Sowing Discord - 1
Torm was a man bloated with fat like a pig.
A full belly could often pass for a mark of prosperity, but this man had taken it to an extreme. His massive gut made even walking look like a struggle, and the flesh pressing against his windpipe produced an occasional ku-hup that sounded uncomfortably like a pig having its throat cut.
Because of that appearance, Torm had never managed to marry, even at twenty-nine.
The only reason a man like him could run with John's gang — the most successful crew in the village — was money. Torm's father was the sole innkeeper in town, raking in coin with every one of the Sun God Sect's four major festivals. Flush with cash, Torm had bought his way into John's company, and with it came opportunities to violate women he never would have touched otherwise.
Of course, the only women he ever got were the ones John's gang had grown bored of and discarded, or outright prostitutes. But for a virgin like Torm, even that was more than enough.
As time went on, though, being handed other men's leftovers began to rankle. He wanted a young virgin of his own. He wanted a clean cunt that hadn't been fouled by someone else's seed. Too timid to say it outright to John's crew, he still swore to himself that if the chance ever came, he would take it.
Then the sleeping draught Pin had procured was delivered into his hands.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime.
Ku-hup. With this, I get a virgin too.
John had sternly ordered everyone to keep their heads down until the church withdrew, but in a mind already drowning in base lust, that warning had long since evaporated. Having heard the church would be pulling out soon anyway, Torm decided this was his last shot.
He spiked the food of every guest staying at the inn. Then, in the dead of night when everyone was asleep, he made his way to the room of the girl he'd marked earlier that day.
Krr-hup. Cute. Young.
A fifteen-year-old girl who'd come to the church with her father. The sight of a girl still untouched by any man's hands sent Torm into a frenzy. He pulled out his cock and prepared to take her then and there.
That was when it happened.
Thud!
"Ku-hup?!"
Something had fallen. Torm jumped, startled. He sensed a presence, but the only other person nearby was the girl's father, still asleep.
Just a rat.
He dismissed it and climbed back onto the bed to finish what he'd started.
"Who are you?"
"Wh-what?"
Contrary to what Pin had promised about the sleeping draught, the noise from moments ago had woken the girl's father. Torm sensed something was wrong — but it was already too late.
"What the hell are you doing to my daughter?!"
The father exploded with rage and lunged at him.
"Lina, are you all right? Open your eyes, Lina!"
The father's first concern was his daughter, and that gave Torm just enough time to flee. But the commotion had woken every other guest in the inn.
"What's going on?"
"Fuck, why is that guy's pants down?"
"Grab him! That bastard tried to rape my daughter!"
"What did you say?"
The faithful gathered for the Brightness Festival may not have known each other personally, but they all served the Goddess Helia. That shared faith forged a bond strong enough that a single father's cry was enough to set them all in motion.
"You son of a bitch!"
"That's the innkeeper's son!"
"Get him! No — break his damn legs!"
Torm didn't get far. They caught him still carrying the evidence — the sleeping draught he hadn't managed to hide.
"Ku-hup, fuck! Krr-hup! Fuuuuck! Pin, you piece of shiiiiit!"
In the end, Torm was dragged off by the faithful, cursing the man who'd deceived him.
And someone watched it all unfold with a thin, knowing smile.
"Really does sound like a pig having its throat cut."
The very person who had deliberately made the noise that woke the girl's father — and engineered everything that followed.
The Sinister Witch's Affairs was a game in which the heroine Aurora crafted every kind of medicine from materials she gathered in the forest. True to her identity as a witch, the potions she handled ranged from deadly poisons to sleeping draughts, paralytics, and even aphrodisiacs. Developing new recipes and producing rare concoctions was the core of the gameplay.
Naturally, the recipes also included methods of neutralizing those same drugs — and among them, the countermeasure for the sleeping draught was simple enough that even an ordinary person could follow it.
Who would have thought that expensive sleeping draught could be undone by nothing more than mint leaves.
Even a small amount of mint — which carried a mild stimulant effect — was enough to cancel out the draught entirely. That was how he'd so easily taught Torm a lesson for trying to take a young girl under its influence.
I'd wanted to kill that bastard from the moment I saw him in the game.
Even if this world treated fifteen as the age of adulthood, he couldn't stomach a man who would rape a girl still so young in every way that mattered.
But if I leave things as they are, Tom will just try to buy his way out of it.
The innkeeper's son attempting to rape a guest's daughter should have been enough to shut the place down permanently. But given how insular a rural village could be, a proper punishment was unlikely. Tom the innkeeper also maintained close ties with the village chief — the very reason he could gouge the faithful on prices and still keep his doors open. The chief looked the other way because Tom paid him under the table.
The chief takes kickbacks from Tom, too.
They would try to bury this incident the same way, exploiting the village's closed nature. But that only worked as long as the relationship between the chief and Tom remained intact.
Been a while since I sowed a little discord.
Entiel Village was thrown into chaos in the middle of the night. The faithful visiting the church were furious over the innkeeper's son attempting to rape a guest's daughter.
"Innkeeper! How are you going to take responsibility for this?!"
"Come now, it's not as if the girl lost her virginity. Let's settle this quietly."
"What did you just say?!"
"My boy's just full of youthful vigor. Let's put this behind us amicably."
"You bastard!"
Even in the middle of all that, Tom remained composed. His son's blunder had him seething, but he didn't consider the problem particularly serious. They were outsiders, after all. Given time, the whole thing would blow over on its own. If they kept pressing, he'd just throw some money at them.
That was the plan — until someone made sure the incident couldn't be contained.
"Fortunately, it appears she was given a sleeping draught. Your daughter should wake within a few hours."
"Is that true? Thank you."
The hunter Ian. A man who had settled in the village only a month ago — and the moment he stepped into the affair, everything spiraled out of control.
"A sleeping draught?"
"Fuck, then this wasn't some spur-of-the-moment crime!"
"Come to think of it, my wife still hasn't woken up either."
"The innkeeper's son drugged the food we ate!"
"For all we know, he's done this before — to my wife, to my daughter."
The faithful erupted into a riot, and Tom's inn descended into pandemonium in moments. The village watch turned out in response.
"What the hell is this at this hour?! Drop your weapons!"
"Shut up! Do you even know what this innkeeper's son did?!"
"You try to rape someone's daughter, you'd better be ready for the consequences!"
Faithful and watchmen faced off.
"This is all your fault! You ran your mouth and turned this into a disaster!"
Tom seized Ian by the collar and threatened him, convinced Ian was the reason everything had blown up.
"You'll be the one paying for the damages. You understand me?!"
"The one who should take responsibility is your son."
"What did you say?!"
Tom glared as if he meant to kill him, but Ian barely registered the threat. Instead, he turned toward the village chief, who had arrived late in an attempt to restore order.
"Chief, I need a word with you."
"Ian, what do you think you're doing? Why take the outsiders' side and turn this into such a mess?!"
"That's not what matters right now."
Ian dropped his voice so only the chief could hear.
"I overheard something at the church. An Inquisitor is coming for this Brightness Festival."
At the word Inquisitor, the chief's face went deathly pale.
There had once been a rural village that treated wives as communal property. Their custom made no exception for outsiders — any married woman who visited was gang-raped by the men of the village. One day they went so far as to gang-rape the wife of a man who served the Goddess Helia. Unable to bear the humiliation, she took her own life.
The village tried to cover it up, but they couldn't stop the rumors. Word of a town that used wives as public goods reached the ears of the Sun God Sect, and an Inquisitor was dispatched to investigate. The result: every man in the village was castrated and reduced to the status of a slave.
The chief knew full well that story was no mere rumor. How could he not? He was the only man who had escaped that village alive.
Ian's mention of an Inquisitor filled the village's representative with pure terror. Inquisitors were beings even nobles dared not cross lightly. Erasing an entire rural village was well within their power. If they learned that someone had tried to rape a faithful's daughter…
The nightmare of the past could repeat itself.
Of course, an attempted rape alone might not be enough to bring an Inquisitor down with full force — but once the old fear had seized him, the chief's judgment was already clouded.
"I-is that information reliable?"
"Yes. I heard it directly from the abbot."
"I'm losing my mind."
The chief's vision went dark. Everything he had built up until now felt as if it could vanish in an instant.
"We need to handle this among ourselves. It cannot reach the Inquisitor's ears."
"Right. We settle it ourselves."
Ian's counsel snapped the chief back to clarity. He couldn't afford to sit idle, just as Ian had said.
"Some things need to be cut loose."
The chief said it while fixing Tom with a hard stare.