Banished from the Party... No, Liberated
The fan that covered the lower half of her face was the kind a noblewoman might carry, yet anyone could tell at a glance that Cynthia’s expression was filled with pure shock. The hand holding the fan trembled violently.
“W-what are you doing, Werther? You’re not the kind of guy who dies to something as pathetic as a goblin’s teeth… right? You… you don’t die.”
No answer came from Werther.
The goblin swung the porter around in the air a few times like a trophy, then hurled him deep into the forest. Werther’s body flopped like a dead fish and showed no reaction at all.
“Next, I’ll kill the hero!”
“Damn it! Everyone get ready! This thing looks pretty strong!”
Among the party members, the one known for her combat prowess, the Princess Knight Jeanne, drew her arming sword and shouted. At her command, the Saintess Theresa and the elf Sharon responded immediately. While the three of them instantly entered battle stance, the mage Cynthia and the hero Leonhart remained rooted to the spot.
Cynthia was too focused on Werther’s mangled corpse to pull herself together, while Leonhart looked as if the fight had nothing to do with him, taking a deliberate step back.
“Done! We took it down!”
“As expected of Jeanne! You took some wounds, but you still did it!”
“But… isn’t this weird? For Werther to die to an enemy of this level…”
About ten minutes later, Jeanne’s arming sword pierced straight through the goblin’s forehead. It wasn’t weak by any means, but a monster of this caliber was something Werther—with his zero attack power—could have handled alone. It would have taken time, sure, but he could have done it.
Saintess Theresa suddenly recalled the time they had encountered one of the Demon King’s Four Heavenly Kings. Werther had volunteered to act as bait, enduring three whole months of brutal beatings to buy them time. She expressed her confusion.
“Even Bael, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, was so terrified by Werther’s life force that wouldn’t die no matter how many times he killed him that he ran away. So how could a mere goblin kill him? It doesn’t make sense.”
“That time was no joke. When we reunited with him, a demon sword was stabbed clean through him from his ass to his mouth. I thought a ghost had come back.”
Sharon chimed in, remembering how she had even chanted an exorcism spell. Their gazes suddenly turned toward Werther. He wasn’t moving. Not even a twitch. The only thing growing was the pool of blood spreading beneath him.
“That’s already way past a lethal amount of bleeding,” Jeanne said, recognizing it instantly from her extensive combat experience.
“Does Werther… really die from losing some blood? I thought he had some kind of immortality blessing. He always acted like he’d never die.”
“Looks like his confidence finally caught up to him. He’s really dead.”
Theresa tried to argue further, but Werther’s corpse spoke louder than any words in favor of Jeanne’s opinion. Well… even if he had been under some blessing or curse, those things usually had an expiration date. Maybe Werther had accidentally forgotten to renew it. He had always seemed a little loose in the head anyway.
“What do we do now…? Werther’s dead. He’s been with us for three whole years as a comrade…”
“He wasn’t a comrade. He was an errand boy.”
At the hero’s voice coming from behind, Theresa, still in her nun’s habit, whipped her head around in surprise. Leonhart had finally lifted his heavy ass and was walking toward the goblin’s corpse. As the leader of the hero’s party, the hero naturally stood at the top of their six-member group.
Jeanne, who had been trained in a knight order and was used to strict hierarchy, dropped to one knee and showed respect as he passed. While the party was generally horizontal in structure, both Theresa and Sharon usually deferred to the hero and followed his opinion. After all, to kill the Demon King, the hero’s presence was absolutely indispensable, even if the others weren’t.
“Who was Werther, exactly?” Leonhart asked, drawing the Holy Sword Exode.
“Did he have the skill to take down monsters with a sword like the Princess Knight?”
Exode pointed at Jeanne.
“No, sir.”
“Then did he possess the useful power to bless and buff us like the Saintess, or heal our wounds?”
The baton passed to Theresa.
“…No.”
“Or, as a representative of the elf race, did he arrange harmony and cooperation between species while providing long-range support with a bow in battle?”
“N-no.”
Sharon answered half a beat early, realizing whose turn it was even without the sword pointing at her.
“And of course he didn’t have connections to the Empire like a mage, nor did he have any magical ability, right?”
It was Cynthia’s turn now. But she simply stood there in a daze, completely out of it.
“And obviously, that bastard Werther…” Leonhart continued arrogantly, as if her reaction didn’t matter, “was never chosen to defeat the Demon King like me, the hero. In other words, Werther was completely useless to this party. So why are you all so shocked that a guy like that died? He wasn’t even a real party member to begin with.”
“…………”
No one spoke. They still seemed to feel a shred of guilt toward the comrade they had spent three years with.
“When that guy first clung to us begging to join the party, what did Cynthia say?”
Cynthia flinched. It was the first real reaction she had shown.
“Didn’t you say, ‘He’s useless as a party member, but I’ll take him as an errand boy’? And Werther agreed to it. So he was never a party member. He was just a convenient laborer who handled all the annoying chores. One worker died. Is that really something to be sad about?”
““…………””
While no one could easily open their mouths, Saintess Theresa—who had a duty to show kindness to all—cautiously raised her hand to request permission to speak.
“Um… still, from some point onward, Werther suddenly became incredibly durable. Wasn’t he quite useful for exploring dangerous areas or checking enemy abilities in advance?”
“Hmph. That just saved us a bit of hassle. Our party would have been fine without him.”
“……….”
“Besides, aren’t you all forgetting something?”
As if trying to remind his foolish party members, Leonhart suddenly stabbed the fallen goblin’s belly with the Holy Sword Exode. A brilliant light enveloped the goblin’s corpse before fading away.
Holy Sword Exode — Power Absorption
“I can absorb the power of those I defeat with the Holy Sword Exode. If you’re worried about losing Werther’s power, I’ll just take it for myself. An undying immortal power like that was always meant for me, the hero, anyway.”
“No!!”
All eyes turned to the owner of the piercing scream. Leonhart in particular glared at Cynthia with the eyes of a watcher hunting for traitors.
“What do you mean, ‘no’? Explain yourself, Cynthia.”
“E-even so… he helped us. Desecrating his corpse like that… isn’t that going too far? A-at the very least, we should give him a proper funeral.”
“…What? A funeral?”
Dragging Exode across the sandy ground with a threatening scrape, Leonhart strode toward her. He grabbed her by the collar and pulled her face so close their noses nearly touched.
“What exactly are we doing right now? Having a picnic? Sightseeing across the world? Or are we here to defeat the Demon King?”
“…Ugh.”
“How many people do you think are dying at the hands of the Demon King’s army at this very moment? A funeral? We don’t have time for that nonsense. We are the hero’s party. We have to kill the Demon King.”
“…For people who say that, you sure are traveling farther and farther away from the Demon King’s Castle.”
“Hey.”
“Eek!”
Leonhart grabbed a fistful of Cynthia’s hair and lifted her entire body off the ground. Her legs kicked helplessly in the air. Theresa covered her mouth in worry, Sharon watched the scene with tense eyes, and Jeanne looked on with satisfaction at her lord disciplining the undisciplined party members. Their varied reactions to the internal conflict were almost amusing.
“If I, the hero, fall into danger, who’s going to save the world?”
“…I-I get it, so let go.”
“Who tormented Werther the most from the very beginning, and now you’re pretending to be kind? If you wanted to be nice, you should have done it while he was alive. What does it matter if you stab a corpse that can’t feel anything or burn it for a cremation?”
“…Ugh.”
“Hmph.”
Leonhart tossed the adult woman aside like a piece of trash and looked down at the party’s now-pale errand boy with a face completely devoid of guilt or remorse. Cynthia, thrown to the ground, curled up while clutching her head, her scalp clearly hurting. Upon closer inspection, her eyes were tightly shut and her ears were covered with her hands. Was she trying to escape reality?
The elf Sharon watched Cynthia with open confusion, unable to understand her reaction, while the rest of the party observed the hero absorbing Werther’s power.
“The power of immortality. I’ll be taking it, Werther.”
A merciless slash toward his former comrade. Far from feeling sorry, Leonhart even let out a small, mocking laugh. Safely absorbing the power of enemies defeated by others was simply the hero’s method of powering up. Having grown strong this way many times before, Leonhart didn’t even bother looking closely at the familiar process. Just as a new driver consciously performs every step—pressing the accelerator, starting the engine—only to later drive unconsciously while talking on the phone, he swung the holy sword mechanically and left without a second thought.
That was why he completely overlooked the fact that Werther’s body was not enveloped in the same brilliant light as the goblin’s had been. His loyal subordinate Jeanne followed right behind, blessing her lord’s power-up without the slightest suspicion. Only Theresa stared at Werther for a moment, feeling that something was different from before, but eventually she too let go of her lingering attachment. Sharon matched Theresa’s pace as they followed the hero.
And Cynthia… after fixing her disheveled hair and clumsily recreating her signature rolled-up bun, waited until no one was around before secretly returning to Werther. She knelt before him in a posture that carried the grace of someone well-bred. It felt less like an apology and more like paying final respects.
“Werther.”
“……”
A call to a corpse. An answer that would never come. Yet the faint, foolish hope that maybe—just maybe—Werther might still be alive had stirred the imperial princess’s foolishness.
“Werther. Answer me. You’re actually still alive, aren’t you?”
“……….”
Just in case, she stroked his cheek. It was cold. She pressed her ear to his chest. No heartbeat. The blood that had painted the ground had already hardened into a stiff crust.
“You’re really… really dead, Werther.”
“……….”
A single unfamiliar droplet fell into the pool of blood.
“This is the second time I’ve cried in front of you. Looks like you won’t come to save me this time either. Hic… You said you wouldn’t die… that you would never die… You liar…”
The imperial princess hugged the corpse and sobbed. Unconcerned that her noble face was being stained with filthy blood, she cried for a long time before finally regaining her senses, remembering that she should at least offer a proper farewell. Her gaze lingered on Werther’s lips for a while.
“Thank you for everything until now.”
Werther had been a strange one, unusually obsessed with defeating the Demon King. He would say he would handle all the dirty work himself, so they just needed to kill the Demon King. She didn’t know why he was so fixated on it… but it was obvious. Probably someone in his family had been killed by the Demon King and he wanted revenge. There were plenty of people like that.
“I’ll carry on your will. So now… this is goodbye.”
A farewell kiss. Cynthia drew so close that her breath brushed against the space between Werther’s nose and upper lip. Just a little more and their lips would meet—but she suddenly stopped.
“No… I can’t. It wouldn’t be right to kiss someone without their permission, would it?”
With a smile that looked far more miserable than sad, Cynthia pulled back.
“But you’re dead now, so you can’t give permission anyway. Guess I’ll never get to kiss you.”
She brushed the dead comrade’s hair back with the back of her hand and whispered one last “I’m sorry” before disappearing. She had probably returned to the embrace of the comrades who had left ahead of her.
Now alone, Werther was left behind in the forest. As if on cue, a torrential downpour began, washing away the blood that had pooled on the ground. The blood staining Werther’s body was washed away as well. When the rain finally stopped, Werther—aside from being soaking wet—looked remarkably clean as he greeted the sunlight.
A single squirrel climbed onto his forehead for no particular reason. It seemed to have found a suitable hill to crack open the acorns it had painstakingly gathered. But a giant hand suddenly snatched the poor squirrel up. The squirrel dropped its hard-earned food and struggled desperately to escape, but the difference in strength was overwhelming.
“…The hell? That bitch Cynthia.”
Werther slowly sat up. The squirrel could not escape his fully recovered grip.
“Ugh, damn it. So I couldn’t die after all. This Rune of Immortality is such a pain in the ass. Can’t even kill myself? At this point, I guess I’ll just have to live until I die of old age. I don’t even know anymore. I’m done caring about the Demon King or the hero or any of that crap. I’ll just live comfortably, eat, and die slowly.”
None of it was his problem anymore. If he was going to reunite with his little sister after dying anyway, time didn’t really matter.
“Still… those idiots are going to suffer so much without me… Tsk. Bunch of morons.”
They had no idea. The role I played in the party wasn’t just being a meat shield. Without my help, those idiots would have been reduced to a pathetic group that even third-rate adventurers could beat. It had nothing to do with the Rune of Immortality. It was because of another skill I had possessed from the moment I was possessed by this game.
That was also the reason I had stayed with the hero’s party despite all the verbal abuse I received from Cynthia and the rest of those bitches.