Wise Life in a Backwater Village
The forty-three bandits who had survived the subjugation force crossed the forest with ruthless speed.
Three of them were devoured by wild beasts along the way, yet not a single man faltered in his stride.
At last the remaining forty reached their destination and strode straight into the village without so much as an attempt at stealth. Then, without the slightest hesitation, they launched their assault.
"Bread… please, give us bread…"
Peacefully.
That was how it went.
Even men who made plunder their livelihood still possessed a shred of conscience. They simply begged, with desperate sincerity, for bread to fill their empty stomachs and a place to rest their exhausted bodies, and the generous hearts of country folk opened wide to embrace them…
…or so a fairy tale might claim. What actually happened was rather different.
"Bread… please, give us bread…"
If you don't want to die, hand over the food, you fucking lowlife bastards.
The bandit gang that had come to the village was no pitiful throng of beggars pleading for mercy. Of course it wasn't. Banditry is not a profession that thrives on begging.
Had these men been the sort to kneel quietly and plead at the crossroads of life and death, their skulls would never have been crushed by government troops in the first place.
"Please… show us mercy…"
The only reason they presented themselves in so thoroughly un-bandit-like a fashion was that they had no idea how many people lived in this miserable little village. Had they not been so badly weakened after their rout by the soldiers, they would have drawn steel at once and begun the profitable business of plunder—slaughtering any farmers who resisted, raping their wives and daughters, and stripping the place of every last possession.
Asty's village was no exception to their plans. They intended to pose as refugees, map out the village's size and layout, recover their strength, and then drive knives into the backs of everyone who had shown them kindness.
"Aigoo, tsk tsk… You're nothing but skin and bones. Come inside at once. How could a man hold his head up if he turned away from folk who are half-dead already?"
"Thank you, elder—thank you so much!"
Naturally the villagers saw through the act at once. Where in the world does one find a band of beggars composed solely of forty rough-looking adult men? Anyone with eyes could tell this was a pack of bandits putting on a pitiful show.
Pointing that out, of course, would only end with the village in flames. So the sharper residents cheerfully played along with the performance—each with a worn dagger tucked up a sleeve.
"What do we do?"
"Well now… the moment those bastards get their strength back, they'll turn on us for certain."
"Even if every young man in the village stands up, it'll be a hard fight."
Behind the houses a quiet council of war convened. The simple country folk trusted the forty sudden strangers not one whit. Rural villages have always been exclusive places, and their people are long accustomed to handling trouble themselves.
"Aigoo, lads—come have a spoonful each. If you're too tired, shall I feed you myself?"
"Th-thank you…?"
While the village chief's wife dragged out the meal service, buying precious time, the chief and the other leading men of the village discussed their options in low voices.
"Um… would it be all right if I looked after those strangers? I happen to have some work that needs extra hands…"
"Asty. Adults are talking. Go home this instant and hide where no one will find you."
The hopelessly naïve twenty-first-century notion that offering honest work might create a mutually beneficial arrangement was rejected on the spot. Bandits are not parties with whom one negotiates or trades. Men who live by robbery keep a contract only when the other side's strength so vastly exceeds their own that they have no choice. This rustic village possessed no such strength. Therefore the only path was to sink venomous fangs into their throats the moment their guard dropped.
"We'll use the pouches."
The village chief delivered the decision in a solemn voice. The others nodded in understanding and slipped away to their homes. In the deadly duel where every life hung in the balance, the villagers had struck first.
When I first opened my eyes inside Asty's body, I told myself I had simply been unlucky.
For an idiot who had half-chosen to die, a second chance at life felt closer to a curse than a miracle—especially when that chance had been purchased by ending someone else's existence. I had been a thorough pessimist who never believed in souls. Even after a surreal experience forced me to accept that souls and reincarnation were real, the guilt of having snuffed out a young girl's life refused to leave me. Given that personality is shaped by experience after birth, the guilt was not entirely baseless either.
So I tried to do something—anything. Hoping desperately that devotion to humanity's prosperity and the common good might serve as atonement for the girl, I set out to remake the world according to my own tastes, armed with nothing more than scraps of modern knowledge. Through modern eyes the Middle Ages looked like a complete disaster, after all.
That, I think, is why I let my guard down. I never truly accepted this world as reality; I was content to intervene as a detached third party. Never mind that reality's blade could have slit my throat at any moment.
Fortunately I realized the truth before it was too late—by offering the lives of forty bandits as the sacrifice.
"Hic… kugh…"
"Looks like the big ones are stubborn. Come choke this one's neck for me."
"Hey now, just because we're about to be in-laws doesn't mean you get to work me like a dog."
"Then should this old man try to strangle these muscle-bound brutes with these skinny hands of mine?"
"Yes, yes…"
Every last one of the bandit friends who had crawled in dressed as beggars had been neutralized. The village chief had laced their food with poison. Most already lay as corpses on the ground, but a few of the larger ones still clung stubbornly to life. Cooper—my father—was methodically finishing them off alongside the chief.
"Wouldn't a knife be faster?"
"Aigoo, spill blood and the cleanup becomes a nightmare."
"No rope around? Hang them for a bit and it'd be easier."
It wasn't only the two of them. Every adult who normally did heavy work had gathered and was calmly twisting necks, chatting all the while as if this were nothing out of the ordinary. Confirmed corpses were lifted one by one and loaded onto a cart.
"Damn it. Stack them like that and the cart'll break."
"Just put up with it. We have to dump them quick."
"Listen to him talk big when it isn't even his cart."
The scene looked less like a horrific massacre and more like a one-sided slaughter. No matter how I looked at it, this was clearly not their first time.
Ah…
Only then did I understand the strange peace that blanketed this village—the reason a place defended by nothing more than a single fence had survived so long; the reason ordinary farmers could live in relative comfort in an age when a moment's inattention meant robbers stripping you of life, family, and everything else.
It wasn't because the village was a hell full of psychopathic killers…
Aha. In this era, self-help is the default…!
When robbers break into your house, the smartest move is for the homeowner to poison them, finish them off, and bury the bodies himself. It happens often enough that everyone can twist a neck without batting an eye.
Is that the answer?
"Been quiet for a while—why the sudden rush?"
"Bread prices are up these days. Living's gotten hard. Empty bellies make a man turn savage."
That was the answer. Looks like I've become a half-medieval person already.
So bread prices have risen. I haven't been reincarnated long, yet I never particularly felt that life had grown harder. Wondering if the medieval average was simply that low, I skimmed Asty's memories. The Cooper family's standard of living hadn't changed much at all.
If I were still a foolish modern man I would have spun all sorts of useless theories…
Being a backwater village half-isolated from the central economy, the price surge barely touched us!
Now that I was a proper half-medieval person, the answer came easily. A place the lord had half-abandoned because all anyone did was dig dirt and hunt animals—what price inflation?
There was nothing left to be disappointed about. In fact, I no longer had the right to be disappointed. I shouldn't judge this place by my old standards. I should be thinking about how to turn my knowledge into something that actually helps here.
This hopeless world is my reality now, and this dead-end backwater is my hometown. Like it or not, I am no longer Cheon Si-jun, twenty-first-century modern man. I am Asty, youngest daughter of a rural village.
Which means the very first thing I must do is—
Hide. Tightly.
If Dad catches me sneaking out to watch after he told me not to, I'm dead. Stay quiet, stay hidden, and slip home without a sound…!