This man is definitely going to do something huge.
Finn felt his blood run hot.
He had spent his entire life in this backwater village, like a frog at the bottom of a well. Now that he was hearing a plan to seize control of the world, he could barely contain his excitement.
Perhaps the man before him truly could rule the world.
If Finn could stand at his side, he too would be able to wield absolute power.
"You know a woman named Iva, don’t you?"
But Ian’s next words rapidly cooled Finn’s blood.
"Haha, do you know Iva? If that’s what you want to know, you should ask Kaelen. Iva was Kaelen’s wife, after all."
"Despite being called a bat, you really can’t lie."
Ian continued as he pulled a bottle from his coat.
"Your pupils dilated, and your breathing became irregular. If you’re going to lie, you should at least be able to control your physiological responses."
"Fuck, I didn’t do anything wrong. John and Kaelen were the ones who started it!"
"Oh? That’s the truth. No, you genuinely believe you did nothing wrong. Even though you raped her, tested drugs on her, and enjoyed burning her skin with a branding iron. Ah, the last one was what Daevon did, wasn’t it?"
Ian’s observation made Finn’s heart plummet.
His manner, as though he knew everything—as though he had watched it all unfold from beside them—filled Finn with terror.
"Y-you, what the hell are you? How do you know that?"
"That isn’t important. What matters right now is that you’re irredeemable trash."
John’s gang had treated Iva, Kaelen’s wife, as a communal fuckhole—more precisely, as something less than human.
Gang rape was a given. Whenever he was bored, Daevon tortured Iva with a branding iron, while Finn tested the drugs he had obtained on her.
Torm unleashed his filthy lust upon Iva.
Whenever she resisted, Kaelen beat her black and blue with his fists. Whenever Iva fled to a neighbor’s house, the gang used the authority of John, the village chief’s son, to quietly drag her back.
She was a mute anyway, so there was no one who would help her.
Most of the neighbors knew and pretended not to.
John’s gang, Finn included, did not think any of this was wrong.
After all, Iva was a mute, useless for anything but her body.
When Kaelen finally lost his temper and beat Iva to death, they had merely regretted that their toy had broken. They felt no guilt whatsoever.
They had never thought anyone would question their crimes in the first place.
Not until Ian, an outsider, asked Finn about Iva.
"D-don’t tell me you’re trying to avenge her?"
"No. I never even met her."
"What the—Ugh?!"
Ian poured the liquid from the bottle into Finn’s open mouth. Startled, Finn tried to spit it out, but Ian did not allow even that.
"Cough, cough! Fuck, what did you make me swallow?"
"This? It’s a drug witches favor. They say it increases sensitivity three thousandfold."
"What?"
"There’s no need to be so tense. It doesn’t really make your sensitivity three thousand times greater. The human brain and nervous system can only manage about twice as much, at most. If sensitivity really rose three thousandfold, witches’ anorgasmia would have been cured long ago."
But there was a reason it was called three-thousandfold sensitivity.
"This drug’s true effect is amplifying your sense of time. Witches who can barely feel pleasure probably developed it this way so they could hold on to pleasure, even if only for a fleeting moment. Raising sensitivity itself is practically impossible, after all."
An amplification of perceived time.
That was the true nature of the drug Ian had fed Finn.
"Now then, a question. What is the most horrifying pain a human can feel?"
"D-don’t tell me..."
"That’s right. Burning pain."
And Finn’s execution was to be burning at the stake.
Naturally, Finn realized what Ian intended to do to him.
Within time stretched three thousandfold, Ian intended to throw Finn alive into the fires of hell.
"Why? Why are you doing this to me? What did I do that was so wrong?!"
Trembling in terror at the pain soon to come, Finn screamed at Ian.
"Is it because we tormented Iva, that mute bitch? Fuck, do you think this makes you some righteous hero? Do you think that bitch would thank you for taking revenge like this?"
"Ah, this has nothing to do with Iva. As I said, I never even met her. If I had intended to do something righteous, I wouldn’t have gone about it this way from the start."
"Then why are you doing this when you know that?! I’m capable! I’ll definitely be useful to you."
"Because it’s fun."
"F-fun? Did you just say it’s fun?"
"Yeah. Fun. You tormented Iva because it was fun too, didn’t you? I’m no different."
Holding the torch before Finn’s face, Ian spoke.
"Trample, torment, violate. That’s human nature, isn’t it? So I have no intention of judging what you did to Iva. I’m irredeemable trash, no different from you lot. You understand how that feels, right?"
The torch’s heat tormented Finn’s skin.
Ian kindly showed Finn what kind of pain awaited him.
"Well, if there’s one difference, it’s that I prefer tormenting trash like you over tormenting the weak, like Iva."
Ian smiled.
A smile as pure and innocent as could be.
"There’s nothing more enjoyable than throwing people like you, who live tormenting others as though none of it could ever concern you, into the abyss."
"You crazy bastard! You’re completely fucking insane!"
"Thanks for the compliment. In return, I’ll tell you one interesting fact."
Ian threw the torch onto the stake.
"It takes five minutes for a human being to burn to death. For you, with time multiplied three thousandfold, it should take around two hundred and fifty hours."
"What?"
"Then, have a wonderful ti—me—."
In Finn’s eyes, the falling torch grew slower and slower. Ian’s words became blurred, impossible to make out properly.
"N-no!"
Before long, time had slowed to the point of near-total stillness. Other than his consciousness, everything might as well have stopped.
Help me! Somebody save me. Save me!
Even within the slowed time, his senses did not disappear.
They remained vivid, and because of that, he could feel every last detail of the flames.
Fuuuuuck! What did I do wrong? Why do I have to suffer this?! If there’s a god, please save me!
Finn screamed inwardly, but there was nothing he could do in this hell.
All he could do was stare endlessly with terrified eyes at the flames creeping toward him.
. . .
[A Country Village’s Circumstances] had Ian as its protagonist, but that did not mean it told only Ian’s story.
As the title suggested, the true subject of [A Country Village’s Circumstances] was the country village itself.
For that reason, once Ian left the village, his story was no longer narrated.
I was hiding out in the mountains, though.
Instead, the stories of countless major and minor characters unfolded, including that of a mute girl named Iva.
There was one distinguishing feature to Iva’s story, however: it was told through the recollections of her younger brother, Aiden.
Like the NTR game it was, whenever Aiden reached a particular location, there would be a flashback showing Iva being broken.
Iva’s story laid bare the dark side of the country village.
The reality that the weak were thoroughly trampled and violated—and that most of the villagers knew yet turned their eyes away.
You really have to give H Company credit for its malice.
To persuade Kaelen, who possessed the strength of a knight, to settle in the village, the village chief had introduced Iva to him.
As a mute, Iva naturally had no say in the matter. Because of that, she was forced into a near-compulsory marriage with a man she did not want.
At first, she too held hope that she could build a happy home with Kaelen.
But Kaelen and John’s gang, who spent their time with him, tormented Iva whenever they had the chance.
Their abuse at home was almost the better option. It was also common for them to rape her in front of young Aiden.
Even then, Iva tried to endure.
She had her precious little brother.
But they gradually crossed the line, exploiting the fact that Iva could not speak.
Torm sexually tortured Iva in disgusting ways, and Daevon burned her skin with a branding iron.
Finn tested the drugs he had procured on Iva, while Kaelen beat his wife.
Finally, John crushed Iva’s dignity and treated her like livestock.
In the end, unable to endure any longer, Iva ran away. But the neighbors she begged for help captured her instead.
And so, after Kaelen, her husband, beat her mercilessly, she died from her injuries.
According to Aiden’s recollection, Iva’s corpse had been ruined beyond belief.
Even her body had been left abandoned in the forest like an animal carcass.
Had Iva done anything wrong to deserve that?
Of course not. Simply because she was a mute, and because she was Kaelen’s wife, she became the gang’s fuckhole and toy.
The neighbors who knew about it not only refused to help Iva, but even defended John’s gang by claiming that Iva had committed adultery.
Afterward, John’s gang may have needed to watch the villagers’ reactions, but perhaps they could not forget the thrill of breaking a woman. Before long, they had set their sights on another prey.
That prey was Isolde.
She’s pretty, and she has no voice in the village either.
I had thought Isolde was unable to marry because of Isabelle, but that was only half true.
The decisive reason Isolde could not marry was that John had been pulling strings behind the scenes.
That bastard has some truly twisted tastes. Just because Isolde has red hair like his mother, he thought of turning her into a communal fuckhole.
John had one complex: the fact that his own mother was a slut who spread her legs for anyone.
Because of that, he loathed women intensely.
To such an extent that he treated every woman who was not obedient to him like an animal.
I wondered what kind of pathetic asshole he was, but given the standards of this village, he almost felt ordinary.
Just look at the villagers cursing at Finn as he burned to death.
"Hurry up and die already."
"You fucking idiot, your screaming is annoying as hell."
The villagers who had once groveled before Finn now mocked him.
A smile naturally spread across my face at the sight of villagers who were the perfect embodiment of being weak before the strong and strong before the weak.
If the same thing happened to these people, could they still laugh like they are now?
I liked this village.
It was overflowing with trash perfectly suited to my tastes.
Even now, merely imagining the hell I would give John, Kaelen, and the villagers filled me with delight.
Is this why everyone mistakes me for a good person?
Contrary to what Isabelle and Reina thought, I was not a good person.
I found Iva’s story deeply pitiful, but I had no intention of avenging her.
Of course, I planned to give hell to John, Kaelen, and everyone connected to them.
But that was merely my hobby, not something I did out of some noble sense of justice like a web novel protagonist.
Seeing how I act, I’m not fated to die peacefully either.
Leaving the burning Finn behind, I headed toward where Isolde was being held in isolation.
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