I could hear the excited cheers and whoops of the villagers in the distance. The village of Merte was bustling like it usually only ever did once per year during their harvest festival. The sun had already set, and around this time, adults and children alike would have normally been asleep in their beds. But now, the village square was brightly lit and filled with song and dance. Even the children had been permitted to play outside and were running around energetically, as this was a cause for celebration.
Merte’s villagers weren’t the only ones participating in the festivities. Residents of the neighboring villages were also present, and all of them were either mayors or village advisers. In other words, they were all in positions of leadership. In fact, Merte was perhaps even busier at present than during its annual harvest festival.
“Honestly, they just keep coming one after another. There’s no end to the people who want to meet and thank me,” I muttered, having used the toilet as an excuse to leave the festivities. “Maybe I overdid it by donating all those orcs to them.”
It went without saying, but I’d achieved a complete and total victory against the orcs. I’d eaten the souls of each and every one in the settlement, including the high orc. Their forces could have easily conquered not only Merte, but the surrounding town and villages as well. The news of the tribe’s destruction had brought joy and relief to everyone in the area.
I myself was also in extremely high spirits. Not only had my revenge on Iria gone off without a hitch, I’d leveled up in the process of eating her soul, and with the orc threat laid to rest, now I had the entirety of Merte in my debt. Everything had gone exactly as planned—scarily well, in fact. So, although that wasn’t exactly the reason, I’d decided to contribute to Merte’s prosperity myself by donating the monetary reward for the orcs’ extermination, as well as the raw materials from their corpses, to the villagers.
Whenever a monster like a goblin or orc proactively attacked humans or their settlements, it was common to offer a reward for their extermination. And the corpses of such monsters were treasure troves of materials. Orc meat was pungent and had an acquired taste, so it wasn’t often used in dishes raw, but once the astringent taste was cooked out, the meat could be dried and mixed with grain to make a highly nutritious feed for livestock. The monsters’ bones and skin could be used to make useful tools, and the testicles and heart were common ingredients in medicine and tinctures. Even the entrails could be spread into the soil as fertilizer or used as bait to tame a carnivorous monster, among many possible uses. The profit the village would make from selling these materials, coupled with the bounty for the orcs, would more than offset the losses they’d incurred from the epidemic. Now, with this and the profit from the latest harvest, no villager in Merte would go hungry even if they didn’t yield any profit from next year’s harvest.
Leaders from other villages had come here because of the treasure trove Merte had suddenly gained. It went without saying that the epidemic had severely affected not just Merte, but the other villages as well. Not only did they all highly approve of what I’d done, but they were jealous of what I’d donated to Merte and wanted a slice of that pie for themselves.
Merte’s village chief had welcomed them with a smile and open arms. If the village kept all the wealth for themselves, they would end up antagonizing the surrounding villages, so he’d probably felt it better for the village in the long run to share. And since doing so would put the other villages in Merte’s debt, Merte would no doubt profit from this decision further down the line as well.
So yes, it was cause for celebration. For my part, however, I’d intended my contribution to the village to be the coup de grâce to my plan. Now that I’d gone this far, their trust in me would be set in stone. No matter what Iria did or said now, she’d never be able to overturn it. And indeed, the villagers had been thrilled, acting exactly in line with my expectations.
Iria had kept quiet since returning to the village and hadn’t tried to disrupt the celebration or deny my achievements in any way. In fact, she hadn’t said much at all to me ever since witnessing my Shinsou’s power. From that, I could safely assume she had lost her will to rebel against me. And thus, my plan had ended largely without incident.
If there was one thing I hadn’t counted on, it was just how lively the festivities would become. I wasn’t really used to a crowd like this, and ever since the party had begun, everyone had grouped around me so much that I hadn’t been able to eat a single skewer of meat.
Stop swarming me with those dollar signs in your eyes, people!
I’d heard “please contribute to our village as well!” so many times that even my hands and feet wouldn’t be enough to count them all. Not to be outdone, the Merte village chief had also requested that I stay longer.
At this rate, maybe I should just take it all back, I thought.
Anyway, that was why I had decided I couldn’t take it anymore, said I needed to use the toilet, and got out of there. Now that I’d done everything I needed to do there, I didn’t plan on returning. I made my way to the empty lot where Claimh Soras was staying, thinking about what I’d feed it to reward it for all its hard work today, and was surprised to find someone else already there.
“Priestess Sela? Is that you? Oh, it’s just the little brats,” I said.
None of the three took too kindly to that remark. “Hey, I’m not little! And I’m not a brat!”
“Me neither!”
“Or me!”
I chuckled. “Sorry, but to me, you just look like a bunch of little brats. If that frustrates you, then you’ll just have to hope you grow to be older and taller than me one day!”
“Grr! You’ll see! Soon I’ll get even taller than you, and older than you too!”
“I don’t think you can get older than him, Ein.”
“You can’t, Ein!”
“Huh?!”
Oh, so even you kids know how to perform the straight man routine, huh? The other two brats, named Zwei and Dora, had retorted back at Ein, who looked shocked.
As the brat trio talked among themselves, Priestess Sela joined in as well. “Since everyone else was feasting, these children thought the dragon might want to join in the festivities as well, and they wanted to come feed it. We’ve been preparing for this since before noon. I planned to call out to you when you got back to tell you, but...”
“Right, I was swarmed almost the instant I returned, so you couldn’t have. By the way, Claimh Soras hasn’t been too rough with them?” Honestly, I was concerned about that. It still hadn’t entirely warmed up to Seele, and she was always tending to it kindly. It hadn’t threatened Sela or the kids, had it?
In response, Sela gave me a big smile, dispelling my worries. “No, it’s been calm the whole time! It must be behaving itself for the children’s sake!”
“Well, that’s a relief.” I glanced at Claimh Soras. Apparently the indigo wyvern hadn’t realized its master had shown up yet, because it still had its head in the barrel of food and was chowing down ravenously. Judging by the way it was repeatedly smacking the ground with its tail, it must have been enjoying the priestess’s meal.
In other words, it isn’t that it’s being especially careful around the kids. It’s just focusing on eating instead. And judging from the acrid smell coming from the barrel...
“You pickled the meat, I take it?”
“Yes, that’s right. I heard that it likes sour foodstuffs, so I thought pickling might do the trick. I’m so glad it seems to favor them!” She thrust her chest out as though proud of herself.
What’s pressing against her plain priestess garb is definitely larger than her daughter’s, I found myself idly thinking...then I shook my head to clear that lewd thought from my mind. Iria was one thing, since I had a grudge against her, but her mother didn’t deserve such rudeness.
I concentrated instead on listening to the cooking process that Sela explained. Preparing the wyvern’s food had been more involved than I’d thought. According to her, she’d drained the blood and removed the skins of the smaller boars I’d hunted the other day, then removed the guts, stuffed the bodies with fragrant herbs, and placed them onto large skewers. Then she’d rotated them on an open flame for around three hours. Instead of a pork roast, it was a boar roast.
While the meat was busy cooking, she’d prepared the vinegar, but it sounded like that in itself hadn’t exactly been simple. She’d boiled some village crops, then after preparing them in various ways, poured them into a barrel of base vinegar so that the vinegar would take on the natural flavor of the vegetables. I didn’t cook, so to me it all sounded rather complicated and incredibly time-consuming. However, I could at least tell she’d put a lot of effort into it.
Once the meat was done, she’d cut it up into bite-sized pieces for Claimh Soras to eat more easily, then poured the meat into the barrel of the vinegar she’d made. Finally, she’d let the meat pickle for another three hours. Uh, was it just me...or had it taken more effort to make Claimh Soras’s food than the rest of the food at the party?