The Legendary Heroine is actually a Pervert when Level Drained?! - Hero in the Mud

The night had broken. Though in the forest, it was hard to tell. The light filtering through the gaps in the canopy had merely shifted from orange to white, while the ground remained dark and damp as ever, the heavy scent of decomposing leaves settling at the bottom. Liliana Solana Voss opened her eyes between the roots of a tree. She hadn't slept. She wasn't in a state where sleep was possible. The heat crawling up from the core of her body had continued through the night, and her consciousness had only risen and fallen repeatedly. Her body could move. It could move, but it was heavy. Heavier than yesterday. In a single night, something had been worn away. She channeled mana through her circuits. ——Below thirty percent. Her body knew it before the numbers could be calculated. Not only were the edges of the circuits hazy, but the middle sections were too. A sensation like swimming through fog. When she tried to gather magical power to her fingertips, there was a faint resistance. A resistance that hadn't been there yesterday. Liliana pushed against the tree trunk and stood up. Her feet wavered. She steadied herself over two seconds, both hands pressed against the trunk. Mud had soaked into her clothes. Dried leaves were tangled in her long silver curled hair. The wounds from yesterday's battle——the ache in her side, the bruising on her shoulder——throbbed as old pain in the morning cold. And then. There was a pull toward the north. Grauben Cave——fifteen kilometers north of Golan Village, where the limestone cavern opened at the entrance to the Myles Great Forest. The place she had barely escaped from yesterday, crawling along the ground. An impulse to return there was rising quietly but surely from the depths of her body. Her foot moved one step. Toward the north. Liliana stopped it with all her strength. Her right hand gripped the trunk. Her nails dug into the bark. She steadied her breathing. She turned her gaze south. Reason was screaming. Don't go back. You cannot return there. She pressed down the impulse from the depths of her body with her consciousness——pressing, pressing, and finally her feet stopped. Three seconds later, the pull came again. She almost took another step. She stopped it again. That repeated thirteen times over the course of the morning. After the thirteenth time, Liliana pressed her back against the tree trunk and gripped the soil from the ground with both hands. Soil spilled between her fingers. Mud packed under her nails. She faced the opposite direction from the cave. That was all Liliana could do. At some point, pulled by the attraction, she had unconsciously taken three steps. She noticed when she looked down at her feet. The tips of her shoes were pointing north. ……Are these my feet? Are these really my feet? She stared down blankly. Then anger came. Irrational anger——anger at her own feet. Not at the pull, but at her own feet for moving of their own accord, she stamped the ground with all her might. The soil rang out with a thud. Dust scattered. Her feet got even dirtier with mud. The sight of a silver-haired heroine stamping on her own feet in the middle of a forest was probably unparalleled. Liliana was blank for just a moment at her own feet and her own state, and then——the pull came again. The lingering echo of laughter vanished in an instant. --- Past noon, she attempted a precision scan of her mana circuits out of desperation. She sat down and closed her eyes. She sank her consciousness inward. A task that normally took seconds now felt like groping through the haze of the circuits. She traced through the surface——the middle layer——down to the depths. In the depths, she found it. A crack. Minute, but unmistakable. A fracture running through the deepest part of her mana circuit, something like a hairline break. The purple-black erosion of the breeding wedge——the curse planted by the Goblin Shaman——was not spreading across the normal parts of the circuit, but concentrating intensively along this crack. Why is there a crack here. Liliana thought back. She traced her memory back a year. The shape and quality of the crack resembled something she had felt somewhere before. ——The Demon Lord Valzerion. The final phase of the End Demon War. The fortress in the Caldea Wastes. The final curse released just before the Demon Lord fell. At that time, Liliana had deployed a defensive barrier. She had judged that she had blocked it completely. No one had examined the depths of the circuit. The examination by the mages, the priests of the Celesta Curia, had all judged it as undamaged. It had been cracked. Only in the depths. In a place that couldn't be seen. In other words. The breeding wedge was eroding Liliana at several times the normal speed because the wound from the Demon Lord's defeat——celebrated as a heroic victory——had become the path of infiltration. The price of the victory that saved the world was destroying her from within at this very moment. Liliana opened her eyes. Leaning against the tree trunk, no sound came from her voice. Images flowed through her mind——the white castle walls of the royal capital Felizand. The cheers of the people. The title of heroine bestowed in the great hall of the castle. The solemn ceremony of the Celesta Curia. Her father, Edgard, had, unusually, relaxed the corners of his mouth just slightly. All of it felt like events from some distant place. Like someone else's memories. Like a story from beyond the fog. In the end——was I broken from the start. Those words echoed in her head as her own voice. The pride of a hero had already been exhausted. Silver hair matted with mud and dead leaves, soiled light armor, faint curse marks floating thinly on the inside of her arms——nowhere was there a trace of the Liliana Solana Voss who had stood in the royal capital's ceremony. A voiceless sob shook her throat. She realized she was crying. She couldn't find a reason to stop. Tears traced down her mud-covered cheeks. No one was in the forest. She didn't need to make a sound. There was no one listening. She curled her body. She hugged both her knees. The trees of the Myles Great Forest stood without saying anything. --- The fifth night came. It was as designed. After the fifth day, the breeding wedge would transition to a stage that made autonomous resistance nearly impossible——Liliana, who knew this as a technique, now understood intellectually what was happening to her body. Her body moved toward the direction of the cave. She stopped it. She was exhausted. It moved again. She stopped it again. Several times the willpower was needed for a single restraint. The mental control drilled into her by the Voss family training——the technique of cutting off emotion and concentrating consciousness at a single point——was functioning as the last bastion, but the walls of that bastion were now only paper-thin. Liliana wrapped both her arms around the tree roots. She was gripping with all her strength. Her arms were trembling. The sensation in her fingertips was fading. As her mana depleted, the outline of her consciousness became vague. It was muddled. When she tried to think of something, she was immediately swallowed by fog. Only one word remained in her head. ——Don't move. She repeated only that. Don't move, don't move, don't move. That word alone was barely keeping the outline of Liliana intact. The inside of her arm was glowing. A faint purple light. The curse marks were luminescent. Each time that light wavered, the pull toward the cave intensified. The light wavered. The pull came. Don't move. The light wavered. The pull came. Don't move—— Both her arms began to release the tree roots. Her fingers were loosening. There was no more strength to stop it—— In the distance, a light wavered. An orange light. Not the purple of the north, but from the south, between the trees. The orange of a torch slowly approached. One, two, three——multiple lights split through the darkness and advanced. "Over here! Watch your footing!" A voice called out. Old, but with a strong core. Ordo Peizen——the village chief of Golan Village, fifty-eight years old. Short hair streaked with white, the scar on his left shoulder from an old wound, sharp green eyes gleaming within deeply etched wrinkles. The man who, seeing that Liliana hadn't returned to the village for two days, had whipped his aging body and organized a search party, now advanced through the forest holding a torch aloft. The torchlight illuminated Liliana. One of the village youths caught his breath. Covered in mud, pressed against tree roots, her arm's interior glowing purple, her body trembling as she curled up——that person couldn't be the arrogant and overwhelming heroine, he found it hard to believe. Ordo didn't hesitate. Without pausing a single step, he knelt before Liliana. He handed the torch to one of the youths and extended his hand. Liliana looked up. Her face dirty with mud and tears. From her hoarse throat, she screamed with all her strength. "Don't come near! Don't touch me! Don't look——don't see me like this!" It wasn't the voice of a hero. Not haughty, not dignified, just raw screaming. Ordo didn't withdraw his hand. A long silence followed. The torch wavered in the wind. The forest cried out. Then Ordo quietly opened his mouth. "Half a year ago, goblins killed the village chief of the neighboring village. I couldn't stop it." Liliana remained silent. "Three years ago, I sent three young men into the forest——they didn't come back. As village chief, I had nothing to say to their families. I was ashamed, and every night I was sorry, and there were hundreds of nights I couldn't sleep." Something was seeping into his voice. Even as he held it back, it seeped through. The weight that the old man had accumulated over long years was emerging at the edges of his words. "Showing weakness isn't shameful. We've trembled with fear, cried, and still remained in the village to live. Asking for help isn't losing. ……It's the people of this village who have proven that." Liliana's body trembled. It was a different kind of trembling. Not the trembling of the pull, but something more human, coming from the core of her being. Cracks ran through the ice shell. The education of the Voss family. Kneeling meant failure. Weakness is shame. A hero doesn't cry. ——The shell she had hardened with those words slowly crumbled before the old village chief's quiet voice. The dam broke. Tears overflowed. Sound came out. An unseemly, choking sob spread through the forest. The sole heroine of the prestigious Voss family, in the mud, in front of the old village chief she had disliked from the moment they met, was crying like a child. A trembling hand reached out. Liliana grasped the hand Ordo had extended. --- Supported by five village youths, Liliana was carried back to Golan Village. She had almost no strength to walk. Right foot forward. Left foot forward. Each single step was supplemented by someone's arm. The curse marks remained floating on her arms and neck, and the youths said nothing seeing them. Perhaps Ordo had told them beforehand to say nothing. She was laid on a bed in the assembly hall. The wooden ceiling came into view. The torchlight wavered. Her body was heavy. When she closed her eyes, consciousness blurred. Two more days. By sunrise on the seventh day, the curse circuit of the breeding wedge would saturate and collapse on itself——that was how this curse was designed. But the deadline for dispelling it was within twenty-four hours of activation, requiring A-rank or higher holy magic, and that deadline had long since passed. All that remained was to endure until the seventh day, or find another means, that was all. Who could call for reinforcements. Even if they could, would they arrive in time. Half a day by fast horse from the royal capital Felizand——there was no time. Without understanding anyt

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Episode 5

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

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