Side: Yuki
"""We sincerely apologize!!"""
The men all bow their heads simultaneously.
"Hmph."
The only one looking away, still tied up, is the bunny-eared dandy named Sett, who was felled by my single blow.
"Hey! Watch your attitude! Is that any way to behave before the savior of our lives!?"
A heavily built—or rather, a thoroughly plump—woman, who appeared to be his wife, brought her fist down squarely onto Sett's skull.
THUD!
That punch carried some serious weight behind it.
Yeah, that definitely hurt... Even the sound had a heavy bass quality to it.
Sure enough, the bunny-eared dandy rolls around in pain, still tied up... When you can't hold the place that hurts, that's all you can do.
"I accept your apology. By the way, who is the representative of this village? I'd like to speak with them properly."
Exactly. The vital issue at hand was mapping out our next moves.
I didn't know if the heavily armored guy we captured was a high-ranking officer of the Jilva Empire or what, but we currently had a portion of their vanguard entirely in our custody. We needed to determine their ultimate disposal, but it would be a terrible strategic move to decide that without thoroughly listening to the locals' perspective first.
Granted, the scale of the raiding force wasn't massive, but complete radio silence from a three-hundred-man vanguard would inevitably trigger immediate suspicion back at their headquarters.
...No, even if we were to simply release them, they would undoubtedly launch immediate retaliatory campaigns. It would be great if the villagers simply chose to relocate... wait, scratch that.
Our dungeon entrance was situated directly in this clearing, which meant we were fundamentally obligated to defend this specific perimeter no matter what.
Sigh... Man, I'm starting to not care anymore...
...No, wait, calm down.
Let's think logically.
If these villagers voluntarily chose to evacuate the area, it would actually make our lives incredibly simple. We could seamlessly exercise our full Dungeon Master authority across the entire sector, turning the regional landscape into an absolute, impregnable fortress.
On the flip side, if the villagers insisted on staying, we would have to constantly restrict our dungeon functions and carefully micromanage our combat output to ensure we didn't cause accidental collateral damage to their settlement.
Honestly, if they insist on remaining here, maybe I should just deport the entire population to Weed?
While I was busy running through those administrative calculations, a remarkably sharp-eyed elderly woman stepped forward from the rear of the gathered crowd.
"I am this village's representative, the elder Etheri. We truly thank you for saving our village."
With those words, the old woman delivered a profound, deep bow.
She didn't seem to harbor any immediate aversion or prejudice toward us, despite the fact that there were active humans sitting right in the middle of our party. Or perhaps she was simply using her decades of life experience to mask it flawlessly?
"So, you called yourself Yuki, I believe? What is it you wish to ask?"
"Several things. We came here from another continent through the ruins that you all hold sacred, so we know very little about the situation here. We also need to know how these Jilva soldiers should be handled. More importantly, we've captured their entire force and driven them off. But doesn't that simply mean it's only a matter of time before the Jilva Empire sends a larger force to this village?"
"Fumu... While the first half of your claim regarding traversing the sacred ruins is admittedly difficult to swallow on a whim, your assessment regarding the Jilva Empire's future movements is entirely correct. Their gaze will undoubtedly lock onto our village moving forward."
The moment the Elder validated my concerns, a wave of anxious murmuring rippled through the surrounding villagers.
Well, you can't blame them.
Realizing that imperial executioners could be marching down on your home at any moment is bound to ruin your day.
"Quiet down, all of you! I am still in the middle of a consultation with our benefactor. Whether we abandon this village to its fate or resolve to defend it—the ultimate outcome will, in all likelihood, rely entirely on the actions of these individuals."
"What do you mean by that, Elder?!"
"What? Nothing complicated. A mere handful of ten individuals effortlessly suppressed a vanguard of 300 imperial soldiers in the blink of an eye. Furthermore, from what my eyes gather, it appeared as though they weren't even exerting their true capabilities."
Woah... this old lady possessed a terrifyingly sharp sense of observation
People like her are always the hardest to deal with.
"Hah! A mere three hundred soldiers is child's play to our hunters! Elder, we have absolutely zero need to rely on the charity of these outsiders!!"
"Sett. I suggest you refrain from spouting such boasts until you are capable of achieving an overwhelming victory against our benefactor yourself. If memory serves, you were completely flattened in a single blow the moment this gentleman decided to exert a fraction of his true agility earlier."
"Nguuh...!"
Come on, old man.
Face reality.
Though I understand how you feel.
"Therefore, assuming your tale holds water, you are actively utilizing the ruins as a gateway, which means securing this perimeter is an absolute necessity for your operations as well, correct?"
"Yes, that's exactly right."
"I see. So you wish to discover our intended course of action beforehand?"
"Yes. We intend to focus our research operations around the ancient ruins, so we would highly prefer to prevent any specific global superpower from seizing control of the territory. However, looking at the current layout..."
"You realized that we built our entire settlement explicitly to encompass the ruins?"
"Exactly. Depending on how you choose to act, the operational strategies we need to deploy will change drastically."
"Ho? I see. I had assumed our only available options were to flee and face slow extinction, or stand our ground and face immediate annihilation."
"Well, yes. But the additional alternatives we can offer you are: either we establish a brand new sovereign nation right here, or you can evacuate directly to our home territory and live out your lives in absolute safety."
The moment the words left my mouth, the Elder's eyes went completely wide. A second later, she burst into a fit of thoroughly amused, hearty laughter.
"Uhyahyahya!! Oh, forgive me. I never imagined that at my advanced age, I would experience a moment that made me laugh so genuinely from the bottom of my heart."
"I assure you, I'm being completely serious here, not joking."
"I am well aware of that, child. That is precisely why I found it so thoroughly entertaining. I already held a firm conviction that our village would never fall as long as your group resolved to shield us, but it seems I have grown terribly old. I have allowed myself to become entirely too conservative. Had I simply analyzed the sheer scale of your capabilities, such an obvious conclusion should have manifested immediately."
Pausing to catch her breath, the Elder slowly scanned her eyes across our group, meticulously studying each of our faces one by one.
"Umu. No matter which way I look at it, the magical residue radiating from your bodies is far from ordinary. Indeed, carving out a brand new nation under your banner is far from an impossibility."
"You don't have to force yourselves to match our pace, you know. Our initial offer stands—you can choose to live a completely peaceful, insulated life back at our primary headquarters..."
Personally, I was heavily pushing for the evacuation option. From a purely strategic standpoint, these civilians were nothing but a massive liability.
"No. If we are to rely on outsiders like you to shield our home, the least we can do is lend a hand to the effort. Besides, our people possess a deep sense of historical pride regarding the sanctuary we have preserved up until now."
Yeah. Of course you do. It always comes down to pride, doesn't it?
Then again, it's not like any rational community would suddenly hand over the entire defense of their homeland to a pack of complete strangers without a second thought.
"For the time being, I shall sit down with the village collective and thoroughly discuss the matter through that specific lens. You all appear entirely capable of executing a wide array of miraculous feats anyway. Feel free to act as you see fit in the meantime; I shall deliver our official consensus by tomorrow morning."
With that closing statement, the Elder turned and guided the bulk of the villagers away.
That being said, since we were standing right in the dead center of their settlement, the civilians who weren't involved in the leadership meeting immediately set to work rebuilding the damaged structures around us.
"Phew. Well, that concludes the diplomatic phase for now."
Mobu let out a heavy sigh, sinking his hips down onto a nearby crate as if he had just endured a grueling marathon.
"Hey, you literally didn't contribute a single spoken word to that entire conversation, did you?"
"But what should our immediate course of action be, Yuki-san?"
As I immediately shot down Mobu's complaint, Ria asks me a question.
"For the immediate future, we're putting the village affairs and the Jilva prisoners on the back burner. We'll wait for their official response tomorrow morning. Though, given the trajectory of the conversation, it's highly likely we're going to end up defending this place."
"That sounds perfect to me. I'd absolutely hate to just ditch them and walk away after we already went through the trouble of saving them, you know?"
"Agreed. I feel exactly the same way."
Riel and Tori were completely onboard with shielding the locals.
Well, looking at our long-term objectives on this continent, securing a cooperative local workforce was technically a necessary asset anyway...
"...The critical variable is the Jilva Empire's mobilization timeline."
Exactly.
Kaya hit the nail right on the head. That was our absolute biggest hurdle.
"The village's decision tomorrow will ultimately dictate how the Jilva Empire responds. Though, realistically, the only real variable is whether an imperial army marches down on this clearing sooner rather than later."
"Well, that's completely inevitable. After all, our group just went and casually blew their vanguard into the stratosphere."
"...I thoroughly loathe agreeing with Mobu's phrasing, but that is the exact reality of our situation."
"Yes, things will undoubtedly play out that way."
While Mobu put it rather crudely, Raiya and Kurse were entirely correct—at the end of the day, our only real recourse when the enemy arrived was to systematically eradicate them.
We could theoretically attempt diplomacy, but...
"Trying to negotiate after capturing imperial soldiers would be difficult."
"...Indeed. If we were dealing with a power of equal strength, perhaps negotiations would be possible."
Sheila and Labyris analyzed the current layout and concluded that peaceful negotiation was practically dead in the water.
They were entirely right.
If a massive superpower finds out an entire deployment of its professional soldiers was completely captured by a seemingly defenseless, backwater village, they will mobilize their absolute maximum military might to erase the settlement from the face of the earth. Purely to save political face!!
Any actual negotiation would only become viable after we thoroughly beat them back a few times. In other words, we had to force them to consciously comprehend the absolute disparity in our military output first. Until that happened, we were locked into enduring a series of tedious, annoying skirmishes.
"If that is the case, regardless of how the village responds tomorrow, we absolutely cannot afford to recklessly exhaust our dungeon resources in our current unverified state. Therefore, shouldn't we prioritize wrapping up our baseline experiments immediately, allowing us to efficiently structure our military assets?"
Zargis's analytical breakdown was flawless.
Whether we wanted to expand the dungeon layout to implement massive automated trap networks or simply crush the invaders under a tidal wave of our own monster legions, we first needed to thoroughly map out the exact variables of the magical depletion crisis.
If our abilities scaled down or shifted parameters due to the low ambient mana, discovering that flaw in the heat of a real battle would be catastrophic.
"Prioritizing our military readiness means we need to fast-track the experiments directly tied to our combat assets, right?"
"Precisely. Rather than digging into the deep root cause of the depletion crisis right out of the gate, it would be far wiser to verify which specific monsters we can reliably summon for defense, allowing us to artificially bolster our numerical vanguard. Transporting raw physical logistics from Weed is simply too much of a hassle."
He was entirely right. Relying on summoned monsters was easily the most efficient method for handling heavy logistics and construction, but because we hadn't verified how the low ambient mana would affect them, I had deliberately chosen not to bring any along on our first day.
Given the current trajectory, it looked like we needed to completely tear up our original timeline, fast-track the experiments, and start multiplying our numbers immediately. After all, a full-scale war was practically knocking on our front door.
Sigh.
And here I was, genuinely hoping I could live a completely quiet, low-profile life on this new continent...
