Monster Fish Beneath the Lake

An hour and a half later, the two arrived at the entrance of a village.

It was a very small village with only one street. The number of houses could be counted at a glance. At the entrance, piles of stones formed a waist-high wall, with weeds growing thick between the cracks.

Owl and Sa entered the village. Several villagers working in the fields stopped what they were doing and looked at them.

Small villages like this were mostly extremely xenophobic, sometimes completely unwilling to welcome outsiders. Thus, neither Owl nor Sa dared relax their guard, observing the villagers as they walked.

Before this, the two would never have set foot in such a closed-off village.

Owl's original goal had been to find a large city, not a tiny village like this. Such villages were extremely dangerous. There were often rumors of entire villages joining forces to murder travelers for their wealth and imprisoning their wives and daughters.

Owl and Sa had once heard traveling merchants speak of an unnamed village four or five days' journey from Moreya Town. A year ago, the lord of Layton City had sent troops to slaughter it to the last person.

The reason was that the Layton City lord's youngest son had secretly gone traveling with two maidservants, only to be drowned together by the villagers in a latrine. The two maidservants were imprisoned in a cellar for the villagers' amusement.

Those villagers had not known the identity of the person they killed. Only later, when the Layton City lord saw that his son had not returned for many days, did he dispatch troops to investigate. Following clues all the way with military dogs, they finally uncovered the truth.

It could be said that both Owl and Sa remembered that incident deeply, and it