“……What’s all this?”
When we reached the golem that had sounded the alarm, an entirely strange scene was spread before us.
A large leaf had been laid out outside the fence, and piled on top of it was a heaping mound of fruit.
Enough that a single adult couldn’t carry it all.
Obviously the work of someone — but who, and what for?
“It appears this suspicious object is what triggered the alarm.”
Makina spoke while looking at the Talos unit, which had prostrated itself.
Fair enough — it was a suspicious object, when you thought about it.
I’d ordered them to report immediately if anything unusual happened, so it wasn’t wrong.
That said, it was a little anticlimactic.
We’d braced for combat, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of that.
“A prank by demi-humans?”
“But what’s the point of just leaving fruit? I don’t get it.”
“Could there be poison in it?”
Alicia picked up one of the fruits and said it with a serious look.
The logic of trying to poison someone by leaving fruit out in plain sight baffled me, but……
Demi-humans like Goblins and Orcs aren’t particularly smart.
Maybe they thought a trap this crude would actually fool us.
“I’ll dispose of these.”
“Yeah. Let’s take them somewhere away from the village first, just in case. If there’s Evil Ivy mixed in it’d be a disaster.”
Evil Ivy was an invasive plant sometimes called the worst weed in existence.
A single stalk growing in your field is enough to destroy the whole crop.
At a glance everything looked like ordinary fruit — but something like that being mixed in wasn’t entirely impossible.
“Then——”
Makina was about to lift the pile of fruit.
When from somewhere, a voice came.
“Hmm……did someone just say don’t?”
“Heard it. Sounded a little childlike.”
“Oh, ho……now this is getting interesting……!”
Ganz drew the battle-axe from his back and fell into a stance.
Alicia and the others matched him, shifting into combat readiness.
I immediately moved out of their way and ducked behind the nearest Talos.
Makina set the fruit down and drew her knife.
An unpleasant tension settled over everything.
I was used to none of this, and couldn’t help breaking into a cold sweat.
Then——
“……There! Someone’s there!”
Misha was the first to call out.
She immediately fired a fireball straight into the nearby thicket.
——Whomp!!
The thicket went up in an instant, and out of it came several white shapes leaping one after another.
I was shocked — they’d been that close.
I’d felt absolutely nothing……!
“Who’s there!!”
“Eek!”
Alicia closed the distance immediately and leveled her blade at them.
……Dog-people?
The two white shapes that had burst out were covered in fur, shaped like dogs.
But their limbs were longer than a dog’s, and their faces were somehow distinctly human.
On top of that they were dressed in clothes — the only word for it was dog-people.
……I’d never seen a species like this before.
With Alicia’s sword pointed at them, I slowly called out to the two trembling figures.
“Uh — can you understand me?”
“Y-yes.”
“Who are you two?”
“I’m Popol, a Kobold. And this is my little brother Lopul.”
“Kobold?”
Great, a species name I’d never even heard.
I tilted my head, at a loss, and Makina immediately spoke up.
“I recall reading about them. A type of demi-human of gentle disposition — but I believe they were a species that had already gone extinct, which became their misfortune.”
“We’re not extinct! The Lavanya Empire came after us, but the survivors escaped into this Great Forest!”
“We can set that aside for now. You’re the ones who left that fruit, aren’t you?”
“Yes! We wanted to apologize for the other day.”
Apologize for the other day?
What on earth were they talking about — we’d never even met these two.
That was my thought when Misha spoke up.
“Could it be — is it these two who took the boar meat?”
“Oh — so that’s it!”
“W-we’re sorry! We just couldn’t help ourselves……”
Lopul bowed his head apologetically as he said it.
……I was genuinely surprised. The culprits behind that whole incident turned out to be these small children.
While we were still trying to process it, Popol bowed his head deeply too.
“Please forgive Lopul! We haven’t really had meat to eat lately……and then we smelled the barbecue and just……”
“The fruit is the good kind we gathered from the forest! Please, accept it in place of the meat we took!”
“……That being said. Lord Viktor, what would you like to do?”
Alicia, still with her sword half-raised, looked at me with a thoroughly troubled expression.
This must have been completely outside anything she’d expected either.
The distress was plain in her arched-down brows.
I glanced quickly at Misha and Ganz, but they looked equally at a loss.
“This village’s lord is Lord Viktor. We’ll go with whatever you decide.”
“I’m leaving the call entirely to you too.”
“……For now, let’s bring these two into the village as guests. We’ll hear the full story before deciding anything.”
The moment I said it, Alicia withdrew her blade.
Still wary of Popol and the others, she sheathed it for now.
Misha and Ganz put their weapons away in turn.
“Then I’ll go prepare some tea.”
“Please do.”
And so our village welcomed its very first guests from outside.