Somehow, I had thought my body felt heavier than usual. Was it a premonition for this very moment?
Standing at the center of a dining table filled with a cold atmosphere, I couldn’t bear to meet the silent, oppressive stares weighing heavily on me, and instead, I fixated my gaze on the food.
Even someone as clueless as me instinctively knew that if I dared lift my head in this situation, I wouldn’t escape unscathed.
If physical pressure could be exerted by glares alone, I would’ve already been riddled with holes with blood gushing out from every one of them.
“Here you go, Sir Mars. Aaah~”
And the woman at the root of all this was sitting right next to me, acting coy as she tried to feed me.
What the hell is going on?
When I woke up from sleep, she was seated beside me like a newlywed bride, sitting modestly.
Before my brain even had a chance to start the day with a cup of morning coffee, Pollo had barged in. And just like that, everyone came to know that Lilia, the mistress of this mansion, had been in my room since early morning.
And just like that, I became the scum who had supposedly spent the night with another man’s wife in her own house(?). I couldn’t even offer a proper explanation since I was now sitting at breakfast while simultaneously being cursed out with people’s eyes.
“Oh my, Sir Mars. Are you sure you’re done eating?”
“Ah, y-yes. I’m full.”
Don’t worry. I’ve been fed a stomachful of silent anger. I think I’ll be fine without food for the next three days.
“Is that so? From the looks of it, it seems like you still need to eat a lot more though…”
It would be rude to say she was acting like a grandmother trying to feed her visiting grandson who looked too scrawny, but it certainly felt that way.
Lilia, who had been looking at me with pity in her eyes, subtly reached out a hand toward my stomach.
Thanks to consistent training and sparring, my stomach was lean and firm, but perhaps to her it looked like I was malnourished from not eating enough.
I didn’t know whether I should push her hand away, and while I was hesitating—
“Excuse me, Madam Lilia.”
My savior, the noble lady, intervened and stopped her hand in its tracks.
“Yes, young lady. Is something the matter?”
“No matter how much you think of Mars like a son, don’t you think clinging to him like that is unbecoming of a noblewoman?”
A righteous and correct statement.
Even if no one else was watching, her behavior was clearly something that could be criticized.
“Besides, I think a married woman should feel at least a little shame acting that way toward a man who’s much younger than her.”
“…Grr. What would some wet-behind-the-ears brat know…”
“Huh?”
“Fufu, oh no~ But I’d appreciate it if you could just understand that I acted out of pure intentions. And wouldn’t it be nice for Sir Mars too, to be treated kindly by a beauty like me? Judging by the fact that he didn’t exactly reject me, I’d say he didn’t dislike it either, don’t you think?”
Damn. A huge misunderstanding had just taken root.
It wasn’t just because she reminded me of my mother that I didn’t stop her when she approached me.
From the moment I first met her, there was a sweet, distracting scent that kept drifting around.
It was the kind of scent that seemed to dull a person’s senses. Something that had been bothering me ever since we arrived at the mansion.
Unlike the sticky, dark energies I’d seen from other cult executives before, this had a slightly different quality to it. I wanted to look into it more carefully, so I’d been waiting for the moment she would take the initiative to touch me.
After all, it would’ve been strange if I were the one to suddenly grab or touch a married woman.
That’s why I acted awkwardly without stopping her approach…
“What? Is that true, Mars?”
“…Uh, hahaha…”
To explain the reason behind my behavior, I’d have to lay everything out. But doing that would tip off Madam Lilia, who was now a suspect.
Caught in a situation where I couldn’t go one way or the other, the only thing I could do was offer an awkward smile. But when the others saw that smile, their faces stiffened even more.
Damn it… What kind of hell is this…?
***
…It was awkward.
After lunch, we set out to investigate the strange happenings in this village and decided to check out the forested hills behind it, where monsters had reportedly appeared.
The mountain path wasn’t particularly rough, so the exploration wasn’t difficult in itself. But what wore me down and drained me was the unnerving silence of the club members.
“……”
“……”
“……”
Did they really come all the way here to solve the village’s problems, only to be so displeased that I was distracted by such a beautiful woman?
“Um, everyone. I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“What kind of misunderstanding?”
Swallowing hard under the noble lady’s piercing gaze, I realized I had to choose my words with utmost care.
So, if I just spoke as truthfully as possible, it should be fine, right?
“To be honest, ever since I first met Madam Lilia yesterday, she’s had this unusually pleasant scent about her. It was a smell I’d never experienced before, so I intentionally let her approach me to figure out what it was.”
“…You crazy bastard.”
Huh? What was that…?
Why did it feel like I’d grown even more distant from the three of them?
“Uh… well, you see…”
“My head hurts, so let’s just focus on the path ahead… If you keep talking, I might just lose it.”
“Y-Yes…”
Why though? What exactly did I do wrong?
All I did was truthfully explain the suspicious circumstances.
“Didn’t think he’d have that kind of fetish…”
“Maybe he’s just into smells. Sniff sniff. Maybe it’s because she’s been walking around, but it kind of smells like sweat too…”
“…Saintess, you have a lovely scent. Do you wear some kind of special perfume?”
“Eh?! Oh, n-no?! I don’t even wear makeup…”
“Then is that just your natural body scent? Damn it…”
Feeling wronged and a little downhearted, I left behind the conversation of the three women coming from behind and approached Pollo, who was diligently searching ahead.
“Pollo. How’s it going? Any progress?”
“Not really. At a glance, it’s just an ordinary mountain. Nothing stands out.”
“I figured as much…”
Realizing that, just as expected, there wasn’t any ominous presence or unusual energy and that this really was just a normal mountain left me feeling somewhat deflated.
“But this forest… something’s off.”
“…Huh?”
Just then, Pollo spoke with a hint of seriousness in his voice.
Did he realize something?
“What do you mean, ‘off’?”
“Take a good look. If monsters were living here, there should be signs. Like territorial fights with other animals or traces of animals fleeing. But there’s nothing.”
Taking another look around at his words, I saw he was right. There wasn’t a single clue.
Even gentle monsters, like those with the habits of moles or wild boars, couldn’t completely avoid conflict with wild animals.
They were living creatures too, so they would have needed a place to stay and rest. In that case, there should have been some friction with the native wild animals.
What’s more, the mountain wasn’t particularly large, so under normal circumstances, there should have been signs of territorial disputes here and there. Like fur, waste, footprints, or something similar. Yet it was strangely quiet, and nothing could be found.
“…You’re right. After searching this much, we should’ve at least come across a footprint or two from some wild animals by now…”
“Hmm. Could they have been washed away by rain?”
“As Her Highness said, that’s not entirely impossible. But even if it had rained the day before we arrived, there’s no way all the animals stayed indoors all day yesterday. Besides, judging by how dry the soil on the mountain is, it probably hasn’t rained for at least a week.”
Pollo answered the princess, who had approached and asked the question at some point.
Just as he said, it wasn’t the rainy season lately, so rain was a rare occurrence.
If it had rained in a place like this, it would’ve been obvious right away.
“We should head back for now. There are just too few clues.”
“Shame.”
In the end, we had no choice but to return from the mountain without finding any meaningful clues.
“Brother, since it feels like a waste to go back empty-handed, how about we stop by the village and ask around? The villagers might know when the monsters started coming down.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Not wanting to return completely empty-handed, we decided to stop by the village we had seen yesterday and gather information from the residents.
A quiet village.
The streets, empty in the middle of the day when people should’ve been out and about, gave off the eerie feeling of a ghost town, sending an involuntary shiver down my spine.
“It’s unsettling… a whole village this quiet.”
“Looks like all the women have gone off to work again. But where on earth are the men?”
We knocked on the doors of several houses, but all that came back was silence.
Just as we were starting to consider whether we should go outside the village to where the women were working and ask them, we finally got a response at the fifth house we visited.
“D-Dear?!”
At the sound of our knock, a woman came running to the door with a voice full of excitement, calling for her husband.
“Dear, you’re back—hiiik!!”
But when she opened the door and saw that it wasn’t her husband standing there, she gasped and instinctively stepped back in surprise.
“Ah, we’re very sorry. We just had a few questions we were hoping to ask… Are you not feeling well?”
Looking more closely, I noticed a splint on her leg.
Yet despite her injury, she had run to the door so eagerly that it seemed she hadn’t even realized the pain. Only now, after being asked, did the pain seem to hit her, and her face twisted in discomfort.
“Ah… aahhh… I’m sorry. I thought my husband had come home, and I got so excited that I just…”.
“Not at all. We’re the ones who showed up unannounced. Please, don’t strain yourself. You need to rest if you’re unwell.”
“It’s alright. But… are you all from outside the village?”
Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen this woman among the group we met yesterday.
“Yes. We came to discuss compensation for the monster attack that occurred in this territory a few months ago… but things seem a little strange around here.”
“I see…”
The woman leaned her head slightly out the door, glanced around to make sure no one was nearby, then opened the door wide and invited us in.
“I’m Elin, the owner of this house. There’s something important I need to tell you.”
And with that, we accepted the village woman Elin’s invitation and stepped into her home.
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