Nfirea, who was sitting beside her, seemed a little tense.
What was going on with him?
As Enri bathed the side of his face in a suspicious stare, Nfirea took out a handful of papers.
They were covered in tiny letters. Although Enri could recognize several words, there were more words there which she did not know than she did in her brief glimpse.
“The first thing is how to feed the remaining goblins from Agu’s tribe and the ogres.”
“Eh? Aren’t we fine as we are? They helped with the harvest in the autumn, and we managed to buy the ogres’ food from the city.”
“Mmm, and the herbs sold for a good price, so we can say we’ve got ample food reserves. It should be enough to deal with his winter. Even if we add a few extras, our food stocks should still hold out.
But if the numbers keep increasing, life’s going to be quite harsh. Maybe we should acquire our food by other means.”
There were 14 people in Agu’s tribe now. They were not born, but instead, they managed to escape from the territory of the Giant of the West and the Serpent of the East.
“Mmmm. Although I don’t see a problem, we should probably buy more food from E-Rantel.
However, I was planning to save some money to commission some metal tools for the ogres.”
“If we could make some farming tools for the ogres, the spring seeding should go a lot faster. …But the problem is that if we order tools for the ogres, they’ll be big enough that no human could use them, and that’ll raise a lot of questions.”
“And if word about the ogres gets out, it’ll cause a lot of problems, right?”
When the tax collectors came in autumn, Jugem and the others had to hide in order to escape being noticed. Incidentally, it was due to their efforts that the grain harvest was so bountiful.
Since Carne Village had been attacked by Imperial knights, they only needed to pay a nominal tribute, which was a stroke of luck for them. In addition, they were excused from the draft for several years.
Most of that was a form of apology for not protecting Carne Village properly, but it looked like they felt genuine guilt about that as well. There were some questions about the mighty wall surrounding the village, but they deflected questions by saying “it was the work of that magic caster”. If they could do that, surely they could explain the ogres away as well, right? At least, that was what Enri thought, but Nfirea shook his head.
“There’s no doubt about that. If it goes bad, the Kingdom might even send a punitive force out.”
“That’s too much!”
“You say that, but the truth is that ogres usually eat people. The only reason why they can live with us in this village is because of Jugem-san, who’s stronger than us. Don’t forget that.”
“I haven’t…”
“Another thing is that we have far too few people in this village. We need to think about how to get more residents. If the newcomers arrived with the spring planting season, that would be great.”
“That’s a big if. And, like you said, what happens if they see the goblin-sans and ogre-sans and run off? What then?”
That doubtful question came from Enri. As she spoke, something strange seemed to be happening with Nfirea. Something like… his mind wasn’t fully there or something like that.
“Eh? Ah, no, nothing’s wrong!”
There was no way that could be true. Was he feeling restless? After all, her lover had a bad habit of dropping everything to obsess about his potions.
As he saw Enri’s eyebrows furrowing, Nfirea took a deep breath and shifted his body over.
Hm? So he’s really restless, after all? He does do a lot of experiments everyday… but it’ll be cold if he sleeps here. Although it’s kind of warm in the hay…
While Enri was thinking about this. Nfirea slowly leaned more and more of his weight on her.
What’s wrong? Though come to think about it, it would be better if Nfirea were a bit stronger… I guess he needs more meat. He hasn’t been eating and sleeping enough.
A playful impulse came over Enri, and she pushed Nfirea back. She’d originally intended to use just a bit of force, but because she used too much strength, she ended up pinning him below herself instead.
“―Ueeeeh?”
Before Enri’s eyes, Nfirea’s surprised and confused face slowly turned bright red.
Aaaah~ It must be embarrassing for a man to lose to a woman in strength. That’s why I said you need to eat more…
Just as Enri rolled herself off him, Nfirea lay down in the hay and closed his eyes.
They stayed like this for several seconds, enjoying the peace and quiet.
“…What’s wrong, Enfi? Do you want to sleep?”
Nfirea sat back up, his face uncharacteristically red.
“Uh… oh… um. N-nothing…”
“―Ane-san!”
The door flew open without a knock as the shout reached her ears. So forceful was the entry that the door crashed loudly against the nearby wall.
“Hueeee?”
The curious squeak came from Nfirea.
“W-w-w-w-what happened?”
“Sorry for disturbing you two, but this is an emergency!”
“What happened?”
This was the first time she’d seen Jugem this worried ever since that troll attacked. A strange, terrible premonition seemed to run through her body.
“Troops! A large body of troops is heading this way!”
“Eh?! What, what did you say? Whose troops are they?”
“We don’t know about heraldry so we couldn’t tell. But there’s a lot of different coats of arms, so you should come and look… In any case, we should shut the gate first. What should we do?”
“That! Ah… well, can you tell us which coats of arms make up the most among them? If you can describe or sketch them for me I can help.”
After listening to Jugem’s explanation, a suspicious expression spread over Nfirea’s face.
“How strange. Those are flags from the Kingdom. If we knew which nobles’ crests they were, we could identify who was coming here.”
Carne Village was a frontier village, and before it had been founded there had only been forest here.
It was obvious that their objective was Carne Village, but why they were coming here was still a mystery.
“But why? Do you know why, Nfirea?”
“Why would the Kingdom’s troops would come to the village? If they wanted to go to the Great Forest of Tob, it’s strange that they’re sending so many troops. They could have just sent adventurers instead. If that’s the case… maybe there’s a revolt or something…”
“Could that sort of thing really happen?”
“It’s just a rumour, but I’ve heard that the King’s power isn’t actually very strong. Currently, it seems like the nobles are in conflict with the King. If that’s the case, are they coming to Carne Village to attack it?”