"What the hell happened here?" Ye Uchiha's expression darkened as he surveyed the devastated Lute Village. Calling it a ruin would have been no exaggeration. The damage was worse than after the last Waves attack, and he had rushed back from the Capital without stopping.
Through the king, he had become the lord of Lute Village, a fact everyone in the kingdom knew. Yet someone had brazenly attacked his territory and slaughtered his people. Wasn't this an outright challenge to him?
Although Ye Uchiha cared little about the affairs of Lute Village and was even willing to entrust all his authority as lord to someone else, that didn't mean anyone could come onto his land and run wild.
Some surviving villagers crouched in corners, numb and vacant-eyed, staring blankly at the shattered walls around them. Others threw themselves over the bodies of their loved ones and wept bitterly. A heavy pall of grief hung over the entire village.
"Some nobles coveted the profits from the automatons, so they formed an alliance and sent their men disguised as a bandit group to attack your territory, Master-Lute Village. They never expected our headquarters to be elsewhere. These villagers suffered through no fault of their own," Paracelsus explained quietly beside him.
Ye Uchiha asked expressionlessly, "Do you know which ones?"
Paracelsus handed Ye Uchiha a slip of paper listing every noble involved in the attack. As he read the twenty or thirty names on it, Ye Uchiha's face turned stormy. His grip crumpled the once-smooth sheet.
Do they think I'm some rich idiot they can push around?!!!
He looked around at the devastation in Lute Village. He hadn't expected his own group to bring disaster upon these villagers, leaving them to suffer a calamity that should never have been theirs.
Although he had killed plenty of people in the Naruto World, they had either stood against him or tried to kill him, only to die at his hands because they weren't strong enough. In short, he had never slaughtered innocents indiscriminately. Only by holding to that could Ye Uchiha still see himself as the peace-loving man from Earth he had always been.
As he looked at the bodies covered with white cloths and smelled the blood still lingering in the air, Ye Uchiha found his anger increasingly impossible to contain. He wanted to storm into those nobles' homes and slaughter every last one of them.
These nobles really would do anything for profit!
"My lord, please tell us who attacked Lute Village, so we can at least know who murdered our loved ones!" The Lute Village Lord seemed to have aged years overnight. Hunched over his walking stick, he approached Ye Uchiha with several young, able-bodied villagers whose faces were filled with grief and resentment, and pleaded quietly.
Although he was called the Lute Village Lord, he had nothing in common with those nobles who occupied their positions without doing any work. He was a true local, elected by the village to serve as its representative in dealings with the kingdom. Aside from paying the kingdom a fixed tax, his daily work was much the same as that of the other villagers. He, too, had to farm and labor to earn a living.
They had finally survived the "Waves of calamity," only to be attacked by a bandit group that had appeared out of nowhere. Even his son and daughter-in-law had died in the nighttime massacre. Only his granddaughter had escaped. Fortunately, she was still alive, giving him the courage to go on living. Otherwise, he might already have broken down and killed himself by dashing his head against a wall.
A bitter smile crossed the Lute Village Lord's face as he looked at the villagers crouching numbly by the walls. At least he still had his granddaughter. Some villagers had suffered even more than he had, losing their families and everything else, without even the hope they needed to keep living.
The young villagers accompanying the Lute Village Lord wore expressions of grief and resentment. They had been sitting peacefully at home when disaster struck out of nowhere. Overnight, nearly half the people in their large village had been slaughtered, separating them forever from family and friends. Anyone would have been devastated. Every one of them harbored a heart full of resentment and hatred.
Ye Uchiha fell silent for a moment, then told them plainly, "Those men were sent by the nobles. They wanted to seize my business and silence Lute Village in the process, disguising it as a bandit attack to bury the truth."
"I'll do everything I can to compensate you for the losses Lute Village suffered. If you want to take your anger out on me, I won't object."
At Ye Uchiha's words, almost every villager stared at him with either shock or resentment. Only the Lute Village Lord lowered his head, his expression conflicted.
The Lute Village Lord knew a little about Ye Uchiha's business selling Magic Automatons. He had heard it earned hundreds of thousands of gold coins each month. No wonder those noble lords had set their sights on the new lord. As for the villagers, they had probably been treated as nothing more than expendable casualties.
Knowing the nobles' true nature, the Lute Village Lord hadn't lost his head to anger as the other villagers had. He sighed helplessly to himself. Though furious at what the nobles had done, he felt even greater disappointment in this country. This wasn't the first time he had witnessed the kingdom's dark side. Most nobles with talent and ambition had been stripped of their positions and banished to remote regions. Those who remained were nothing but parasites, splendid on the outside and rotten within.
The nobles were born above everyone else, while powerless commoners like them could only submit to being butchered. It was a helpless reality, but the deaths of his son and daughter-in-law were more than the Lute Village Lord could swallow.
"Please. I know this wasn't your fault, but I beg you to avenge our dead loved ones!" Taking a deep breath, the Lute Village Lord bent down, dropped to his knees, and bowed his head to the ground as he pleaded with Ye Uchiha.
"Lord, why are you begging him? He's the one who brought this disaster on us..." a young villager said bitterly. Many around him voiced their agreement, looking at Ye Uchiha and his companions with deep resentment and cold hostility.
The Lute Village Lord turned and looked at them with grief and anger in his eyes. "Be quiet!" he snapped. "Do you still not understand who actually slaughtered our families? The true murderers are those nobles! You're just taking your resentment out on someone else. Do you think that will avenge our dead families? The real killers are still walking free, and this lord is the only one who can help us get revenge!"
"But..."
Conflict flickered across every villager's face. The Lute Village Lord was right. Although Ye Uchiha had been the cause of this disaster, the nobles were the ones who had carried it out. Their greed had killed the villagers' families. Even if they wanted revenge, could ordinary villagers like them possibly stand against those lofty nobles?
Remembering the expressions on their loved ones' faces before they died, the villagers were filled with pain and helpless outrage. Then, one after another, they fell to their knees and pleaded mournfully with Ye Uchiha, "Please avenge Lute Village for us!"
"Yes. I'll avenge those who died. This is compensation for your losses. Do your best to rebuild Lute Village. After all... the dead can't come back to life."
Silently watching the villagers bow their heads to him, Ye Uchiha took a large bag of gold coins out of a Sealing Scroll and dropped it on the ground as he spoke solemnly. Then he turned and left, leaving behind the villagers, who clenched their teeth without a word as tears streamed down their faces in silent grief.
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