The Vegetarian Troll's Cabin (4)
Just as Billy had said, there was indeed a human village nearby. Tucked away in a corner of a mountainous region surrounded by peaks of all sizes, a small community of people truly lived.
The village was situated in such a secluded spot that Yohan and Falco would have walked right past it had Billy not told them of its existence and general location. Still, Yohan didn't particularly care. As long as they could stop by, restock on food for their journey, and leave, that was more than enough.
Fortunately, the terrain leading to the village wasn't as rugged as the surrounding areas, so their horse-drawn carriage had no trouble making its way inside.
"Get the hell out of here before you try anything funny!"
"Whoa, there."
The problem was that the villagers were far more hostile to outsiders than Billy had let on. The moment their carriage crossed the village threshold, glaring eyes filled with blatant suspicion locked onto them. That wasn't all. One young man, snorting with rage, marched right up to them and demanded they get the hell out of his sight.
"Look, we're just here to buy some food and we'll be on our way," Yohan said.
"I said get lost! We don't have a single rotten potato to spare for outsiders!"
Yohan wholeheartedly agreed with the Goddess. The atmosphere was incredibly tense; at this rate, things might actually turn bloody. He spent a few moments bickering with the young man at the entrance of the village.
"That's enough, stand down. Judging by their gear, they aren't people you want to mess with."
A voice called out from behind. Yohan instinctively turned his head to see a middle-aged man with a large scar over one eye walking toward them.
"Tsk."
Perhaps the middle-aged man's intervention had worked, or perhaps the youth had chickened out after seeing his intimidating appearance. The villager, who looked ready to grab Yohan by the collar just a second ago, spat on the ground and stomped off.
"Whew..."
What a relief. Yohan let out a sigh of relief, clutching his chest. If the tension had escalated any further, Falco, who wasn't exactly known for her patience, would have definitely drawn her daggers.
"..."
Sure enough, though her face remained blank, Falco was already poised to draw her weapons at a moment's notice. Her cloak hid her stance from the villager, but Yohan knew her well enough to notice. Usually quiet, but absolutely obsessed with meat, and once her switch is flipped, there's no stopping her... and this crazy elf is my companion. Well, it was probably that fiery temperament that had caught the Goddess's eye in the first place. Yohan smacked his lips, feeling a bit bitter.
"Thanks. You saved us some trouble," Yohan approached the middle-aged man and expressed his gratitude. However, the man didn't seem particularly friendly toward them either.
"You look like adventurers, but I'm sorry to say we don't have any food to sell you, even if you offer gold. I'm not just saying that to get rid of you."
The man spoke bluntly. Yohan couldn't detect any deceit in his voice. In the first place, this village wasn't nearly large enough to support commerce. Frankly speaking, it was even smaller and poorer than Junk Town.
"Hmm. What do we do now?" Yohan groaned softly and glanced at Falco.
"Don't worry. An elf of the forest can easily find food in the wild," Falco replied with absolute confidence, giving him a big thumbs-up.
"Th-that's very reassuring," Yohan stared at her with a dubious expression.
"Ahem."
The man, who had been quietly observing their exchange, cleared his throat. Both Yohan and Falco immediately turned their attention back to him.
"Still, I can at least offer a passing traveler a simple meal. Follow me to my house."
The man gestured with his chin for them to follow. Despite his rugged, intimidating face, he seemed to possess some basic decency. What a relief. Yohan let out a quiet sigh of relief and followed behind him. Even though the young man had backed off thanks to this man's intervention, Yohan could still feel the hostile, piercing glares of the other villagers prickling his skin.
The man's house was quite spacious for someone living alone. Perhaps because they had visited Billy's cramped cabin just the day before, it felt even larger. Because of that, the air inside felt unusually cold and drafty to Yohan.
The man guided them to a wooden table with four chairs. Yohan and Falco naturally took their seats across from him.
"As you can see, this place can barely be called a proper village. Let alone an eatery, we don't even have an inn for travelers to stay. The villagers here just scrape by, digging in the dirt to survive."
The man glanced at the farming tools leaning against the wall.
"And the people here only stay because of unavoidable circumstances. It's not like we live in a dump like this by choice."
"Unavoidable circumstances?" Falco echoed, tilting her head.
"Judging by the direction you came from, I assume you've already heard a bit about our situation."
It seemed the man was acquainted with Billy, the cabin's owner. Honestly, considering the distance between the cabin and the village, it would have been stranger if the villagers didn't know Billy existed.
"Well, we did hear some things from a fellow with rather prominent fangs, but to be honest, it was a bit hard for us to believe," Yohan answered honestly. The man merely let out a hollow, bitter chuckle.
"To be fair, I think a vegetarian half-troll makes far less sense than man-eating trolls."
"That is a fair point," Falco, the meat-lover, chimed in. The man nodded in agreement with her.
"At any rate, as travelers, it would be best for you to leave this village as quickly as possible."
"Because we'll get targeted if we catch the trolls' attention?" When Yohan asked, the man offered a silent nod of affirmation.
"Man. I know this is the middle of nowhere, but I can't believe this kind of stuff still happens in this day and age."
When he had only heard it from Billy, Yohan had harbored some doubts. But now, he had no choice but to accept that the half-troll's words were entirely true.
"What about petitioning the local lord...?"
"Impossible. More than ten years ago, a villager tried to escape. What returned wasn't the lord's subjugation force, but the runaway's cold corpse and a pack of furious trolls. And that day, two innocent villagers were sacrificed alongside him."
There was no word for it other than horrific.
"The two who died that day were the neighbors of the man who tried to run."
"..."
Silence fell over the room as Yohan and Falco exchanged glances. Something smells fishy. Yohan thought to himself. It wasn't just that the villagers' situation was terrible; there was something fundamentally off about the whole setup.
"So, for those of us born and raised here, there is no escape."
It was impossible for them to call for help. At the same time, the lord who nominally ruled this territory had absolutely no reason to dispatch precious troops to such a remote, godforsaken corner. It was complete and utter isolation.
"What if you stole my horse outside and bolted?" Yohan asked again. The man shook his head.
"If we could, we would have done it long ago. But if any of us tried to steal your horse and run, the other neighbors would stop them. Even if it meant killing them."
It was a cold, calculated survival mechanism: better to kill one runaway than to let three people—the runaway and their neighbors—be slaughtered. The man-eating trolls had bound the villagers in a noose woven of pure terror. Offer one human sacrifice every year to buy survival for the rest, or try to escape, get caught, and face total annihilation.
"How devious. Killing exactly two more as an example is incredibly calculated."
The monsters kept their killings within a "reasonable" limit. If they executed ten or twenty villagers at once as an example, the village would collapse entirely, destroying their food source.
"So, leave this place as soon as you can. If you catch their eye, you'll only end up as their next meal."
"Tsk..."
There was nothing they could do for now. It was best to follow the man's advice. The two immediately left his house and climbed back onto their carriage parked in the middle of the village road.
"Man, look at those glares."
Even as they prepared to leave, several villagers continued to shoot them hostile looks. Yet, Yohan couldn't bring himself to pick a fight with them. It was a toxic cocktail of terror from the trolls' rule, sheer helplessness at their inability to escape, and a bitter jealousy toward outsiders who possessed the freedom to leave.
"Let's head up the mountain like you suggested. At this rate, we're going to completely run out of food."
"Okay."
Leaving the village behind, their carriage began its ascent back up the mountain where Billy's cabin was located.
"We might have to head back to Junk Town if things go south, so we need to ration our preserved food as much as possible..."
"Don't worry. When a forest elf walks, the trees drop their fruits, and the beasts of the wild approach to offer their milk."
"Cut the crap."
Sometimes, Yohan genuinely couldn't tell if she was being serious or just trying to crack a joke.
"This can't be..."
Two hours had passed since they set off to forage in the mountains. Despite her grand declarations, Falco's hands were completely empty—not even a rotten potato in sight. Instead, it was Yohan who had managed to catch a few fish from a nearby stream. Looking utterly devastated by this blow to her elven pride, Falco slumped onto the ground and hung her head in defeat.
"The gifts of the forest... the wild berries, the venison..."
"Heh. Looks like I win."
Yohan had absolutely no intention of offering her a single word of comfort. Instead, he dangled the freshly caught fish right in front of her face, wearing a smug, teasing grin.
"Th-that's cheating! Using your Authority to electrocute the stream!"
"If you don't like it, become an Apostle yourself~"
In any case, they had fish, and roasting them would make for a decent meal. Yohan immediately gathered firewood on the sandy bank of the stream and built a fire. He then skewered the fish on wooden sticks and propped them up around the campfire.
"But seriously, we didn't see a single wild animal out there," Yohan remarked. Of course, he wasn't saying this to make Falco feel better; he was simply stating a plain fact based on what he had observed.
"Perhaps..."
Since this entire area was the hunting ground of man-eating trolls, the weaker forest animals had likely fled far away, driven out by the monsters' overwhelming presence. Yohan silently hypothesized.
They sat in silence for a while. Once the skin of the fish had charred to a dark crisp, Yohan finally pulled the sticks out of the dirt.
"In places like this, you have to make sure it's thoroughly cooked, even if the outside gets charred."
Eating raw freshwater fish was a one-way ticket to a parasite infestation. Yohan handed one of the roasted fish to Falco. The two sat by the campfire, filling their empty stomachs. The unseasoned, hastily roasted fish tasted terrible, to put it mildly, but neither Yohan nor Falco complained, having survived in far worse conditions during their grave-robbing days.
"Ugh... maybe we should go back to that fanged fellow's place and ask for some food."
Still, bad food was bad food. Yohan grumbled under his breath.
"Ah, forget it. Why rob a guy who barely has anything to begin with? It's not like we can go back down to the village either."
"Yeah. It felt uncomfortable staying there anyway."
"Right?"
Billy, the cabin's owner, didn't seem like a bad guy. However, there was no telling when those man-eating trolls might pay his cabin a visit. As for the human village, it wasn't even worth discussing. The survival instincts Yohan had honed over years of grave robbing were ringing alarm bells in his head. If that scarred, rugged-looking man hadn't intervened in time to stop the young villager and Falco, a massive headache would have surely ensued. Yohan let out a sigh and finished off the remaining half of his fish.
Rustle—
At that moment, the sound of rustling came from the bushes behind them. Yohan and Falco sprang to their feet in unison, drawing their blades.
"A wild animal?"
"No. It's heading straight for us."
It wasn't just a beast wandering around. Which meant...
Shhhk—
The thick foliage parted, and a familiar green-skinned youth poked his head out.
"Found you. So this is where you were."
"Huh?"
Dumbfounded by Billy's sudden appearance, Yohan and Falco stared at him, completely oblivious to the fact that they had dropped their half-eaten fish onto the dirt.