Chapter 376 – The Cotton Field
“I wonder if the residents have disappeared… ?”
“If it disappeared, where did it disappear to?”
“Hmm…”
At my murmur, Natalya tilted her head and expressed her doubts. And she couldn’t find a suitable answer to the question, so she shut her mouth.
Slaves, an empty house provided to them… Where is the owner of the house?
However, no matter how much you think about it, there is not enough information to derive an answer to the question.
Insufficient information results in no conclusions. Truly duck. It’s like a thick fog obstructing your vision.
An accident that moves insensitively, as if the head is hardened.
You need to make your brain flexible through simple brain exercises. And when it comes to exercising your brain, nothing is more helpful than moving your fingers.
That stream of thought pointed her fingers at Natalia’s large breasts, like gravity pulling on objects.
“Kyaa…”
While blushing, she offers her body so that I can massage her breasts. The obedient attitude makes the blood that should go to the head go downward, so I feel like my intelligence is falling.
The old man who was watching from the side on the day he was massaging Natalya’s breasts shrugged her shoulders.
“Maybe he just left for a city or something?”
“To the city?”
“Huh. A city or another town.”
“Is it… ?”
I can’t imagine why people who have spent their entire lives picking cotton in rural villages would abandon their economic and technological foundations and leave for cities or other villages, but it is unlikely that such a mysterious evaporation of people will occur in such rural villages. Does not exist.
Above all, if a person had gone missing, Trisian would have been tenaciously trying to investigate.
Therefore, the old man’s answer to whether people have left for the city or other villages has some truth.
He stopped kneading Natalya’s breasts and turned his gaze to the cotton fields. Some of the slaves who were picking cotton in the field are staring at us.
They are contract slaves bought by the village chief. Looking at them, I wondered if there was any point in contemplating a problem that no longer had an answer.
And above all…
“The disappearance of people or why there are still empty houses in the village are not that important to us, are they?”
“That is also true. Our goal is arson.”
Natalya read my thoughts accurately and continued. I nodded my head happily in a good mood because it seemed like my heart was connected in a small way.
“That’s right. Our purpose is to obstruct the supply of bedding for the winter months of the mansion, which the administrator requested from the village headman. And since it’s called arson, it sounds a bit like that. It’s like we’re the bad guys.”
“No, that’s a bad thing.”
“If arson is uncomfortable, what should I call it?”
I stroked his chin at Natalya’s question, lightly ignoring the old man’s argument. Come to think of it, isn’t this period of transition from autumn to winter the period of Halloween in the world I used to live in?
On Halloween, if you don’t give them candy, it’s the rule to play pranks.
“Let’s do it as a joke.”
“Are you kidding?”
“It’s a bit vicious for a joke, but…”
Natalya obediently nodded in agreement, and the old man shook his head throbbingly. Carrying the two of them by their sides, they walked slowly through the outskirts of town and came across a river.
If you leave the river and the village on either side and go down, you will reach the warehouse.
“Even if you move to the river, it will be difficult to reach without being detected, right?”
As a matter of course, the river is lower than the village. Of course, the private house is located a little far away in case the river overflows, but if you walk a little, you can see the river at the bottom of the hill at a glance.
The river is quite wide, so I wonder if it would be possible to move stealthily by submerging in the river in the middle of the night, but the current is quite fast.
Roin shook his head as if he judged that moving to the river would be dangerous.
“I would have to turn off the lights to move around at night without getting caught, but the current is fast and I can’t see how deep it is. If I slip my foot even once, I think I will become a water ghost.”
“Huh. It would be dangerous Villagers, you’ve built a warehouse in a safe location that’s hard to access secretly.”
A place that catches the eye of the residents at a glance, and vigilantes are always on standby. Besides, there is a river right behind it, so it won’t be difficult to extinguish the fire.
When I first heard the story from the lord, I thought it would be an easy job and came here with a light heart, but the job is more difficult than I thought, and it hurts.
I walked, thinking about how to spread rumors that I had destroyed the warehouse to look good, and I quickly reached the place where I could see the warehouse.
Private houses lined up in a row, warehouses where workers diligently come and go, and a river you can see when you go down a small hill.
As I stood still and watched the scenery reflected in my eyes, the bustling movement of the river came into my field of vision.
“Are they kids?”
I could see several children playing by throwing water swallows into the river. It didn’t seem like a lot of numbers.
Come to think of it, it was the same yesterday when the village chief and the captain of the ten people showed us around the village, but there is nothing in this village except for private houses, warehouses, and cotton fields.
In the world I lived in, I would send my children to school when their parents went to work, but this is not a sophisticated society where children’s right to learn is guaranteed.
“What do children in rural villages like this usually do?”
“Yes?”
To my question, Natalya answered with a little troubled look on her lips.
“If you are a noble, you will be educated by a private tutor or enrolled in a wizard school, but… If it’s commoners’ children, well… Usually, children gather together to play, or when they are old enough to learn work, they will follow their parents and learn work… ?”
Since the warehouse workers are said to be villagers, is it normal for the children in this village to play by the river near the warehouse while their parents work in the warehouse?
Isn’t manpower an asset in such a rural area? It would be normal to give birth to many children, but if the children on that river are the children of the villagers, the number of children is very small compared to the size of the village.
Or is it because the number of residents is small and the number of slaves is high?
Again, the question I had before rears its head. Why does this village have so few inhabitants?
Just before falling into the whirlpool of questions, the sound of horse hooves suddenly brought me back to my senses. After retreating from the side of the road with Natalya and Roin, I looked back and saw that a cart loaded with cotton was approaching.
The gaze of the man who drove the cart was fixed on us, probably because we were strangers that were hard to see in the village.
It was similar to the unpleasant gaze I felt yesterday, so I waited for it to pass quickly, but strangely, the cart stopped in front of me.
I looked up at the man driving the cart, wondering why he had stopped in front of me.
Driving the cart was a muscular, middle-aged man with a strong body, but his face with a shaggy beard had a gloomy expression. Judging by the contrast with the residents who worked in the warehouse with a happy smile, they must be slaves working in the cotton fields.
“These are the foreigners I saw yesterday. What did you come to this town for? If it’s for tourism purposes, just leave quickly before you see anything bad.”
“What? Tourism? A rough look?”
I’m getting annoyed because my head is complicated by work problems, but I’m getting annoyed twice as much when I’m treated like an idle cock-meal by a slave.
“I am the sheriff sent by the city to investigate the security of this town. How dare you treat me as a tourist,”
“Sheriff?!”
The slave interrupted me and exclaimed in surprise. The gloomy wrinkled face was wide open in surprise.
“You said sheriff. Now?!”
“Yes, and forgive me if you interrupt me one more time.”
“Hey! You bastard!!”
The conversation was interrupted by another uninvited guest who interrupted. The one who cut me off this time was not the slave who drove the cart, but the captain of the ten.
A ten-man captain appeared from a gap in the private house and glared at the slave with a stern face.
“What a slave bastard is talking to the sheriff in such a way! Can’t you turn it off?!”
“Ah, I see.”
At the intimidation of the captain of the ten, the slave who drove the cart looked at me with regretful eyes and then slowly left. The captain of the ten glared fiercely at the back of the slave’s head, then approached me with a servile smile.
“Are you all right, Sheriff?”
“No, no problem.”
“Didn’t that bastard say something strange to the sheriff?”
“Sounds strange?”
I don’t understand what the Ten Commander is asking. No, it doesn’t matter what this bastard asks me. Why is the leader of the Ten in front of me?
“Fuck you, I told you not to follow me. What is it? Have you been tailing me?”
When I asked him with a wrinkle on his face, the captain of the ten struck him with a wave of his hand in amazement.
“Yes?! Oh no! It’s not fair to be tailing! Didn’t the sheriff tell you to patrol?! I was just on patrol! It was just a chance encounter!”
“You said that when a slave accidentally approached while on patrol, he showed up and kicked it out?”
Well, it can’t be too complicated.
