The Villainess With A Heroine Harem

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Although the experience and silver rewarded for each [Minor Tentacle Plant Demon] was quite high, thanks to its high level and ability to regenerate, it took their team a long time to take it down. 𝑏𝑒𝘥𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝘭.𝑛𝘦𝑡

But Emilia obviously knew that the forest surrounding the capital of Fire Kingdom wasn't an ideal place for newbies to farm experience, and even if they ventured deeper and searched for some other 'prey', their experience wouldn't be any better.

After forming a party, they could obviously pick any one of the remote cities that they'd originally come from and have a much easier time.

The reason Emilia led them here, though, was simple.

Grinding small mobs might be easy and efficient, but only taking on more challenging foes would prepare her team for tougher fights.

Of course, the fact that the drops from these monsters would help increase their reputation in the capital when sold to the right place also helped.

"Crystal, use your light arrow!"

"On it!"

Shortly into their second fight with the 'beast', Sylvia had discovered that arrows infused with the light element dealt a lot more damage to the [Minor Tentacle Plant Demon] once set on fire, much to Emilia's delight.

The fact that elements could be combined like that, and the weakness of demonic beasts against 'holy fire', was only supposed to be discovered much later, after all.

Although Sylvia wasn't very happy with her discovery, and was furious that her 'darkness' infused arrows dealt even less damage than they usually should, she didn't hesitate to share it.

Compared to Crystal's calm response, Danielle was a lot more surprised at the fact that Sylvia was willing to 'contribute' like this to the team.

Just a few days ago, she wouldn't have dared to even dream of such a thing. And yet, now it was happening right in front of her eyes.

"Wow! To be able to notice such a minor detail… Sylvia is really amazing!"

Looking at the beaming crimson-haired elf praising Sylvia, though, Danielle realized that it really wasn't that much of a surprise. 'I have the feeling that if she'd been born in ancient times, Emilia would have been the perfect 'demonic' concubine, brainwashing the emperor and the courtiers alike.'

She giggled. 'Luckily, she's just a silly little goofball.'

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Finding and killing the level twenty elite [Minor Tentacle Plant Demon] took them quite a while, and by the time the 'Crimson Witches' had fulfilled their goal for the day based on Emilia's demands, the sun was almost already down.

"The guards warned us not to stay out after sunset, so let's go back for now." The crimson-haired elf sighed. "Anyway, I'm sure everyone is tired, right?"

Danielle immediately groaned. "Don't remind me, I barely just managed to tune in out."

Nico also agreed with a pained grunt, making the rest of the team giggle.

Although it hadn't been obvious before, Nico and Danielle had discovered that using too much mana in a short time somehow seemed to give them some form of mental stress. And using mana potions to recover and repeat the process quickly led them to have a migraine that simply couldn't be fixed with 'Mend Wounds'.

Slyvia wasn't using her elemental infusion anymore, since it would only lower her efficiency because of the enemy's higher resistance to darkness, so she obviously didn't go through the same. And a [Rogue] like Robin naturally wouldn't waste mana potions needlessly either.

It wasn't all bad news, though. Being forced to use mana sparingly meant that they slowly learned better coordination and timing, and were also able to watch Emilia being entangled with a lot more 'vines' as she flipped and weaved around.

It was a pity that she seemed to have an item that allowed her to clean off the slime sticking to her silky skin after every fight, but even Robin wasn't stupid enough to complain about it out loud, lest Danielle burn off all the hair off her scalp.

As the only one privy to many of their secret thoughts, Crystal obviously couldn't contain her amused giggles all the time, but the glares she immediately attracted quickly made her raise her hands in surrender. "Oops."

Fortunately, no one else knew about her ability, and Emilia quickly came to her rescue with an excuse. "Don't mind her. It's not that much of a surprise that she didn't get a headache like everyone else. I didn't start calling her my lucky star without reason, after all."

Danielle couldn't help but roll her eyes. "I get that the two of you might have got a lot of good stuff earlier because she was lucky, but this and that are two very different things. You don't need to endure pain and pretend like that."

Although her tone was rude, Crystal could obviously feel that Danielle meant well deep down, so she didn't hesitate to use a more humble tone. "Thank you for your care. I'll… be more honest from now."

Having her true thoughts exposed, Danielle immediately exploded. "Who cares about you?!"

"Ohhh… I can't believe someone discovered that our captain was a big softie so quickly!"

"Like a cute little hedgehog!"

Danielle's eyes immediately turned red. "You two really want a beating?!"

"Eek!"

"Kyaaa!"

While Nico and Robin were 'teasing' their captain, Sylvia couldn't help but rub her chin in thought. 'So that's how it was… huh.'

Meanwhile, Crystal could only rub her nose in embarrassment.

Obviously, she would only be deceiving them by pretending to suffer so she can appear more normal, which was embarrassing enough for a straightforward girl like her. And Emilia's teasing gaze didn't help at all.

Unable to endure after a while, the blonde girl quickly took the lead in rushing back to the capital. "L-Let's get back quickly, I-I'll show you around the market!"

"Hey!"

"She ran away?!"

"Oops."

Only Emilia was able to keep up with the fleeing girl, making the rest of them sigh.

"That full agility build… it's really something else, huh? No wonder Emilia kept boasting about it."

"But I don't think it's suitable for everyone. Maybe only freaks like them can pull it off properly."

"Mhm."

Unknowingly, somehow, they'd already started treating Crystal as one of their own.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━