Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyou Survival-Chapter 83

New Weapons and Nostalgic Faces Part 1

“How’s it going?”

“Nothing so far. Nothing unusual, it’s just eerily quiet.”

Kevin, a Rank 2 adventurer standing guard on a tower, looked grimly at the wheat fields outside the town and the forest beyond. The harvest was already over, so there was not that much damage, but if this situation continued, it could affect the sowing of seeds.

Nearly a month had passed since the town’s residents began a full-scale evacuation, and now the evacuation of those residents who could move was almost complete, but there were still sick people and their families who couldn’t move.

As a countermeasure, they had been asked to gather at a community center in the center of town, but it would still take several days to move them.

This chapt𝙚r is updated by freeωebnovēl.c૦m.

Baron Horace, the lord of the land, who asked for help from his parent, Count Torus, was finally ready to send out 1,400 soldiers, including those from other noble families, to launch an attack.

The Adventurers’ Guild also contacted several guilds, and the guild of Dandol finally secured a Rank 4 scout who was acting alone, and called him in to act as an instructor until a party of Rank 4 or higher could be dispatched from the royal capital.

With this information, the baron also sent out 50 soldiers from his town ahead of the others, and was now cooperating with the soldiers of this town to evacuate the residents.

The Adventurers’ Guild had also made contact with the Rank 4 adventurers and had sent out a guild request for assistance. Seeing the situation, two Rank 3 parties had come forward and joined Kevin’s party in preparing for the Orc attack.

“As promised…we will be able to evacuate the residents, who can move, in time. Kevin and his party have kicked the crap out of the Orcs that had shown up the other day.”

A familiar soldier, who had previously stood guard around the gate, climbed onto the scaffolding he had built behind the stone wall and turned his head in the same direction as Kevin.

There had been no movement for over three weeks, but a few days ago they had spotted five Orcs trying to take food out of a warehouse outside of town, and Kevin’s party and the Rank 3 party were now working together to take them out.

“These Orcs were no big deal. We could have managed on our own even if she didn’t go there. She won’t be able to do much anyway, so we should have just gone out there.”

“Kevin… you’re the one who is most worried about her, even though you say that.”

“No, no, no, I’m just mad that she moved on her own!”

A month ago, a girl named Aria headed off alone to an Orc settlement to buy time for the residents to complete their evacuation.

No one could stop Aria, who was just in her early teens, but was far beyond the strength of Rank 2 adventurers. When Kevin woke up after being beaten and passed out that day, Aria had already left to launch an attack.

“I mean, there’s no way she’s going to take anything I say seriously, and she will still do it all by herself….”

“She was a beautiful girl, wasn’t she? Did you fall in love with her after she hit you?”

“No, I would never like that kid!”

“Well, anyway, I’m glad to see that the Orcs don’t seem too powerful. I heard that Orcs are Rank 3 monsters, but aren’t they weaker than rumors say?”

“That’s not true.”

A scout from a Rank 3 party that had been in town for a while, climbed up on the scaffolding of the stone wall. He was the scout that investigated the Orcs’ strength at the request of the lord when they were first discovered, and his party was now part of the defense because they knew the threat the Orcs imposed.

“Doyle-san…what are you talking about?”

“You know, I infiltrated their settlement, so I know their strength. The Orcs that came in the other day were acting strangely, so I examined them and found that they were all emaciated and their fighting strength had been reduced to half. It was as if they had been poisoned.”

Doyle, a seasoned scout in his mid-thirties, inhaled and exhaled from a lit pipe. Kevin and the soldiers looked at each other, trying to understand what he was talking about.

“You don’t mean… it was because of her?”

“She said she’d buy us some time, but…”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. If it were me, I wouldn’t have gotten into the center of that abandoned village, I would have just observed it from a distance. Do you understand why? Because I would have been scared. If they found me, I would die for sure. If I wanted to poison all the Orcs, I would have to stay undercover for more than ten days without being noticed. I don’t have the gall to do that.”

“”…””

A skilled scout said he couldn’t do it himself. If so, why were the Orcs so weakened? Why haven’t any of the confirmed higher species shown up? Why haven’t Orcs invaded in the first place for over a month?

“Hey, there is something coming!”

Kevin and the others jumped to their feet and looked toward the wheat field, where they saw a small shadow approaching from the distance, holding what looked like a long spear or stick.

“That little brat…!”

“Hey, Kevin!”

Kevin’s eyes widened as he ran toward the gate, followed by the soldiers and Doyle.

Kevin, who had been running at the front of the group, approached the person and called out her name.

“Aria!”

“…Kevin?”

The girl, who was clad in a muddy and frayed cloak, dragged a fur sack and carried a huge staff over her shoulder, turned her tired face at them as they approached.

Kevin gulped at the ghoulish atmosphere and blood on her cheeks, a soldier he knew stepped forward and called out to her with a serious and intense look on his face.

“What are you doing? What happened to the Orcs?”

“The Orcs won’t attack us anymore. There may be a few left, but at least the higher species are gone.”

“What do you mean by they are gone?”

“Wait, Kevin.”

Doyle stopped Kevin’s attempts to approach Aria and turned his attention to the black stick Aria was holding.

“Hey, let me ask you something… that hexagonal stick of magical iron, isn’t that the weapon that the Orc General had?”

Ignoring the puzzled adventurers and soldiers who could not understand the meaning of Doyle’s words, Aria turned to Doyle.

“Want it? I brought it, but it’s pretty heavy.”

“…No, thanks. Let me ask you one more question. Where are the Orcs now?”

“They are scattered in the woods and abandoned settlements, so you can check on your own. I’m tired, can I go?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, hey…”

Doyle grabbed Kevin’s shoulder and shook his head quietly as Kevin tried to stop Aria.

As her little back disappeared toward the town gate, a grim-faced Doyle called out to the soldier and the other adventurers.

“Someone, call my companions. We’re going to check out the forest and the Orc settlement now.”

Later that day, Doyle and Kevin’s party set out on a search, and a few days later, more than fifty Orc corpses, including higher species, with Magic Stone taken from their hearts, were found in the deep forest and abandoned village that had been the Orcs’ stronghold.

When they returned to the town to ask for more information, the girl was already gone, and the voice of one of the adventurers who had searched for her, muttered Ash Crowned Princess. His words drifted away in the wind.

***

I woke up to a blue sky.

Extreme loss of strength and magic… If I had taken even the slightest more damage, I would have been left in a coma and starved to death, resulting in a slow and painful death.

When I woke up, I could not move my body. It seemed that the muscles and tendons of my entire body had been considerably overloaded, as I had used my physical capabilities beyond their limits. In addition, due to the recoil from the sudden deceleration after thrusting my dagger, the upper arm of my right hand was broken, my shoulder joint was dislocated, and I had multiple bruises all over my body as well as damage to my internal organs.

I was lucky that my head was not injured. If my head had been damaged as well, I would never have woken up again.

After regaining consciousness and grasping my current situation in a daze, I used my recovered magic power to use life magic [Flowing Water] to let the water wash my face and sip a bit of the muddy water to recover some energy.

In this state, if there were any Orc survivors, I would have been killed without being able to do anything.

The amount of magic power flowing through my body was not constant, as if the magic pathways in my entire body had gone haywire. I was having a hard time controlling it, but I was able to adjust to a stable level, and used Cure to gradually repair my body. I put the few remaining medicine I had in my mouth with my shaking hand, which was the only body part I could move. After a whole day of rest, I had recovered enough to finally be able to move my whole body.

Fatigue and damage had set in, and I had not yet recovered more than half of my physical strength and magic power.

Reaching the conclusion that staying here would only delay my recovery, I decided to clean up and get out of here.

I had pulled a black dagger from between the dead Gorgeol’s eyebrows and placed it in a holder, then pulled out a spare knife and extracted the Magic Stone from its chest. I was an adventurer. I didn’t kill them with hate. So, I would not waste his death, a high-level monster.

I found the pouch of fur that the Orcs used, went around the abandoned village and took the Magic Stone from all the Orcs, and retrieved the knives that had been thrown on the Orcs during my battle.

That night I roasted wild vegetables and yams, boiled water, and ate my first warm meal in a month, and slept like sludge until the sun came up.

It was only on a whim that I brought the magic iron hexagonal rod that Gorgeol had used.

I had no intention of calling it a trophy, but I didn’t like the idea of someone I didn’t know using it without my permission, so I took it home anyway, but it was heavy, and I regretted it right after on the way back.

When I returned to that small town, I told the adventurers and soldiers, including Kevin, only that the threat was gone, and threw the rest of the process to them.

I was too tired to clarify the situation, but I was sure they would be convinced by seeing the crime scene without any detailed explanation. I was uncertain if they would believe me even if I explained what I had done anyway, so it was better to let them see with their own eyes.

Inside the town, there was no sign of any residents other than soldiers, as if the town had already been evacuated to prepare for the Orcs’ attack.

“…”

I was supposed to buy some time, but I did more than I had planned, but I prevented the worst from happening, so it didn’t matter. Probably.

Even in a town in this situation, I still managed to find an open Inn and went inside. The place was most likely used by adventurers or soldiers as a staff station, so I rented a corner of the inn and meditated as I wrapped myself in a cloak.

Currently, I would rather sleep in a safe zone than have a decent meal. A place with people was not necessarily safe, but it was better than a place with wild monsters wandering around.

I found some dry cheese that had been left on the table, probably because there were only men there, so I poured it into my stomach with water and woke up with enough sleep to find out that I had recovered about 70% of my strength and magic power.

It seemed that while I was sleeping, some of the adventurers and soldiers went to the abandoned village where the Orcs were.

There was no need to wait for them to return. I might have been asked for an explanation, but since I would be reporting to the guild anyway, I decided to leave as soon as I could and return to the town where the guild was located, so I wouldn’t need to report twice.

I noticed after I started walking on the street that even though I was tired, my body felt more sharp than before because my Taijutsu and Non-Attribute Magic skills had both been raised to Level 4.

I was still at Rank 3 as my attribute magic and combat skills had not improved much later on, but my physical abilities had upgraded to as close to Rank 4 as they could be after the battle with those Orcs.

With this, I had finally stepped onto the stage where the “strong” stood.