After leaving E-Rantel at dawn, Aaron followed the intel and rough map he had bought from the Adventurer Guild, heading northwest toward the very edge of the Re-Estize Kingdom near the Great Forest of Tob.
There was a place there called Carne Village.
This village lay on the borderlands and had nearly a hundred years of history. Even so, despite its age, that did nothing to change how poor it was.
Within the kingdom it was utterly insignificant, to the point people forgot it existed. Yet in the anime, it ran through a whole chain of events.
Of course,
the village itself was actually unrelated to most of those events and functioned more as a story hub.
"Graah!"
From the weeds on a barren roadside hill, a goblin that had been lying in wait suddenly lunged out.
Aaron's gaze slid toward it as he drew the iron sword at his waist in one smooth motion. With a sidestep he easily slipped past the ambush, then brought his arm down in a slash.
Pshff!
The blade flashed.
The goblin screamed as its body was cleaved cleanly in two.
"EXP +30."
Expressionless, Aaron flicked the green blood from his sword and glanced around. Four more goblins were crawling out of the grass.
"What a troublesome species," he thought, then spoke aloud, "Magic Arrow!"
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Spending 5 MP, then another 1 MP on top, he created four magic arrows in one go and sent them flying at the four goblins.
Four bursts of green blood sprayed through the air.
As the bodies hit the ground, prompts appeared on his status panel.
"EXP +27."
"EXP +25."
"EXP +30."
"The EXP is about the same as from beasts. I should get a level by the time I reach Carne Village. Early leveling really is fast."
Aaron walked over and cut the ears off the dead goblins. Their ears could be exchanged for money at the Adventurer Guild.
That was no small income stream.
On the road that followed,
he ran into several more groups of enemies, not just goblins but also minor monsters.
Under those conditions, he finally reached a small village by evening, ringed by wooden fencing and dotted with cooking smoke.
A quick glance told him
that this kind of wooden barrier offered almost no real defense against monsters from the forest.
Yet Carne Village, so close to the Great Forest of Tob, had persisted without being wiped out, which was interesting in itself.
The occasional monster attacks along the way had given Aaron a visceral sense of the situation.
After leaving E-Rantel, the numbers of monsters and goblins had steadily risen, but the closer he drew to Carne Village, the fewer monsters he encountered.
That was because three powerful monsters known as the "Forest Rulers" dwelled in the Great Forest of Tob.
In the south, the forest ruler, great beast of the forest—the Wise King of the Forest, Hamsuke.
In the east, the forest ruler, Eastern Giant—Ogre Gu.
In the west, the forest ruler, Western Demon Serpent—Naga Lularus.
These three together effectively ruled the Great Forest of Tob, and Carne Village lay within the territory of the Wise King, Hamsuke.
That was why no monsters attacked Carne Village.
All three Forest Rulers were around level 30, with the Wise King slightly higher. By human standards, they had all stepped into the hero realm.
Yet even a human hero of the same realm would almost certainly lose to any of them one-on-one.
That was the advantage of demi-human and heteromorphic races.
Aaron pulled his gaze from the village's wooden fence and looked toward the endless primeval jungle visible not far away.
His view was blocked by a dense mass of towering branches and leaves, hiding everything beyond, but his eyes still grew cautious and wary.
Because the truly terrifying thing in the Great Forest of Tob was not the three Forest Rulers,
but a presence in its deepest heart.
Two hundred years ago, during the era of the Thirteen Heroes, one of the monsters that descended into this world was the "Evil Tree." Its level was as high as 85, and even back then it had never been destroyed—only sealed away in the deepest part of the forest.
When the anime's story began,
the reason Shalltear suddenly ran into the Slane Theocracy's strongest unit, the Black Scripture, complete with the world-class item Downfall of Castle and Country,
was pure bad luck on her part.
The Black Scripture had deployed with a world-class item because the seal on the Evil Tree was weakening.
They had intended to break the seal and then use Downfall of Castle and Country to control it, but instead they ran into Shalltear.
The two sides ended up fighting for no clear reason.
The anime only brushed over this, but the light novels gave more detail.
The Black Scripture suffered heavy losses, and the human who actually wielded the world-class item was slain in a last desperate strike by Shalltear before she was controlled.
That was why, even though she had been mind-controlled, Shalltear turned into a "wild monster" afterward—because the wielder of Downfall of Castle and Country had died.
"Who are you?"
Suddenly, two middle-aged villagers with pitchforks appeared at the village gate, glaring warily at Aaron as he stood there.
"Sorry to intrude. I'm a traveler just passing through and was hoping to stay the night," Aaron said softly, keeping his tone mild.
At his words,
the two villagers exchanged a look. Their wariness did not fade, and they first peered past him.
Seeing he was alone, they relaxed slightly.
"Wait here."
Clearly unable to decide on their own, one of them spoke to Aaron, then turned and ran quickly back into the village.
He was not gone long.
Soon he returned with a man who looked to be in his forties or fifties, with dark, rough skin and gray-brown hair.
From his appearance, he was likely the village chief.
The chief came up, looking Aaron over carefully, his gaze lingering especially on Aaron's black hair.
"You're here to stay the night?" he asked in a rough voice.
"That's right."
Aaron nodded.
"Then please, come in," the chief said readily, without pressing further.
That caught Aaron a bit off guard.
Carne Village almost never saw outsiders. Only in late autumn did tax officials and herb buyers show up.
"Chief?"
The two villagers sounded surprised. They clearly had not expected him to agree so quickly.
With evening already upon them, a stranger arriving at this hour made them uneasy.
"This past month or two, the monsters and beasts in the forest have been especially restless," the chief said with a sigh as he opened the fence.
At that,
the two villagers finally understood. Their village might be peaceful, but the road here was not.
For someone to reach them alone meant he was not weak. Their flimsy wooden fence would never stop someone of his level.
The fact that he had not broken in showed the black-haired youth bore them no ill will.
Once they thought it through,
their earlier vigilance faded.
Following the chief's lead, Aaron stepped through the gate and into Carne Village.
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