Searching for Collaborators (1)

Three days in Bridget Village, where I joined Gyeotmwa Jyosyegigot’s Hero Party.

Naturally, until the night of the third day, before the final battle with the bandits, I had to diligently work on the assignments for the Humanities Exploration Class.

Because if I were to tell the villagers things like, ‘The bandits will attack again on the night of the third day, so we need to prepare,’ and neglect the basic assignments, it would inevitably affect my grades.

Even though identifying the spy and subjugating the bandits accounted for half of the total assignment score, I couldn’t just completely abandon the existing assignments and wait for the last day.

“Hey, Bart-ssi! Could you carry some wood over here!”

“Yes! Please wait a moment!”

“Mars! I think we need more bricks here?!”

“Ah, yes! I’m bringing them over!”

“Seri-yang? It’s almost dinner time, and we’re short-handed. Could I ask you to help prepare meals at the Orphanage?”

“Ah, yes…! I, I’ve done a lot of meal preparation at the Church, so please leave it to me…!”

“Pardon? The Church?”

“…Ah, um, that is….”

“Seri-yang, like me, grew up in the same Orphanage. She’s always been kind since she was young, so she listened well to the adults at the Orphanage.”

“Ah, so that’s why Seri-yang and Seraphine-yang have similar names. Because they’re from the same Orphanage….”

In reality, Celista and Seraphine were from completely different backgrounds, but the villagers didn’t seem to notice anything strange about it.

Since we were all pretending to be commoner students, the students participating in this class were all using aliases, just like before.

Besides the ones just mentioned, Silena used Lena, Luke used Kru, Agnes used Ness, and Natalie used Lia, shortening or slightly altering their original names.

It was hard to guess their original names just from their aliases, but they were simple enough for the person themselves to understand.

Gyeotmwa Jyosyegigot’s name sounded strange no matter how it was shortened, so he changed his original surname, Volt, and was called Bart. No matter how you shortened it-Mwajyo, Josye, Syegi-they all sounded quite odd.

By the way, my alias here isn’t Lily, but ‘Lis’. I originally intended to use ‘Lily’ as I always had, but Ethan seemed quite reluctant.

After all, ‘Lily’ was a term of endearment we used when Ethan and I were on equal footing, without having to mind each other. He probably didn’t like the idea of anyone else calling me Lily.

‘Seriously, if he gets jealous over such trivial things, what’s he going to be like later?’

So, I also made Ethan use ‘Dan’ as his alias instead of ‘Ed’. It’s only fair to give as good as you get.

Anyway, from the very first day in the village, the members of the Hero Party were working hard to restore the village with their respective strengths, without even a moment to rest from their travel fatigue.

My task in this village restoration work was to strengthen the combat power of the existing villagers in preparation for an emergency.

“Then, let’s briefly practice the movements we’ve learned so far. One, draw the dagger hidden in your skirt with your right hand. Two, bring the drawn dagger behind your back and stab the opponent upside down.”

-Clang!

“Ah, I, I dropped it again….”

“Me, me too. This isn’t easy, is it, Lis-yang? It looked easy when you did it….”

It was a simple movement of drawing a small blade hidden in one’s clothes and stabbing instantly, but even this training saw many failures.

It couldn’t be helped. Women living in such a remote village would have handled kitchen knives or axes more often than daggers in their lives. It would be a bit difficult to get used to the feel of this short dagger in just one night.

“D-do we really have to go this far…? W-what if we make a mistake?”

“Showing a reckless attitude of resistance could put you in danger. That’s why you need to learn it even more thoroughly.”

“T-then, if we’re taken hostage, it’s better to remain quiet at first….”

“You must always remember, everyone, that the bandits don’t just want money or food. Those bastards will take anything that’s valuable, and in an isolated village like this, the easiest and most expensive thing to get is ‘women’ like us.”

“…….”

“If you don’t even prepare for minimal self-defense, you’ll be the ones who suffer in the end. Also, if you’re taken hostage, others won’t be able to move recklessly for fear of you getting hurt.

If you want to see dozens of people sacrificed to save one of your lives, and then with that saved life, be dragged away by those ugly men, have your chastity and honor completely defiled, and finally be sold for the price of a few cows to live your entire life as a beast for their sexual gratification, then you can stop.”

“N-no…. I’m sorry….”

The woman, who had felt revulsion even at holding a blade other than a kitchen knife, clutched the dagger in her hand once more.

One might think I scared them a bit too much, but I had to be this direct. I couldn’t bear to see other villagers getting slaughtered because one woman was taken hostage.

The fewer casualties there were during the bandit subjugation, the higher the score I could get in the Humanities Exploration Class, and the more experience points I could recover.

…Of course, even without that, the primary goal was to save as many lives as possible, as human lives are precious.

-Whish! Whish! Whoosh!

“…….”

And among the women learning self-defense from me, there was one with a particularly intense gaze.

Someone with brown hair braided on both sides held a sword in one hand and asked me a question.

“…May I ask one question?”

“Yes, young lady.”

“Instead of self-defense techniques like stabbing awkwardly from behind, how do you directly slice an opponent’s throat from the front?”

“…….”

“I want to learn swordsmanship that can be used for direct combat, not just self-defense. Using a weak pretense to kill those bastards can only work once or twice at most; after that, they’ll naturally become wary, so to outright kill them….”

“I apologize for saying this, but I cannot teach you such swordsmanship right now.”

“…Why not?”

“Teaching self-defense swordsmanship is only to avoid the worst-case scenario. If you are lucky enough to save your life once with self-defense swordsmanship, consider it your last chance and focus only on saving yourself.

That’s why I cannot teach you any swordsmanship other than for self-defense. If I were to teach you ‘combat swordsmanship,’ you might attempt dangerous actions against strong men.”

“…Understood.”

…Now that I think about it, that woman I just spoke with was definitely one of the ‘Collaborator Candidates’ in the original game. I should keep that in mind for now.

It was only the first day in Bridget Village. I still needed more evidence to figure out which of the three Collaborator Candidates was the culprit.

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

And so, on the night after the first day in Bridget Village.

We all gathered again at the Village Hall, sitting in a circle in the men’s room to exchange the information we had gathered on the first day.

“Haa, I’m tired. From the first day, it’s been nothing but carrying heavy loads of wood and bricks all day.”

“I’m stiff too. They say they’re going to start repairing the broken buildings in earnest tomorrow, but I wonder if my shoulders will hold up….”

“…I apologize. I couldn’t do even half as much work as you two.”

It seemed Ethan had done the least amount of work among the men who were called to do strenuous tasks.

Gyeotmwa and Thomas quietly shook their heads, comforting Ethan, who looked a little apologetic.

“Don’t think that way, E-no, Dan. Dan is still in the recovery period from the injury he sustained last night.”

“On the contrary, if Dan-ssi and Lis-yang hadn’t helped us last night, we would have been in danger, so please don’t worry about it.”

Ethan had injured one arm and was still recovering, so his right arm was currently unusable.

Picking up a fork or knife was fine, but holding logs or a sword for an entire day would naturally have been impossible.

According to Celista’s explanation, he would probably be fully recovered around the last day, so Ethan had to take care of his shoulder as much as possible until the final bandit subjugation.

…And to make him recover even faster, I naturally had to use my Healing Aura.

“Dan, come here.”

“Lis?”

-Malkang.

“…….”

“…….”

I pulled Ethan’s right arm into my embrace, wrapping my whole body around it, deliberately tucking it between my breasts.

Although we couldn’t sleep naked and embrace due to the lack of rooms, I had to at least heal Ethan’s injury at times like this.

Celista and Thomas were startled and averted their gaze when they saw me, and Agnes frowned with a disgusted expression, but I had no intention of stopping.