Volume 1 - CH 1

Chapter 1 – Lie

When Eto returned to the stable where he would sleep tonight, his party member, Lana, appeared.

“… Eto, where did you go until this late?”

Lana asked somewhat hesitantly.

“I was just hunting for monsters outside the town. What’s wrong? Do you have some business with me?”

“Hunting for monsters…why are you doing that? Even though we just arrived in this town this evening!”

Eto was surprised at Lana’s strong tone. However, since he has never talked about hunting for monsters alone to them, it may be unavoidable for her to have such a reaction.

“Well, that’s true, but… Hero-sama doesn’t give me any reward after all, so I have to at least make some money just for food.”

While being embarrassed, Eto explained the reason why he went out of town in the lightest tone possible.

Hearing that, Lana cast her eyes downward and sank into silence.

In actuality, Eto didn’t want Lana to know that the Hero-sama doesn’t recognize his work, resulting in him not giving Eto any reward. Let alone reward, the Hero didn’t even give Eto a room in the inn, so Eto had to ask the innkeeper to rent a corner of the stable at a low price.

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Two years have passed since Eto joined the Hero’s party. During that time, the treatment he received inside the party got worse and worse. For the past year or so, the situation where he didn’t get any reward and couldn’t stay at the inn continued even until now.

“I… heard about it, you know…”

Suddenly, Lana started speaking in a lower voice than usual. Eto doesn’t know what kind of expression she is making right now because her face was still cast downwards.

“Heard what? About how I didn’t get any reward?”

“Not that!”

Lana replied strongly.

“About how Eto played with women in various towns! That’s how you spend your money, that’s how you always run out of money, right? It seems Hero-sama has also warned you many times. Despite that, Eto still plays with women, so Hero-sama didn’t give you a room in the inn as punishment!”

Eto couldn’t understand what Lana was saying. He used his money to play with women? If he couldn’t even have enough money to get an enjoyable meal, there is no way he could play with women, right?

Why did Hero-sama tell her such a lie? Well, if it’s that person who looked down on Eto, he may tell such a lie half-jokingly.

More importantly, how could Lana who was from the same village as himself and had been with him since she was little believed that? For Eto, that was the most shocking thing that he heard.

“Looks like you couldn’t say anything to that…”

When Eto was unable to respond to her soon enough, Lana stood up, tried to leave Eto at the place

“Wait, Lana. I didn’t play with women!”

“… Alright, stop it. You even lied about not getting any reward from Hero-sama…. I’m really disappointed in you, Eto.”

Lana said so and started walking towards the entrance of the inn.

“Lana! T-that’s not true!”

Eto shouted. However, without looking back, Lana went into the inn just like that.

“Why…why does Lana believe what Hero-sama said more than me….”

Needless to say, Eto’s muttering didn’t reach anyone and disappeared into the darkness of the night.