The Hero is Disappointed in You – Chapter 71

Ch 71: Karen Started Experimenting

“Haa… I want to go back to the Magic Tower.”

While the Hero was off getting his weapon fitted, Karen sat in the room the dwarves had prepared for her and muttered to herself.

From the start, Karen didn’t particularly like the Magic Tower.

The tower was full of all sorts of magic books, but the people inside were mostly just crazy old men obsessed with magic.

Karen loved magic more than anyone else and had a great thirst for knowledge, but there were limits to how much she could associate with those old men.

The fact that Karen was peeking outside the Magic Tower under the pretext of independent experiments was actually due to that reason as well.

But for the first time in her life, Karen was realizing just how peaceful and stable a place the Magic Tower was.

The human called Hero was savagely violent, and the dwarves were truly a cursed race that should disappear from the world.

For Karen, who had high self-esteem, the words the dwarves were spouting at her were just nonsense, but now it was a little different.

Karen, whose self-esteem had already been completely shattered by the Hero, was now cowering at the dwarves’ jokes about her appearance.

‘And I even went completely crazy.’

Karen suddenly thought, looking at her fingers.

The finger had a wound from being bitten by a skeletal lizard just before arriving in the dwarves’ city.

The Hero and the dwarves who had accompanied her didn’t say anything, but Karen remembered the situation clearly.

In the first place, she wasn’t completely gone mad, but rather closer to being drunk, if you had to say.

The moment she remembered her disgraceful behavior at that time, Karen’s face flushed.

Words that she didn’t even know where they came from popped out of her mouth against her will, and she was doing bizarre body movements that even zombies would avoid.

‘How on earth did I get into that state?’

But after all, she was the genius magician of the Magic Tower, and a woman who couldn’t resist her curiosity.

Karen objectively looked back on her condition at the time and began to analyze what principle had caused her to fall into that state.

Certainly, as the Hero said, the body tended to get used to pain little by little.

The road to climb the mountain to the city where the dwarves lived was hard enough to die, but after sweating a lot, she felt strangely refreshed.

And at that moment when she was spouting nonsense like a crazy person, Karen felt a strange sensation that all physical pain disappeared and her body was floating.

Karen pondered about that heterogeneous sensation and recalled one old memory.

It was a memory about one of the old magicians in the Magic Tower, who craved spicy food to the point that people couldn’t understand.

━Do you find that delicious?

━Ah, it’s not delicious. But you know, when I eat this, I feel great.

Curiosity was piqued by that answer, and Karen tasted the food that the magician was eating, and almost said goodbye to her life.

The magician, who burst into laughter at the sight of Karen stomping her feet and gulping down water, began to explain to her why he sought spicy food.

━Kilkilkik. Karen-ah. This doesn’t just happen. This brain of ours needs time to adapt.

━Adapt?

Karen wiped her tongue with water and asked a question at the sight of the magician tapping his head with his finger.

━That’s right. The brain is amazing, when it feels pain, it releases medicinal properties to withstand it. If you become skilled like me, these medicinal properties will flow out constantly and you’ll become intoxicated. That state also drives people crazy, so it’s better not to even try it, because if you taste it once, you’ll become addicted.

The magician, who was crazy about spicy food, explained it to Karen like that, and Karen just listened and passed it on.

But Karen now thought that she might have tasted the medicinal properties that the brain was spewing out.

‘Yeah, in fact, when you think about it, getting punched in the stomach isn’t necessarily bad…’

Karen, recalling her conversation with the magician who was crazy about spicy food, naturally thought of the Hero.

At first, when she was punched with a fist, she felt a tremendous shock that seemed to twist all her internal organs, but as the Hero said, she was getting used to it as she repeated it.

Of course, Karen wasn’t quite at the point where she liked getting punched in the stomach yet.

She only felt that the pain was different depending on which part of the abdomen she was hit.

First of all, in the case of the upper abdomen, she felt like her breath was being cut off and the world was spinning around, and she lost consciousness as quickly as that.

If she was hit slightly below that, she would naturally throw up, and if she was hit near her navel further down from there, she would feel the shock of her internal organs twisting.

The problem was when she was hit slightly below her navel.

It was clearly a part where she felt more pain than when she was hit near her navel, but she felt a subtle pleasure creeping up between the pain.

‘Could it be that that part is a place that stimulates the brain?’

Karen thought that the strange liquid that was on her panties was probably because her brain was stimulated.

Karen was more intelligent than anyone else, but she lacked sexual information, and thanks to that, she came to a strange conclusion.

And all that was left for her, a born magician, to do was to confirm that assumption.

“Hmm.”

Karen clenched her small fist and quickly tapped the area near her lower abdomen.

Of course, it wasn’t easy to hit her own body, and she lost strength in her fist because she was frightened while hitting it.

“This…is not it.”

It was an intensity that couldn’t be compared to what the Hero was hitting at all.

Karen sighed lightly and clenched her fist again.

Just as pain becomes accustomed, the emotion of fear also tends to fade little by little.

Karen punched her lower abdomen a little harder than before.

“Ugh!”

Twitch, twitch.

Karen’s body, which had struck her abdomen herself, began to tremble faintly.

She clearly felt painful pain, but at the same time, a subtle pleasure began to heal her body.

‘It’s…out again?’

Karen felt her underwear getting a little wet and judged that her assumption was correct.

^^^

“Ugh!”

‘What’s going on this time?’

I had just finished my request to Catherine and was about to see Karen.

Anyway, I was a little worried about her condition before arriving at the dwarf village.

But when I opened the door assigned to Karen and went inside, I couldn’t say anything because of the absurdity.

That’s because Karen was hurting herself by hitting her own stomach.

“…Haa!”

What was even more absurd was Karen’s behavior after hurting herself.

She was writhing in pain, and then suddenly making strange moans and twisting her legs, which was definitely far from normal.

“…Are you okay?”

“Kyaak!”

In the end, I asked Karen that, and she, who was absorbed in self-harm, finally found me and screamed.

“Wh-what? Without knocking.”

“Sorry about that. But are you really okay?”

Knocking was really a trivial matter compared to Karen’s condition right now.

It was a big problem that Karen, who I had to use for a long time to come, tasted so bland that she was hurting herself.

I could see Karen’s face turning red in an instant as she read my worried expression.

“Th-this is, well, an experiment.”

“Experiment?”

I tilted my head as I watched Karen answer alone without me even asking.

Karen’s eyes were shaking at my reaction, but she was still continuing to make excuses.

“Hero, I was just experimenting to see if I could get used to pain as you said.”

“So?”

“So what is so?”

“No, so what are the results of the experiment?”

I could see Karen’s face turning red again at my question.

I didn’t know the results of Karen’s self-harm experiment, but I was able to confirm one thing: that a person’s skin can turn red in stages.

“Ah, still, experimenting.”

“Really? Then let me know when it’s confirmed later.”

I said that to Karen and chuckled.

It was because I felt like Karen was slowly breaking down, just like Zenoa had strangely broken down.

“You were here.”

At that time, James’ voice was heard from outside the door that I had opened and entered.

I looked at James, who was standing outside the door with a serious expression, and so did Karen.

“What’s wrong?”

“A messenger has come from the Demon King Army.”

I tilted my head at James’ words.

The Demon King Army that I knew didn’t have the kindness to send messengers to the enemy.

Moreover, Bahamonz was definitely not the kind of person to do this.

He was the Lord of Death who cursed all living things and represented the dead.

“Let’s go. Everyone is waiting for you.”

James said that to me and Karen, and I began to follow him with a uneasy expression.