Chapter 9:
Violence Solves Everything
THE REALITY OF THE SITUATION was that Deneros and company’s village was only one of many pioneer villages that I needed to build. After returning to Museburg, we met with Viscount Travis again, borrowed young Steven, and went right back to it—constructing one village after another. Rinse, dry, and repeat.
“You sure are in a hurry, huh?” Mono observed.
“I’ve got pregnant women back home, so I really wanna wrap this up as quickly as I can and head back.”
“I get that you’re worried, but don’t push yourself too hard, okay? If you end up collapsing, that’ll only cause more problems for everyone else,” Ifriita cautioned.
“You’ve got pregnant wives waiting for you back home, and you’re out here ensnaring scrawny girls like me? You’re a bad boy,” Mono teased.
“He’s a bad boy,” Aqual said.
“A really bad boy,” Ifriita added.
“Have mercy.”
Mono slotted into the group effortlessly. And for reasons beyond me, both Ifriita and Aqual grew attached to her. As a member of her race, Mono was small, but she carried herself like someone with a lifetime of experience.
She slept near the princesses, and apparently every night they’d stay up chatting about all kinds of things, melting the ice between them bit by bit.
With Mono now part of our team, we traveled all across Viscount Travis’s territory, building pioneer villages. At each new site, Mono used her skills and charisma to help recruit plenty of promising future civil officials alongside Ifriita and Aqual.
After that, I parted ways with the three of them and their royal guards to keep constructing villages on my own. The reason I moved on without them was simple: We’d recruited far more potential workers in Viscount Travis’s territory than expected. The refugee camps outside of Museburg weren’t exactly ideal. Sure, they had tents, but the people were still exposed to the wind and weather. So I decided to have the girls escort the new recruits back to Merinesburg while I continued building villages.
“What number is this?” Grande asked, wondering just how many villages I’d built.
It was rare for her to actually be awake during work hours.
I counted on my fingers, thinking back over the last few weeks.
“I wanna say this is number seventeen? I’m pretty much all done with the viscount’s territory now.”
In areas where build sites were close to one another, I could finish two villages in a day, but generally, I’d build one, head back to Museburg to check in, then set out again the next day. I was repeating this process, so it wasn’t the fastest system, but it worked. As of today, a month had passed since I’d arrived. I was really starting to want to see Sylphy, the rest of my wives, and my harpy daughters.
Lost in thought, I spaced out until Grande suddenly turned to look ahead of us, a serious expression on her face.
“What’s up?”
“I smell blood. I’m heading out,” she said before opening the roof hatch of the airboard and soaring into the sky.
Almost at the same time, one of the harpies scouting from above contacted me through the golem communicator.
“I have visuals on the meeting spot, but something’s off!”
“You can probably see her, but Grande flew ahead toward the meeting spot. Scout the surrounding area, please.”
“You got it!”
Bela immediately increased our speed as I relayed messages back and forth over the communicator. I really appreciated that she knew exactly what to do without me saying a word.
“The smell of blood, hm? That don’t sound good.”
“What do you think’s going on?”
“Either a monster attack or a bandit raid. But given how we’ve been setting up security at every build site, it’d have to be something or someone pretty strong to wipe them out. ”
“Which means they were attacked by an opponent they couldn’t even fight back against… But this area’s supposed to be pretty far from any monster domains.”
“Then it’s probably bandits, aye?”
When we arrived at the site, the scene before us was truly awful. Like a battlefield, almost. They must’ve been attacked at night. Most of the tents were soaked in blood, torn apart, or burned to ash. Corpses were strewn about everywhere, some of them even ravaged by wild beasts.
“This is terrible,” I said as I surveyed the scene.
“There’s no one alive here. As far as I can tell, humans did this.”
Grande pointed toward several corpses marked with clean, deliberate, blade-inflicted wounds.
One, likely a female beastman, had no weapons or armor, just regular clothes. She must’ve tried to flee; the gash that split her shoulder blade to her spine made that clear. Beast fangs couldn’t do that kind of damage. She had been partially eaten by beasts, but she died from a human’s blade.
“I don’t like this at all,” Grande muttered.
“Indeed.”
I began collecting the corpses, storing them carefully in my inventory. Viscount Travis would have a list of the pioneers stationed here, so I’d be able to cross-check their names and give them proper burials later. Thankfully, my inventory displayed their names even if the bodies were too damaged to identify.
“Looks like whoever did this took the food and valuables. Pretty damn certain this is the work of bandits.”
“Mm… They might’ve kidnapped some folks too. Really looks like this was one-sided.”
“As far as I can tell, the raid went off perfectly. Whoever they are, they’re clearly well trained. And based on the condition of the bodies, I’d say it happened at least two nights ago. Maybe longer.”
The ogre girls moved through the ruins, analyzing the scene of the crime with professional precision. Having three veteran adventurers around for something like this was a real blessing.
“Think you can track them?” I asked.
“Probably. They’d need horses or carriages to carry their loot, so I think we can track them down,” Tozume said, nodding as she looked around.
Shemel was nodding too, so if they were that confident, they could handle it. But what was Bela up to? She was off a little ways away, investigating something and clearly hadn’t heard our exchange.
“Once we clean this up, we’re goin’ bandit-huntin’.”
Hunting these bastards down and killing them wouldn’t bring the people back, but it’d stop them from claiming any more victims. But most importantly, I was furious they’d interrupted our work. And I was angry they’d brutally massacred the people I came to save.
That was reason enough to take out every last one of those bandits.