, and she still hadn’t returned… was she still fighting that Abyss Priest?

I hadn’t even had the time to worry about her while fighting the corpse giant…

‘Please don’t tell me she’s in trouble…?’

Now that I had taken down this giant, anxiety suddenly bubbled up in my chest.

Her skill level was probably among the top tier in our party of adventurers, but Hugh Casval was also a force to be reckoned with, capable of easily slaughtering ordinary party members.

So,

“Taking down a monster like this all alone… Impressive, indeed. Quite astonishing.”

“Um, Gerda, I have a favor to ask…”

“A favor?”

“I was wondering if you could look for Friede, if you’re still able to fight. I just can’t move right now…”

I asked Gerda, who was admiring the fallen corpse giant next to Amy, to go find Friede.

If she was still fighting that Abyss Priest, she could either join forces to take him down and come back or at least escape together.

Now that the corpse giant had fallen, Hugh wouldn’t have any way to deal with the paladins either.

So even if Friede decided to retreat, he wouldn’t be able to chase after her.

If we didn’t escape the forest quickly, we’d get caught by the furious paladins and turned into a human puzzle.

“…Can you not move?”

Gerda tilted her head slightly, looking puzzled as if I looked fine and wasn’t severely injured.

“Yeah, I’ve used up all my energy… so I don’t have any strength to get up right now.”

I gestured toward my trembling limbs, exhausted.

“You’ve certainly earned your exhaustion. You took that down almost by yourself, right? Just not being seriously injured is a miracle.”

Amy leaned down to offer her shoulder to help me up.

“Yeah….”

I chuckled softly and raised my trembling hand to clasp hers.

If I could just rest like this for about five minutes, I felt like I could stand up somehow, but right now was too much for me.

To fight again, I’d need at least an hour or two of good rest and a full belly.

“…It was definitely a fierce battle.”

Gerda nodded with a light smile.

“You did well.”

With lightning speed, she pulled out a dagger from her pocket and sliced Amy’s shoulder as she was trying to help me.

“Huh…?”

Sudden ambush. Amy sat down as her face went pale, looking at her bleeding shoulder.

“Amy!”

I, too, was completely shocked and hurried to get up.

Well, I tried to, anyway.

“Ugh…!”

Before I could fully rise, my strength gave out, and I fell back down.

“From that reaction, you really are too exhausted to move, huh?”

Gerda looked down at me, starting her explanation with a smirk.

Holding up a vial she had taken from her waist, she soaked the blade stained with Amy’s blood.

“Lucky me. If you were able to move, you wouldn’t even dream of doing this.”

“Gerda…!”

I gritted my teeth and glared at her.

I was chiding myself for letting my guard down just because I had defeated a formidable foe.

“You were a thief, weren’t you!? You, little rogue…!”

I never imagined that a party adventurer, who had collaborated with us without so much as a hint of suspicion up until now, would turn on us.

It was a grave mistake.

“Thief? That’s an outrageous slander! I’m simply doing what I need to do.”

Gerda laughed lightly, poking the knife into my arm.

It felt like a hot iron was digging into my flesh. The pain radiated from where the blade was embedded throughout my body.

My muscles lost strength, and my senses dulled. My body, which could still twitch a bit, felt like it was turning into a log.

“Poison…?!”

“It’s a paralysis poison mixed with a sleeping drug. The same kind I used on Amy.”

She held up a glass vial filled with poison, smiling at me as I became paralyzed and helpless.

She half-hid the now half-empty glass vial back into a small bag at her waist and gently patted my shoulder.

“Good thing I prepared this. I can’t kill the mage of the Magic Tower, and you, Hilde, should still be alive for now.”

“Why…?”

“You really don’t know? Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

Gerda smiled, her expression suddenly turning serious as she revealed her reason for betraying us.

“The runaway knight from the Kingdom of Rhine. The traitor hero, Brunhilde.”

The sins of the original owner of this body came to light.

◆◆

My true identity had been exposed. I looked up at Gerda, filled with embarrassment, sweating profusely.

“Honestly, at first, I was unsure. It’s hard to be certain just from your face.”

Since I lost my helmet during the battle, I had been aware of the possibility that others might recognize me, but…

‘I was careless…!’

I never imagined that Gerda, who had shown no sign of recognizing me and had kept up her act so well, would notice my true identity without showing it at all.

She had acted so naturally that I completely fell for it.

Gerda erased her smile, looking down at me with a blank expression as she pulled out a thick, strong rope.

“Using the name Hilde only made things more confusing. For a fugitive criminal to use part of their real name is simply something unimaginable.”

…She wasn’t wrong.

The reason I chose the name Hilde as an alias was that it was a common name in the north and…

“The real Brunhilde wouldn’t use the obvious name Hilde as an alias. Didn’t you aim for that blind spot of logic?”

She was luring the assumption that if Brunhilde were truly hiding, she wouldn’t use a name like Hilde.

“However, it was only after seeing you take down that corpse giant that I could finally be certain. Hilde, you are the fugitive of the Kingdom of Rhine, Brunhilde.”

I had been found out like this, but…

“…What will you do now…?”

With my body paralyzed, feeling the mana rushing in.

It was the worst-case scenario. I couldn’t even fathom a way out.

“Isn’t it obvious? I plan to escort you back to the Kingdom of Rhine and hand you over to the royal family. The bounty for capturing the ‘traitor hero’ alive would allow me to live in luxury for the rest of my life.”

Gerda began to bind my body with the rope. It was not cloth but wire-like rope, essentially a restraining device similar to a chain.

“Originally, I was just going to settle for a tip-off… but with Friede absent and both you and Amy incapacitated, I couldn’t let this opportunity slip away.”

“You, ah…!”

“Don’t blame me. Betraying a party member I fought alongside does weigh on my conscience a bit, but when it comes down to it, this is all your fault, isn’t it? Fugitive.”

She bound my body tightly, and with the dagger coated in paralysis poison raised again, a grin spread across her face.

“By the way… quite a potent sleeping drug, yet you’re holding up surprisingly well. Since time is of the essence, I think I’ll increase the dosage a bit.”

The sharp dagger shimmered in the morning sunlight.

“Sleep tight. It’s a long way to the gallows—”

And then.

CRACK!

In the next moment, a steel greatsword flew like a projectile through Gerda’s forehead, piercing through and emerging on the other side.

“Cough…!”

With a face of shock, Gerda staggered heavily before sinking to her knees, trembling on the ground.

Instant death.

An attack that came at a speed not even a party-level patrol could respond to, and she collapsed without so much as a parting word.

Her end was absurdly anticlimactic.

To me, it felt like a lifeline had been thrown from above while I was trapped in a blaze.

“Hii, Hilde!”

A frantic voice filled with urgency called out.

Beyond my fading vision, a black-haired girl holding the old man’s head was charging toward me.

My consciousness cut out right there.

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