Continuous Posting Part 3
Once I arrived at Banza's house, I surveyed the interior once more.
"Maybe I went a little overboard?"
If any of the other members had been here, they would have pointed out that "a little" was a massive understatement.
The back wall of the house had been blown away, and of the 28 bodies inside, 19 had been killed by debris punching holes through their bodies or blowing chunks off them, the remaining 9 had all been split in two with their innards scattered everywhere, and the sole survivor, Banza, had his wrists and ankles scorched clean off, was unconscious, and had wet himself.
All of that left the room filled with the stench of filth and the coppery reek of blood.
"Well, time to clean up."
I summoned three mid-sized Golems and got to work. First, I had them carry Banza outside and rinse him down with water. He came to midway through and tried to resist, so I had one Golem wrap him tightly in rope and hang him from the eaves.
The other Golems hauled out the large rubble and broken furniture like tables. When some small Golems showed up, I sent 10 of them to collect the bodies from inside the room and pile them outside, while the rest continued transporting prisoners.
In about 30 minutes, the room was cleared out.
So I used water magic on the whole room the way you'd use a high-pressure washer, blasting the grime off the floors and walls.
The wastewater was flushed outside. Then I used wind magic to both dry the room and cycle in fresh air. Compared to how it had been, it was considerably better.
The bodies that had been brought outside were frozen and tossed into the Dimension Bag, and the furniture was burned for disposal.
After all that, I had nothing left to do and was bored, so I headed out to the fields and extracted a large amount of clay using earth magic.
I mixed straw into the clay and used alchemy to shape it into a rectangular box form.
The dimensions were roughly two meters tall, four meters wide, and sixty centimeters deep.
I dried it using wind magic and fire magic.
Finally, I fired it with fire magic, and it was complete.
What I had made was a "bathtub" crafted from pottery. For something built on half-baked knowledge, I thought it turned out pretty decent.
I put the finished bathtub into my bag and headed toward the house where the women were staying.
I dug a square hole in the yard, packed the earth firm, set the bathtub in, and filled the gaps with soil.
Next, I tried building walls around the bathtub using earth magic. I left an opening in part of the wall to serve as an entrance.
Finally, I filled the bathtub with water and heated it with fire magic—just like that, the "bath" was complete.
Incidentally, I decided against making a roof, since a hastily built one could be dangerous.
I called out to the three inside the house and had them come outside.
"Tenma, is something wrong?"
"Whoa, what's this little building?!"
"What did you build?"
They seemed very curious about the little structure, so when I told them I'd made a bath, the three of them—
"A bath?!"
—went wide-eyed in surprise, rushed inside to check, and were absolutely thrilled.
"Let the captured women use it. But we don't have soap or towels, so you'll have to figure those out somehow."
When I said that, Lily went to ask the women inside if they had any towels or the like.
It turned out the house had no clean towels, so we decided to search other houses and gather some. Apparently there was no soap in this village either.
The three also went looking for buckets in addition to towels. It seemed the bath would be used in three shifts of four people each, with one of Lily's group joining each shift to help out and add more hot water using magic.
While the women were bathing, I strolled around the village, found the food storage, and decided to go inside.
As I was leaving, Lily and the others warned me sternly not to peek under any circumstances. It didn't sit quite right with me, but I nodded anyway for the time being.
The food storage was surprisingly spacious, but there wasn't much food left inside.
In its place, the bandits' treasure was piled up in one corner.
The gold amounted to roughly one million G, there were two small boxes packed with gems, one hundred and forty-six swords, one hundred and thirty-two spears, one hundred and thirty bows, and arrows filling twenty barrels—roughly ten to twelve thousand of them. The sheer quantity of weapons was abnormal.
"Something's off. The gold and gems are one thing, but the number of weapons is way too much for a bandit group of around a hundred."
I concluded that this was something the other three needed to know about and we should discuss it together, so I put off further investigation for the time being.
When I headed back to the house, it seemed the third group had just finished their bath, and Miri—who had been on duty—was stepping out just as I arrived.
"Miri, got a second?"
When I called out to her, she came over rubbing her still-damp hair vigorously with a towel.
"What is it, Tenma? Eek! Don't tell me you were peeking at me while I was bathing!"
"This is serious. Call Lily and Nelly over—we need to talk."
I cut her off with a solemn expression, and Miri straightened up and went to fetch the two of them.
Before long, the three of them were gathered, and I reported what I had found in the food storage—the weapons.
"What do the three of you think?"
"It does seem like way too many, yeah."
"But couldn't it be a coincidence? Like they stockpiled a large reserve or something?"
"Even so, could bandits really gather that many brand-new weapons in that quantity? And when you add in the ones from the bandits we defeated, even as a reserve, it's way too many."
They went back and forth, but we settled on recording every count and submitting it to the Guild, and for the time being, that was that.
Once the discussion was over, I tried to take a bath as well, but for some reason all three of them vehemently objected. Left with no choice, I heated up water in a pot and used that to wipe down my body instead.
Between everything that had happened, it was nearly dawn by the time I finished, so I decided to get some sleep and reconvene after waking up.
I woke up to the sound of my own stomach growling. The sun was already high in the sky—judging by its position, it was just before noon.
I yawned and climbed down from the carriage where I had been sleeping. After that whole affair, I still felt uncomfortable sleeping in the same house as the women, so I had pulled the carriage out and slept there by myself.
It was an odd time, but I decided to go ahead and start preparing an early lunch.
The menu consisted of yesterday's leftover soup, to which I added dried meat and vegetables along with water to increase the quantity, then adjusted the flavor with salt and other seasonings. I also prepared bread I had bought in town. Since the women would be eating too, I called out toward the house.
The one who came out wasn't Lily and the others, but the woman who had served tea at Banza's house yesterday.
"I was rude to you yesterday even though you saved us. I'm truly sorry."
"Not at all. I'm not holding it against you. Given the situation, it couldn't be helped."
The woman who opened with an apology introduced herself as Serna, and she was apparently the village chief's daughter.
After accepting her apology, I asked her to tell me what had happened here, feeling guilty for doing so.
Serna hesitated for a moment before slowly opening her mouth.
According to Serna, Banza's gang had suddenly attacked this village about three weeks ago in the middle of the night. At the time, all sixty or so villagers were present, but it was nighttime and the attack had been planned in advance, so the villagers couldn't do anything and were all captured.
After that, they were separated into women and men, but the men were promptly killed to the last person.
There were twenty-five women, but among them, the thirteen who were older were killed in the same manner, and only the twelve who still had value as women in their eyes were left. However, when two of them could no longer endure it and bit off their own tongues to kill themselves, Banza had placed "slave collars" on Serna and the others.
As she said this, Serna showed us the collar she had been hiding under her scarf. Apparently, the reason she had wrapped a scarf around her neck and served us tea was to avoid raising suspicion that the women were gone.
These "slave collars" are supposed to be handled only by licensed slave traders, but in this world too, criminals and the underworld exist. Many obtain them through black market channels, and it is said that they cannot be completely eradicated.
The slave collars carry a curse that forcibly compels obedience to principles much like the three laws of robotics: "You must not harm your master," "You must obey your master's commands," and "You must protect yourself within the scope of your master's orders." If you try to remove one by force, pain courses through your body, and in the worst case, it can lead to death.
Furthermore, a slave collar cannot be removed without the master's permission in principle. Removing it requires someone capable of using purification or dispelling magic that surpasses the collar's power. However, purification and dispelling cannot be used without the master's consent, and they have no effect on one's own collar.
There are several types of slaves: criminal slaves, war slaves, general slaves, and illegal slaves. Criminal slaves are, as the name suggests, criminals who have been enslaved. Their sentences range from a minimum of one year to a maximum of life imprisonment, depending on the severity of the crime.
War slaves are those who were captured in battle and reduced to slavery. The majority of them are people who lost wars.
General slaves are mostly people who sold themselves or were sold by their parents to reduce mouths to feed. Most of them came voluntarily or were sold by their families.
The last category, illegal slaves, refers to people who were illegally trafficked through kidnapping or slave hunting. They can only be freed after filing a formal complaint and undergoing a review, and only if the complaint is found to be legitimate. The shops that handled them face penalties proportional to the severity of the offense.
During the review, the collar is temporarily removed under strict surveillance. However, if the slave is found to have deliberately lied during the review, made severe errors, or attempted to escape, they are demoted to life imprisonment as a criminal slave.
However, illegal slaves rarely appear in public, and since they are indistinguishable from other slaves, they are seldom discovered.
War slaves and general slaves have no fixed term of service—their master can free them at will—but they must spend at least one year as a slave.
Slave owners are categorized as the state (the king), territorial nobles, organizations, or individuals. Criminal slaves can only be owned by the state or by territorial nobles who have received permission from the state and the king, and their usage is also predetermined.
War slaves and general slaves can be owned by anyone regardless of social standing or age. However, if the master is a criminal and has died, the rights to the slave transfer to whoever killed that master or to the first person to discover the body.
While I was dwelling on these thoughts, Serna said,
"Therefore, until we are officially recognized as illegal slaves, Tenma will be our master. We'll be in your care."
She casually told me the very thing I had been deliberately trying not to think about. And worst of all, the three of them only caught the part about me becoming Serna and the others' master—
just
that much,
and they descended on me like a raging fire.
"What's the big idea, meow?!"
"Taking advantage of someone's weakness is the absolute worst, Tenma!"
"Tenma, you pervert! You lecher! You deviant!"
They unleashed this barrage of accusations at me. Serna and I tried to calm them down, but it was completely ineffective—they just kept tearing into me even more viciously.
It took more than thirty minutes after they started berating me before we finally managed to calm them down and explain the situation. We seized the moment when all three of them were out of breath, and Serna and I explained everything at breakneck speed until things finally settled.
Now, the three of them had apologized to me with such intensity it was practically a full prostration, and they were cowering in the corner of the garden, utterly mortified.
"Hey, all three of you! I'm not upset anymore, so come on over. Let's eat."
At the sound of my voice, the three of them flinched and slowly turned around. I put on the most gentle expression I could manage and beckoned them over.
My efforts must have paid off, because the three of them cautiously started making their way over.
I handed them soup and bread, and we decided to have lunch together. Serna took the portions for the other women inside the house, where they would eat together.
By the time we finished eating, the three of them were back to their usual selves. Seeing that everyone had finally caught their breath, I started talking.
"I'm thinking we should head back to town as soon as possible. What do the three of you think?"
"I'd have to oppose that, considering the women."
Lily went against my idea.
"I agree with Lily. I think it would be better to wait and see a little longer before making a move."
"I side with Tenma on this. I think we should report what happened in this village to the Guild as quickly as possible. And if we can, I'd like to get them freed from slavery sooner rather than later."
Nellie was against it while Millie was in favor. The opinions had split right down the middle into two and two.
As I was wondering what to do, Serna came over and spoke up.
"Um, the three of us discussed it, and we all agreed that we would like to leave this village as soon as possible..."
She called out to me hesitantly, then continued.
"I know it must be a burden for you. However, our honest desire is to get away from a place where those days would be too easy to remember."
When she made that appeal, even the two who had been opposing the idea were convinced, so we began preparing to move out.
First, we looked for carriages that could carry the women and transport the bandits. Fortunately, we found intact carriages and horses to pull them, so we selected three of the carriages, gave them a light cleaning, and hitched up the horses. The bandits were all crammed together into one shabby carriage.
I nearly forgot about Banza, so I threw him in at the same time. Of course, I made sure to bind the bandits' hands and feet thoroughly, just to be safe.
The three of us ended up as drivers—two for the women's carriages and one for the bandits' carriage.
Since the women had no intention of continuing to live in this village going forward, I had them collect anything from their homes that could be converted into money. The plan was to sell everything in town and use the proceeds as working capital for the time being. We would take the remaining carriages and horses with us as well.
Lastly, I stored everything from the pantry into my bag. During that process, I had the three of them and Serna make an inventory list, and I checked each item off one by one as I placed it into the bag.
We finished just before dusk, but we decided to depart anyway.
When the moment came to set out, I realized that Shiromaru and Slarin were nowhere to be seen in the Dimension Bag.
I used my detection skill to search for them, and sure enough, they were running toward us from the direction of the forest.
"What were you two up to?"
In response to my question, Slarin shuffled forward right in front of me, and just as I thought its body had split open, it spat out roughly six Dash Boars onto the ground with a series of wet thuds. While we stood there gaping, its body split open once more, and this time it disgorged a boar more than twice the size of the others.
This one was called a King Dash Boar, a higher-ranked species of Dash Boar and a C-rank Monster. Normally, they were supposed to be about 2.5 meters long, but this particular specimen exceeded 3 meters.
Slarin and Shiromaru looked extremely proud of themselves. Everyone else had their eyes wide open, staring at the surreal sight of boars being expelled one after another from a Slime that was only about 60 centimeters across.
I put the Dash Boars away into the bag, then petted Slarin and Shiromaru and praised them. The two of them were delighted, and after that they took some meat from me.
Dimension Bag
They then headed inside.
Pulling ourselves together, we set out from the village. Along the way, we saw bandits tumbling down a slope and wolf-type Monsters eyeing us from the shadows, but we pressed on without any trouble, and by a short while after sunset, we were able to reach the town.