Silence.
After the scream, the world held its breath. The echoes of my rage seemed to hang in the stale inn room air, thick and suffocating. My throat burned. My chest heaved, breath catching in ragged gasps. Tears, hot and stinging, streamed down my face, carving paths through the grime and sweat of the past few days. It wasn't sadness. It was pure, unadulterated fury, raw and corrosive, burning away everything but the desire to move. To strike. To shatter.
The crumpled letter lay near my feet, an obscene white flag of surrender and dismissal. The money bag, a small, heavy sac of coins, sat beside it, radiating an aura of smug finality. Fifty gold. Fifty gods-damned gold coins. For everything. For enduring that puppy Motoyasu, for crafting a scheme complex enough to fool a Hero, for suppressing every survival instinct that screamed at me to kill him when he dared to touch me. Fifty gold coins to wipe away my loyalty, my effort, my desperate hope. It wasn't payment. It was an insult. A mockery. A physical manifestation of his contempt.
My hands trembled, not with fear, but with a raw, barely contained power that threatened to rip the room apart. Every muscle screamed for release, for motion, for the satisfaction of breaking something – preferably his smug, infuriating face.
How?
That one question echoed in the space the scream had left behind. How had he known? How had he anticipated? I had planned this meticulously. Waited for the girls to be asleep. Found the unlocked window. Moved like a ghost through the inn. There was no way he could have known I was coming. No way he could have known what I wanted.
Unless... Unless he wasn't just the dense, shield-obsessed idiot he pretended to be. Unless those fleeting moments of impossible speed, of unsettling perception, were more than just flukes. He'd been too quick to call my bluff about Motoyasu being too precious. Too quick to understand the real reason behind my 'insane conditions'. He saw through the performance, through the lies I fed Motoyasu. But then... why play along? Why let the duel happen? Why not just ditch Myne himself?
Unless... unless he played along precisely because he knew. Because he knew my scheme would make me endure Motoyasu for him. Because he knew it would bind the girls to him through shared trauma. Because he knew it would force me to look like the villain, solidifying their trust in him.
That bastard. That manipulative, infuriating bastard.
He used me. Used my loyalty, my desperation, my willingness to do anything for him, to clean up his mess, secure his companions, and then... and then he just threw me away like a broken tool. Left me with fifty gold coins and a polite note. As if that made everything okay.
My rage boiled over anew. I lunged forward, not towards the window, but towards the money bag. My boot lashed out, connecting with the soft leather sack with a sickening thud. Coins scattered across the floor, glittering like a thousand tiny, mocking eyes in the dim light.
"Keep your damn money!" I screamed, the words raw and hoarse. It wasn't enough. Nothing he could ever give me would be enough to compensate for this.
I snatched up the crumpled letter, smoothing it out with shaking hands. Read his words again, each stroke of ink a fresh insult. 'Needed to move quickly'. 'Couldn't take risks'. 'Task completed'. Task. That's all I was. A task.
A bitter, humorless laugh bubbled up, bordering on a sob. Task. Right. And I, the level 55 adventurer, the girl who survived monsters, bandits, and attempted rape, the girl who planned and executed the downfall of a princess's position, was just a convenient errand girl. A weapon to be deployed and then discarded.
But discarded weapons could still be dangerous.
The raw fury, the pain of betrayal, began to transmute. It didn't disappear, but it hardened. Coiled tighter. Became sharper, colder. Pure rage was messy. This... this was focus.
He wanted to run? Fine. Let him run. Let him think he's safe. Let him think a simple note and fifty gold coins were enough to erase me from his life.
He would learn.
He would learn that Alna didn't forget. Alna didn't forgive easily. And Alna always collected what was owed.
I forced myself to breathe, deep, shaky breaths. The shaking in my hands subsided, replaced by a familiar, steady calm. The same calm that settled over me before a kill.
He took the girls, the letter said. Raphtalia and Rifana. Good. At least they were safe. He hadn't abandoned them. Just me. The tool.
Where would he go? Back to Riyute? Unlikely. Too close, too exposed after the duel and this sudden disappearance. To the capital? Possibly, but risky. The Waves were coming, yes, but the political mess was worse. Where else would a Shield Hero who wanted to get strong, who had just acquired powerful demi-human companions, go?
Demi-human villages. Secure locations. Places where he might be less hated. Places where they could train in peace. And I knew this country. I knew the likely routes. The hidden paths. The rumors would follow him, yes, but I wouldn't rely on rumors.
I relied on myself.
I left the crumpled letter on the floor, a monument to his betrayal. The money bag remained scattered, a testament to his insult. I slipped back out the window as silently as I had arrived, a shadow melting back into the predawn darkness.
The inn slept on, oblivious to the storm that had just passed through one of its rooms. Let them sleep. Their mundane lives were irrelevant.
My focus was singular. Naofumi.
He ran. But I was a hunter. And the chase... was only just beginning. He thought he was ridding himself of a problem? He had just made himself my sole objective. And I wouldn't stop until I found him. Until he faced me. And until he understood that you don't just throw away someone like me. Not if you want to live peacefully.
That night, leaving capital behind, the taste in my mouth was ash. The ash of betrayal. But mixed with it was a new, sharper flavor. The taste of a promise. A promise I made to myself. He would regret leaving me. He would regret it more than anything else.
And I would make sure of it.