The water shortage had been far worse than Vandal had thought. He heard later that if things hadn’t changed within a few years, the villagers would have been forced to abandon their home.
“Where are you heading to next, Lord Vandal?”
“The Second Pioneer Village,” Vandal replied.
He was flying again, using his communication magic item—the shrunken goblin head—to talk to Eleonora and the others.
“Might I ask, why are you visiting all the villages, Lord Vandal?” Eleonora asked. “The purpose of this trip is to register with the adventurers’ guild, correct?”
“Don’t be like that. Helping people is good.”
“You’re doing good, King! By the way, I met a—”
“If you stand out too much, you might catch the attention of more vampires who worship Hihiryu-Shukaka,” Eleonora cut in. “I don’t think you should stir things up too much.”
Zulan seemed keen on the people of the Heartner Domain, a region he had traded with back when he was alive. Eleonora, however, maintained her stance that Vandal needed to register with the adventurers’ guild as quickly as possible. Her concern was a practical one: taking risks for these people, who weren’t even residents of Talosheim, without much hope of reward was simply reckless.
A normal passerby would probably think, “That’s pretty rough,” but then carry on. A Magician with healing magic might have helped out Iwan at the Seventh Pioneer Village. But would he have then also gone to the fifth village as well? And then to the others? Someone with no obligation, who wasn’t even an adventurer?
True, Vandal hadn’t really gained anything from his efforts. He had earned gratitude and respect from poor folk, rough lodgings and crude meals, and promises of building shrines to Vida. None of these things would help him to achieve his goals. He could register as an adventurer regardless. Even his desire to eventually become a noble didn’t rely on the support or opinions of those at the bottom of society’s barrel. His charity wouldn’t help him being back Dalshia or kill Heinz and the others left on his shit list. Rather, he was only increasing the risk of the enemy vampires finding them—that was how Eleonora saw it.
“I do see your point, but if I can help them, surely I should,” Vandal replied. “There’s no harm in a good deed, as they say. Karma comes back around.”
“They do? It does?” Based on Eleonora’s life experience, Vandal’s reply sounded like the argument of a naïve child.
“That’s right,” Vandal assured her. Vandal was confident precisely because he believed in the ugly, stupid, vindictive, evil nature of people—he couldn’t deny the presence of those qualities even in himself.
However, that truth had led him to a deeper understanding: there could be no ugliness without beauty, stupidity without intellect, vindictiveness without mercy, and evil without good. If the entire world were filled with nothing but ugly, stupid, vindictive, evil people, such words wouldn’t exist in the first place. All things now considered negative would simply be thought of as being normal. That was why he felt sure that people could also possess beauty, intellect, mercy, and goodness.
“I’m not about to say ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ or anything. I just want to be happy myself, so I’m trying to make other people happier,” Vandal explained.
“But what about the vampires?” Hearing everything he had said so far, Eleonora figured that Vandal was implementing a message often taught to young children: “If everyone is smiling, you’ll be smiling too.” It did seem to be the way he generally operated, with the exception of his enemies. She could accept that. Sure, he was a soft touch, but that softness of touch was the reason why she—an assassin originally sent to kill Vandal—was still around to tell that and other tales.
Nonetheless, Eleanora was still concerned about attracting unwanted vampiric attention. But Vandal’s reply was yet again nonchalant.
“It shouldn’t be a problem yet. Even if Gubamon and the others who worship Hihiryu-Shukaka are the most powerful vampiric group on the continent, they still don’t have the clout to have agents implanted in new refugee villages. It should be a while before merchants are around this way, so no one will find out about me anytime soon.”
“If you say so . . .”
“Do you want us to join you closer to the reclamation villages?” Zulan asked.
“Well, just make sure none of the villagers see you.”
“King, about my—”
“Also, if you could ask about our descendants and Princess Lebia, that would be great.”
“Sure thing. But I doubt these people know anything about that.”
The last of the pioneer villages Vandal visited, the second one, didn’t have any immediate issues. No murderous merchants, creeping bandits, or unleashed orcs.
However, they did have a chronic problem they had been suffering with for a while.
“It was fine the first year, but the rice harvest has been decreasing ever since. We’ve been trying to improve the soil, whatever we can do. Forget paying taxes in three years’ time, we’re going to starve this winter if things don’t improve. Envoy of Alda, please, save our village.” The chief, a dwarf, and all the other villagers bowed their heads low to Vandal.
The whole village had been gathered to pray for a bountiful harvest just as Vandal descended from the sky, meaning they had been even quicker than the other locations to decide he was heaven-sent.
“I can take a look,” Vandal said. “But I’m a dhampir who worships Vida. I’ve got nothing to do with Alda.” Just like the other villages, this one only had a shrine to Alda. The priest he met in the Seventh must be really good at converting folks.
In any case, Vandal wasn’t sure what he could do to help them improve their crops, but he decided to go to the fields and check the soil. The rice fields here were dry, not flooded with water like the ones Vandal knew back in Japan. Using the knowledge from his Agriculture skill, he did observe that the rice seemed to be weakened by something. There was plenty of irrigation and the crops didn’t seem to be sick. He licked a little of the soil to check its components, and that was when he got a slight hit on Detect Danger: Death.
“Is that some kind of poison? Detox.”
The spell removed the problem from the soil at once. Something intended to harm human physiology was mixed in with the soil. All he had to do was use Detox to resolve the problem. Maybe that was what caused the lower yields?
“Why would the soil be poisoned, though?” Vandal asked. The soil here looked the same as in the other villages. If there was poison in the water they were using for the agriculture, the irrigation system would have responded to Detect Danger: Death. Maybe they were using a special kind of fertilizer. Vandal asked questions along those lines, but everyone shook their heads.
“We make our fertilizer from ashes and human waste,” the chief told him. “The same as all of the other villagers around here.”
“Father, remember when those knights came around on training, and they brought that pesticide for us?”
“That’s right. It was the knights led by the eldest son of the Duke, Prince Lucas. But I believe he took the same pesticides to the other villages.”
The conversation between dwarf father and son—who Vandal could only tell apart by the respective colors of their beards, gray or black—did not provide any further edification. This pesticide sounded suspicious, but there seemed no reason for knights to be poisoning the fields of a village of refugees. Not unless there was something unpleasant brewing back in the ducal keep.
I already know this reclamation work is being led by the duke’s second son, Belton, Vandal thought. Now we have his eldest son, Lucas, a knight captain. Throw in merchants, bandits, orc Tamers, and the fields in this village—there’s something up.
Even if the family was feuding, Vandal saw no reason for them to embroil these poor villages. They could brutalize each other in their castles or fine houses, surely, and leave the common folk out of it.
“In any case, I’ve cleaned the poison from the fields.” Vandal did consider for a moment that maybe he was destroying evidence, but if the perpetrator had any kind of powerful backing, it probably wouldn’t matter even if he had a sample.
The villagers all gave a cheer, but for Vandal, it didn’t feel like a big win. Even with the poison gone, frost or bugs or disease could still harm the crop. Winter could still see this village starve.
He wondered if there was another way to improve the yield here. He could pump some MP into the fields, which would help things grow—into crazy rice monsters or something. He needed another method.
Then he had a flash of inspiration. Maybe it was due to the former presence of the Goblin King, but there were still more goblins around the villages than normal. That meant he could probably find some gobgrass.
“Okay, everyone. I’m going to teach you a way to eat goblins that you’ll find quite palatable, and that you can use in an emergency.”
Time to make ghoul emergency rations—time for gobgob.