“Whoa. Are— Are those priests?” Ado said. “And they’re...wrapped up in mats and hung upside down? There are groups of villagers beating them up too...”
“Well, this would need to be R-rated. If innocent kids saw how cruel people could be, it’d traumatize them...” Shakti said.
“Why are the villagers doing this, though?” Lisa asked. “Aren’t the people hanging up there part of the clergy?”
The culprits behind the killings—the Inquisition members—had been thoroughly punished by the villagers, hung upside down or half buried alive, and then subjected to gang violence too brutal to show on-screen, leaving them on the verge of death.
While they were very much reaping what they’d sown, anyone visiting this village for the first time might think they’d stumbled across a bunch of devil-worshipping villagers tormenting innocent priests.
Without the context of what had happened here, Ado and the others were speechless. All they could do was stare at the cruel scene, mouths agape.
Zelos was the only one willing to call out to one of the villagers.
“Excuse me!” he said. “Would you happen to have seen my coccos around here? There are three of them, and they’ve turned into pitch-black cockatrices, if that helps.”
Wait a minute! the others thought. Are you seriously gonna pretend you don’t see all this?!
The villager Zelos had called out to was in the middle of mercilessly beating a swollen priest with a piece of timber. He lifted his head and looked at Zelos with the eyes of a madman. He was clearly consumed by bloodlust.
But the moment he registered the meaning behind Zelos’s words, his expression changed to a pleasant smile, as if nothing were out of the ordinary at all. “Oh? Are you the keeper of the sacred coccos?”
It was hard to believe he was the same man who’d been unleashing a tempest of violence moments ago.
“The... The ‘sacred coccos’? What did they do?” Zelos asked.
“The sacred coccos saved our village. And they continue to protect us, even now.”
“You don’t say...”
Left in a daze by the villager’s strange reverence for the coccos, Zelos glanced toward the nearby forest and saw a massive bear flying through the air.
It had probably just been hit by a powerful attack from Ukei or one of the others.
By the looks of it, the coccos were doing just fine, and they were out hunting to test their skills against monsters.
“In that case,” Zelos said, “what’s with the priests here?”
“These scum attacked our village! They even killed our elderly, our little children... If not for the sacred coccos, I imagine these vermin would’ve killed us all by now,” he said, turning to kick the nearest captive priest in the head.
Zelos sighed in relief now that he knew what was going on.
When he’d first witnessed the scene, even he’d been a bit worried—What do we do if this is some deranged village that just has a thing for torturing people? he’d thought—but now that he knew the problem lay with the priests, he figured everything was fine.
What had happened to Zelos’s common sense?
More villagers came over to chip in, having heard the conversation.
“They’re all murderers dressed up as priests! Surely you wouldn’t think of helping them, would you?”
“They killed our families—even the children! You’d better not get any stupid thoughts in your head, okay?”
“You may be the keeper of the sacred coccos, but if you try to stop us—”
“Oh, no, don’t worry,” Zelos said. “They had it coming, so I won’t do anything to stop you. Though I would suggest you stop short of actually killing them and hand them over to some guards when you’re done. It’d be best to make them regret ever being born before they die, don’t you agree?”
How is he just accepting this?! the other three thought. They may be criminals, but even criminals have rights!
Zelos had come to grips with the furious villagers’ explanation without a moment of hesitation. The way Ado, Shakti, and Lisa saw it, dispensing mob justice in the form of a bloody beatdown was wrong—even if these priests were criminals. But the villagers’ bloodlust had whipped them into an absolute frenzy, so there was no way they would see it like that. The trio could tell this was not the sort of atmosphere where they could try to mediate.
If the reincarnators made a heavy-handed attempt at mediating, they could find themselves on the receiving end of the villagers’ “justice.”
The villagers, having had their families brutally killed, still saw these battered priests as their enemies, and no one in Ado’s party had the nerve to deny them that.
“H-Help...” one of the priests groaned.
Zelos turned his gaze to the man. “Tell me—what brought such a large group of priests to Solistia in the first place? And to a little farming village, at that? The Holy Land sees Solistia as its enemy, doesn’t it? Were you here to lure the great givleon into Solistian territory, perhaps?”
“Gakh—?!”
“So, do I take that as an admission that you came here to drive the monsters that attacked the Holy Land into another country? And then you thought you’d kill some innocent civilians while you were here? Oh—might you all be members of the ‘Inquisition’ I’ve heard so much about? Wouldn’t surprise me. Killing and torturing for a living would turn people rotten.”
The man who’d called out for help—Josephoke—had done so as a desperate last hope. But he hadn’t expected Zelos to figure out the truth—and now that he had, Josephoke was lost for words.
Of course, Zelos hadn’t been confident in what he was saying. Not at first, at least. He’d just made a guess based on the information available to him, but Josephoke’s reaction had confirmed his theory.
“Then I suppose you were the ones who isolated this village too, hmm?” Zelos asked. “Let me guess—you came here planning to enjoy an all-you-can-kill buffet, figuring that if anyone asked later you could say you were ‘meting out divine retribution’? And really, I am just guessing there... But I’m right, aren’t I?”
Josephoke remained silent.
“Cat got your tongue, eh? Well, whether you’re priests or criminals, the fact is that you came here to kill innocent civilians. So we have to make sure you atone for your sins, don’t we? Ah, I say ‘we,’ but I won’t be the one punishing you.”
The priests were quickly realizing that the Faith’s “pardons” meant nothing here. There would be no salvation for debauched priests who delighted in murder. Not from Zelos, and not from the gods.
With the discussion over, the villagers resumed their gang violence.
“Hey, Zelos...” Ado said. “You sure we shouldn’t stop this? Even criminals have rights...”
“Exactly. Don’t you think they deserve due process? Even if they’ve killed people.” Shakti nodded.
“This is just terrible...” Lisa murmured. “I know they have their reasons, but seeing people be so brutal toward each other is just...”
“Mmm? No, of course not!” Zelos replied, astonished by their reaction.
“Huh?!” the three of them exclaimed together, caught off guard by the tone of his response.
They weren’t wrong. Criminals did have the right of due process under the law—but due process only applied to criminals apprehended by guards or bounty hunters.
In this world, crime was rampant, and the perpetrators were often repeat offenders who’d escaped the eyes of the law, or fugitives who’d fled distant lands where they were wanted. And any rural civilians who caught such a perpetrator red-handed couldn’t rely on guards being around to solve the issue. They’d need to either apprehend the criminal themselves or kill them on the spot.
“Things here don’t work like they do in Japan,” Zelos reminded them. “Laws in this world are still a bit behind the times. These criminals were killing people—right here, in this village. And yes, the villagers managed to apprehend them, but do you think that’ll be enough to satisfy the hearts of people who’ve watched as their loved ones were killed?”
“Still... It isn’t like doing this will bring their loved ones back, is it?” Shakti replied. “Besides, once they captured the culprits, shouldn’t they have handed them right over to the guards?”
“This is a small village. Calling guards would require a trip to the city and back, which would take, what—about three days on foot? There’s a chance the culprits could escape in that time. Besides, I’m sure the families of the deceased hate these people enough that they need an outlet for their rage.”
“Even then, I think it’s important to follow the law. If anyone can be judge, jury, and executioner when they feel like it, then what’s the point of having laws in the first place? We can’t let this happen.”
“Could you say the same thing to the victims’ families? People who saw their loved ones killed before their very eyes? Look, you’re right when you say that nothing these people do will bring their loved ones back. But unless they avenge their families, they won’t be able to put this behind them and move forward with their lives. Here in this world, the law means less than you might expect. That goes double in remote areas like this, where the eyes of the law don’t reach. Ultimately, things get left to the local citizens to decide.”