“Haah… Hoo…!”
A sigh mixed with pain seeped out between my teeth. I released the hilt of the great sword that had been stuck in the ground and barely managed to lift my curled-up body.
My head was fuzzy. Was it because of the relief I felt from the onslaught of Gunther? Or maybe it was the arrow that precisely pierced through the torn gaps in my armor?
“Ugh, argh…!”
I gritted my teeth and yanked out the arrow lodged in my left arm. The sharp arrowhead scraped against my bone and tore through my muscles, spurting blood as it emerged.
…Ah, that really hurts like hell.
I threw the extracted arrow down on the ground and clenched my jaw.
I had become somewhat accustomed to pain through my life as an adventurer and a fugitive… But familiar doesn’t mean I’ve grown numb to it.
Getting used to pain only means I can endure it and keep fighting. Getting slashed, stabbed, or burned still hurts like a hell of a lot.
Brunhilde’s second engraving trait, [Frozen Heart], has capabilities that dull pain, but… it’s utterly meaningless since I can’t use it.
Activating the Frozen Heart technique is tenfold more complicated than managing Gunther, and if I try to activate it consciously, nine times out of ten I’d fail.
In all the time I’ve been running away, I’ve managed to activate it properly only twice. For every other wound, I had to bear it solely based on my patience.
What a crap situation.
– Crack!
With fury, I lifted my foot and brought it down. The broken debris under my foot let out a coughing sound as it spewed blood everywhere.
“Khuh…!”
What was the name again? ‘Intruder’ Jason, perhaps?
The patroller who ambushed me while I briefly sent Friede off to the village.
Now lying there with a pierced heart and a crushed leg, but for a supposedly damaged adventurer, he was no pushover.
With this level, I’d say he ranks among the top tier even amongst the silver-rank adventurers.
Had it not been for the antidote I had recently snatched, I might have ended up poisoned and defeated from the first hit.
In fact, for a patroller, his swordsmanship surpassed that of a decent knight, and it was only after my armor was shredded to bits that I could finally subdue him.
Now are these types starting to chase after me too… What’s next, are golden-rank adventurers or a knight from the royal order going to come after me?
What a bleak situation.
Most of them are too busy blocking the deeper dungeons to have the time to chase down a mere fugitive like me… But that’s just a fleeting thought for now.
As my notoriety continues to rise, there will come a day when they too will start targeting me.
◆◆
A few hours later. Just as Friede returned, the intruder Jason was slowly devolving into a scrap level of Jason.
“…This can’t go on.”
I muttered quietly with a sigh as I wrapped bandages around the cuts all over my body.
“Huh…? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
Friede asked me back, having turned to me. Maybe she was so focused on dismantling Jason that she didn’t hear my voice.
“Um, well…”
I let out a soft sigh as I got up and approached Friede and opened my mouth again.
“I don’t think we can keep running like this.”
As I wiped away the blood splatters on her face with my sleeve.
“That’s…?”
“The pursuers are only getting stronger, and how long can we keep this up? There will come a limit for both you and me.”
It was a future so obvious that it hardly needed stating. There was no hope in continuing like this.
Even if we came from the hero’s party, at the start, we weren’t that different from a mere knight of the kingdom.
Now that we’ve gotten stronger since then, sure, we could deal with maybe three or four knights at most, but…
‘In other words, if ten of them came at once, we’d be done for.’
That we were still alive could only be considered pure luck.
Thank the uncharted territories scattered across the realm, making it easier for us to hide, and the fact that the kingdom has problems far more pressing than me… But that too won’t last long.
“If this continues…”
Friede looked at the bandages wrapped around me with a gloomy voice, perhaps thinking all these wounds were her fault.
Should I call this kindness or foolishness? Truth is, all these wounds were entirely my doing.
Ah. Except for the bite marks on my neck, shoulder, and thigh.
That was indeed Friede’s fault.
No matter how much I asked for it, there was no need to bite that hard until it bled!
Sure, it was stimulating, but… once the moment passed, it just felt like a sting from a cut.
Anyway.
“If we’re just going to be chased eventually, then before we’re caught, let’s break through head-on. Just the two of us, somehow.”
“Head-on?”
Friede tilted her head slightly, looking puzzled about what I meant by a head-on confrontation.
No surprise there. I hadn’t even started giving a proper explanation yet.
“Think about it. Why are we running like beggars right now?”
“Uh… Well, isn’t it because Gunther is targeting Hilde?”
The moment she spoke Gunther’s name, a fierce killing intent sparked in Friede’s eyes. It was reminiscent of an enraged dragon.
…Seems like she hates him more than I do.
I merely think about wanting him dead; she looks ready to shred him into pieces and feed him to the dogs.
“No, that’s just a superficial… I mean, that’s just the surface reason.”
“Surface reason…?”
Right. The real reason we’re running from pursuers and suffering isn’t because Gunther or Heid are targeting me.
The more essential, true reason is simply that—
“The real reason is that we—no, I am weak. That’s the problem.”
Being weak.
That is the fundamental reason we’ve ended up as fugitives.
If I were strong enough to defeat Imelia, Irina, or even Gunther, then I wouldn’t be in this predicament at all.
Sure, I’d still need to be careful of Heid, but that’d be manageable as long as we avoid facing him where others could see.
It wasn’t just them. If I were strong enough, I could’ve easily cleared my name.
If a hero with more power than others returned with an adventurer who had left the party, it’d be casually spun into a heroic tale of redemption.
It’s likely the king would personally present me as a misunderstood secret agent sent by the party to identify traitors.
If at twenty years old I showed that level of strength, entering deeper dungeons and growing would easily make me a crucial power in the kingdom in just a few years.
That was the whole point of having a hero’s party.
One of the primary abilities of the hero’s engraving is significantly increasing the growth rate of party members, including the hero.
To put it in gaming terms, when hunting in a party, the experience gained amplifies five to ten times.
As more party members join, the effectiveness decreases, so the best efficiency is to fight with around three to four companions.
Thus, the most talented among promising young individuals are chosen and placed beside the hero to ensure rapid growth, so they can achieve skills akin to the kingdom’s elite at a young age.
Wouldn’t it be more effective to place established strong individuals instead of younglings?
It doesn’t work like that.
Even if growth is accelerated, it means nothing if they have no potential left to grow.
After twenty, it’s hard to expect growth no matter how well one eats; strength is no different.
The optimal age to get benefits from the hero’s engraving is in the early thirties at best.
Anyone older than that only sees slightly improved skills after teaming up with a hero.
They’re essentially already in a state where their growth potential is virtually closed.
Rather than waste the ‘hero’s engraving’ like that, nurturing a younger person with vast potential even if they start off weak is a hundred times better.
The efficiency is incomparable. With proper nurturing, one could defeat dragons and even demon lords.
So, if I can prove my overwhelming, incomparable talent, even the King of Line would welcome me back.
In such a situation, what weight do the king’s authority and honor have against the national disgrace?
If properly nurtured, it’s like a talent capable of taking down dragons would be returning on its own. They’d gladly accept me back.
Of course, that’s a pipe dream for my current self.
My skills were still at a level where defeating Gunther felt like a distant fantasy, let alone facing him directly.
“We can’t be confident because we’re weak… and we’re running because we’re weak.”
“Huh, it’s not a sin for you to be weak… no, no, that’s not it!”
As Friede started to argue against the notion that weakness was a fault, she realized she was merely pointing out my shortcomings and quickly corrected herself.
“Uh, Hilde, you’re not weak…! You’re my idol!”
With an even more embarrassing compliment.
“Uh… Yeah, thanks.”
Idol? What an embarrassing thing to say.
When Friede refers to ‘the strong Hilde,’ she means the original Brunhilde, but the embarrassment is still mine to bear.
Honestly, Friede already possessed strength that surpassed mine. Can we even call her a hero?
It’s not that there’s an overwhelming gap, but if we fought ten times, she’d win seven of those encounters.
When someone stronger than me is telling me I’m not weak while propping me up as her idol, it’s no surprise I’d feel completely embarrassed.
I could only bow my head slightly as my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
