Clank.
The sound of the helmet’s lock being undone echoed through the air.
I shoved my blood-and-grease-soaked greatsword haphazardly into the ground and lifted my face-covered helmet slightly to reveal my nose and mouth, letting out a light sigh.
Haaa…
My cheeks were flushed from the heat. Sweat poured down, mixing with the bloodstains on my armor.
Honestly, there was no point in cleaning it. It would just turn red again anyway.
What I needed was water—water first. After a whole ordeal in armor, my body was boiling like a sauna.
Haa…
I brought the water pouch at my waist to my lips, gulping to cool down my elevated body temperature.
Even though the water inside was lukewarm, it was still better than nothing—way better than nothing!
Hoo… This really isn’t easy…
My party members looked just as exhausted, plopping down on the stone floor and letting out deep sighs.
“Damn those request office bastards! What? They said maybe ten goblins? Where the heck are the ten goblins?”
“That’s how they are, right? I’ve never seen them do their job properly.”
The middle-aged man in chainmail checked his battered shield, cursing under his breath, while the scruffy archer next to him shrugged and tried to calm him down.
“Well, if they could read and all, maybe they wouldn’t be stuck in the request office all day just flipping through papers. They need to be shoved into a dungeon for a week! Only then will they know how tough it is for adventurers while they’re safe and sound, living high on the hog!”
The middle-aged warrior still simmered with anger, continuously berating the request office workers for their negligence towards the dangers faced by adventurers.
It was a valid anger, but I couldn’t really empathize all that much.
While it was evident that the request office staff didn’t value adventurers’ lives, that was mainly true for the bottom-tier guys who could be easily replaced—like low-level pawns and iron-clad newbies.
Those types were basically no different from ragtag thugs with swords, and from the request office’s perspective, they didn’t care if they lived or died.
On the other hand, the adventurers with substantial accomplishments who had climbed to higher ranks received ample attention and consideration from the request office.
In short, the middle-aged warrior hurling insults at the request office staff was still just a low-tier iron-clad adventurer, despite his age.
He was one of those losers, either lacking skills or suffering from serious personality flaws that kept him from rising to higher ranks. What good would it do me to sympathize with his fury?
After all, we would part ways once this request was over anyway.
“Hey now, calm down, Hans. It was a rough time, but at least we caught them all, didn’t we?”
Despite his shabby appearance, the archer seemed patient and level-headed, consistently trying to reassure the boiling-over middle-aged man with a smile.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, right?
He looked like the type who’d brag about stealing a man’s partner, but surprisingly, he was quite sociable and sincere.
From the way the middle-aged guy, Hans, talked to him, they probably knew each other pretty well.
Once inside the dungeon, you’d only have your party members to trust, so it wasn’t unusual for adventurers of the same tier to become friendly.
“Hey, you know the spirit of ‘good vibes’? Looks like the loot isn’t bad either, let’s just feel good about it.”
“Hmmmm… That’s true. I might have overreacted.”
Thanks to the archer’s encouragement, Hans’s boiling anger seemed to subside as he nodded and softened his twisted expression into a smile.
Truth be told, the loot we gained from this request wasn’t all that impressive.
Contrary to the request office staff’s word that it’d only be about ten goblins, we ended up with almost forty, including one hefty upper-tier goblin that was four times bigger!
But at the end of the day, they were still goblins. The loot was just a bunch of rusty pieces of scrap metal—not worth a dime.
If there had been people captured and being kept inside, we could’ve rescued them and received a reward, but all we found in that den were skeletal remains stripped to the bone.
So, Hans wasn’t pissed about the loot; he was satisfied with the archer’s cheerful demeanor while comforting him.
Plop.
Ah, I drank it all.
I looked at the empty water pouch with regret as I let out another soft sigh.
Haa…
Now that I was headed back up, water wasn’t essential, but honestly, I was still a bit thirsty.
“Hilde? Have you run out of drinking water?”
The last party member who had been glancing at me spoke up. A low-tier adventurer with the scruffy appearance of a lumberjack, wielding an axe, approached me.
Was his name John or something?
Since our first meeting that morning, he had been subtly encroaching, the epitome of a rural fool who foolishly got caught up in drunken adventurers’ wild tales.
“Would you like some of mine?”
With a friendly smile, John offered me his water pouch. It was an unwelcome gesture; I could clearly see the desire lurking beneath it.
This is why I can’t take off my helmet in front of others.
Even with most of my face concealed, there’s always one creep that pops up every request. If I went around showing my bare face, I’d likely have ten times more after me.
“No, it’s fine.”
I shook my head, rejecting his offer, and tied the empty water pouch back at my waist.
I was thirsty, sure, but I had just met this guy today—there’s no way I’d sip on water he gave me.
He could’ve mixed something unwelcome into it for all I knew.
Just because he looked like a simple country bumpkin didn’t mean he was completely innocent.
I had been raised in a place with security levels leagues above this one. Accepting a drink from others could end bad very quickly.
Let alone now, in a world that felt like a 19+ novel.
If I let my guard down, I could be a mother of three in no time—each with a different father, no doubt.
So, I had to be careful, always!
I had come all the way to escape the tragic fate of a “Harem Heroine” in this twisted world.
—
Do you know what “Harem Heroine” means?
It refers to a genre of stories that were all the rage back in my hometown.
Using extreme emotional states like regret, devastation, and obsession as spices, the stories provided readers with a swift, intense, and pleasurable emotional ride.
The genre was polarizing but undeniably popular; it spawned hundreds and thousands of similar works that once were mere writing techniques, now solidified as a distinct genre.
…You’d say that regret and devastation are emotions entirely contrary to pleasure, right?
Well, that’s only true for the protagonist being the one regretting or devastated.
In the Harem Heroine genre, the characters filled with regret and torment weren’t the main characters; they were secondary figures who had shared the stage with the protagonist.
Those party members who would neglect or outright expel the protagonist or lovers who would betray the main character for another guy—the characters who had turned away from the protagonist.
Living through various pains after having abandoned the protagonist, only to reunite with a noticeably stronger version of them and shed tears of regret, desperately trying to mend broken ties.
However, odds were they wouldn’t just rekindle their relationships but would rather meet a tragic downfall as payback for their actions.
Betrayal and regret, reversal of power dynamics, and poetic justice—that was the essence of the Harem Heroine genre.
The delight of having those who had disregarded my worth cling to me as I exhibited my “true power,” combined with the sweet vengeance against those who had belittled me.
The preferences for this genre were incredibly polarized; those who liked it would devour every title, while those who disliked it would vehemently reject it.
“It’s like ‘If I kill myself, others will regret it?’ combined with ‘I want revenge on the bullies that tortured me.'” Critiqued as an extreme loser genre.
What about me?
To be perfectly honest, I liked it quite a lot. It could be brilliantly entertaining when written well.
Filled with betrayal, regret, devastation, and revenge, just like how “The Count of Monte Cristo” was a legendary masterpiece despite fulfilling all the conditions of a Harem Heroine work.
Of course, expecting Harem Heroine web novel authors to have the same writing level as Alexandre Dumas was probably asking too much.
Yet when a genre goes into a flood, some certainly rise to the occasion.
Finding and reading those gems made the time fly by… So yeah, I could say I liked the Harem Heroine genre.
…Not anymore, though.
My site has received a lot of DMCA notices, lol. From now on, I will update the MTL on https://darkmtl.com/.
The site is fast and lightweight because there are no ads yet. However, the theme is different from Cybor-TL, so take some time to familiarize yourself.
Support me by donating at least $10, and you'll have the right to request any novel from Novelpia (excluding 19+ content) using a newly developed tool.