"Isolde, has she been doing well?"
"Yes! Thanks to Brother Ian coming by often to talk with her, she’s regained her spirits."
"I-I see."
At the mention of Ian, Adelia’s expression turned complicated.
At present, her feelings toward Ian could not be defined in a single word.
She was certainly grateful that he understood what she lacked, but it was also true that he had cursed her daughter, Isolde.
She had fallen in love with him as a woman, yet as a mother, she could not help resenting him.
"Mrs. Adelia, you look troubled. Is something weighing on your mind?"
"Ah, thank you for your concern. There’s always something to worry about."
"If you don’t mind, I can listen and offer you some counsel."
"No, I couldn’t possibly take up a nun’s time over my own troubles."
"Please, don’t refuse. It is a nun’s duty to guide those who are suffering. Better answers come from worrying together than from struggling alone."
"Then..."
At Reina’s suggestion, Adelia opened up to her about her concerns for the first time.
"Well, this is what happened..."
Without revealing that Ian had cursed Isolde through a witch, Adelia told Reina everything.
The heart of her story was that Ian disliked Isolde.
Reina’s eyes narrowed as she heard it.
"Hmm. I think I understand why Brother Ian made such a painful choice."
"What?"
"This isn’t something that can be resolved through advice from a third party."
Reina continued, her shoulders slumping.
"The best advice I can give you is that you need to take a harder look at yourself, Mrs. Adelia."
"S-so it really is all my fault?"
"Ah! You mustn’t do that!"
"What?"
"Don’t apologize. If you apologize, Mrs. Adelia, it would be no different from running away."
"Then what should I do?"
"I can’t tell you that for you, but I’m sure you know. There are things you need to say to Miss Isabelle and Miss Isolde."
It was a difficult command for Adelia to accept.
She was being told not to apologize to her children when she had done nothing for them as their mother?
It was the same as being told never to escape her guilt.
"I’ve never been a mother myself, so I probably can’t fully understand how you feel, Mrs. Adelia. But if I were your daughter, I wouldn’t want my mother to apologize to me."
"It’s very difficult."
"It is very difficult. But you have to do it. You’re their mother."
"Yes. It will be hard, but I’ll think about it."
"I’ll be right beside you, cheering you on."
Reina’s advice gave Adelia the courage to face herself more honestly.
Kate, who had watched it all from beside them, was utterly shocked.
After all, Reina, who normally never stopped spouting dirty talk in front of Kate and Ian, had just shown the bearing of a true nun.
Why is she like that only when she’s around us?
In a sense, Kate had suffered no small shock.
"Kate, are you okay?"
"Urgh, thanks to someone, I’m not."
. . .
"Kaelen, are you okay?"
"Fuck, no, I’m not okay!"
"Judging by the way you’re cursing, you seem fine to me."
John had rescued Kaelen, but his expression was grim.
You bastard, were you planning to betray me too?
He had already anticipated Finn’s betrayal and spoken with Kaelen.
They had agreed to inform each other if Finn approached them.
Yet Kaelen had not kept that promise. Worse, he had even tried to betray John alongside Finn.
John was furious to realize there was not a single trustworthy bastard in his gang, but the situation was too dire to settle accounts one by one.
The sudden bandit attack had thrown the villagers into panic. Flames rose all over the place, and the screams never stopped.
The village watch was fighting back, but without Kaelen, their captain, they were outmatched.
"Move, now! At this rate, the village is really going to burn to the ground!"
"M-my body won’t move."
"What?"
"That bastard Finn drugged the liquor. My body is listening to me even less than before."
"Goddammit!"
John had rescued Kaelen because of his fighting prowess.
They needed him to defeat the bandits, but in this condition, all their efforts would be wasted.
"John, more importantly, do you have a healing potion? At this rate, I’m going to end up a eunuch."
"The whole place is about to go to hell, and that’s what matters to you right now?"
"Please, I’m begging you. Help me, and I’ll be your lackey for life!"
"Haa... What kind of fucking disaster is this because of these idiots?"
"How did you figure it out?"
Finn sneered at John, who had come looking for him.
"I thought you’d be having a good time with the whores I sent you."
"Bella told me. Unlike some people, I’m ridiculously handsome, you know."
"Hah. I’m the idiot for trusting a whore. Well, it doesn’t matter."
Finn had already incapacitated Kaelen, the biggest nuisance, with a paralytic drug.
It was a shame he had not been able to castrate him completely, but Finn had already finished everything he needed to do.
"Who said I’d let you leave? Finn, you’re dying here today."
"John, don’t pretend you’re tough. You’re just as useless as Kaelen."
"I can handle one little anchovy like you by myself."
"The piece of shit who only beats women because he can’t forget his slut mother sure talks big."
"You bastard!"
When Finn struck a nerve, John could no longer hold himself back and charged at him.
But that was exactly what Finn had been waiting for.
Finn pulled a vial from his clothes and scattered its contents, showering powder into John’s eyes.
"Aagh! My eyes!"
"You think I’d work with bandits without any insurance?"
Thrust!
"Become a cripple."
"Guhhk!"
As the dagger pierced his knee, John writhed in agony.
Of course, John did not simply take it lying down.
Even without being able to see, he swung his sword as widely as he could, resisting Finn.
"You cowardly bastard! Fight me fair and square!"
"Idiot. For a merchant, being cowardly is a compliment."
But Finn no longer fought John.
His objectives had already all been achieved. There was no reason to remain and waste time.
Thus, amid betrayal upon betrayal upon betrayal, the final victor was Finn, the man called the Bat.
"Puhahaha! Goodbye to this shitty village at last!"
He stepped outside, his heart swelling with new dreams.
The thought of the gold coins he would soon obtain kept him laughing.
"You took longer than I expected."
"Y-you...?"
But waiting for him was not a new dream, but cruel reality.
"W-what in the world...?"
More than twenty bandits he had brought with him had all been struck by arrows, turned into human pincushions, while the few still in decent condition had surrendered.
The bandits had already been dealt with. All Finn could do was stare blankly up at the hunter who had created this scene.
"Bat, did you enjoy your pleasant dream?"
The Bat had dreamed another brilliant dream today.
A dream in which he, once looked down upon, monopolized mountains of gold and beautiful women, then trampled the men who had scorned him.
He had run this far carrying the kind of fantasy every man had entertained at least once.
"Now it’s time to wake up from that dream."
That was, until he was hunted by the hunter.
. . .
I already knew that the bandits would attack the village around now.
It happened in the original work as well, but I had not reached that conclusion merely on the vague assumption that things would unfold as they had originally.
The escalating power struggle between the eastern nobles.
The excessive taxes resulting from it, and the farmers who had turned to banditry to make a living.
Meanwhile, Entiel Village was earning a great deal of money through the church’s infrastructure, and it had just made a huge sum of gold by selling the criminal Daevon.
In a way, it was only natural that Entiel Village would become the target of a bandit attack.
And John’s gang must be desperate to kill each other by now.
After the incidents involving Torm and Daevon, John had gradually lost his footing in the village.
Kaelen, who wanted to rule the village with John backing him, and Finn, who wanted to reap exorbitant profits from the village, had no reason to stay with John any longer.
Thus, the friendship they had thought would last forever began to crack.
Though I wonder if trash like them ever had any friendship to begin with.
What mattered now was reaping the fisherman’s profit while they fought amongst themselves.
If I dealt with the bandits Finn had brought and made John and Kaelen’s incompetence stand out, my influence over the village would naturally grow.
That was why, despite knowing the bandits would attack the village, I had left them alone.
The problem in the original work was that I ended it too early.
In [A Country Village’s Circumstances] as well, bandits had been about to attack Entiel Village according to John’s plan, but Ian had noticed and eliminated them beforehand.
As a result, Entiel Village suffered no damage at all, but no one recognized Ian’s devotion.
I’ll do the opposite and act after the village has taken some damage.
The house of my wife’s family would be targeted first because of the gold coins, but I had already made perfect preparations to protect Isabelle and Adelia.
I had set traps, of course, and placed Reina and Kate at the house as a precaution.
And Isolde, the one who had been the most disobedient, had already been put in the church’s isolation room, eliminating even that variable.
There would be no problem even if I was a little late.
"I should get going soon."
The problem was that the dairy cow in front of me would not let me go.
"Moo~ Give me semen. Semen♥"
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