I wiped off the blood on my body by putting my hand inside my clothes, while overworking my slightly dizzy mind with unsolvable worries.
What on earth should I do about Amy?
It was a dilemma like no other.
First of all… killing her was out of the question.
We had gotten along relatively well as party members until now, so how could I kill her just because she might know my identity?
That’s not something I could do.
Although it might seem to others that I kill people indiscriminately, I had my own firm standards.
A line that I, who had been transmigrated into a world where law and morality crawled on the ground, had created to adapt and survive in this world. You could call it my criteria for killing.
Well, it’s not particularly grand philosophy.
It was simply repaying kindness with kindness, hostility with hostility, and murderous intent with murderous intent. Quite simple, isn’t it?
In fact, those who had been killed by me so far were either criminals who had committed capital offenses from the start, or those who had openly swung weapons at me.
Well, there were some who were mistaken for plunderers and met my blade for carelessly touching my shoulder without such intentions…
…Let’s just skip over those cases.
In such cases, instead of confirming the kill by blowing off their heads, I somehow managed to treat them using my own money. I even apologized.
Anyway, unlike those scoundrels who deserved to be killed, Amy wasn’t a criminal, nor had she attacked me with the intention to harm me.
So according to my standards, she was a person who shouldn’t be killed.
That was the most troublesome part.
It was a problem that could be perfectly solved by killing her to silence her and throwing her body among the numerous corpses of copper token adventurers, but my conscience absolutely wouldn’t allow it.
Really, what should I do with this woman…
‘…For now, let’s check her reaction after she wakes up.’
After pondering with sighs, I ended up postponing the conclusion.
I judged that waking Amy up should come first.
Whether she had noticed my identity or had no idea. To confirm this, she first needed to wake up from her dream world.
Therefore-
“Amy, wake up. It’s not the time to be sleeping.”
I walked over to Amy’s side, shook her shoulder back and forth, and then…
“Mmmm…”
Seeing her only mumble in her sleep with no signs of waking up, I poured water from my canteen onto her head.
Also to wash off her face that was covered in rotten blood.
“Uh, huh? Kack! What, water!? Cough!”
The effect was excellent.
Amy, who had been sleeping soundly and suddenly got doused with water, opened her eyes wide and sat up, coughing roughly.
“Are you awake? Are you hurt anywhere?”
I took out a handkerchief and wiped her face while asking with a mix of concern.
“Keck, hueck. No, you pour water on someone’s face and then calmly…”
Amy frowned at me with a look of disbelief.
Was the waking method a bit too rough? Well, you should have woken up when I shook your shoulder.
I just shrugged lightly and took a step back, casually throwing the handkerchief dirtied with the undead giant’s blood onto the cave floor.
“…More importantly, where is this? The undead giant…?”
Amy, after spitting out the water that had entered her mouth, looked around and tilted her head.
A face mixed with puzzlement and bewilderment. It was too natural to be acting.
…Did she not notice?
It was too early to be certain. Still.
“Ugh, my shoulder… Ah, right. I remember. I was certainly… by Gerda’s dagger…!”
Perhaps the water that ran down her face had touched her injured shoulder, Amy clutched her left shoulder and grimaced in pain.
It seems she remembers being attacked by Gerda.
“What about Gerda? Where is that damn woman!?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead…?”
Amy asked back with a dumbfounded face.
“Yes. Friede took care of her.”
Was that quite unexpected? Amy turned her head to look at Friede, who was sitting quietly behind me.
“…What, so that kid is my lifesaver?”
“Well… you could say that?”
I trailed off slightly and gave a noncommittal answer.
Strictly speaking, since Gerda’s target was only me, Amy’s life probably wouldn’t have been in danger…
‘But I can’t tell her that straight out.’
To explain that Gerda’s purpose was me, I would have to tell her the reason why she targeted me, but that was confidential information I had to take to my grave.
So, Gerda had to be remembered as just a simple plunderer or traitor.
“Ugh… of all people, it had to be her…?”
Amy sighed with a disgusted face. She looked like she would rather die than express gratitude to Friede.
“Th-thanks aren’t necessary. After all, I, um, just saved you as a side effect…”
Seeing that expression, Friede shook her head and said. In a tone suggesting she hadn’t expected any gratitude in the first place.
“Ugh…!”
Perhaps that tone pricked her pride instead.
Amy bit her lip hard and furrowed her brow, then finally expressed her gratitude in a subdued tone. Saying that she was thankful for being saved, whether as a side effect or not.
Friede nodded with a slight smile, saying that was enough.
* * *
After finishing the explanation that Friede, who had dealt with Gerda, had dragged us here and hidden us.
“We’ll spend the night here… and join up with the paladins tomorrow morning.”
I announced the plan for the future while stretching to loosen my stiff body.
The plan was simply to find the paladins, report a watered-down version of events, and then return home by borrowing a carriage or something.
I wanted to forget about reporting and just leave the forest to return to the city, but that wouldn’t have been a wise decision.
By now, the paladins would have confirmed the annihilation of the ruins defense team and the death of the undead giant.
If we just returned to the city like this, we might be treated as traitors involved in the deaths of the priests.
So, we needed to meet the paladins to confirm our innocence before leaving.
Those who had committed betrayal wouldn’t dare to approach the paladins. Just returning to the paladins would prove our innocence halfway.
Moreover, among the surviving adventurers, there would be those who had witnessed me briefly engaging in combat with the Abyss Priest.
Although they wouldn’t have been able to confirm my face since it was just before dawn, they would have roughly recognized my armor or voice, so they would be able to prove my innocence.
Probably.
“So it’ll still take a while to return. Haa, I thought it would be a simple request, but what a hardship this turned out to be.”
Amy grumbled as she took out two potion bottles from her bag and handed one to me.
“You’re telling me. First that last one, and now this, I really wonder if we’re cursed or something.”
I felt equally like grumbling.
From the ghost spider to the undead giant. Both were monsters I wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t figured out how to use Iron Arm.
I was barely able to take them down thanks to Brunhilde’s specs, but if I had been an ordinary adventurer, even ten lives wouldn’t have been enough.
If I had been exploring mid-level or deep-level dungeons as a member of a hero’s party, it might have been understandable, but to experience such disasters one after another while living as an ordinary copper token adventurer.
This level of misfortune was unheard of.
“Cursed…? Are you saying we’ve been cursed by demon folk?”
Amy tilted her head and asked back. It seemed she had taken the word ‘cursed’ literally.
Well, in a world where demon folk and curses actually exist, it might be a natural assumption.
“No, not like that. It’s just that lately, it feels like our luck has been particularly bad.”
“Really…? I think we’ve been quite lucky.”
Amy seemed to have a different opinion from me.
“We safely escaped during the last dungeon exploration, and this time we achieved victory against an unbelievable undead. Even after that, we survived being attacked by a party member. If this isn’t heavenly luck, what is?”
“I’m not so sure…”
That seems more like bad luck rather than heavenly luck.
No matter what request we take, the situation gets horribly twisted, and we barely survive from there. How is that heavenly luck in any way?
If we really had heavenly luck, things wouldn’t have gone wrong in the first place.
“That’s not all. Think about it. All the other adventurers either died or ran away, but we managed to take down both that monster and the Abyss Priest, right? With this level of achievement, we should be able to receive quite a hefty reward, don’t you think?”
Ah, I had forgotten about that.
“If we report to the paladins, we can expect at least a gold coin―”
“Um, Amy. About that…”
I clicked my tongue in awkwardness and delivered the bad news I hadn’t managed to tell her yet.
“We probably won’t get it. I don’t intend to report it in the first place.”
“…What? Why not?”
Amy’s expression twisted strangely. It was like the expression of someone witnessing a madman feeding a winning lottery ticket into a paper shredder.
“Even if we report it, they wouldn’t believe us. We don’t have any evidence to begin with.”
It wasn’t an unreasonable argument. If we had been resting at the scene, it might have been different, but thanks to Friede, we were now far away from the undead giant’s corpse.
By now, the paladins would have discovered it, and if we went to them now bragging that we killed it, they wouldn’t believe us.
To the paladins, we were just another common copper token adventurer party.
For me, this was truly fortunate.
A copper token adventurer who took down an undead giant? I couldn’t possibly handle such fame. At least not as I am now.
To rise to silver token adventurer status, fame and achievements are necessary, but there’s a limit to how much.
Promotion to silver token should be done slowly and naturally, not suddenly shooting up as if revealing hidden power.
Excessively outstanding achievements inevitably attract a lot of attention.
That was dangerous. Very dangerous. Especially in this country.
The hero of this country, Hervor, Heid Gardarik Hervor, has a hobby of ‘collecting’ such talented individuals as party members.
Not recruitment, but collection.
It’s truly an ominous expression, but there was no more appropriate word to describe his actions.
In the original game that was the background setting of the novel I had been transmigrated into.
Just as Gunther in the game was the villain who stole the protagonist’s early party members, Heid was another villain aiming for mid to late-game party members.
So, according to Kim Seung-woo’s monologue in the novel…
If the protagonist party’s fame was too low, party members would be stolen by Gunther, and conversely, if it was too high, they would be stolen by Heid, right?
So my fame shouldn’t become too high.
If it had been the middle of the original story, taking down an undead giant wouldn’t have been a big deal, and Heid probably wouldn’t have shown much interest…
But now it’s still the early part of the story. Even heroes or hero parties wouldn’t have become superhuman yet at this point.
At this point, a twenty-year-old knight who single-handedly subjugated an undead giant would be worth collecting even for Heid.
Therefore, the fact that I had subjugated the undead giant had to be kept as our secret. Unless I wanted to end up as one of his collectibles and dolls.
“What do you mean there’s no evidence? If we show the Abyss Priest’s corpse or your swordsmanship…”
Therefore, I shook my head and cut off Amy’s rebuttal.
“Well, I did cut off his head, but when I saw us being attacked by Gerda, I threw it away in my rush to come help.”
That was the story Friede had told me, and-
“And that attack I showed… it’s not a power I can use freely. At least not right now.”
Taking advantage of the fact that Amy knew nothing about ‘Iron Arm’, I told a lie to convince her.
* * *
Amy lamented as if she had just realized that the golden chest shimmering before her eyes was actually a mimic, but in the end, she conceded to my argument.
In fact, when you think about it, hadn’t I subjugated the undead giant almost single-handedly?
Since I, who had done that, was insisting on keeping the subjugation a secret, it must have been difficult for her to argue further.
“Haa… what a shame. With that money, who knows how many magic books I could have bought.”
She kept sighing, seemingly unable to suppress her regret.
Anyway, after observing Amy’s reactions throughout our conversation, I finally reached a conclusion.
The conclusion that Amy had either not noticed my identity, or she possessed such a genius talent for acting that she could become a great actress right now.
…Can this be called a conclusion?
Honestly, I’m not sure… but for now, it seemed I could relax.
Of course, I couldn’t completely let my guard down, so I would have to keep watching Amy for a while.