Chastity-Reversed Hard Mode: Surviving as a Steel-Minded Adventurer in Another World - Chapter 07: “I’ve Been Watching Your Struggles All Along”

Chapter 07: “I’ve Been Watching Your Struggles All Along”

Back in her furnished apartment room, Irene plopped down onto the bed with a soft thump. The moment she sat, the exhaustion of drunkenness came crashing over her.

Staring up at the pitch-black ceiling, she couldn’t help but wonder—what was Yuji doing right now?

Yuji was staying at the guild’s designated inn, where every night he was placed in a room with a peephole. Everyone in the guild knew about it. It was part of Deabolica’s scheme—a way to vent the heat of the escalating competition over Yuji, and at the same time, to show off the “grand prize.”

Yuji’s bare body had basically become shared jerk-off material for the entire guild.

Irene had never once gone to peep. She genuinely despised her seniors who ogled Yuji like that. Just imagining him being exposed to those filthy, lust-filled stares every night made her blood boil until she thought she might lose control.

Honestly, she sometimes dreamed about grabbing Yuji and eloping to some other city—whether he agreed or not.

But… if she actually tried that now, would Yuji really come with her?

“Well… if you confessed, he’d probably fall for you. But then the guild master would never allow it.”

“Yeah. Doing that would smear mud on Deabolica’s face. Worst case, you’d get erased.”

“He’s a flower too far out of reach, Irene. Be satisfied just admiring him from afar.”

Her companions’ warnings echoed in her mind.

Deabolica, the guild master, was the third daughter of the local gentry lord who governed this city. In this region, her family’s power was practically equal to royalty. The heirship was already promised to her eldest sister, but Deabolica herself still held considerable political influence.

Otherwise, there was no way an eighteen-year-old girl could control an adventurers’ guild full of rowdy brutes.

She was ambitious, too. Rumors even said she had her eyes on a seat in the central parliament. Using Yuji to stir up competition inside the guild was no doubt part of her strategy—to build her base and rack up achievements.

If Irene ever ruined those plans by stealing Yuji away, Deabolica would never forgive it. No matter how far Irene fled, she would be hunted down relentlessly, destroyed without mercy, and Yuji would be taken back.

After all, she was just a lowborn slum girl. There was no way she could outrun someone like that.

Irene flopped back on the bed and stretched her right hand toward the ceiling. Her vision blurred, the outline of her fingers wavering like smoke.

“Ah… I want power…”

By luck and talent, Irene had managed to climb far enough to earn citizenship and rent this small apartment. For someone born in the slums, this alone was a miraculous success.

She no longer had to lie shivering on cold floors, listening to strangers cough all around her, fighting over filthy, lice-ridden blankets, praying through frosty breaths for morning to come. Now, morning arrived without suffering.

But while she had escaped those nights, Yuji—the one who had lifted her up to this point—was spending his days forced to endure the lustful gazes of vulgar women, his body devoured by their eyes.

Just thinking about it made her feel like she would lose her mind.

“Yuji…”

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She remembered the day she first met him.

It was half a year ago, back when Irene was still just another slum kid.

There was this odd young man—strange because, despite being male, he went out every single day to hunt Big-Horned Rabbits all by himself.

For slum children, this was unheard of. They had been taught from the start that men’s work was sewing, babysitting, and house chores. Seeing a young man actually out in the wild was something entirely new.

The only man they knew was the dried-up old priest at the orphanage.

So of course they were fascinated.

And then there was how he fought.

The kids watched, wide-eyed, as this young man clumsily struggled for tens of minutes just to bring down a rabbit that even they could hunt.

“Wait—you’re an adult and you can’t even beat a rabbit?”

“You should quit trying to be an adventurer, big brother. Just get married already.”

Yes, there was some teasing in their voices, but mostly it came from genuine concern.

Because no matter how you looked at him, he didn’t seem suited to being an adventurer. He had zero magic aura, and his spear work was sloppy as hell. Even slum kids could tell he’d never been properly trained. At this rate, sooner or later, he was going to slip up and get skewered by a rabbit’s horn.

And yet… his jet-black hair gleamed with a luster they had never seen before. To kids used to nothing but red or gold-haired people, his black hair looked breathtakingly beautiful.

The thought of something that beautiful being killed by a mere rabbit and lost forever—it felt unbearable.

That was why they wished for him to quit adventuring quickly and just get married, so he could live a happy life.

But no matter what anyone said, he stubbornly insisted he would rise as an adventurer, and kept challenging Big-Horned Rabbits alone.

Even though everyone knew—you could hunt a hundred of those things and still never rise in rank.

It was such an obvious fact that even slum kids understood it. Why didn’t he?

Then, one day.

As usual, the slum kids headed out to hunt Big-Horned Rabbits.

Leading the group was Irene. She was the only one who knew even the basics of magic, and as the oldest among them, she was their natural leader.

That morning, the ground was treacherous. Rain had fallen through the night, leaving the earth muddy and slick.

On Brishav Island, Big-Horned Rabbits had multiplied so wildly that they stripped every patch of grass bare. The fields were nothing but exposed dirt. Add rain, and the whole place turned into a mud pit.

Everyone knew mornings after rain were dangerous—you had to step carefully.

But still, they let their guard down.

The rabbit they spotted that day was a big one, larger than usual. Just imagining how much meat they’d get for dinner stew had them licking their lips before the fight even began.

As always, they spread out to surround the rabbit. Irene, gripping a wooden shield reinforced with magic, taunted the beast to draw its charge, bracing herself to block it—while the others stabbed from every direction with their spears.

It was the same routine they always used. A simple, practiced hunt.

But that day, Irene’s foot slipped just as she braced against the Big-Horned Rabbit’s charge.

The muddy ground couldn’t hold against the weight of such a beast. Losing her balance, Irene dropped her wooden shield.

The next thing she saw when she looked up—were blazing red eyes filled with murderous intent, and a massive horn about to skewer her face.

—Ah. I’m dead.

A sickening squelch echoed, and something warm splattered across her face.

…It took her a moment to realize there was no pain. Maybe it had only been a split second—but to her, it felt like an eternity.

When Irene dared to open her eyes, she found a broad back standing in front of her.

“Ahh, that hurts. Wait—this horn went right through my leather armor? Doesn’t that make wearing armor kinda pointless?”

“Big Brother…?”

In the instant before Irene was pierced, the young man from the East had thrown himself in between.

The rabbit’s horn had impaled him straight through the stomach, jutting out of his back. But instead of collapsing, he had wrapped his arms around the beast’s neck, veins bulging as he used sheer strength to pin it against his own body.

“Your stomach—you’re bleeding!!”

“It’s fine. I’ve got high pain resistance. Besides, I read in a manga once that if you pull something like this out, you’ll just bleed out faster.”

He spoke calmly, as if the wound didn’t even hurt.

It was unbelievable mental strength. Any grown woman stabbed through the gut would’ve been screaming. But this man not only endured it—he was clamping the rabbit’s horn in place, refusing to let it slip free.

“Why…?”

“What do you mean why? If a kid’s being attacked, of course you help.”

The young man clenched his teeth hard, muscles straining, yet somehow still managed a wry smile.

“Anyway, hurry up and finish this thing off. I don’t have much time before I’m the one who dies here.”

Snapping out of their shock, the kids scrambled to thrust their spears into the rabbit’s back. The beast shrieked and thrashed, but the young man never faltered—shielding Irene, who had collapsed in terror and couldn’t even move, until the monster finally went still.

“Ahhh, great. My armor’s wrecked, and now I’ve had to use my precious potion too.”

He poured the potion straight onto his gaping wound with a glug glug, hissing, “Ahh, it stings.”

Later, Irene would learn that dumping potion directly into an open wound, while effective, was absolutely forbidden without anesthesia. The regeneration pain was so unbearable it could break even an adult’s mind. Drinking it orally was the norm. “Ahh, it stings” was not supposed to be a casual remark.

The wound bubbled and foamed as it knitted itself back together. Catching Irene’s wide-eyed stare, the man chuckled lightly and waved it off.

“Don’t worry about it. The armor and potion were borrowed from the guild’s storage anyway. I’m not about to make you kids pay me back.”

“…Didn’t it hurt?”

“Oh, it hurt. It hurt like hell. I thought I was gonna lose my mind.”

But then he scratched at his black hair and added casually—

“Still… letting a kid die right in front of me would’ve hurt way worse than getting skewered.”

Ah… this man is going to die.

That was what Irene thought.

How could someone so naïve even exist?

A man willing to throw himself in harm’s way for poor slum kids the city guards wouldn’t even bother to save… and of all things, he wanted to become an adventurer?

He would never live long. He’d keep repeating the same reckless acts, and someday, without anyone even noticing, he’d end up dying in a ditch.

The noble spirit the Brishav people so admired.

That beautiful black hair, shining like no one else’s.

All of it, rotting away alone, forgotten by the world?

No. She couldn’t allow that. Not ever.

“Ah, I forgot to ask—…you’re not hurt, are you?”

—I’ll be the one to protect him.

Clutching his rough, calloused hand in both of hers, the girl made her vow.

Once Irene made up her mind, she moved fast.

She begged and pleaded with the older orphans who had already left the orphanage, swearing she’d pay them back, until she scraped together enough for the guild registration fee.

Then she marched straight to the Adventurers’ Guild.

Thanks to a word from that young man, she was allowed to take the aptitude test.

And when she passed, a warm feeling spread in her chest—proof, she believed, that he really had seen her.

But then.

That was when she learned the ugly truth.

That same young man—Yuji—was now the prize in a brutal contest, a “husband-to-be” fought over by adventurers… and on top of that, his naked body was being ogled every night through a peephole room.

“Big Brother, I did it—I became an adventurer! Let’s form a party! From now on, I’ll be the one who—”

“…Sorry, who are you again?”

For Yuji, she was nothing more than “one of those kids he saw around sometimes.”

That cruel reality hit hard.

Even though Irene had left the street kids behind and become her own person, Yuji never connected her to those memories. In his head, she was just another face in the crowd.

Unable to bear it, Irene had walked away without a word and joined another party that needed a frontliner.

And maybe it was only natural that, whenever she saw Yuji after that, all she could do was lash out at him with sharp words. It was her heart’s way of defending itself.

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“*sniff…”

Irene hugged her pillow tight.

If she didn’t, the tears spilling from her eyes would drown her.

“yuji…”

She lay like that for a while, motionless in the dark. Then, slowly, she began to fidget.

(Join us already… You’ll find out soon enough that using that sweet, aching frustration as material makes it hit way harder…)

“…”

The trashy words of her so-called “adult” party members echoed in her head.

“…That’s not true.”

It wasn’t like that. The feelings she held for him—her big brother—were purer, gentler than that.

But still…

Whenever she thought about him, her body felt restless.

She couldn’t sleep like this.

Just a little. Just a tiny bit. Just to try it.

Schlick…

“Ahh ♥ Aahh ♥ Big brother ♥”

It was the most intense release of her life.

Her mind was already long gone.

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Clink.

I thought I heard something jingle in my pocket, so I quickly patted myself down while standing in front of the vending machine.

And what I pulled out was—

“Cheat coins!”

The same nostalgic coins I’d first seen half a year ago in that strange void.

And not just one—five of them! That was enough to buy half an Inferno Dragon God Set!

Whoa, seriously? This was amazing.

But… why now?

“Ahhh, I get it. My rabbit-hunting finally paid off, huh?”

All that time spent grinding away, hunting rabbits day after day—it had to be recognized eventually.

Even in a world with no such thing as “level-ups,” I believed that as long as there were adventurers, killing monsters had to earn me coins. That faith had kept me going.

And now? Finally rewarded.

Ahhh, I could almost cry… and to think I didn’t even shed tears when I got skewered by a rabbit.

Still, shouldn’t there have been some kind of announcement?

Like, if a god suddenly descended and said—

“I’ve been watching your struggles all along.”

“You really did well, didn’t you?”

“At last, your patience is rewarded with immense riches!”

—then yeah, I’d probably end up punching them right in the face out of embarrassment.

Just as I was mulling that over while staring at the coins, the long-awaited announcement finally came.

≪Congratulations!

You have unlocked the achievement: [Used as Fap Material 10,000 Times].

Reward: 5 Cheat Coins.≫

…Come down here right now, god. I owe your face a fist.