Meanwhile, Derek, the Grand Duke of the North, was inspecting the outer castle with the Hero.
Lately, ferocious monsters had been spotted frequently, and strange phenomena had begun manifesting among the barbarians who roamed the northern plateau.
Bands of barbarians who had lost human reason and ran rampant like monsters.
Even in the North, where driving off barbarians every year was routine, Derek found it strange that their numbers had increased to such an unusual degree.
And then, the Hero appeared.
When a crisis came upon the world,
a Hero, said to appear only by an exceedingly rare chance, had been discovered in the North.
Derek could feel that something momentous was approaching.
“Ah!”
“Careful!”
“Thank you, Derek.”
“...Ah, yes.”
For that purpose, they repeated this date every day.
No, this search operation.
‘...What am I thinking?’
Derek, who had briefly forgotten himself, shook his head.
Somehow, the two of them had ended up coming out alone, but this was strictly a matter of official duty.
“Whew~”
He exhaled deeply, intending to pull himself together.
Seeing him like that, the woman walking beside him spoke.
“I’m sorry. Did I startle you?”
Her name was “Ayla Rose.”
The Hero chosen by God.
A beauty unbefitting a commoner,
and a combination of red hair and black eyes that contrasted with his own.
At her delicate appearance, which stirred one’s protective instincts, Derek stared at Ayla with a dazed expression.
“I’m sorry. I’m still not used to walking on snow...”
Ayla watched his reaction carefully, worried she might be blamed for her mistake.
But Derek’s feelings were different from what she assumed.
He wanted to pull her into his arms and embrace her right then and there.
The instinct he had been trying to restrain drove out his reason for a moment.
In that instant, Derek felt a yearning emotion he had never felt from the women of the North.
His heart pounded violently.
And from the moment he realized it, Derek was unconsciously staring straight at Ayla’s face, slowly approaching her.
“De... Derek?”
His gaze was so intense that Ayla, her face flushed, had to lower her eyes cautiously.
Even so, Derek’s face drew right up before hers, and soon his eyelids naturally drifted shut, demanding an answer from Ayla.
At the sight of him so openly yearning for a kiss, Ayla froze in confusion, not knowing what to do.
In her heart, she thought she ought to accept it, of course, but her body would not easily move.
And then, at that moment.
“Hee~ How cute.”
Someone’s voice rang out.
A woman’s voice, full of mischief.
“Who’s there!”
The instant he heard the sound, Derek gripped the spear strapped to his back and turned around.
To protect Ayla, Derek tried to stand before her like a human shield.
But his opponent was nowhere to be seen.
“Derek...”
A silent snowy mountain.
Silence lingered there, where the snow swallowed sound.
Had he misheard?
But Derek did not let down his guard.
This was the North, a place where nothing was too strange to happen.
And beside him was the exceedingly rare Hero.
There were more than enough reasons for an ambush.
Above all—
“For the Grand Duke of the North, it seems you’ve kept up with your training. Taking you down in one blow won’t be easy.”
“Who are you!! Reveal yourself!”
He had no idea what her intention was.
But because the assailant kept making her voice heard and flaunting her presence, Derek had no choice but to heighten his vigilance instead.
“Whew...”
He sharpened his senses and scanned the surroundings.
But he could not catch a presence.
It was a sign that his opponent was a powerhouse no less formidable than himself.
In that situation, Derek spoke to Ayla.
“Run.”
“Derek!”
“She’s not someone to underestimate. I’ll hold her off somehow, so run back the way we came.”
“But...!”
“It’s all right. You, at least... I’ll protect you no matter what happens.”
Derek tried to send Ayla away.
But his opponent instead aimed for that opening.
—Swish!
The moment Ayla turned her body.
In that fleeting instant, a spear flew in.
—Clang!!
“Urgh!”
Derek caught it at the last second and blocked it with his own spear.
But his opponent’s attack did not end there.
—Shwick!
Gripping the spear that had been deflected away, the assailant flew in lightly.
“Too slow.”
Drawing a line through the swirling snow, she launched an attack at Derek.
—Clang! Clang! Swoosh!
“Urgh, grrgh!!”
Under the relentless barrage of attacks, Derek could not get his bearings.
There was no time to think.
All he could do was receive the attacks flying toward him.
But even that was no easy task.
“Ghrk!”
Unable to withstand the continuous attacks, Derek chose to retreat.
He jumped backward with all his strength to create an opening, but—
“I told you. You’re slow.”
“Hah! Urgh!”
Before his feet could even touch the ground,
he had to grit his teeth at the spearhead that had arrived right before his eyes.
And then, soon after—
“Guhah!”
The spear shaft struck him squarely in the middle of his body, sending him flying.
—Thud.
His body, as if struck by a carriage,
slammed into a massive tree.
“Hmm. That felt refreshing.”
The assailant who had made him that way turned her head toward her next target with a satisfied smile.
“Eek, eeeek!”
The Hero, Ayla, met the assailant’s eyes.
As the assailant approached after brutally crushing Derek, who was several times stronger than herself, Ayla trembled violently.
She had a sword at her waist, but she was too frightened to draw it.
“Hmm? I heard you were the Hero...”
The assailant looked at her strangely.
At her overly fragile appearance, she seemed to hesitate for a moment.
“Well. Does it matter?”
But soon, as though she had settled her thoughts, she leveled the spearhead again.
She had decided to attack for now.
“Haa... haha. Hahaha.”
At the assailant’s approach, Ayla gripped her weapon.
She had realized long ago that it would be useless, but the terror that felt as if her heart would burst first if she did not at least do this forced her to wring out her strength.
With the sword in her hand,
Ayla trembled.
But the assailant, who had been approaching for a moment, saw something and stopped in her tracks.
Then she lowered her spear as well and said,
“Oh dear... I didn’t mean to torment you this much... For some reason, I feel sorry?”
The assailant’s gaze turned to Ayla.
Ayla had become so terrified that she had shed tears.
Her pants, too, were being soaked by some liquid.
At that sight, the assailant—
No, Cecil let out a sigh.
“...Derek is going to give me an earful, isn’t he?”
It was a cold winter in the North.
***
My name is “Ayla Rose.”
I am the Hero.
It was not because I wanted to become the Hero.
I simply opened my eyes and found that I had become one.
Some might wonder what nonsense that was, but it was the truth.
Because... I was someone who had possessed another body.
“Whew...”
With my body submerged in bathwater,
I recalled the past.
They said I was found in a cave on the northern plateau.
I had been discovered naked at the sacred site of the North, together with the Holy Sword, the symbol of the Hero.
The one who found me was Derek, the Grand Duke of the North, and I was brought to this grand ducal castle in his arms.
Since then, I had been staying in the grand ducal castle.
If you only heard that much, it sounded like the prologue of a typical romance fantasy.
And I had become the heroine of that place.
“...But! Why did it have to be 『Tactics of the Northern Grand Duke in a Romance Fantasy』 of all things?!”
The problem was that, among the many novels I had read, I had been given the cruelest role.
As far as I remembered, “Tactics of the Northern Grand Duke in a Romance Fantasy” was an old novel, and it had not been popular either.
I had read it to the end out of pride as a romance fantasy maniac, but—
from the story of the female lead, who was put through suffering to an almost cruel degree, to the needlessly verbose war scenes,
I remembered it as a romance fantasy in fashion only, with barely a few pages of that fresh charm unique to the genre.
The heroine of a place like that?
No, how many 5,700-character comments had I written until now?
I had picked fights with authors thousands of times.
If I had possessed one of those novels, I could at least understand.
But why here, where I had not left a single comment, and as the heroine who gets dragged through the mud at that?
“Haa... My life.”
My head throbbed.
My future unfolded before me.
Ayla in the novel was made to suffer so much that even the “ruined” tag would not have been enough.
Getting hurt in fights and having bones broken was commonplace, and even having limbs torn off by monsters happened so often that it became stale.
On top of that, she was imprisoned several times, abandoned without being given even a drop of water.
And at the end, they said she became a sacrifice to the Demon God and felt the pain of her soul burning away...
“I want to die.”
I wondered if it would be better to just die now.
But the problem was that I could not.
Even in the original novel, there were several instances where the Hero, unable to endure the pain, attempted suicide... but in the end, the Hero could not die.
No, she was incapable of dying.
Because the Hero’s ability revealed through those descriptions was none other than—
“Immortality...”
A body that would not die.
It was not merely that she did not die, either.
She also had regenerative abilities, so even if her arms and legs were cut off, they would heal within a few hours.
If her head was cut off, it did require a full day, but even then, she did not die.
Even if she was torn to pieces, even if she became a lump of meat trapped in something like a glass vessel, she would not lose consciousness and would continue to “exist alive.”
That was the Hero who appeared in the novel.
And that was me, Ayla Rose.
“I’m going insane...”
Of course, I knew the correct answer.
If I followed the original protagonist’s story and overcame all kinds of adversity together with Derek... I would be able to enjoy the original happy ending as it was.
But I was not confident I could endure the process.
If things flowed according to the original, I would go mad before the ending.
Besides, in order for the Hero’s abilities to manifest, I had to fight numerous battles while prepared for death... and even that was terrifying.
No... I mean,
I was an ordinary female college student.
How was someone like me, who had never even held a gun, supposed to take up a sword and fight?
If they were going to do that, they should have given me proper abilities!
Or at least given me a status window like in other novels!!
“Haa...”
All I could do right now was sigh every day.
Or... wet myself and wash my body like this.
“...How miserable.”
And so, to forget yet another day, I entrusted my body to the water.
It was a cowardly act of pushing the responsibility onto tomorrow’s me, but I had no choice...
Because it was the only method available to the me of the present.
Yesterday had been the same,
and tomorrow would probably pass the same way too.
***
However, today was different from usual.
Contrary to my hope that I would be able to end the day by washing up and changing clothes, what was given to me next was another trial.
“Hello?”
“Ah... uh..., h-hello.”
Black hair and red eyes.
It was a familiar combination that made Derek’s face come to mind just by hearing of it, but standing before my eyes now was someone else with the same combination.
It was the woman who had attacked Derek and me just a short while ago.
But she had not come to attack me again.
“Derek’s older sister... you say?”
“Mm. That’s right. Cecilia Way. Feel free to call me Cecil.”
Had there been a setting like this in the original?
Maybe it was because I had skimmed it since I disliked the story, but she was not someone in my memory.
In any case, the fact that she had entered the grand ducal castle openly, the reactions of the people around us,
and the combination of black hair and red eyes that was plainly visible all told me that her words were true.
“Sorry~ You were really startled earlier, weren’t you? I heard my little brother had brought a woman home, so I was curious, and I wanted to check how much Derek had grown, so I played a little prank. But I think I went a bit too far.”
“N-no, it’s all right.”
On top of that, since she even apologized, there was no room left to doubt her.
But something felt strange.
Because the person who claimed to be Derek’s older sister was wearing a maid uniform.
“But... why are you dressed like that...?”
“Ah, this? It’s just comfortable.”
Was she a slightly eccentric person?
But that assessment had to be corrected before long.
No, it was not merely a correction.
The instant our greetings ended, a fleeting silence passed between us.
An awkward atmosphere.
At the danger signal my intuition sent me, I looked around, and before I knew it, I saw a spear gripped in Cecil’s hand.
She had been empty-handed just a moment ago, so when had she taken up a spear?
But before that question could finish forming into a sentence in my mind, an intense pain struck my brain.
“Huh...?”
The source of the pain was my left arm.
Since I had just finished bathing, the arm was still damp with moisture.
But my arm.
Why is it falling to the floor?
—Thud.
"Kyaaaaaaack!!"
It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
No thoughts came to mind.
The only thing I felt was maddening pain.
What? What happened?
Did you cut off my arm?
Why?
In an incomprehensible situation, I looked at Sesil.
I wanted to demand what the hell this was all of a sudden.
I wanted to protest, to ask why she was doing this to me.
But I couldn't.
"Ugh… hck…!"
Blocking my gaze toward Sesil was a sharp speartip.
A blade hanging a mere sheet of paper's width from my left eyeball.
Terrified that even the slightest tremor could pierce my eye, I could only freeze in place.
And to me, frozen like that, Sesil spoke.
"But you~ aren't you too weak for someone called a Hero? I heard you've never even properly fought before?"
Words that cut like daggers.
But I couldn't answer.
Blood from the severed stump of my arm soaked my upper body, and the pain was still paralyzing my brain, making it hard just to listen to her.
"So I did some digging, and the answer was obvious. That Grand Duke fell for the Hero and is coddling her, while the cowardly Hero is holed up in the castle without training properly. Right?"
"Ugh… uhk!"
"No wonder… I found it strange that no information came to me even though a Hero had appeared. I suppose Derik blocked the news unnecessarily, worried you'd have a hard time if word got out."
It was the first time I'd heard of it.
And I couldn't see what that had to do with my arm being cut off.
It seemed to be about Derik caring for me.
Why was she telling me this now?
"This must be why the Patriarch sent me here. To correct the Grand Duke's misconduct and train the Hero. There's no one else but me for that."
"What does that even mean…!"
I tried to argue back.
But I never got the chance.
A burning sensation.
A 'stab,' and a line drawn.
What followed was.
"Kyaaaaaaack!! Aaaaaaaack!!"
Heat from my left eyeball, and fresh agony.
Half my vision was covered in black-red, and the remaining sight was also filled with tears, making it impossible to see ahead.
All I could see was Sesil's silhouette.
"Heroes are beings that grow by feeding on death. That's why they're immortal."
"Haa… a… aa…!"
"So I'll make you grow. Ah, don't worry. I'm a specialist in this sort of thing. I'm also someone who grew by treading death's threshold many times."
No. No…!
Why me?
I had to speak, but only groans came out.
"Since you're immortal, you'll be able to grow faster than me. *Chuckle.* I suppose this is what the Patriarch meant by 'go have fun.'"
"A… aaa…!"
"Now then, shall we play?"
And what reached my ears was.
Terror itself.