(Heartfelt thanks to 'Fleeting Years,' 'Raging Policeman,' 'Young Master Ziran,' 'Pokémon,' 'Mo Yu Linshang,' and 'Yatogami Toka' for their rewards!)
By the time he noticed it, that distinctly strange village had already appeared before Noah.
It was a village that covered a fairly broad area.
However, Noah was somewhat hesitant about whether it should really be called a village.
The reason was that the entire village was surrounded by towering walls, making it impossible to see inside.
The only things visible were the watchtowers standing even taller than the village walls.
Their construction was remarkably solid. Even in some kingdom cities, it would have been difficult to find watchtowers so sturdy.
At that scale, it seemed less like a village and more like a strategic stronghold, giving off an intensely guarded atmosphere.
Of course, the village was relatively close to mountains inhabited by all kinds of Magical Beasts, so it was not strange for its residents to worry about attacks and build tall defensive walls and watchtowers.
The problem was that, for a village that was generally rather poor, even if it built such luxurious defenses as walls, it would normally only surround the residential buildings or warehouses, leaving the fields outside.
After all, enclosing the fields within the village would mean constructing walls large enough to encircle vast farmland and living areas. That would be extremely costly and laborious, beyond what an ordinary village could afford.
Yet there was not a single plot of farmland outside this village's walls.
Judging by the scale of the walls, the farmland truly had been enclosed within the village.
Furthermore, the people stationed atop the watchtowers were so alert that even from afar, Noah could see them slowly sweeping their already-nocked arrows in every direction as though on patrol, ready to fire at