Click.
The metallic sound of the helmet’s lock being undone.
I carelessly stuck my sword, soaked in blood and oil, into the ground, and slightly tilted up the helmet covering my face to reveal my nose and mouth, letting out a faint sigh.
“Whew…”
Cheeks flushed with heat. Beads of sweat poured down, mixing with the bloodstains on my breastplate.
I didn’t feel like wiping it off. Even if I did, it would turn red again soon anyway.
More than that, water came first. After rampaging around in full armor, the heat built up to the point where it felt like being in a steaming hot room.
“Haah…”
I brought the water pouch from my waist to my mouth and gulped it down, trying to cool my heightened body temperature.
The water in the pouch was also lukewarm, so it wasn’t much help… but still, it was better than nothing. A hundred, thousand times better.
“Whew… this isn’t easy…”
My party members, seemingly exhausted as well, plopped down on the stone floor one by one, letting out deep sighs.
“Those bastards at the request office, like orc dicks. What? They said it would be just about ten goblins at most? How is this anywhere close to ten?”
“That’s how they always are. I’ve never seen them handle things properly.”
The middle-aged man wearing chain mail cursed while inspecting his dented shield, and the lanky-looking archer sitting next to him shrugged his shoulders and tried to calm the older man.
“Just because they learned to read and write, they spend all day cooped up in the request office shuffling papers. That’s why they’re like that. Those bastards, we should gather them all up and throw them in a dungeon for about a week! That’s the only way they’ll understand how hard adventurers have it. They’re so safe and comfortable, their bellies are full…”
The middle-aged warrior continued to grumble, his anger still not subsided.
He kept criticizing the incompetence of the request office staff who didn’t care about the dangers faced by adventurers.
It was a justified anger, but not to the extent that I could sympathize with.
It was clear that the request office staff disregarded the lives of adventurers, but that was only for the novices of wooden or iron token ranks who could be replaced at any time.
Those guys were no better than armed vagabonds, so from the request office’s perspective, it didn’t matter whether they lived or died.
On the other hand, adventurers who had accumulated enough achievements to rise to higher ranks usually received sufficient attention and consideration from the request office.
In other words, that middle-aged warrior who was raging and spewing curses at the request office staff was, despite his age, only at the iron token rank.
Dropouts who either lacked skills or had serious character flaws that made it impossible to promote them to higher ranks. What was the point of sympathizing with the anger of such a person?
We were going to part ways after this request anyway.
“Oh, come on. Calm down, old man Hans. We had a tough time, but we managed to get them all, didn’t we?”
The archer, contrary to his slovenly appearance, was either patient or good-natured, as he kept grinning and trying to soothe the middle-aged man who was throwing a fit.
Perhaps you really can’t judge a person by their appearance.
He looked like the type who would enjoy stealing other men’s lovers and bragging about it… but he might actually be a sociable and diligent person.
Judging by the way he addressed the middle-aged man, Hans, they might have known each other well from the start.
Once you enter a dungeon, the only people you can trust are your party members, so it’s not uncommon for people of the same rank to be friendly with each other.
“Let’s look on the bright side. The loot seems pretty good, so cheer up.”
“Hmm… That’s true. Yeah, I got too worked up.”
Encouraged by the archer’s words, the middle-aged man’s anger seemed to subside. He soon nodded, relaxed his contorted expression, and smiled.
In fact, contrary to the archer’s statement, the loot from this request wasn’t really much to speak of.
Despite the request office staff’s claim that it would be at most about ten goblins, nearly forty had shown up, and there was even a higher species that was four times the size of regular goblins…
But goblins are goblins after all. The loot was nothing more than rusty, worthless pieces of metal.
If there had been people captured and bred by those creatures, we could have rescued them and received a reward, but after thoroughly searching their den, all we found were skeletons picked clean of flesh.
So, Hans wasn’t satisfied because of the loot, but rather because of the considerate behavior of the archer who kept comforting him.
Drip.
Ah, I drank it all.
I looked at the empty water pouch with regretful eyes and let out a faint sigh.
“Haah…”
We only had to go back up now, so I probably didn’t need water anymore… but honestly, I was still a bit thirsty.
“Miss Hilde? Have you run out of water?”
The last party member, who had been glancing at me even while resting, quickly spoke up. He was a wooden token adventurer with a countrified appearance, carrying an axe that looked more suitable for a lumberjack.
His name was John, wasn’t it?
He had been subtly trying to get close to me since we first met in the morning, seeming like a country bumpkin who had recklessly come to the city after falling for the nonsensical love stories of drunk adventurers.
“How about I give you some of mine?”
John smiled at me and offered his water pouch. It was an uncomfortable gesture. The desire underlying it was all too obvious.
This is why I can’t take off my helmet in front of others.
Even with half my face covered, guys like this pop up in every request. If I were to show my bare face, the number of men pestering me would probably increase tenfold.
“No, I’m fine.”
I shook my head to decline his offer and tied the empty water pouch back to my waist.
I was thirsty, but I had no intention of drinking water offered by a man I had just met today.
For all I knew, he might have put something unsavory in there.
You might think that such a country bumpkin wouldn’t have the guts to do something like that, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Even in my hometown, which boasted a much higher level of public safety than this place, accepting drinks from strangers could easily lead to big trouble.
Let alone now, when I’ve entered the world of an R-rated novel instead of Earth.
If I let my guard down, I might end up becoming a mother of three children in the blink of an eye.
And with different fathers for each child, at that.
So I had to be careful, very careful.
Wasn’t it to somehow avoid the tragedy that would come someday that I had fled to a place like this?
The fate of a RDO heroine.
* * *
Do you know what RDO means?
It was a term referring to a genre of novels that was very popular in my hometown.
Novels that use extreme psychological emotions such as regret, devastation, and obsession as seasoning to provide readers with quick and intense emotional pleasure.
It was a genre with quite divided opinions, but its popularity was undeniable.
Hundreds and thousands of similar works poured out like a tidal wave, to the extent that what was originally just a writing technique became established as a genre in itself.
…You might ask, aren’t gloomy and negative emotions like regret or devastation the opposite of pleasure?
That’s only if it’s the protagonist who regrets and becomes devastated.
In the RDO genre, the characters who regret, become devastated, and obsess over something are not the protagonist, but the other main characters who were with the protagonist.
Characters like party members who mistreat or even expel the protagonist, or lovers who betray the protagonist and fall for another man’s seduction.
Characters who live in various pains after abandoning the protagonist, then reunite with the now incredibly strengthened protagonist, shedding tears of regret and obsessing over trying to restore their broken relationship.
However, far from restoring their relationship, they usually face a miserable downfall due to their own karma or the protagonist’s revenge.
Betrayal and regret, the reversal of power dynamics, and karmic downfall.
Those were the basic essences of RDO.
The emotional pleasure of seeing those who didn’t recognize my true value and ignored me now clinging to me in tears when I reveal my ‘true power,’ combined with the cathartic development of taking revenge on those who looked down on me.
Since opinions were so divided, those who preferred such emotions would read them continuously to the point of addiction, while those who disliked them really hated the genre.
To the extent of criticizing it as an extremely pathetic genre that combined the ideas of ‘If I commit suicide, others will regret it, right?’ and ‘I want to take revenge on the bullies who torment me.’
What about me?
To be honest, I quite liked it. If written well, these could be incredibly entertaining stories.
Just as The Count of Monte Cristo, which fulfilled all the conditions of RDO including betrayal, regret, devastation, and revenge, became a legendary masterpiece solely based on its entertainment value.
Of course, it would be too harsh to expect web novel writers of RDO to have the writing skills of Alexandre Dumas.
But when a genre floods the market, several decent works tend to emerge.
If you pick and read those works, you can lose track of time… Yes, I could say that I liked the RDO genre.
…Not anymore, though.
Tl/note: Hello, it’s translator Kayi! Actually the title of this novel as well as its synopsis has to include the RDO term but I don’t think something similar exists in English? If you know something about it please feel free to enlighten me!