“What’s this all of a sudden…?!”
A sound of air being torn.
Perhaps judging it was too late to deploy a holy barrier? Or certain that it would be penetrated even if deployed?
Imelia’s complexion changed drastically as she hurriedly rolled to gain distance.
Boom!
As soon as she vacated her position, the greatsword that had swept past with a whoosh pierced and shattered the ground, scattering a fountain-like pile of dirt.
A destructive power that shattered the ground like a cookie. It looked as if a shell had fallen.
“An intruder…!”
“Who the hell is that!?”
The power seemed alarming even to them, as Imelia and Irina hastily took battle stances and glared in the direction the greatsword had come from.
I also turned my head to look in the same direction as them.
“…Friede?”
It was a voice I couldn’t mistake. After all, we had been laughing and talking about various things together just a few hours ago.
Though I never imagined we’d reunite like this.
“Hilde!”
A black-haired girl running towards me with an expression of indescribable desperation etched on her face.
Her cloak fluttering like bird wings as she kicked off trees and charged forward, her movements so fast that she had already reached my vicinity by the time I blinked a couple of times.
Thud!
Friede, who had flown in after kicking off the last tree with all her might, landed in front of me in a parabolic arc.
“Hilde, are you alright!?”
As soon as she did, she turned her head to look at me and urgently asked about my well-being.
“You are alright, right?!”
Eyes full of concern.
Her pale complexion was drenched in cold sweat.
…How should I answer?
Does this look alright to you?
Thanks for saving me when I was about to be violated?
Neither was the right answer. The former was too shameless to say, and the latter couldn’t be true.
“Why… did you come…! Stupidly… didn’t you see… my letter…?”
So I just blurted out the sincere words that spontaneously arose within me.
Asking why she had followed me here, did she know where this was?
Asking if she hadn’t seen my letter.
Grind…!
Friede, who quickly looked me over, instead of answering, gritted her molars and furrowed her brow sharply, then
“…I came because I saw it! What was that!”
She shouted as if angry, raising her head and taking a deep breath.
Saying it wasn’t that she hadn’t seen the letter, but because she had read its contents that she had hurriedly followed me.
“Leaving just one letter and trying to leave on your own, and not even managing to leave, what kind of state is this!”
“I’m sorry…”
That’s right. What kind of state is this indeed?
Despite trying to run away after giving up everything, I was caught before getting far and was in danger of being raped with a mace.
Even to my own eyes, it was a pathetic and unsightly state.
“…We’ll talk in detail later.”
Friede, grinding her teeth again, stretched out her hand towards the greatsword embedded in the ground. Her golden pupils flashing fiercely with anger.
“After I kill them all first, those bastards who put Hilde… who put Hilde in this state!”
…Is she saying we can sort things out later, so she should save me first?
As the one in need of saving, I should properly bow my head in gratitude… but most regrettably, I couldn’t.
“No… just withdraw. They’re not… opponents you can handle…”
I pleaded with Friede in a tired, trembling voice to just run away.
If it were ordinary bandits it might be different, but the opponents were Imelia and Irina, who had become even stronger than before.
How could Friede possibly face these two people that even I couldn’t defeat after fighting with all my might?
I was grateful for her attempt to save me, but in the end, it would only result in the offerings to Gunther increasing to two.
I didn’t want to see such an outcome.
That’s why I offered this advice.
Although being violated like this was really… really worse than death, could I drag Friede in as a companion?
That wasn’t just something I disliked, it was something that shouldn’t be done.
“…That’s not for you to decide, Hilde.”
However, instead of following my advice, Friede rejected it with a tone of determination I had never heard from her before as she stood up.
…Well. I did tell her to withdraw, but even as I said it, I had already guessed inside. That such words wouldn’t work on Friede.
Friede wasn’t the type of person who could abandon a party member in crisis and run away alone.
Moreover, the person in question wasn’t just a party member, but someone she had romantic feelings for.
When the woman you like is about to be raped, how could you calmly withdraw and run away? Your eyes would roll back in your head instead. It was advice that had no chance of being accepted from the start.
“You’re being stupid… that name was a lie from the beginning, you know…? If you saw the letter, you should know. I, I am…”
So as a last resort, I brought out the confession that the copper token adventurer Hilde you knew never existed in the first place.
Even the confession that I wasn’t actually an adventurer from Hervor, but the wanted fugitive Brunhilde who had been living disguised as an adventurer while deceiving and misleading everyone―
“So what? I’ve known Hilde’s true identity all along, you know?”
“…You knew?”
Lost its force and faded away in the face of a confession twice as shocking.
‘She knew? That I was Brunhilde? Since when…?’
Saying she knew I was Brunhilde, what does that mean? It was such a shocking answer that I was dumbfounded with amazement despite the situation.
“Not just me, everyone knew. Amy and I pretended not to know out of consideration for Hilde, and Kikel just didn’t care from the start.”
“…”
Good heavens. I thought I had been deceiving them well all this time, but was that all just my own delusion?
Only then did I finally realize.
That I wasn’t an acting genius who had deceived all the party members with my acting skills and eloquence, but merely the protagonist of The Truman Show… no, The True-woman Show.
‘So… the excuses I’ve been making all this time weren’t actually believed…’
Everyone knew they were lies, but they just smiled and went along with it, thinking I was trying so hard?
All the words and actions I had uttered, the acting I had done to hide my identity, flashed through my mind all at once like a revolving lantern, filling my head.
“…”
A mood where I wanted to kick the blanket beyond the atmosphere if there was one.
An enormous sense of shame… embarrassment that was incomparable even to having my crotch fully exposed, dyed my entire face bright red.
My face felt like it would burn from the hot flush.
“So…”
As Friede was about to continue speaking at my appearance, she suddenly narrowed her brow sharply and pulled out her greatsword, swinging it widely.
Crack!
A bursting sound like metal being ground. Deep scratches were engraved all over the blade surface of the greatsword that had deflected the scatter shot.
Friede’s greatsword was a lump of metal even thicker and harder than my armor, so it wasn’t penetrated or broken in one hit, but…
‘No good. It still can’t withstand it after all.’
If it took a few more of the same attacks, it would eventually shatter before long.
Once she lost her weapon like that, Friede would end up in the same position as me, rolling on the ground and ruminating on defeat.
“Just… run away…, Friede…!”
Friede didn’t answer.
“Scatter shot…?”
She just turned her body towards the direction the arrow had come from, startled to an odd degree.
“No, it can’t be…”
Friede, who had turned her back on me like that, finally faced the enemies she had to confront.
Faces she hadn’t had time to confirm when flying in from afar due to her urgency.
Well, it’s not like she could immediately recognize their identities just by seeing their faces…
“Imelia and Irina? Not pursuers from the Rhine Kingdom…?”
…She knows them.
It was quite unexpected. I didn’t think she’d recognize them at a glance. Were they faces she knew from before?
“Kuh, of all people…!”
Friede frowned as she adjusted her grip on the greatsword diagonally. The confusion was evident in her raised voice.
“What’s this? Where does a brat we’ve never seen before get off acting like she knows us?”
Irina clicked her tongue as if displeased and nocked a new arrow.
Whether she was displeased at having her identity immediately recognized, or displeased at being called by name right off the bat by a stranger. Maybe both.
“I don’t know who you are, but if you know us, please step aside. This is a matter between former party members. It’s not an issue for an unrelated third party to interfere in.”
Imelia urged Friede to withdraw in a relatively calm tone.
Saying this was an internal matter between former hero party members… that is, between the trio of kingdom traitors.
Though her words seemed calm and polite, in reality, it was just a priestly way of telling her not to be a nuisance and to get lost quickly.
“…Ugh.”
Friede let out a small groan and gritted her teeth. A hesitation that even momentarily clouded her hostility could be felt.
Yes, I could understand. She had no choice but to hesitate.
Recognizing Imelia and Irina’s identities meant she had realized the opponents were members of the hero’s party, didn’t it?
While it might be different if they were ordinary pursuers, facing the hero’s party as enemies, even Friede would inevitably shrink back, sensing defeat.
That’s why she couldn’t help but hesitate to rush in and swing her greatsword right away.
“…Run away, Friede. You know now too, don’t you? That you can’t win.”
So, I tried once again the persuasion that had been ineffective no matter how many times I repeated it.
Now that she knew who the opponents were, I told her to change her mind and run away.
Actually, I wanted to ask her to end me painlessly while she was at it… but those words seemed to stick in my throat, refusing to come out.
“It’s okay, I won’t resent you if you run away…”
“…That’s not it.”
Friede reluctantly answered through gritted teeth. In a lowered voice as if forcibly suppressing her emotions.
“Haah… This really is the worst. There’s a limit to bad luck.”
Then, letting out a deep sigh, she muttered while plunging the greatsword she had been holding diagonally into the ground with a thud.
“At this rate, that’s the only way… But still… Haah…”
A murmur that seemed to contain tremendous internal conflict.
If she wasn’t conflicted about whether to run away or not, what on earth was she hesitating and worrying about so much? It was a response whose reason I couldn’t even grasp.
“Ah… really, doing it this way… isn’t good. I didn’t intend to reveal it like this…”
Friede lamented, covering her lowered face with her left hand.
After letting out another deep sigh like that, she turned her head to look at me and pulled up just the corners of her mouth with a hardened face.
“Hilde. You said you’d grant me one wish, right?”
And then she asked me.
“Uh… yeah, I did.”
“I’m going to use that now.”
Friede, with a smile that seemed forcibly squeezed out, stretched out her right hand that had been gripping the sword hilt towards the empty air.
An incomprehensible question. An incomprehensible action.
“In this situation, what on earth are you trying to ask for…?”
So I asked back. In a tone that said what nonsense are you talking about when we should be running away right this instant.
“…Forgive me.”
Friede answered.
Still, it was an incomprehensible answer.
“Forgive… what do you mean?”
Friede firmly grasped the empty air as if clawing at it, and said with a bitter smile:
“This.”
The next moment.
Crack.
With a noise like a frozen river splitting, the empty space in front of her shattered like a glass window hit by a ball.
“…Huh?”
An utterly surreal sight. I widened my eyes and stared at the hole in the shattered empty space.
…No, to be precise, at the amber-colored radiance bursting forth from within it.
Whoosh!
A flash so intense it brightened the surroundings for a moment.
From the hole torn in empty space, something golden with a faint red tinge was slowly revealing itself.
Like the sun rising beyond the horizon, burning away the darkness of night.
“Wait, that’s…!”
“Wh-What, that can’t be. It can’t be…?!”
Irina and Imelia, who had been about to attack Friede, gaped in shock. Honestly, I felt similarly.
All three of us knew all too well what this phenomenon was.
The two of them thanks to having actually witnessed it, and me thanks to descriptions through text and illustrations.
Amber steel. A rare metal of amber-gold color more expensive than gold of the same weight.
A self-luminous amber-colored lump of metal was slowly being drawn out, becoming the blade of a huge greatsword, using the hole in empty space as its scabbard.
No, Friede was drawing it out. With one sword hilt that had formed at some point firmly grasped in her right hand.
A long sword hilt. A golden cross-guard with elaborate craftsmanship added. An amber-colored blade twice as ornate as that.
Everyone present knew the identity of this greatsword. Knew it. Including me.
“Nibelung…?”
I muttered the name of that greatsword in a dazed tone. The sword Friede had drawn out. The name of the sword that shouldn’t be here.
Nibelung.
The holy sword of the Kingdom of Rhine shone, scattering amber-colored radiance into the world.
Held in the grasp of the small girl standing defiantly before me, rather than the possessed Kim Seung-woo who should be busy accumulating power right now according to the original work.
“Uh, th-that’s, that’s impossible. Nibelung, why…?”
It was an impossible thing. Why was that sword here, why was it in Friede’s hand?
A shock that shook the knowledge I had – that is, the knowledge from the original novel – to its roots.
“Friede, you, what on earth…?”
I gaped, looking back and forth between Nibelung and Friede with trembling eyes.
“…I’m sorry for deceiving you. Hilde, no… Miss Brunhilde.”
Friede turned to look at me and apologized like that, then pointed Nibelung’s amber-colored blade towards Imelia and Irina.
“You said a third party should withdraw, Imelia. I’ll return those words to you.”
Then she opened her mouth and declared.
“Go back. Go back and tell Gunther. That if he comes again, I will definitely kill him. Both you traitors, and Gunther who instigated the betrayal. That I will definitely, definitely kill you all.”
Her own identity that she had been hiding all this time.
“In the name of Friet, hero of Rhine and master of Nibelung.”
The name from the past that they knew.
“No, in the name of the hero Sigfriede.”
And the current name that they couldn’t have known.
Silence fell.
A silence as still as death, seeming to cover the entire forest.
Three women, fallen into indescribable shock, stared blankly at the girl grasping the amber-colored greatsword.