Chapter 20 (2/2)

In the short time that I waited for my meal to arrive, I absently gazed outside the window.

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“Well then, shall we go.”

“Eeh~ I still haven’t finished eating, y’know.”

“I don’t care.”

Seth, who came back with Belus, ate the morning meal with me as there was a large excess.

Although Belus sharply scolded him, Seth just feigned ignorance.

I only heard about it later, but it turned out that Belus was Seth’s father. That fact deeply surprised me.

Most likely, Seth’s lazy character was the result of leaving things like pressure and tension behind in his mother’s womb. When I said that, Seth sulked like a child.

“Village head, I made these pastilles yesterday. You have to make sure to distribute it to everyone in the village!”

“What’s this? Medicine?”

“No. It’s not medicine. But, it’s something that can help with heatstroke.”

For now, I entrusted three days worth of pastilles to him.

With this, I could take a look at how much the pastilles could improve the villagers’ situation, and I also planned to improve the taste.

“As usual, you’re using us as guinea pigs?”

“Yep. You should be honoured.”

“Tsk, you’re really…”

A soft smile floated on the village head’s face, and he poked my head. Then, as always, as if soothing me, he patted my head which he had just poked.

Since long ago, I’d always thought that since he was going to pat it anyways, why not just stop poking my head? But, I didn’t hate being treated like this either so I wasn’t going to say unnecessary things.

After a day’s work, I once again returned to the residence.

In the afternoon, the residence was full of people going back and forth. However, similar to Belus, almost everyone began to hide their malice towards me.

Well, even though that was the case, there was still a small fraction that couldn’t keep it hidden.

It was after I parted with Seth and headed back to my room to take a look at the medicine.

When I was standing at the landing of the staircase, someone pushed my back from behind.

I, who was sent into the air, disorientedly veered off the staircase and tumbled down headlong to the floor.

Fortunately I protected my head, so nothing important was hurt, but a sharp pain shot through my left ankle. A wound like this wasn’t that big of a deal. With this situation, I could use healing magic. But before that, I looked around to confirm if there was anybody around me.

More than being pushed down, it grated more on my nerves that somebody had sneaked up on me without me knowing.