Guided by a woman named Elin, we all entered her home together.
Naturally, the house felt a bit cramped for five people to fit inside. But no one voiced any complaints, since we didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere.
“Please, have a seat first.”
“N-No, I couldn’t possibly… not with such distinguished guests…”
“Aren’t you injured? We’re perfectly fine sitting on the floor, so please, go ahead and sit.”
Supported by the Saintess as she entered, the woman finally seemed to realize from our appearance that we were nobles. She tried to decline the seat, but since she was injured, we gently insisted and had her sit down.
Once Elin was seated, the Saintess immediately treated her leg using divine power. When the leg that was injured enough to require a splint was healed in an instant at the Saintess’s touch, Elin realized we weren’t ordinary people and became even more respectful.
“M-My leg, it healed instantly…! M-May I ask who you all are…?”
“Ah, we came from the academy to offer help after the monster extermination request sent from this territory a few months ago was denied.”
Not wanting to startle her, I quickly introduced the women as the Imperial Princess, the Duke’s daughter, and the Saintess, adding that Pollo was the second son of House Helios. However, Elin had already remembered her earlier rudeness and started to tremble as she bowed deeply.
“I-I was ignorant and acted rudely out of my lack of education! Please, have mercy—!”
To Elin, the realization that she was now face-to-face with high-ranking nobles, with people she might never encounter in her entire life, was enough to inspire sheer terror.
It took some coaxing and reassurance from us to calm her down a little, but even then, she continued to watch our expressions carefully, wary of making another mistake.
“More importantly, Lady Elin. Earlier, when we came to your door, you seemed to be calling for your husband. Has something happened to him, by any chance?”
Perhaps it was the narrative convenience of everything tying together.
When Pollo gently opened the conversation with a warm voice to put her at ease, she hesitated for a moment before finally revealing what was on her mind.
“To be honest, it’s a bit embarrassing to say this… but my husband and I have always been very close. We were childhood friends who became lovers, so we’ve known each other well for a long time. In fact, people in the village often called us a lovebird couple.”
She then continued, saying that at some point, her husband had completely changed, as if he were a different person.
“No, it’s not just my husband. All the men in this village… they’ve all changed in strange ways.”
“Strange…? Judging by their appearance, they didn’t seem particularly off.”
“It’s not their appearance that changed. But all of them… their personalities have completely shifted…”
She explained that the people of this territory were originally known to be gentle and kind-hearted.
The lord of the territory was known for his gentle nature and his deep affection for his people. Life in the region was comfortable, with no major hardships. Since the territory was small, everyone saw each other as neighbors and comrades, and each day was filled with smiles and peace.
However, everything began to change on the day the lord brought home a very young woman as his wife.
From that moment on, the men in the village started acting strangely.
At first, they seemed dazed and mentally absent, then they began neglecting their farming duties and disappearing without explanation. Eventually, they started disregarding the women around them, treating them violently and without respect.
To make matters worse, certain individuals began taking turns acting as self-appointed watchers. They were checking daily to see if anyone was trying to leave the village.
Though the villagers wanted to report the situation to the outside world, the village’s remote location meant no one passed through, and the surveillance was so tight that sending a letter or message was impossible.
“Come to think of it, when we arrived in this village, the way those self-proclaimed vigilantes looked at us was definitely off. It felt less like the fear commoners usually have toward nobles and more like a deep-rooted contempt or hostility.”
Hearing Her Highness say that made me realize just how strange the vigilantes’ reactions had truly been.
I could understand if they reacted that way to me, but these three women with me had appearances that practically screamed, “We are nobles~,” and yet none of the men looked surprised or even blushed at their beauty?
“Could it be… that their minds are being controlled? Like they’ve been made to never feel affection for any woman other than her?”
“But even if something like that exists, wouldn’t it usually be used only on the man she likes? From what I’ve heard, every man in the village was affected.”
“Maybe there was a reason for that? Like, something only the men could do…”
“No, before that… who would benefit from something like this? There was something clearly strange in what Lady Elin just said.”
As I pondered Lady Elin’s testimony, I suddenly recalled something that didn’t quite add up.
“Huh? What is that?”
“She said all the men in the village mistreated the women, right? The women are the ones working in the fields, and the watchers are all men. Almost like slaves. But isn’t there one person who doesn’t follow that pattern?”
“Someone like that… ah.”
Exactly.
Whether it was hypnosis or mind control, it was as if the men had been programmed with a code in their brains that said, “Hate women”. And yet, there was someone who still interacted with them normally and lived among them.
We had seen exactly one such person since arriving in this village.
“Lady Lilia.”
***
After promising Lady Elin that we would rescue her husband no matter what, we headed back to the mansion.
“Yeah, it really does seem like she’s the culprit. People started acting strange after she came to the territory, right?”
“But we don’t have concrete evidence. Even though we were inside the castle all day yesterday, we couldn’t find any proof directly linking her to the villagers.”
“No, Pollo. There’s still a part of the mansion we haven’t checked yet.”
“Huh? Where?”
I tapped my foot on the ground lightly and said,
“The basement.”
Most noble mansions were equipped with underground facilities.
There were some depraved men and women with twisted fetishes who had built disgusting facilities to satisfy their own sexual desires.
But usually, underground spaces were modified as escape routes in case of emergencies or to house people and store food during wartime and other crises.
Even for a small baron’s mansion like this one, it was likely large enough to hold all the men in the relatively small territory.
“When I checked the mansion this morning before we left, there were no signs of many people coming and going. That means the secret passage connecting the underground area and the outside must be located somewhere else.”
“Then shouldn’t we just find the entrance to that passage?”
“But we don’t even know where that is. If we turn the entire village upside down just to find one passage, it’s only a matter of time before she starts getting suspicious of what we’re doing.”
The passage might have been disguised as a cave, or it could be something like a mine shaft that required climbing down through a hole.
Unless we were professional searchers, it would have been nearly impossible for people like us to detect such a hidden passage.
“That’s why it would be much faster to search from inside the mansion. Since it’s underground, there must be an entrance somewhere on the first floor.”
“But where were we supposed to find that passage? The mansion staff wouldn’t just stand by and let us search, and more importantly, I doubted the lady who had done all this would sit idly by either.”
If she really was the one behind this incident, she might visit the underground area herself to check on what was happening there.
Even if we managed to find the way down, getting caught by her would render it all pointless.
“Can’t we just let ourselves get caught? I don’t think subduing a single woman would be all that difficult.”
“Saintess. Do you really think that woman alone could’ve done all this? It’s possible someone is working behind the scenes. Someone we don’t know about is using her as a front to set the stage for something much bigger.”
It was hard to believe, from a logical standpoint, that she had manipulated the villagers all on her own.
There was almost certainly a larger force operating behind her, and it seemed most likely that they had helped her brainwash the men of the village.
“That’s exactly why we need to be more cautious. If we blindly capture her without knowing the full picture, the real mastermind might just cut her loose and escape.”
“Ugh… this is tricky.”
“So the key issue is how to separate her from the others. If we can divert the attention of our most suspicious suspect, searching the mansion will become much easier.”
“How about just knocking her out?”
That sounded disturbingly close to an assassination. As long as there were no witnesses.
“I have a good idea.”
“Hmm. Mars, what is it?”
To prevent the birth of a future mass murderer assassin, I finally decided to step in.
“I’ll seduce Lady Lilia.”
Whooosh—
I thought it was a very good move after much deliberation, so why was the response so cold like this?
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