Do you guys have some business in the village?"
"No, we don't plan to stop by in particular. It looks like some things have been burned, did some thieves attack?"
When we were passing near a farm village, we got challenged by some armed farmers. This farmer looks to have some burn injuries, but the farmers behind him seem to only have some kind of scar injuries. In addition, their weapons are all crudely made, you can even call it improvised. Things like wooden spears with only the tips shaved, or spears with smashed obsidian stones attached on the tips.
There are hatred and fear on the eyes of the farmers.
"I, it was someone even worse than thieves. It was a noble."
The young man announced as if vomiting. I feel some glance from a far away house. We should get away from here as soon as I've gathered some information.
"Was it a noble from around here?"
"No, I had never seen him before. He asked if we were hiding beastmen, when we told him that we didn't know, he burned our houses with magic, and threatened us to confess."
A fire magic-user noble who's searching for beastmen.
I'm terribly reminded of someone. It's the foreign noble who had tried to buy the white tigerkin princess in the dark auction. Since I don't remember his name, I search for him by limiting to only around up to the neighbor town from here. Looks like he's staying on the town of Puta that we're heading to. Let's mark him at least. It'll be troublesome if he mistakenly attacks Tama.
"That's unfortunate. We also have to be careful as to not get involved. These are thanks for the information, please accept it."
I take out three lower-ranked potions from the accessory case in the wagon, and pass it to the young man. Since he looked doubtful, I told him that they were cheap magic medicines (potions), and then the wagon departed before he could say something.
"You're quite generous eh~"
"They were just dummy that I've made for the wagon, they were really cheap stuffs you know. One is worth one copper coin at most."
"Chea~p."
They're leftovers from when I was mass producing military-use magic potions, from the alchemy book I had bought in the dark auction. They came out when raw materials weren't enough, or after I omitted some step. The lower-ranked potions from earlier are about the same as lower ranked magic potions I usually make that are 20 times more diluted. Nevertheless, they're not inferior to lower-ranked potion that's on the market. However, since you can make the dilution without magic cores, it's quicker and easier to make the potion normally considering the trouble.
Since the [Diluted Lower-Ranked Potion] that are made from this method has a weak effect, I can freely give it to people, it's convenient.
◇
And then, three days after we depart from the riverside town of the great river, we can finally see the town of Puta at last. This town is congregated by people called magic hunters that are working by hunting monsters to collect their magic cores. Even though the job sounds strong, most of them are not higher than level 10. In this duchy capital, there are several towns where magic hunters are gathering like in this Puta town.
I've learned the circumstance of things around here from Tarina-san of the scroll workshop. She was complaining when the magic cores that had arrived from Puta town were small and had low purities.
Around the forest near this Puta town, there are eight nests with about 100 demi-goblins each, they're separated for 10 kilometers apart from each other. Small nests with about dozen of demi-goblins also exist here and there. They're probably controllably hunted so that they won't become too many, or die out.
Humans don't seem to be the only one who hunt demi-goblins, various snake, lizard or frog monsters are loitering around near the nests.
Even now, there seem to be several magic hunter parties that are hunting the demi goblins, loitering around in the forest. One of those parties seems to have just been returning to Puta town, and from what we can see from here, they're having some kind of trouble.
Good grief, there's a lot of troubles in this world.