The Legendary Heroine is actually a Pervert when Level Drained?! - Day of Collapse — When the Hero Falls to the Ground

Beyond the counter, Berta Hoffen's hands never stopped moving. Amber eyes tracked the travel-worn adventurer. The gold piercing in her right ear caught the tavern's torchlight. Her deep crimson hair, reaching to her shoulders, remained perfectly arranged despite the long day's end. "Another round, if you please." She said it with a cheerful voice, sliding a mug of ale across the counter. The traveling adventurer—a sun-darkened man in his thirties—accepted it and continued his story. "It was posted on the Mutual Aid Society's board this morning. Abnormal curse reactions detected around the Myles Great Forest. No details given, but... I heard the Hero recently entered that area." "So it seems." Her voice remained calm. Only her eyes narrowed slightly. Berta Hoffen, forty-two years old. Proprietress of the inn "The Silver Apple"—but behind that face lay over a decade spent as a B-rank adventurer, walking the continent. The palm of her right hand still bore the old calluses from years of gripping a sword. "Did you learn what type of curse it was?" "Not the type exactly. But the scale... apparently it was quite large. The kind of thing that can be sensed all the way to the royal capital from such a remote cave—that's rare." —Large. That single word quietly ignited something in Berta's memory. Goblin Shaman. A mutation that appears once in every five hundred births. The Breeding Wedge—a curse that erodes the target's magical resistance over seven days. During her active years, one of her companions contracted it. Within twenty-four hours of activation, only A-rank or higher holy magic could break the curse in time—she still remembered the temple priest's voice telling her that with perfect clarity. That companion hadn't made it in time. The tavern's noise faded into the distance. "Have you ever seen a Shaman?" "Hm? Yes, from a distance." The man answered casually. "But the comrade who saw one up close... never came back." For a moment, the room fell silent. An adventurer at the next table set down their cup without a sound. "...I see." Berta said only that, wiping her hands on her apron. "I'll step away for a moment." Her smile didn't fade. But when she left the counter, her footsteps carried something different from the lightness of a housewife going shopping. It was the gait of a former adventurer heading toward her destination. --- The night before dawn in Goaran Village was damp. The smell of leaf mold drifting from the edge of the Myles Great Forest, and the sound of morning dew wetting tree leaves. The light filtering through the assembly hall's wooden walls was still thin, a grayish white. Liliana Solana Voss opened her eyes. Within the blanket, she stopped moving for just a moment. The act of confirming her body's condition—it was a habit from right after waking. Muscle fatigue, joint condition, and the flow of mana. The moment she ran mana through her circuits, something felt wrong. Hazy. Distinctly hazier than yesterday. About seventy percent of normal flow. Before she could calculate it as numbers, her body already knew. Her magical power was being eroded. (It's just exhaustion from yesterday's battle, I suppose.) She found the reason immediately. It was Liliana's habit. There was always another explanation for any abnormality. If she could believe that, she didn't have to think about what came next. She threw off the blanket. Her body felt heavy. Her arm rose with a slight delay from her usual movements. She reached for the hilt of Calenvita. She gripped it. —It was trembling. Her right hand was shaking finely. Liliana pressed her lips together. Her gaze fell to that hand. The wavering fingertips looked unnaturally vivid in the pale morning light. In seven years of wielding a sword, this hand had never trembled before a battle. (The blood of Voss does not tremble.) Her father's voice returned with the cold feel of stone pavement. The training grounds. A low voice heard the moment she knelt. Stand up, Liliana. The moment you kneel, you have lost. She suppressed it through sheer will. She poured strength into her fingertips. The trembling stopped. " I will end this today." She spoke it low, to the empty assembly hall. --- At the village's edge, Ordo Peizen was waiting. Salt-and-pepper short hair, an old scar on his left shoulder, deep shadows under his eyes. His sleepless face had aged another day. The moment he saw Liliana, something flickered in those sharp green eyes. " Hero, your complexion—" "There is no problem." "It's clearly worse than yesterday. Would you not rest for today? The villagers would also be willing to wait a little longer—" " Ordo." Liliana didn't stop walking. As they passed, she cut him off sharply. "I will slay the Shaman today. When the request is complete is my decision." There was a moment when Ordo seemed about to say something. His mouth opened—then closed. Liliana didn't look back. She passed through the village's edge and stepped onto the beast trail leading into the Myles Great Forest. Behind her, only the sense of an old man standing and watching remained. --- When she stood at the entrance to the third level of Grauben Cave, the air changed. Something like the smell of rotting flowers. Layers of curse residue accumulated and soaked into the limestone walls. Liliana drew Calenvita and stepped into the third level's darkness. The ritual chamber was vast. Curse runes carved into the walls glowed faintly in depths where torchlight couldn't reach. A stone altar at the center. Blood patterns. And—the darkness moved. From all sides at once. One, two, three—before she could count, her vision filled. Not ordinary goblins. A full head taller. Arms grotesquely swollen. Eyes burning with instinctive combat hunger. Elite warriors strengthened by the Shaman's curse—the individuals it had prepared in the ritual chamber last night. Twelve of them. She was surrounded. Liliana held Calenvita in proper stance. She gathered mana. She ran it through her circuits—hazy. Still, she could move. " Come." The first three charged simultaneously. Iron clubs, fists hard as stone, sweeping kicks. Liliana flashed Calenvita and felled the first, jumped sideways to dodge the second, and met the third's club with her blade. —She couldn't hold it. The thinness of her magical power eroded her defensive barrier. Her arm went numb. She was knocked back. In the instant her stance broke, the fourth came. A sound like "thud" echoed through her core. Into her flank. Her body slammed against the stone wall. Rock struck her back. Air left her lungs. Before she could collapse, she kicked off the ground and steadied herself against the wall. The taste of blood spread in her mouth. Her ribs burned. Not broken—but creaking. Still, she stood. (Voss does not fall.) She forced more mana out. She began chanting. A defensive barrier spell— The second wave came. This time five together. The chant broke. The barrier scattered like mist. A club struck her shoulder, a leg sweep cut her feet. Her knees buckled. The ground came close. She caught herself on one hand, trying to hold on. She couldn't hold on. On the third strike, she fell. Sprawled on the stone floor, her consciousness wavered. Her vision swam. Her body wouldn't move. She tried to put strength in her arms, but the signal wouldn't reach—the curse was dulling something through her circuits. Mana was becoming mist, dissipating. From the depths of the ritual chamber came a dragging sound. The Goblin Shaman appeared. An old wound on its left shoulder from yesterday. A body a hundred forty centimeters tall with two knobby horns. A staff in its withered, twig-like fingers. The expression on its face was—laughter. Not human laughter, but something readable. Glee, victory, that sort of thing. The Shaman raised its staff. Violet-black light filled the ritual chamber. Liliana tried to stand. Her arm moved. She lifted her body halfway. Then—something pierced deep into her circuits. Not pain. There were no words for the sensation. Something else was entering her body, trying to rewrite her outline. Something else was gripping her magical circuits deep within, reshaping them. Violet-black runes crawled up the inside of her arms. —Terror came. Different from the terror she'd felt facing Demon Lord Valzerion. That had been the terror of death. What she felt now was—the terror of erasure. The terror of ceasing to be Liliana Solana Voss, of being remade into something else from within. Her grip on Calenvita's hilt loosened. Not by choice. Her body opened her hand. Metal rang across the ritual chamber. Calenvita fell to the stone floor. Liliana wrapped her arms around her knees. She was trembling. The pride of House Voss, the dignity of a hero, the memory of slaying the Demon Lord—none of it meant anything in this moment. The sound of collapse continued in her head. The Shaman completed its spell while making strange cries. The goblin warriors stopped moving. No follow-up. —It wasn't necessary. The prey would return, even if it fled. Anyone who knew this curse understood that. --- From the depths of her being, not a voice but an impulse came. Don't die. Don't die here. Not her father's voice, not House Voss's teachings. Something older, rooted in what it meant to be human, moved her body. Her right hand searched the stone floor. Her fingers found Calenvita's hilt. She gripped it. Crawling, she moved toward the exit. A goblin warrior tried to follow. The Shaman stopped it. Liliana didn't know the meaning of that cry. She only knew that no pursuit came, and she clung to that as she dragged herself from the third level to the second, from the second to the first. When she emerged from the cave, the sun was already sinking. Orange light slanted through the forest trees. The ground was warm. Not stone, but the softness of earth transmitted through her palms. She couldn't stand. The moment she tried to lift her knees, the bone in her flank screamed. Her breath stopped. She tried again, and pain returned. Liliana didn't give up. Slowly, she placed one foot on the ground. Supporting herself with her arms. It took seconds to rise unsteadily. She turned toward the village. Three steps, and her knees gave way. She grabbed a tree trunk and stopped. No strength remained. Not enough to make it back to the village. Liliana slid down the trunk, collapsing slowly to the ground. Thick tree roots waved across the earth, and her body settled between them. She looked up at the sky. Between the tree branches, the colors of dusk remained. And—almost absently, she glanced back toward the cave. —There was a pull. Not a desire to return. She was thinking she didn't want to return. That darkness was terrifying. Those runes were terrifying. Yet from inside her body, an impulse to head in that direction existed, unmistakably. Not her will. But coming from within her own body. Nausea rose. She gripped the tree roots with both hands and turned her back to the cave. She closed her eyes. A sound came out. At first, she didn't know what it was. A choking sound. Air leaving her lungs irregularly. Her throat resonating. She was crying. She didn't know how to stop. The heir to House Voss does not cry—that axiom crumbled silently in her mind at this moment. She found no reason to stop. She had no strength left to find one. Her voice dissolved into the forest's darkness. The cry of a nineteen-year-old, wounded human being was absorbed by the trees of the Myles Great Forest, reaching no one. The runes on the inside of her arm glowed faintly even in the twilight. Her magical power had fallen below half. A foreign will was beginning to take root in the depths of her spirit. And most terrifying of all—even as she wept, the pull toward the cave did not fade. --- At the same time, in the second-floor private room of the "Silver Apple" in the royal capita

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Episode 4

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

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