The Legendary Heroine is actually a Pervert when Level Drained?! - Signs of Corruption

The sky before dawn still held stars. When the edge of the horizon had only just begun to pale, Liliana Solana Voss had already folded her blanket. She hadn't slept. Not really. There had been time with her eyes closed, but it fell far short of what could be called sleep. She placed her hand against the wooden wall of the assembly hall and slowly rose to her feet. The strange heat that had resided in her core had faded with the dawn. The remnants of the dream were vague now that her consciousness had fully awakened. A dream of goblins drawing near. A dream where the will to flee never activated. (What an odd dream that was.) That was all. The restless sleep was probably because the straw bedding in the assembly hall was tilted. The same reason as last night. Nothing more, nothing less. Liliana donned her light armor and fastened the holy sword Calenvita to her waist. She circulated mana through her body lightly—checking her magical circuits was a daily habit. The flow was normal. ...Mostly normal. The edges of the circuit felt slightly duller than yesterday. A sensation like haze settling over them. But this was a natural phenomenon caused by sleep deprivation. The Voss family training included trials where one couldn't sleep for two nights straight. It felt similar to that. No problem. Liliana opened the assembly hall door and stepped outside. Cold air struck her face. The dawn of Goran Village smelled different from the royal capital Felizand. Instead of the white limestone walls and the oil smell of carriages, there was the scent of forest humus and morning dew. Not unpleasant. But not familiar either. From the edge of the village, the treetops of the Meles Great Forest were visible. She had to go there again today. Grauben Cave—a half day's walk north from Goran Village, a three-layered cavern that opened its mouth in the limestone bedrock. She had exterminated the entire first layer yesterday. What remained was the surviving individuals of the second layer and the shaman that had fled to the third. "I shall settle this today." She murmured it low into the empty morning air. --- The forest path should have been the same as yesterday. The same trees, the same branch arrangement, the same animal trails. Yet the sensation of her feet gripping the ground felt subtly different. The hardness of the path hadn't changed, but there was a faint extra sensation of her feet sinking into the earth—no, that wasn't it. It wasn't sinking. Her legs were heavy. (Accumulated fatigue. No problem.) She reached that conclusion. The moment she identified the reason, the anxiety vanished. That was Liliana's habit of thought. If she understood the reason, she could handle it. Things she couldn't handle didn't exist. As she moved through the forest, she directed her awareness toward the presence ahead. Just like yesterday, traces of sorcery were thinly dissolved in the air. Proof of the shaman's existence. Still alive. At a fork in the animal trail, there was movement in the brush. She reacted instantly. Her right hand reached for Calenvita's hilt—and stopped. She hadn't drawn it from the scabbard. Normally, the drawing motion would begin simultaneously with her reaction. There had never been a gap between consciousness and action in the past several years. But now, her right hand grasped the hilt while the motion paused slightly. A delay of mere fractions of a second. What burst from the brush was a single goblin scout. A thin individual less than a hundred centimeters tall. The moment it recognized Liliana, it let out a high-pitched cry and turned on its heel. She was late. Calenvita drew from its scabbard, tracing a path of light. The sword light reached the scout's back. That was the end of it. Liliana flicked the blood from her blade and returned it to the scabbard. She glanced at the fallen scout. She had defeated it cleanly. A perfect result. But... (...I was a bit slow just now.) She immediately searched for another reason. The morning cold had stiffened her muscles. That was all. Liliana turned forward and began walking again. Only the reader knew that her pace was slightly heavier than yesterday. --- The entrance to the second layer was a crack in the rock that continued into the depths of the first layer. Damp air pressed forward. The passage, carved along an underground water vein, had wet walls, and the ground was densely covered with mushrooms. From large ones with caps over ten centimeters in diameter to thumb-sized ones clinging to rock crevices, various species lined the ground like a pattern. Apparently the goblins' food source. Liliana didn't bother trying to avoid stepping on them and simply pressed forward. Squish. The mushroom beneath her foot crushed, and white spores rose into the air. (...) They hit her face directly. She stepped on another. More spores rose. They came at her face again. Liliana made no sound, simply wiping her face with her sleeve. Silent. Perfectly silent. A hero should not choke on spores. Internally she was coughing slightly, but Voss family education wouldn't permit such a thing. She continued forward with a stone face. Yet with each step, the mushrooms went squish, squish, and the spores continued to dance, while the number of times she wiped her sleeve only steadily increased. Multiple presences came from the depths of the cave. Liliana switched her thoughts. Her combat senses came to the fore. She forgot about the spores. The remaining goblins numbered over twenty—she had estimated that from yesterday's information, but there were precisely twenty-four. Four hidden on the rock ledges of the ceiling launched the first ambush. But for an ambush to function as an ambush, the enemy's attention must be scattered. Liliana's perception reached them. Calenvita ran from its scabbard. One flash. Two flashes. The four falling from the ledge were finished before they landed. "—!" The rest moved as one. The second layer goblins were different from the first layer. They had set traps. A log suspended by rope from the ceiling swung like a pendulum toward her. Liliana jumped to the side to evade, and the moment she landed, the thin floorboards beneath her cracked—there was a hole below. She jumped on one foot and landed on the edge of the hole. She balanced. Perfect. Three goblins rushed at her simultaneously from three directions. Twenty total. Her sword moved. Spinning, sweeping, thrusting. One, three, seven. Midway through the battle. A final ambush came from the rock ledge above. A single goblin descended toward her, and Liliana jumped to the side to evade. In that instant— The sensation in her right hand gripping Calenvita vanished for just a moment. Her brain issued the command "ready the sword." There was a gap between that command and the muscles' response. Like an hourglass where all the sand has fallen and before the next sand is poured—a single moment of emptiness. A lag of zero-point-several seconds that should never have existed. As a result, the evasion succeeded. The descending goblin was slammed to the ground, finished with a single thrust of Calenvita. There was no problem. All results were perfect. But Liliana placed her left hand against the cave wall. She looked at her right hand. It wasn't trembling. No wounds. Completely normal. She moved each finger one by one. They all moved. (No problem.) Not spoken aloud, but processed in her mind. Then she removed her left hand from the wall and turned back to face the remaining goblins. It took less than three minutes to defeat the remaining twelve. --- At the deepest point of the second layer. With the traces of battle—shattered trap logs, bloodstains, fallen goblins—at her back, Liliana stood before a pattern carved into the wall. A primitive sorcerous pattern carved by goblins. Yet the precision of the lines was clearly at odds with what could be expected from goblin intelligence. Not simple spirals or combinations of angular shapes, but geometric symmetry and a structure that converged inward. Carving this would require something equivalent to a design plan. (...This was not carved by goblins alone.) The moment that thought crossed her mind, an image flashed through her consciousness. A white stone plaza. Not the royal palace of Felizand, but somewhere older, more authoritative—the training grounds of the Voss family. A place of serious practice owned by one of the continent's foremost sword-wielding families. Liliana's memory from when she was ten years old. Young Liliana knelt on both knees on the stone plaza, blood seeping from her palms. Another fall. She couldn't bear the weight of the sword; her stance had given way. The low voice of her father, Edgar Voss, descended from above her head. "—The moment you kneel, you have already dishonored the Voss name. Stand. Feel pain only after you stand." There was no emotion in that voice. Not anger, not disappointment—merely the statement of fact, delivered with dry confirmation. Because of that, ten-year-old Liliana had no escape. Crying meant nothing. Remaining on her knees meant nothing. She could only stand. She could only raise her body before the pain. Before anything else. Liliana stood. Blood fell on the stone plaza. Still she held her sword in position. —Return to the present. The second layer of Grauben Cave. Damp air. Sorcerous patterns on the wall. Liliana averted her gaze from the pattern. Should she descend to the third layer today? She had wounded the shaman yesterday. That individual had fled into the rock crevice at the back of the cave. There was no guarantee it would be in the same place today. It might have recovered and prepared to meet her in combat. Meanwhile, she had accumulated magical consumption today. The twenty-four goblins of the second layer were not a light battle. No problem. She had sufficient reserves. (...No.) Liliana tried to accurately assess her body's condition. Total mana—approximately seventy percent. A level with no problems. But today, from the start, there was a slightly duller sensation. Even in the cave, her right hand's sensation had vanished for a moment. It was natural to judge this as battle fatigue, but if...if it were a different cause. That thought, Liliana cut away in her mind as "hypothetical talk." "Today's results are sufficient." She spoke it aloud to give the words weight. If she spoke it, it became fact. If it became fact, it was a judgment, not a retreat. Liliana turned on her heel and headed toward the cave's exit. The reader watched her back disappear into the darkness with unease. The sorcerous pattern on the wall continued to exist quietly in the depths where no torch light reached. --- She returned to Goran Village as the sun began to set. Ordo was standing in front of the assembly hall. An old body nearing sixty, still leaning on his cane as he stood beside the entrance. Short hair streaked with white, sharp green eyes. The old wound on his left shoulder was visible even through his clothes in the slanting light of dusk. When he recognized Liliana's figure, the old village chief slowly moved toward her. "Welcome back. ...How were today's results?" Liliana stopped walking. "I exterminated all twenty-four remaining individuals in the second layer. That is all for today." Ordo nodded. His eyes looked directly at Liliana's face. Eyes that had observed people for half a century. Overworked farmers, signs of illness, hidden injuries, the face of hunger—an old man who had watched the villagers for nearly fifty years as their village chief examined the details of Liliana's face over several seconds. Her cheeks were faintly flushed, more than usual. Her breathing carried short pauses between words, different from yesterday. A difference so subtle that it would go unnoticed if one didn't pay attention. But Ordo's eyes had paid attention. "...Is there nothing troubling your health?" It was a rest

日本語

What is Novelia? →

Episode 3

Name: The Legendary Heroine is actually a Pervert when Level Drained?!
Author: Novelia

What is Novelia?

Novelia is an AI-powered platform to read original light novels and fan fiction, create your own in just a few taps, and chat with the characters. New, illustrated episodes arrive daily — free to start.

Learn more about Novelia →New sign-ups get 5,000pt