Side: Yuki
"Prepare yourself, you bastard!! You cowardly humans who dared defile the women of our village!!"
I've had enough.
Why does it always end up like this?
I mean, I completely anticipated this exact scenario, but come on, would it hurt for things not to go according to my predictions for once?
"We can sort this out by talking. Please, listen."
Calm down, me.
I just needed to find a way to get my opponent to cool his head.
I was already incredibly irritated myself, but if I ended up accidentally killing this dapper rabbit-eared middle-aged guy, our entire operation would be ruined. Resorting to violence right now was a terrible move.
"Uoooohhhhh!! I'm going to take that head of yours right off!!"
Yep. This is hopeless...
As I wept tears of frustration on the inside, I could only pray that one of the village women would hurry up and get over here to defuse this.
—Now, if you're wondering how exactly things devolved into this mess?
We have to rewind back to the moment right after I finished administering medical aid to the raid victims.
"Alright. I've successfully cast a wide-range high-tier recovery spell over the entire area. Is anyone still feeling unwell? Ah, and just to be clear, if you're simply feeling emotionally shaken or nauseous from the shock, please wait on that. By 'unwell,' I mean is there anyone left who still has actual physical injuries?"
I made sure to explicitly lay down that boundary. If I hadn't, practically every single person in the clearing would have raised their hand to complain about feeling unwell due to the psychological trauma of the raid.
Honestly, this exact phenomenon was the primary reason medical science never properly developed on our home continent. Everything could be seamlessly resolved with a wave of a magic staff, so no one ever felt the practical need to meticulously slice a body open just to fix an ailment.
In fact, the very concept of invasive surgery simply didn't exist over there. Well, it might have existed as a heavily marginalized minority opinion somewhere, but I personally had never once heard of it.
Sigh, this is exactly why I find fantasy logic so exhausting...
Then again, looking at it from a fantasy native's perspective, I was easily the one who defied all standard common sense. Didn't some famous sci-fi writer once say that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?
Though I suppose the nuance is a bit different here. Back on Earth, even everyday passenger cars have automatic sliding doors now. That invention blew my mind when I first saw it. I completely understand the practical reasoning behind it, of course—it's incredibly convenient for people carrying heavy groceries, or for young children and the elderly. It just goes to show that you should always give new ideas a proper shot.
...Ah, crap, my train of thought completely drifted off to another dimension.
I need to focus on verifying that there are no remaining casualties.
"How is everyone doing? Please thoroughly check your own bodies. You can even double-check the person sitting next to you. It's incredibly common for people to sustain internal or hidden injuries during a crisis without immediately realizing it themselves."
The moment I gave the instruction, the vast majority of the villagers immediately began diligently inspecting themselves and their neighbors to ensure there were no lingering abnormalities.
Yes, the vast majority did.
However, a very select few simply stood frozen, staring at me with absolute, unblinking intensity.
"Hmm? What's wrong? Are you still feeling unwell somewhere?"
"N-No, sir! It's not that at all... Ah, forgive me. Thank you so much for saving us. Please accept my deepest apologies for delaying my gratitude."
The woman speaking to me was the exact elven mother I had treated first during my demonstration, and her tiny child was currently clinging tightly to her skirt.
I recognized her instantly.
"Don't worry about it. It was honestly just a matter of circumstance."
And it really was just pure circumstance. Riel and the others were the ones who had actively charged in to save them, after all. Left to my own devices, my initial instinct was to look the other way.
"However, even though you're human, you use far more powerful magic than us elves who are blessed with magical talent..."
Ah, so that was the source of her profound shock.
Well, I can't exactly blame her. Back on our home continent, I had routinely run completely amok using my stats. I possessed specialized cheat abilities and absolute freedom of movement, after all.
However, now that I was on the new continent, Luna's intelligence report proved to be flawless: the environmental MP consumption rate was exactly twenty times higher than normal. Earlier, when I cast that single-target heal on this woman, my personal mana pool was aggressively siphoned at twenty times the standard rate.
I'd have to sit down and bounce some theories off Zargis to figure out the exact underlying physics, but the most likely explanation was that because the density of ambient magic in the atmosphere was so low, the conduction efficiency of spells dropped drastically.
Consequently, whenever we attempted to project magical energy outside our own bodies, the resource cost required to manifest that magical 'pipeline' into the environment skyrocketed.
But still, twenty times the cost is insane.
The underlying logic doesn't entirely make sense to me yet. Interestingly, when I subsequently cast that wide-range mass heal to patch up all the remaining critical casualties simultaneously, the per-capita MP consumption ended up being noticeably lower than the initial individual Extra Heal I had used on her.
"Ah... forgive me, I have pryed far too deeply into your affairs. Magical talent is a caster's personal treasure, and it was incredibly thoughtless of me to interrogate you about it."
"Oh, no, don't worry about it. My apologies, I was just lost in thought for a second. More importantly, there are a few things I'd like to ask you about the local area, if you don't mind?"
"Yes, of course."
Steering the conversation away from the technicalities of magic, I resolved to gather some baseline intelligence regarding our current surroundings.
To put it bluntly, our understanding of this new continent's geopolitical landscape was a total blank slate. We didn't even know the proper geographical name of the region we were currently standing in.
Honestly, I was just relieved that our spoken languages translated perfectly. I could only hope that the written text would be readable as well.
The baseline intelligence I managed to extract from her summarized as follows:
* This village was located roughly in the central region of the continent, serving as one of the few remaining hidden sanctuaries where beastmen and elves lived together in quiet isolation.
* The raiders who had attacked them belonged to the Jilva Empire, a human-supremacist superpower located to the south. As expected, they were locked in near-perpetual warfare with neighboring states.
* The dungeon entrance we emerged from was locally recognized as an ancient ruin, and the beastmen and elves regarded it as a deeply sacred, spiritual site.
* Regarding ambient magic and spellcraft, just as Luna had stated, the continent was so starved of environmental mana that casting magic was practically impossible for regular citizens. Furthermore, because the resource consumption was so astronomical, anyone capable of deploying magic at a practical combat level was considered an incredibly rare, highly sought-after asset by any nation.
* As for the local beastmen and elves, their total population had dwindled drastically over the years. However, because their lineages excelled at processing internal mana, executing physical reinforcement, and manifesting spells, they were the primary targets of aggressive slave-hunting campaigns launched by human nations. Although they were constantly forced into a defensive disadvantage due to sheer numerical inferiority, their individual combat capabilities were vastly superior to standard humans.
* The only reason the village was caught completely defenseless today was because the local adult men had temporarily deployed to a neighboring settlement upon hearing rumors that it was being raided, leaving their own home completely exposed.
While there were plenty of finer details to sort through, that covered the vital baseline metrics. I needed to use the Call function to assemble everyone and hold an immediate strategic consultation regarding whether we should stick around to dig for more information or prepare for immediate transit.
"Hey, can everyone hear me?"
I broadcasted into the network.
『Ah, wait a minute, damn it! Just listen to reason for a second!!』 Mobu's voice cut in.
『We're not the ones who attacked the village!!』 Raiya added frantically.
『Tch. Yuki, it appears the adult men belonging to this village have just returned!! They're launching an immediate assault on us!!』 Kurse reported.
Seriously!?
A misunderstanding scenario...? This is way too cliché!!
"Are Riel and the others alright!?"
『Uh... since we're beastmen ourselves, they aren't treating us with immediate lethal hostility. But they're treating us like fragile refugees they need to 'protect', so we're completely pinned down and can't move...』 Tori explained.
『Yes. Right now, they're aggressively shouting about executing every single human in the area to avenge their village...』 Riel chimed in.
『...Can I beat these guys up?』
"Kaya, wait. Talking comes first!"
Wait, what about Aslin and the others?
"Sheila! Aslin! Filia! Labyris! Can you hear me!?"
『Yes, we're fine. Since we look like beastkin children, nobody has tried to hurt us...』
"Onii-chan, be careful. You and Ria-oneechan are adult humans."
"Please be careful, Nii-sama."
"Indeed. If Yuki gets hurt, even by accident, I think these people might end up getting slaughtered."
Holy crap!!
So the absolute biggest crisis right now was the catastrophic fallout that would happen if I actually sustained a physical injury!?
* * *
And that brings us entirely back to the present, where I was currently forced to navigate an aggressive assault without sustaining a single scratch, while simultaneously ensuring I didn't accidentally kill my opponent in self-defense.
Since Ria was a human standing directly by my side, she was being targeted with relentless lethal strikes by the other village defenders as well. Fortunately, her combat gear carried absolute cheat-level defensive parameters, so she didn't seem to be struggling in the slightest.
I, on the other hand, was currently wearing what essentially amounted to basic cloth clothing in terms of defensive stats…… Note to self: I seriously need to start looking into wearing a proper set of heavy armor.
"Slippery bastard!! To think a mere human would attempt to match my beastman reflexes in pure physical agility!!"
"I told you to shut up and listen to me!! I literally just finished saving these people, you dense idiot!!"
"N-No, Sett, stop! Calm down!! These people genuinely are—"
"—They are obviously forcing you to speak under duress!! Why the hell should I place any faith in the word of a human!?"
Yep, there's absolutely no reasoning with this guy.
Time for a change of plans.
I'm going to beat him into submission and establish some physical distance. If I don't, this conversation is going to loop in circles forever.
"All units, fall back and assemble in front of the dungeon entrance. Anyone who gets in your way, knock them out—just keep them alive. I can always patch them up with healing magic later. Verbal communication is officially a waste of breath."
『『『Roger that.』』』
I smoothly read the trajectory of the incoming strike from this bunny-eared dandy named Sett by a paper's width and countered with a punch, knocking him out cold in a single blow.
There was absolutely no logical reason for me to waste time playing keep-away or dragging out a complicated defense. At the end of the day, our baseline combat power outputs were simply on entirely different dimensions.
"...Ah. g-guggh..."
Sett, the rabbit-eared gentleman, was left crumpled on the dirt, completely breathless and unable to form words from the sheer impact of the blow.
"Uh, sorry about that. Um, what was your name again?"
"A-Ah... my name is Naya."
Apparently, the name of the elf married woman with a child is Naya-san.
"Alright then, Naya-san. Please help convince these people. We can't even have a conversation right now. We'll be waiting in front of the dungeon, so come once everyone's calmed down. I'll even heal the guy writhing in pain over there. Though the condition is that nobody attacks us."
"...I sincerely apologize."
With that settled, I left the diplomatic heavy lifting entirely to her and the other villagers we had rescued.
Turning my gaze to Ria, I saw that her side of the skirmish had concluded just as effortlessly; she was already looking back at me, quietly waiting for my next directive.
"Alright, let's head over to the dungeon entrance."
"Yes, let's do that. Until they properly compose themselves, there's really nothing more we can accomplish here."
As the two of us began walking away at a leisurely pace, Zargis came sprinting up from behind to catch up with us.
"Hey, wait a minute! Were you seriously about to just leave me behind!?"
"I mean, you were literally just standing there doing absolutely nothing the entire time anyway."
"He's right."
"I'M NOT! I was actively conducting critical measurements on our MP consumption rates and verifying everyone's movement parameters, you know!?"
Ah, right. I completely forgot he was technically our lead research analyst. Since he wasn't actively swinging a weapon, I just assumed he was slacking off.
* * *
On our way back to the dungeon entrance, we were ambushed three separate times by different search parties of village men scouring the settlement. I simply systematically beat them into the dirt and kept moving.
Hey, you guys brought this entirely on yourselves by launching a blind assault based on a misunderstanding, so you'll just have to suck it up and bear the bruises.
Under normal circumstances against the imperial army, you'd all be dead right now anyway, so look on the bright side—you should consider yourselves incredibly lucky, right?
