Chapter 382 – The Cotton Field
“That, yes… I made a mistake.”
“Please be careful next time.”
When the captain of the ten people apologized, the village chief gently closed his eyes that had been wide open.
“Anyway, I’m back to work…”
The village chief, who was slowly leaving the guards barracks with his hands behind his back, was stopped by a person who hurriedly rushed in.
While the village chief looked at the woman in bewilderment, the ten captain opened his eyes and checked the face of the suddenly jumped in.
“Aren’t you the maid at the chief’s house? What’s going on?”
“Big deal! Big deal! Chief! Those uninvited guests have started searching the inside of the mansion! If you do this, the place will be found out! We must go quickly and stop it!”
*****
“Isn’t it because the villagers are in trouble with being kicked out?”
“Trouble? What?”
“Um…”
For the village chief, villagers who do not follow his orders are potential enemies. Enemy is basically best to kill. So that there will be no regrets.
But rather than kill them, the chief enslaved them, kidnapped his family and kept them under him.
There was a reason why he couldn’t be killed.
“I can guess why.”
“For what reason?”
“The villagers are skilled weavers. Since you said there was a shortage of workers in the village, you couldn’t have killed them.”
“Work in hand? Why is that all of a sudden… ?”
Roin tilted his head, probably thinking that the context of the story was somewhat out of the blue.
“This village has contracted with the administrative officer to deliver winter bedding such as blankets every year. However, if there is a shortage of workers in the village, it will be difficult to meet the delivery date to the lord’s castle, and if that happens, the administrator will have no choice but to be interested.”
The village chief is wary of that. I don’t know the details, but what’s going on in the village is unusual, so he probably doesn’t want to attract unnecessary attention.
So he must have been unable to reduce his labor by killing or driving out the inhabitants who did not obey his instructions.
“In other words, are you reluctant to attract attention from the outside?”
“Isn’t the fact that you are framing villagers and making them recklessly enslaved people enough to be a problem?”
“That’s right.”
“So…”
“I think the village chief is leaving.”
The conversation was interrupted by Natalya’s words at the window. In the end, it is a hundred times surer and easier way to secure evidence to prove what the chief did than to talk about what the chief did and what the slave did in this room.
“Are you going to work in the morning? How are you, good Now, reasoning time is over. As I said earlier, let’s find a place where the village chief may have hidden the kidnapped children.”
“Hanseong-ah, that’s what you mean. Have I thought about it?”
As I was about to leave the room, I stopped at Roin’s words.
“Do you have any guesses?”
“Huh.”
Also my girls are competent. I hadn’t thought about it at all, but Roin seems to have realized something in the meantime.
“There must be a considerable number of children, but shouldn’t it be a fairly large building to hide them?”
“Yes. It would be nice to have easy access to bring meals to it or manage the temperature.”
“That’s right. It should be a place where the chief is easy to approach, but the slaves are hard to access, and they don’t know where they are.”
These are truly contradictory conditions. A place that should be inconspicuous but large enough to be accessible to you, but not to your neighbors.
No matter how much I think about it, I don’t know where.
“Where is that?”
At my question, Roin rolled his feet on the floor.
“Here.”
“Here?”
At the old man’s answer, I became dumb for a while and blinked my eyes.
“The village chief’s house is large enough to accommodate children, and it doesn’t feel particularly strange to exist here. In addition, the village chief is easy to access, and the villagers cannot look inside, so it is not easy to guess that there will be children. How is it?”
“Uh, um…”
Come to think of it, I’ve been walking around the village and looking around here and there, but I’ve never thoroughly searched the village chief’s mansion. Is there a place where the village children are locked up somewhere in this mansion?
It was strange when you think about it. Isn’t there a reason for a village chief with two sons to live in a mansion with so many empty rooms?
We must do our best to show rudeness.
“It might be worth a search.”
To prepare for an unexpected situation, the steel skeleton Natalya summoned opened each door one by one and took the lead in searching.
Including the room I was staying in, I finished investigating the east wing corridor on the third floor of the mansion and the rooms attached to it, but I couldn’t find anything particularly suspicious.
“There is nothing here.”
“They are just empty rooms.”
“Then this time it’s the corridor and rooms in the west building on the third floor.”
The 3rd and 2nd floors must have been quite noisy, so a maid came up on the way and tried to stop us, but she yelled at me, so she got scared and ran away.
After coming down to the first floor, while investigating the drawing room and the main hall, an old man who had gone to the backyard came out and called Natalia.
“Did you find anything?”
“Doesn’t this look strange just by looking at it?”
In the backyard of the mansion, in the wooded corner of the mansion, he saw a wooden door. It was suspicious to be in such a remote place, but the fact that the chain or door leaf firmly attached to the door was lying on the floor raised the suspicion even more.
“Is this the door to the basement?”
It’s hidden in a place like this, so it’s unlikely you’ll find it unless you’re determined to search the mansion. As I was stroking her chin and looking at the cellar door, Roin grabbed the chained lock.
“I’ll try to open it.”
“Can you open it?”
“Sure.”
Roin’s sleek index finger fitted into the hole in the lock. He started pushing with his fingers, and soon the fingers turned into a clear liquid and began to enter the hole in the lock.
After a while, click! And unlocked the lock.
“Roin, step back. Let’s open the door with a skeleton.”
At my instruction, the old man stepped back and the steel skeletons approached and opened the door. Quang! And there was a crashing sound.
I saw the stairs leading to the dark basement. A cool breeze blew from inside, filled with darkness, and I could feel the strange smell of metal.
The old man next to him frowned and stepped back.
“Ugh, the smell of blood vibrates.”
“Chief bastard. That’s right, I thought it was suspicious.”
Discovering a suspicious facility in the village chief’s house was good news, but at the same time, I thought it was strange.
What I was looking for were kidnapped children. I don’t know how wide the cellar below is, but if you’re keeping children locked up under it, why does it smell so bloody? What did you do that makes you smell blood?
“This is strange…”
“Is it Natalie? What’s wrong?”
“It smells like blood. Usually a place like this gives off an aura of death, but I don’t feel it.”
“Are you kidding? The smell of blood is so strong?”
At Natalya’s words, Roin looked at him in disbelief. As a skilled necromancer, Natalia can sensitively perceive the energy of death emitted by the dead.
The story that Natalia did not feel the aura of death is that there are no dead people in this basement.
However, the smell of blood usually accompanies death. The smell of this much blood rises to the ground, but no one is dead?
“I’ll go in and check it out.”
“What are you doing!!!”
I stopped moving to the cellar when I heard a sudden loud voice. The village chief, his two sons, and the guards were out of breath.
He seemed to have rushed to hear the news from the maid who had kicked her out earlier.
Goshi, the eldest of the village chief’s sons, exaggeratedly moved his hands wide apart and shouted.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What. Didn’t you go to work in the cotton field?”
“I went to work and came back after hearing the story from her maid! You’re making a mess in the house! Besides, what is that monster?!”
Goshi’s gaze turned to the steel skeleton. He seemed a bit fearful.
“Am I in a position to answer your questions?”
“At least we have you as our guest! But isn’t it too much to suddenly turn the house into such a mess!”
“It is a natural thing for you to serve me. And what is this basement? The smell of blood vibrates inside.”
“Oh, that’s the meat storage room! There is nothing fun to look at!”
“I decide whether it is fun or not. These bastards.”
One step, I took a step into the basement. Seeing me like that, the village chief started a game and grabbed the captain of the ten by the collar.
“Stop! Stop it!”
“Ha, but how can we get the sheriff… !”
“No one can defile the altar of God!! I mean stop it!!!”
The village chief, who had been pretending to be kind, began to show his dark side.
