Ch.43Into the Dream

A few minutes later, at a pit on one side of the village.

This pit, originally used as a temporary shelter for stray dogs who had “voluntarily joined” the village, had hastily been converted into a detention facility (provisional name) for prisoners.

While the surrounding stray dogs… now being trained as hunting dogs, growled as they peered down into the pit.

I looked down coldly at the twelve naked men and women inside, tightly bound with ropes.

“Are these the ones?”

“Yes, Lord Alzar. The confiscated weapons are over here…”

Upon hearing the words “Lord Alzar,” their eyes widened, and they immediately looked up at me desperately, but I paid no attention to them as I asked Felix Yeager, who had been guarding them.

“Yeager, is the interrogation complete?”

“Yes. Thanks to the priest’s cooperation, it was wrapped up rather smoothly.”

“Cooperation? …Ah. I see what you mean.”

Being well aware of what it meant when a priest who handles holy healing magic “cooperates” with an interrogation, I immediately understood Yeager’s words and glanced at their discarded weapons outside the pit.

Hand axes, wooden clubs with metal fragments embedded in them, kukris as work knives, along with hunting bows and crude leather clothing.

After briefly observing these typical civilian defensive weapons whose quality was evident at a glance, I looked down at those creatures in the pit with contempt and questioned Felix Yeager.

“Please share the interrogation results.”

“Yes, I’ll explain. So…”

Since Felix Yeager had lived his entire life as a hunter, he wasn’t particularly eloquent, so his explanation was less skillful and more a somewhat disorganized and clumsy bundle of words.

Of course, by the time his explanation had progressed somewhat, those disorganized words naturally connected organically, allowing me to roughly understand what had happened in my absence.

According to Felix Yeager, these amateur bandits were the type of people you could find anywhere in the Western Continent.

In this medieval fantasy world, where maternal and infant mortality rates had been drastically reduced thanks to the full support of the Pantheon, there existed a considerable number of “surplus workforce.”

Typically, a social structure had formed where children inherited their parents’ family business, but in such a society where most families had multiple children, could everyone really inherit the family business?

Naturally, usually only the firstborn could inherit the family business, though besides the firstborn who would inherit the farmland or business, a few others might be taught skills.

In short, the Frankish Kingdom, where multi-child families were the norm due to blessed lands providing abundant food, inevitably had surplus labor, and in this situation, children who couldn’t inherit the family business had few paths to follow.

Jobs like day laborers with terrible treatment and poor pay, or combat professions (adventurers, mercenaries) that greatly contributed to population control in the Western Continent—cannon fodder, essentially.

Particularly, adventurers were nominally freelancers who raked in money through exploration and adventure, but in reality, they were just mercenaries specializing in monsters (hostile life forms) and employees of national subcontractors.

Nevertheless, many people who didn’t want ordinary lives, or those tired of harsh and difficult daily routines, eventually chose the even more difficult and challenging path of becoming adventurers…

A significant number of these humans who became adventurers eventually realized they couldn’t become what they aspired to be and turned to the dark side.

“Wow, these guys were adventurers?”

Like these twelve bandit-adventurers in front of me who had attempted robbery.

These days, bandits… the so-called Gen Z bandits rarely live permanently in the mountains, surviving on plunder and tolls. Most have separate main occupations while moonlighting as thieves.

Originally physically demanding jobs like mercenaries or adventurers, or merchants who wouldn’t look strange moving around, or even just drifters.

They become very docile and diligent people when facing strong and numerous opponents, but when they perceive their targets as easy and the opportunity seems right, they often transform into survival-mode bandits.

And these guys too, probably lost their minds when they saw this village under construction while passing by.

From the outside, it appeared to have no special defensive facilities or professional soldiers, so they thought they’d struck gold and moved in, only to realize something was wrong when dozens of people swarmed them and a knight appeared.

Of course, one could also react like this:

No matter how stupid bandits might be, would they attack a village being developed at the domain level, especially one led by the lord’s son?

Not only is the scale of the village under construction not small at all, but wouldn’t they fear the consequences of attacking such a village?

And my thoughts on these reactions… no matter how deeply I think about it, I can’t help but sneer.

Because the reason these bandits recklessly attacked a village where the lord’s son served as the village chief is likely just because they’re stupid.

Unlike modern Earth, in this quasi-medieval world where even the wealthy rely entirely on private tutors for education, let alone public education, a significant number of ordinary people often display incomprehensible behavior due to a lack of common sense and knowledge.

Of course, compared to modern Earth, the intelligence of people in this medieval fantasy world might actually be higher in many ways, but high intelligence (computational ability) doesn’t necessarily improve judgment and knowledge level.

So, predicting that they simply committed this pathetic act due to shortsightedness and poor judgment, I signaled to Corin that it was time to start the “plan” I had mentioned before coming here…

“Corin. What’s the usual punishment for bandits who attack pioneer villages?”

“Execution of the perpetrators and conspirators. Personally, I would recommend hanging.”

Corin, playing the “bad cop,” understood my signal and answered somewhat extremely to push the psychological state of those twelve bandit-adventurers to the extreme, aiming to secure a more advantageous position in subsequent negotiations.

Indeed, when the mention of hanging came up, they trembled and wore expressions full of despair. Thinking this was precisely the right moment, I put on a stern face and declared confidently:

“Hanging… Hmm. That would be good, but given the current situation of our settlement, wouldn’t there be something better?”

“‘Something better,’ you say? Then, Lord Alzar, you mean…”

“Yes. Since we’re short on manpower anyway, how about keeping them alive and using them for labor? The term… roughly 20 years?”

The moment I offered them the hope that they might possibly live, they were slightly discouraged upon hearing the 20-year term, but still maintained hope.

Twenty years is a very long time, but perhaps they believed that as long as they could live, anything was possible.

If so, what I needed to do here was to pressure and oppress them, letting them relax and then capturing them again repeatedly.

“Lord Alzar. Twenty years is too long. They might escape. Wouldn’t it be better to just kill them cleanly?”

“Is that so? Then let’s just go with hanging…”

“I apologize for being late, Lord Alzar!”

“Oh. You’ve arrived, Charlotte.”

And around this time, the domain’s administrator Charlotte appeared as per my orders.

More precisely, she was a magic user who had once belonged to the “Soul School” despite being a dropout from the magic tower.

Soul magic. This magic handled by the Soul School is the original form of necromancy (or spirit magic) and has a negative social perception, but in fact, soul magic itself is not evil but rather in a neutral position.

Due to its characteristic of handling “souls,” it can only perform clumsy tricks in combat unless wielded by an expert, but instead, its true value emerges in spiritual and abstract realms, as its name suggests.

Prevention of undead appearances. Magic that prevents corpses from turning into undead. Additionally, it oversees the absolute contracts of this medieval fantasy world, binding “soul contracts” with each other’s souls as collateral.

Since souls are held as collateral, if the contract is violated, the ownership of the soul transfers to the other party, making it more useful than anything else in building trust between humans.

Ah, of course, there’s a reason for this performance to recruit them despite being able to “voluntarily relocate” them with magic.

No matter how much we constrain each other through magical soul contracts, motivation to work is a separate issue, so this “performance” is conducted to raise their morale a bit and improve labor efficiency.

“Do you all agree?”

“””(Nodding vigorously)…!!!”””

Anyway, now that they would be bound by Charlotte’s soul magic through contracts, I smiled with joy at having acquired 12 fresh asse—free laborers.

※ ※ ※

And that night, after everything was settled.

“…Phew.”

Right after I fell asleep, having completed all the “preparations,” I opened my eyes in the empty darkness, as I always had.