Bandit Subjugation
Sua had turned out to be quite a bit older than I'd assumed, and after turning down her gift, I headed straight home.
"Was that really such a shock?"
But seriously — how is anyone supposed to live alone for thirty years without a single drop of dopamine? That's not a life, that's a sentence.
"Absolutely not happening."
Sure, if I used the Parallel World Gallery in there, I could at least get my minimum daily dose of gallery-posting, but there was no way that alone would cut it.
"How am I supposed to give this up?"
I grilled up the meat I'd bought on the way home, took one bite, and shuddered. Thankfully, Sua had agreed to handle the exchange of my magic stones from now on, which had instantly solved the money problem — so I'd immediately gone out and bought a mountain of meat and carbonated drinks.
Now that I was selling magic stones for money, it finally felt like I was being recognized as a legitimate Hunter. Riding that wave, I stuffed a meat wrap until my cheeks bulged and chewed away, and honestly, I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt this happy.
"Ahh, that hit the spot."
It had been so long since I'd had meat that I'd eaten myself absolutely stuffed. And then washing it all down with a fizzy soda to cut the grease at the end — if this wasn't paradise, what was?
I sat there patting my belly, and that was when the Head's explanation about the fifth floor came back to me.
"……"
The moment that thought surfaced, the blissful meat-high evaporated. I stopped thinking about it, fired up the Gallery, and made a new post instead.
Wait, seriously?
So you're telling me Challenger is gaming, running talk segments, managing her viewers, and lurking the Gallery all at the same time?
Yeah, I guess that level of multitasking is just table stakes for surviving as a top streamer. I couldn't help but be impressed.
Right on cue, the Druid and the Azure Sky Sword Emperor appeared and dropped their replies. The Druid, true to form, didn't seem bothered at all — being not-quite-human would do that — but the Sword Emperor was apparently a different story.
Sua had told me the exact same thing. The Gallery was telling me the exact same thing.
So I decided, forcibly, to believe that I'd be able to do it.
Once I'd digested a reasonable amount of dinner, I entered the Tower — and the moment I took in my surroundings, I couldn't help but gape.
"It's an outsider!"
"You dummy, he's an adventurer the village chief hired."
It felt like I'd suddenly fallen into a medieval village — except this was the fifth floor of the Tower.
"Mister, are you an adventurer?"
"No, this mister is not."
"Well, you're carrying a sword, so you're an adventurer!"
"Then let's go tell the grown-ups, quick!"
"Come on!"
As if simply seeing a new person were the greatest entertainment in the world, the village kids chattered their own lines at each other and bolted off without waiting for an answer.
I stood there dumbly for a while, until I spotted a man in his fifties, by the look of him, approaching from the distance with a group of men in tow.
"So you're the adventurer who took this commission?"
"That's me. Why, want me to put on a sword dance for you right here?"
"Tch. Fine — so long as you can swing that thing, that's all that matters."
Ooh, they actually just let it slide.
From what I'd been told, a polite speech pattern or a vacant expression at this stage would get me nothing but contempt from the villagers — or in the worst case, the kind of distrust that ended with a knife in my ribs while I slept.
"Good. Monsters, bandits, whatever it is — I'll carve up the lot. Just leave it to me."
As I said it, drawing my sword slightly, the men standing beside the chief grimaced — but the chief's face actually brightened.
"It's late in the evening, so make use of that empty house over there tonight."
"Sure, sure. Oh — you wouldn't happen to have any spare booze in the village? My throat's a bit dry after walking all the way out here."
When I made a crude, waggling gesture with my hand, I finally saw the chief's face contort as well.
"…I'll send some liquor over later. But you'd best keep your hands off the village women."
"Heh heh. When did I ever ask for women? Look at the old lecher getting all worked up."
"Grr! With a mouth that fine, you'd better have sword skills to match at least half of it!"
"Don't worry about that."
When I gave a lazy flap of my hand, the chief and his men stormed off in a huff.
Did I do that right?
As far as I'd been briefed, I was supposed to play the most insufferably arrogant adventurer I could manage, so I'd given it my all. Thankfully, I'd heard that the best outcome was the chief not leaving men behind to keep watch on me, so I figured I'd done well enough on that front.
What the guidebook hadn't covered was the villagers frantically hustling their women indoors the moment I arrived.
"So walkthroughs really aren't worth trusting, huh."
Not that I planned on blindly relying on a walkthrough and doing nothing else. Before entering the house, I conjured a Leaf Bird and had it secretly tail the chief.
The chief and his men went around the village gathering people, then slipped into a wooden house slightly larger than the others — so I hurriedly steered the bird after them, attaching it to the trouser leg of one of the men.
Since a Leaf Bird was made of woven plant stems and leaves growing nearby, once it unraveled its body and clung onto someone like that, it just looked like a bit of tangled grass. Which made it a wonderfully convenient wiretap, too.
Ahh, magic really is broken.
"Damn it, that adventurer punk looked young too — how's he allowed to be that cocky?"
"Why don't we just ambush him like before and file a complaint with the guild?"
"Enough. This one's the real deal, so it'll be fine. Besides, the guild isn't run by idiots — the same trick won't work twice. If we kill this adventurer too, the next one they send will be wearing a gold badge."
"A gold badge, you say?"
"Didn't you see the tag hanging around that punk's neck? He's a silver-rank adventurer. They've probably sent someone competent to investigate the one we killed last time."
The chief let out a low, phlegmy chuckle and went on.
"Kill someone like that on top of everything else, and what little reputation this village has left will be gone. And judging by how he carries himself, he's the genuine article."
"You mean the likes of that?"
"Listen well. The more seasoned an adventurer is, the more they go looking for women and liquor — you never know when you'll die out there."
"Ooooh."
"As expected of the chief."
"So you'd all better keep a good eye on your daughters and wives. Don't come crying to me later."
"What about the liquor, then?"
"Just water it down and bring it over."
With the chief's final word, village policy was apparently decided, because it wasn't long before I was handed a cup of the strangest-smelling liquor I'd ever encountered.
"Hey. What is this?"
"What does it look like?"
The man who'd brought the drink was one of the ones who'd been glaring at me earlier, and even now he stood with his legs crossed, scowling down at me.
Did you spit in this or something?
"You brought me this and called it liquor? And what's with the weird smell?"
"Ha! Too refined an adventurer to drink our village brew, is it?"
"Is watering down your drinks some kind of local tradition here?"
The man flinched in visible shock — apparently he hadn't expected to be caught out without even tasting it first.
"Tch, there goes any hope of a palate. Tell the chief: if the food's as bad as the booze, there will be consequences."
"F-fine, I got it."
When I growled it out, the man panicked, hastily grabbed the bottle, and scurried away.
I watched him go, then went back inside and threw myself onto the straw-stuffed bed.
"Bandit subjugation, huh."
That was the theme of the fifth floor. Simple enough on paper: kill every bandit raiding the village, save the village, done.
"I thought it was supposed to be simple. So why am I locked in a battle of nerves with the villagers instead of the bandits?"
Seeing as I'd have to do this kind of roleplay for every floor going forward, I genuinely started wondering whether I should enroll in an acting school.
And naturally, the meal the man who'd run off earlier brought me was also terrible. Walking into the Tower stuffed with Upjinsal BBQ had turned out to be the best decision I'd ever made.
At this point I figured the villagers wouldn't actually ambush me, but just in case, I kept watch all night with the Leaf Bird to see if anyone came creeping. Thankfully my little performance had worked, and no ambush event materialized — though breakfast, true to form, was awful.
"I don't get it. They hand this over like it's something to be proud of?"
Excuse me? I'm the one whining here?
This stuff tastes like someone boiled the smell of sweat into a porridge. If anyone wanted to dispute me, I'd genuinely have loved to spoon-feed them a bowl each.
"Awake, are you?"
"Yeah. Someone watered down the liquor for me, so it's the freshest morning I've had in a while."
"Ahem."
"By the way, is there anyone in this village besides men?"
"Spare me the idle chatter and get on with the commission — go subjugate those bandits."
Fine, that was fair. But I put on another enthusiastic show for them anyway.
"Leave it to me."
With another lazy flap of my hand, I sauntered out of the village.
Here was the problem, though: this wasn't a game. There was no map, no quest markers showing where the bandits were hiding — I had to comb the mountains myself.
"Not that I actually need to."
Knowing the walkthrough, I headed straight for the bandits' hideout.
Being deep in the forest threw me off a little, but a few Leaf Birds later, I found it in no time.
The bandit camp was nothing more than a cluster of tents pitched on open flat ground. From the outside, you honestly couldn't tell whether this was a bandit den or a colony of beggars.
"Yaaay!"
"Hey, over there!"
"Oh no you don't! What did your mother say about running!"
……And seeing the children there — and a pregnant woman, ready to pop any day — the unease I'd been burying this whole time finally lifted its head.
"Status window."
Complete the quest!
That was all the status window said. One single line.
Complete the quest could mean only one thing.
It was no different from an order to kill every single person laughing out there — the children and the adults alike.