I found traces of a bandit outside the wine cellar.
When I told Karubene about it, she exclaimed, “What did you say!” and let out a loud yell in the middle of the night.
“Alright! If we follow these tracks, we’ll catch them. Good job, Brother!”
“Sharin found them, though. Judging by how dry the mud is, I’d say it was only a day or two ago.”
Seeing her excitement, the other Satyrs gathered around as well.
“Hey, I wonder why they stole it.”
“What else would they steal it for but to make money! They’re going to resell it. This wine is something you can’t just buy anywhere. Dammit, I’ll tear them to pieces right now!”
With that, she started to head off somewhere. A Seilenos man who had just arrived stopped her.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Where am I going? What have you been doing until now? I’m going to get the wine back from those bandits!”
The man told her that it was too reckless to go now and they should wait until tomorrow. I thought so too. We don’t know how far we can follow the tracks in this darkness, and even if Sharin is strong at night, there’s a high chance she’ll be ambushed.
“Wait until tomorrow?! That wine is more important than my life. You all know what will happen if I can’t deliver it to the nobles.”
“Maybe we can just say it was a bad harvest this year?”
Philiana tried to come up with an excuse. However, Karubene shook her head.
“No, that won’t work. If we’re caught, it will be disastrous. As you can see, this is a small village, and that wine is a crucial source of income. Without it, everyone will starve to death. And without it, we won’t receive aid from the kingdom.”
In short, the kingdom is keeping this village alive because it has high-quality wine, and if that’s gone, they don’t care about anything else. It wasn’t a matter of simply saying “we couldn’t do it.” It literally was a matter of life and death.
“I’m going, even if I have to go alone. If things stay as they are, death will be unavoidable eventually.”
With that, she began to walk again. Sharin was looking this way.
“Sigh… I guess we have no choice but to go too. However, Piyo and Pauline, you two stay here.”
Piyo looked like she wanted to say something, but she bit her lip and simply said, “Understood.”
