Chapter 26: If you’ve experienced as much as I have, you’d be able to see through all that

“Great. It looks we’re ready.”

“Yes. Amazing, Luke-sama.”

While standing on top of a watchtower, I breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like we had a real chance of overcoming the greatest crisis this village ever faced since its founding.

We had captured a bandit named Baal. Through interrogating him, we gained the information that someone among their group had the Gift of [Telepathy]. The oldest person in the village boldly suggested that we use this Gift against them.

“But will he really tell them what we want him to? I mean, we have no way of checking…”

“Eheheheee…that’s not an issue when I’m around. You see, unless they’re trained to perfection, humans can’t lie completely. If you’ve experienced as much as I have, you’d be able to see through all that.”

Granny seemed confident when she said so.

“In other words, you! You better do as you’re told or your precious balls get crushed!”

“Hii!?”

Once again, granny sure was scary.

…oh well, better leave it to her.

And so, we waited for the bandits to come.

Through Baal, we led them into the village.

Once I confirmed that all members had passed the village’s gate, I immediately built a moat under their feet. Had I prepared the moat beforehand, we would have gotten a few members of their vanguard to fall, sure, but the others would have noticed it and stop their advance.

And it worked. All the bandits fell down the moat and made a splash.

The next step was for Selen to use her Blue Magic to rapidly freeze the water in the moat so that the bandits would be stuck there. However, this step didn’t go as well as we hoped.

A man at least two heads taller than Balrath-san managed to break free from the congealing water. Thanks to the information I heard beforehand, I immediately knew that this was the so-called boss of the bandits.

The boss correctly identified Selen to be the one who was freezing the water, and rushed toward her. To confront the incoming threat, Selen stopped using her magic on the water.

And because the water in the moat hasn’t completely frozen yet, the other bandits made it to land after some serious effort.

Yet, this much was still within our expectations. To turn the tables back on the bandits, Balrath-san and the other villagers with combat-oriented Gifts were on standby on the shore. The bandits’ movements were probably slowed by the cold water, but in the end, what mattered was that the villagers managed to send the bandits back to the water.

And when Selen finally defeated their boss, the bandits lost all will to fight.

Like that, we protected our village from the bandits.

◇　◇　◇

The bandits were now in our jailhouses. There were too many of them to fit into only one jailhouse, so I built another three.

“Luke, we’ve returned with the people captured by the bandits.”

I’m so glad we got to them before they’re sold.

The dawn right after the fight, Selen led a group to look for the people who were captured by the bandits. They should have been immensely tired from the night of the fight, but they left to help as soon as they obtained the necessary information from bandits.

“Thanks for the hard work, Selen. And sorry for putting so much on you.”

“It wasn’t much trouble. The remnants of their group fought us at first, but as soon as they saw they were no match, they ran away.”

According to the information we got, there were about 20 bandits left behind in their base to guard the refugees they captured. However, because there wasn’t anyone there who had any notable fighting prowess, Selen’s group apparently didn’t have much to worry about.

And the one to acquire this information for us was once again granny.

“Ehehehee, these things aren’t an issue when I’m around.”

I was too scared ask what kinds of methods she used to coax the information out.

<<The 94 people represented by Tamilia are now villagers.>>

The refugees we saved agreed to live here now.

All in all, I now had 267 villagers.

“Still, what am I to do with the bandits now?”

<<It is recommended to make them villagers.>>

“…huh?”