Me, the Weakest Member of the Hero’s Party? I’m the Villain Though? - Chapter 9
When we returned to the rest of the group, the atmosphere was unusually tense. For a moment, I worried that they had been attacked by monsters as well, but fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case.
“Kyle, hurry up! That suspicious guy from yesterday disappeared—”
Gerard, who had been sitting on a tree stump, jumped up and shouted. But as soon as he saw me standing beside Kyle, his words trailed off.
…Did he just call me suspicious?
I thought I had done a decent job blending in, but apparently, I still looked suspicious. It wasn’t surprising, but hearing it out loud still stung a little.
“He didn’t disappear. We just took a bath together.”
I almost snapped back, “When the hell did I bathe with you?” but held my tongue. I had just decided to speak less, and arguing over small things wasn’t worth it.
“Heavens, Lysian! What happened to your arm?”
Elonen, who had been packing up his belongings, cried out in alarm when he noticed my injury.
“Ah, just a low-ranked monster attack. Elonen, can you take care of it?”
“Of course! I’ll heal you right away.”
At Kyle’s casual explanation, Elonen hurriedly took my arm and inspected it.
“Oh no, the wound is so deep! How are you not even showing any pain? At least there’s no contamination… but if it had been any worse, you might have lost your arm!”
Hearing the word contamination triggered a memory from the novel. Monsters naturally carried miasma, and any injury inflicted by them would normally fester and rot.
But since my own miasma was stronger than that of most monsters, my wound hadn’t shown any signs of decay yet.
“Hurry up and heal him. If it were Gerard, he’d be whining about dying by now.”
“What?! As if I’d ever get injured by such weaklings.”
While Gerard grumbled, Elonen placed his hand over my wound, his expression serious.
“You’ll be fine in no time.”
A bright light radiated from his palm, enveloping my arm in a warm, soothing sensation. It felt like a gentle heat pack, easing the pain away.
Meanwhile, Gerard shot me a disapproving look and muttered under his breath.
“You’re weak, yet you had the nerve to enter the forest alone? No matter how valuable gloomwood is… Tsk.”
Gloomwood? A term I had never heard before made my brows furrow. I had a vague guess, but surely, it couldn’t be what I thought.
“Gerard, what’s gloomwood?”
Elonen looked up while still casting his healing spell, curious as well. At least I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what it was.
“Trees that grow in highly miasmic areas absorb the miasma deep into their cores, making them valuable materials for crafting magical artifacts. Since they can only be harvested from monster-infested forests, they’re considered rare and precious.”
I nearly gaped in shock. So there really were woodcutters venturing into miasma-filled forests?!
I had just made up that excuse, thinking it was a half-baked lie, but it somehow had a plausible reason behind it to make it work perfectly.
“So that’s why you risked your life to come here and cut wood. You’ve overcome your fears, how admirable!”
Elonen smiled warmly as he said this.
No matter how I looked at it, Elonen was probably the kindest person in this group. Or at least, that’s what I thought.
Until, suddenly, a memory surfaced.
“I absolutely despise liars. But don’t worry, I can reattach severed fingers just fine. So I’ll cut them off and reattach them as many times as it takes. Even if we have to stay up all night, I’ll keep going until you decide to tell the truth.”
The chilling words that suddenly resurfaced in my mind were a line from the original novel. Elonen had spoken them while interrogating a captured villain—one of the remnants of an enemy faction he had hunted down.
They say the smiling ones are the scariest. Turns out, that saying was absolutely true. I silently vowed never to cross Elonen.
“Anyway, you’re suspicious in more ways than one. You’re weak enough to be injured by a low-ranked monster, yet you still thought it was a good idea to come out here alone to cut wood? Most professional gloomwood harvesters can handle low-tier monsters with ease.”
Gerard muttered, his voice full of doubt. Kyle, however, lightly elbowed him in the ribs—just enough to get his attention, but not enough to hurt.
