Evil Dragon, Without a Princess, I Had to Transform Myself!-Chapter 62 : Confession

Too noisy.
The streets were filled with the clamor of carriages and the panicked voices of people.
The setting sun cast its glow upon the smoke of battle, gold and black intertwining. Loranhir stood as if enveloped in darkness. After a long pause, she leaned the holy sword against the wall beside her, making no attempt to draw it.
As if the holy sword didn’t exist for her at all.
Loranhir slowly sat down on the steps, resting her forehead in her hands.
The wind blew against her, chilling her to the bone, from her heart all the way down to her feet.
For the first time in her life, the hero felt loneliness and loss, as though she had fallen into a bottomless abyss she could never climb out of.
She had truly had enough.
Her heart thumped wildly, restless and agitated, as if desperate to announce its presence, sending drum-like echoes reverberating through her.
Loranhir didn’t know why the so-called Heart of the Red Queen was pounding so loudly.
But she… wasn’t afraid, was she?
Ever since the day she was born, the sound of her heartbeat had been abnormally loud, almost like the booming of war drums. Loranhir didn’t understand why she was the only one among her peers with such an anomaly, nor why she had been chosen by the holy sword to become the hero.
The sound of the Heart of the Red Queen quickly drew the attention of the panicked crowd, who recognized the famed hero at once.
“The undead—the undead army is coming! The lich is going to raze this city to the ground!”
“Look, it’s the hero!”
“Hero! The hero is over here!”
Loranhir longed for recognition—for the gaze of others. Yet at the same time, when those gazes converged upon her, she felt suffocated, uneasy.
The reason was simple: she could do nothing.
Neither the holy sword nor the title of hero had ever truly accomplished anything.
When Loranhir saw Patunasankus emerge from the thick smoke, she felt none of the relief she had in the past.
On the contrary, with every unharmed step the princess took, the fire in her heart burned fiercer, swelling as if magnified a hundredfold.
It was always like this. Always this damned luck. Every time, she was the one who put the princess in danger, only to stumble upon her unscathed by sheer chance.
Loranhir hated this fragile, powerless hope—this feeling of treading on thinning ice, trembling with every step.
Enough. Enough. She had truly had enough!
Loranhir told herself not to be a coward.
The worst thing was disappointing others—more terrifying than death itself.
She had to act like a true hero, no matter what she truly felt inside.
In silence, Loranhir walked up to Patunasankus and looked down at the princess before her.
Gazing at this flawless, innocent girl, the tiny spark in her heart suddenly flared, swelling until it threatened to consume her in its warmth.
“What’s wrong? Is there something on my face?”
Patunasankus asked, slightly worried that Loranhir might press her for answers.
The evil dragon hadn’t yet figured out how to explain how she had escaped unscathed.
But suddenly, the hero before her seemed unfamiliar.
Patunasankus studied Loranhir closely. She noticed that Loranhir’s eyes were now a dull gold, giving her an eerie sense of déjà vu."I'm a fake hero."
Loranhir got straight to the point. She should have confessed like this long ago—someone as useless as her didn’t deserve to stay by the Princess’s side.
"...?"
Patunasankus tilted her head, not understanding what the other meant.
"I might be the worst hero in the world, the worst in history, the absolute worst of the worst."
Loranhir raised her voice.
"I’m just an ordinary person, and me becoming a hero and pulling out that so-called holy sword was just an accident! The real hero should be someone else. I’ve been lying to all of you—there was never any Heart of the Red Queen. Never."
Patunasankus stared straight at her face, her delicate brows slightly furrowed. Even with that expression, she was breathtakingly beautiful.
"The Promised Hero, the pinnacle of heroes, all those ridiculous titles—it’s all absurd! I’m just a liar through and through! I’m not strong at all, just some village girl! There was never any so-called hero! The one who’s been by your side this whole time is nothing but a complete fraud!"
"…"
Patunasankus remained silent.
For the first time, Loranhir heard a voice rise from the deepest part of her chest, filled with both relief and tears.
No, she couldn’t cry.
She held back the tears, choking them down, only to let out a stranger, more stifled sob—like the bizarre cry of some tropical bird.
"Well, this is the real me. Pathetic, right? Go ahead and laugh if you want. I don’t care. You’d be right to laugh at me."
She didn’t even know why she was suddenly so emotional. It was just that so many words had been bottled up inside her for so long, with no chance to speak them.
"I know I’m worthless, but I couldn’t just stand by and watch myself live like a coward, waiting to die. Everything I’ve ever done—if it went wrong, it’s because I’m stupid. If it went right, it’s just dumb luck. The people I care about either don’t understand me or just let me keep lying to myself."
Loranhir’s breaths came painfully, like her entire miserable life.
"I’m scared. I’m really scared. But what scares me even more is disappointing the people around me! I’m suffering, but what’s even worse is that I’m still the same person I’ve always been. I’m here because I want someone—anyone—to change me, to make me into someone I’m not."
There wasn’t a trace of hesitation in Loranhir’s voice.
She was simply expressing her feelings in the most direct, most honest way possible.
But from the princess’s icy, expressionless demeanor, there was no way to tell what she truly thought of her.
Fear, fear—everything was fear! What a hateful word!
But what good did hating it do?
What needed to be done still had to be done. There were no excuses left to hide behind.
In the past, she had always been like water at 80 degrees—never quite mustering the courage to boil.
"That person is you!" Loranhir shouted.
Slowly, she began to feel a scorching heat.
That heat started in her heart, spreading outward.
Her palms grew slightly warm, and with that warmth came a rising desire—something inside her straining to burst free.
"Sorry… I got a little carried away…"Loranhir stood up, the novel emotion filling her heart terrifying her, while the biting cold wind cut against her face—a sensation she had never experienced before.
"I'll leave now, so the Princess need not worry about being deceived by me anymore."
Loranhir reflected on her identity as an outright fraud, then glanced at the princess's radiant and pristine appearance.
Silently, she rose to her feet, ready to depart.
She had to go kill a lich.
She couldn’t burden the princess any longer.
She needed an army. An army capable of annihilating hordes of undead.
Anyone’s would do, even if they were her enemies.
Loranhir coldly uttered the words.
"Judgment Knight Order."