Chapter 17: Meanwhile, the Hero's Party...[R-18]
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 17: Meanwhile, the Hero's Party...[R-18]
Rose, the Hero's Party's elf archer.
She was grinding her teeth as she wrapped a bandage around her arm.
‘Ah, this is so irritating.’
She had worked so hard to maintain her fair, beautiful skin.
In the end, she’d gotten a small but noticeable scratch on her arm.
It was an injury from a monster during their latest dungeon crawl.
The hunt had been fraught with uncertainty from the start.
The team members’ conditions, the state of the dungeon, even their teamwork.
Everything, from one to ten, was a complete mess.
And Rose, positioned at the very back of the party, had seen it all more clearly than anyone.
‘...It’s all that bitch Tina’s fault for rushing us.’
They no longer had a magician or anyone to gather information.
So, they had no choice but to enter the dungeon without proper preparation.
Still, they had thought it would be fine.
Weren't they the Hero's Party, who had faced not only dungeons of a much higher grade than this but even the Demon King's army?
‘I never imagined we’d fall for such a basic trap and get surrounded by monsters.’
But without a magician, the party failed to detect the traps and monsters in their path.
Ultimately, they were forced to fight head-on against a swarm of monsters.
—Kyaaak! What are you doing! The monsters are all the way over here!
—There are too many of them, we can’t stop them on our own....
—What are you doing? Do something! Do you think I can hold out without any healing?!
Claire was, after all, the party's most important healer and priestess.
Leon, the Hero and the vanguard, rushed to protect her.
The gap he left in his wake was how a monster had managed to charge at Rose.
At that moment, as Claire clung to Leon and pressed her chest against him, Rose thought she might have seen her smile faintly.
‘Fuck...’
Just thinking about that scene still made her grind her teeth.
But she couldn't get angry at Leon, so the arrows of her resentment were aimed at Claire and Tina.
Besides, wasn't it true that if those two had handled the situation better, it could have been prevented?
‘This never used to happen.’
Back when ‘that magician’ was in the party, a monster reaching Rose was unimaginable.
The hunts themselves were far more comfortable, and the magician always handled any unforeseen circumstances perfectly.
But this time, she had been injured in the very first battle.
Considering this wasn't a difficult dungeon, like one belonging to a Demon King's executive, the outcome was even more serious.
It was obvious to anyone that the absence of the magician was a critical weakness.
But her pride wouldn't allow her to say it out loud.
“Hoo.”
After finishing the bandage, she glanced to her side.
Tina was there, wiping blood from her face.
The sight of her shaking her fur dry like a wet animal made irritation flare up for no reason.
“Hey, fucking cat.”
She called out to Tina on impulse.
With the magician gone, she had no one to gossip about, and she needed another target to vent her stress on.
“Don't you have anything to say to me?”
Her words, sharp as thorns, were directed at Tina.
Sensing the palpable hostility, Tina finally turned her head.
“What.”
Her face was a mask of annoyance.
“What, what?! Is that the attitude you should be showing me in this situation?”
“What did I do now?”
The moment Rose saw that sullen expression, fury surged through her.
Originally, Tina had a relatively mellow personality within the Hero's Party.
Unlike Claire, with whom she was always fighting, Rose rarely clashed with Tina.
But that Tina had changed.
She had suddenly become more irritable, and she didn't even bother to hide it, wearing her annoyance openly on her face.
Of course, for a prideful elf like Rose, this was a change she couldn't just let slide.
Claire the saint was annoying, but Rose wasn't so magnanimous as to be ignored by a mere female cat and let it go.
“Isn't it a warrior's duty to protect the rear guard? If you failed at that and let a comrade get hurt, shouldn't you at least apologize?”
“Ha, what are you talking about?”
Tina shrugged, looking dumbfounded.
“Do you think we’re here to play house? Did you really think you wouldn't get hurt fighting monsters? You should be able to handle something like that on your own.”
“So you’re saying this is my fault?”
“You’re an elf, aren’t you? A so-called ‘noble of the forest’ who doesn't even have the legs to dodge that?”
Rose, about to retort, couldn't bring herself to open her mouth.
The truth was, she hadn't even thought of dodging.
In her panic, her legs had frozen, refusing to move.
‘Dammit, it used to be fine...’
As long as she was with that magician, she never even needed to run.
All she had to do was shoot monsters from her designated position, and it would all be over.
At some point, she had forgotten something as obvious as dodging monsters.
But she couldn't bring herself to admit it.
“Monsters never even touched me before!”
“That’s because the magician was here!”
Tina spat out, as if she was completely fed up.
“We were already short on information and preparation, and we had to rush into this dungeon because of the deadline! And we don't even have a magician. I fought like hell to block them at the front, and that’s all you have to say?”
“Block what? The warrior was so incompetent that everything got through, and I almost died.”
“Ha, died? From a pathetic scratch like that? And do you think you’re the only one who got hurt?”
Rose’s eyes fell on Tina’s stomach as she lifted her shirt.
A bandage was wrapped tightly around her abdomen.
It was clearly a much larger wound, incomparable to Rose’s slight cut.
“You almost died when a monster rushed you? I fought them head-on! And Leon, who was supposed to fight beside me, ran off because he was worried about you guys! I'm the one who has it fucking worse, not you!”
The resentment Tina had been desperately holding back finally burst forth.
From her sorrowful voice and expression, you could feel just how wronged and dumbfounded she felt.
A normal person would have backed down out of guilt.
But Rose was an elf who was the very incarnation of pride.
“Hmph, you brought that on yourself.”
“.......What?”
“You were the one who accepted that dungeon quest in the first place, weren't you? It was a quest with a bad payout to begin with, so you should be the one to take responsibility for the risks.”
Tina’s mouth hung open, her expression shifting from disbelief to astonishment at the logic.
Why had Tina gone to the trouble of going to the guild and accepting a quest herself?
It was because both Rose and Claire had whined that they didn't want to go to the smelly guild.
Those two had lived their entire lives in the church and the forest, completely ignorant of the ways of the world.
If it hadn't been for Tina, the outcome would have been worse, never better.
And now she was blaming her for this?
After she got injured protecting them?
“Ha.”
She felt like an idiot for swinging her sword at the front to protect these bitches.
She should have just let herself die back then.
“.......Forget it. What’s the point of talking to a bitch like you.”
As if she wasn't worth dealing with any longer, Tina shook her head and turned away.
Needless to say, that attitude only infuriated Rose further.
“You disrespectful bitch!”
Unable to hold back, Rose reached for Tina’s head.
She felt like she wouldn't be able to calm her anger unless she grabbed her by the hair.
In that instant, Tina’s eyes flashed.
—K-THUMP!
“Gack...!”
Grabbing Rose’s wrist in a reverse grip, Tina threw her to the floor.
“......Don’t you dare touch my ears. Not unless you want to die.”
“Fuck, you beast bitch. You want to go?”
Grinding her teeth, Rose stood up as a spirit enveloped her body.
Power enough to kill a person flared to life, aimed at her comrade.
In response, Tina drew the sword she had set beside her.
“What do you think you're doing!”
A voice cut in, stopping the two who were about to kill each other.
It was Leon, the leader of the Hero's Party and its sole man.
Without needing to coordinate, both women turned their heads, their faces etched with grievance.
But the sight that met their eyes made them lose all will to fight.
“........”
“........”
Next to Leon, their rival Claire was clinging to his arm with a shy expression.
Her cheeks were flushed red, and she was constantly licking her pink lips with a lewd look on her face.
Both women knew what kind of activity produced that reaction.
‘........He got a blowjob in a situation like this?’
No, it was more likely that slut of a saint had made the first move.
It was obvious she had seduced him, thanking him for saving her.
Still, for the party leader to have happily accepted the service was just messed up.
‘We were just tending to our wounds from the fight...’
Their argument, though mostly about shifting blame, could have at least been considered a form of feedback.
But how were they supposed to react to the fact that their leader had been fooling around with a woman in the meantime?
‘We can’t even say anything about this...’
Unfortunately, the only person who could have called Leon out on his behavior was now gone.
The two of them weren't in a position to do so, nor could they.
With no one to keep him in check, it felt like Leon had become even more undisciplined lately.
“I don't know what happened, but we should talk it out. We're comrades.”
“That's right~ Don't fight, let's all get along~”
Seeing the two of them say such things, completely oblivious, Rose and Tina lost all desire to continue fighting.
‘......This is so fucking messed up.’
Rose watched Claire clinging to Leon’s side, her fists trembling.
The image of Leon abandoning her to save that bitch kept replaying in her mind.
And so, the crack that had formed in the Hero's Party was slowly widening.