◇

We"ve just entered the territory of baron Muno, so I perform [All Map Exploration] like usual.

It seems that there"s a soldier garrison on the pa.s.s slightly ahead. There are 20 soldiers around with level ranging on 3-7. Coming out of that place is a flat terrain with sporadically situated small mountains and forests. The area  is wider than Kuhanou"s earldom. However, the whole population is only around 40000, about 1/3th of Seryuu city.

There is only one big city in the baron"s territory, while the rest are just small villages with less than 1000 people each. The town where the baron lives is populated with 20000 people and seems to be called Muno city.

In that Muno city, there"s a demon. Level 30. Hiding in the city means it"s probably doing something fishy. Since it looks troublesome, I would stay as far away as possible from it.
But, didn"t Arisa say that demons which had crossed worlds are executive cla.s.s? I don"t think that it"s an executive with this level. I wonder if demons could be born in this world?

Next, I examine monsters in this territory. There is no low level monsters, on the other hand, there are several monsters past level 10 in various place. Even nearby, there"s a level 24 monster called War Mantis lurking.

Furthermore, there are also something peculiar, although they"re not monsters, in a forest near Munoo city--a 30 kilometers diameter wide, with 20 kilometers at the shortest, huge forest--there are wood giants in the interior. Although there are only 10 wood giants, the strongest one is at level 39. Their levels averaged at 30.

Another notable thing is that there are a lot of thieves. Although I"ve expected this, most of them are grouped in 10-30 people. The biggest group has around 200 people. It seems that they build their base on the outer edge of the forest where the wood giants live.

Since there are a lot of outlaws, this probably means the public order of this territory is quite bad.

I"d like to take a detour out of this baron"s territory, but that means we"d need to circle around to the royal capital, and if we take longer detour, then we"d have to get to duke Oyugock"s territory. It"d take roughly two months. Furthermore, according to the traveler"s journal, if we get caught in the winter, we wouldn"t be able to move until spring.

◇

"Good afternoon, soldier-san, are you not feeling well?"
"Faa, it"s nothing, I don"t feel like moving today."
"Is that so, thanks for your hard work."
"Umu, you can go through."

The soldier said so while lazily sitting down in front of the military post, and let the wagon through without inspecting it.
His clothes is slovenly worn too, an uninformed person would likely mistakes him with bandit, but he properly belongs to the baron Muno army.

"Hehehe~ Ennui Field is quite usable right~."
"Yeah, we"re saved."

Arisa proudly said so while leaning on the driver seat of the wagon which had started running. How long are you going to put the stamina recovery potion bottle on your mouth, that"s bad manner you know?

The soldier before was that languid because Arisa casted magic to make the entire garrison"s soldiers became tired. Although, since it was morning, there was a high possibility he would be like that anyway even if we didn"t use magic.

There"s a reason why we deliberately used magic.

From the result of my prior investigation, the soldiers in that garrison had things like [Murder], or [Rape] in their Reward and Punishment, just like thieves. I understand that they"re people who do as they like.

I neutralized them in advance rather than getting tangled in counterattack. If possible I wanted them to not realize that they were attacked with magic. That was my plan, so Arisa used Over Boost, coupled with Ennui Field from afar to make the soldiers became languid.

If they had magic detection item then it could be a problem, but it looked more troublesome if we got entangled with those guys, so I picked the relatively low risk method.

It might be problematic if we leave bad guys like them alone, but since the War Mantis is closing in the garrison, their fate is probably already sealed.

I confirm Arisa"s status just in case, but her Reward and Punishment hasn"t changed.

◇

Afternoon on the same day, when we"re pa.s.sing through a road near a village populated with 300 people, we"re called by a man on the side of the road. There are three thin teenage girls beside him. Their faces are quite alright, but since they look fatigued and disheartened, they don"t look their ages.

"Sir, won"t you buy these girls?"
"I"m sorry, but I don"t need slaves."
"Each of them is just 1 silver coin, if you bring them to a big city they would sell well."

The man is promoting with listless voice.
He probably knew that ones would need to pay tax if they want to bring slaves outside the territory.

"Only if there"s no tax, furthermore, I don"t deal in slave trading."
"Is that so, then, how about becoming your attendants, for 2 big copper coins."

That"s cheap.
I won"t buy them though.

"I"m sorry, but they"re not comparable."

I point at Arisa and Nana who"ve showed their face after hearing word, "attendants". Although they wear hoods, their good looks should be evident.
After the man saw them, he gave up.

"That so, I"m sorry for taking your time."
"I"d like to talk for a bit."
"What is it?"
"Did your village fall into poverty because of bad harvest?"
"It"s not that, it was certainly smaller than usual, but we didn"t have bad harvest."

Then, was the tax too high?
If the situation continue and they keep selling humans like this, won"t the workers gradually run out and the village disappear?

"Even if the tax is high, we could still barely last through winter with the little crops we have."

Is there some kind of unplanned expenditure.

"Was it because of thieves?"
"They"re former farmers, we won"t be careless enough to let our winter saving get stolen."

The farmers would fight back to death huh.

"Then, did some monsters appear?"
"If that happen then we"d give up. It was congratulatory gift for the baron"s daughter wedding, we had to give 30% of our winter saving."

The man exhales heavily while saying so.
This baron is terrible. Although it might be an arbitrary act of the tax collector official.

"Did you not send pet.i.tion?"
"If we do that, the whole village would end up as serfs."
"That can"t be."
"It"s true, do you know Tonza village?　Everyone in that village was forced to become a serf, there"s no one who lives in that village anymore."

For a moment, I thought that he was talking about Oyu village but when I checked the map, there was a place called Oyu village around 20 kilometers from here.
Certainly, there is no village called Tonza, but there"s place called [Ruin of Tonza Village]. Is the baron here a tyrant on top of being a fool?

Since I feel a bit curious, I pa.s.singly ask.

"Do you know the partner for the baron"s daughter wedding?"
"According to the story of the tax collector, it"s the hero-sama."

Hero?
I"ve searched through the territory, but there is no one who have hero t.i.tle.

The man who seemingly accept my silence talks as if making an excuse.

"It might be an impostor, but the tax collector really said that. You could ask the village head if you want."
"If she"s really marrying the real hero, why would they torment the people?"
"Hah, a lower cla.s.s man who"s nothing but a tax tool like me wouldn"t know how the big-shots think."

I can"t deny that.

However, if he"s really the same hero, [A straightforward altruistic fool], like Arisa has said, then we could just ask about the daughter to resolve this question. If I"m not mistaken, that hero has weird preference right.

"I have one more question, how old is the daughter?"
"I"m sure they"re 19 and 24 years old women."
"I see, thank you. It"s trifling, but here"s a compensation for the talk."

I said so while pus.h.i.+ng several silver coins to the man and went away with the wagon.

◇

Arisa comes out to the coachman"s seat.

"Hey, you seem to have noticed it."
"Yeah, it"s an impostor."

Yes, the hero that Arisa has told me, Hayato Masaki, has awkward fetish. He"s a lolicon.
I don"t think a man like that would take a 19 or 24 years old woman into his wife.
He might have a change of heart, but then he would be swayed with his beautiful women attendants instead.

"The pervert might has been cured, but that Saga Empire won"t make a blunder like letting him marry with a small-time n.o.ble from some foreign land."

A shotacon like you probably doesn"t have the right to call lolicon a pervert.

Just in case, I try narrowing the search term on the map to check if there"s any other hero besides Hayato Masaki.

A person with [Hero] t.i.tle--Does not exist.
A person with [Unknown] skill--Does not exist.
A person with [Self Status] skill--Does not exist.
A person higher than level 50--Does not exist.

There"s no applicable person besides us.
There"s no one who could possibly be a reincarnated or transported person either.

There"s a fake hero, or there"s a hero from another country inside this territory, I wonder which one is it.
I"m guessing that it"s a fake hero. I can"t help but feel that the demon in Muno city is the one behind this.

However, I don"t intend to get involved.
It may be heartless, but I don"t want to expose our girls with danger if I try to eliminate the demon and the fake hero.

I decide to circulate anonymous doc.u.ments if I get a guilty conscience.