"Uh..."
"Fine!"
Irene felt a little uncomfortable under the scrutiny. Knowing she couldn't bluff her way out of it, she sighed helplessly, tossed the expensive New World game console aside, adjusted her posture, and began slowly recounting what had happened that morning:
"Here's what happened!"
"We passed a pretty big village this morning and were just about to go in to buy some fresh ingredients, like fruits and vegetables."
"But before we even entered, we realized something was wrong!"
"It was way too quiet in the village!"
"As soon as we went in, we saw that everyone had collapsed and was unconscious—men and women, young and old. Some were lying in bed, some were sitting in chairs, others had fallen in the road or beside the fields. It was as if they'd all fallen into some kind of deep sleep."
She paused, then continued:
"Then..."
"Frieren checked things out and said it seemed to be a 'curse' released by some kind of monster."
"But then I realized that wasn't what was happening at all. It was all caused by magical pollen!"
"Frieren didn't know that yet, though, and she wasn't going to just stand by and do nothing, so we started investigating."
"Along the way..."
"We also tried curse-breaking spells like 'Rennervate' and 'Purification' to wake the villagers."
"But they didn't work!"
She spread her hands helplessly and pouted.
"The source of that 'curse'—those damn magical pollen grains—was still producing and scattering more of them. So even if we managed to wake some villagers temporarily, they'd breathe in more pollen and soon fall right back down with a thump."
"They slept just as soundly as before. We were completely wasting our time."
"So we had no choice. We decided to capture the ringleader and figure out how to destroy the