Not a barbarian warrior.

Eugene thought.

First, it couldn’t be Daisy’s father. He was someone who cherished his only daughter dearly.

Moreover, their household wasn’t in such a difficult situation that they needed to earn money immediately or face dire consequences. There was even a pack animal in the yard outside.

Then there was only one possibility left. The elders at the village hall, no, the old men. No wonder they said they would give the reward soon but there had been no news yet.

Eugene asked Daisy.

“Did those old men put you up to this?”

“…”

“If you don’t speak up quickly, I’ll run to your father right now. If you don’t want your bottom to be left intact, tell me the truth.”

As Eugene threatened her, Daisy hurriedly shook her head.

“N-no. I said I would do this myself…!”

“What?”

Eugene frowned at her words. Daisy hesitated, then said to wait a moment and went outside before coming back in. In her hand was a jingling pouch. Eugene realized it was the reward promised by the village for catching the lurehorn.

“Here.”

Eugene received the money pouch Daisy handed over and poured its contents onto his palm. There were far more copper coins mixed in than silver coins.

Eugene started counting the coins one by one. Soon he realized that even adding it all up, it barely exceeded twenty silver coins. It was far short of the promised thirty silver coins.

Moreover, besides the problem of the insufficient amount, there was also an issue with the coins themselves.

“…How much have these coins been shaved? The edges are completely angled.”

Not only were the edges of the coins shaved, but the surface with numbers and patterns engraved was so worn that the shapes were faint.

It was very difficult to receive full value for such severely damaged coins. He would have to find a merchant and have them weighed to check, but if Eugene’s prediction was correct, their value would be reduced by about 20% to 30%.

So, in effect, the village had only paid about half of the promised amount as a reward.

After carefully examining the coins, Eugene frowned and put them all back into the pouch. Daisy, who had been watching this scene, lowered her face to avoid his gaze and fidgeted with her hands.

“Um… while you were lying down recovering, the village elders called me saying they had something to talk about… They said they couldn’t gather all the reward money they promised to give you…”

“And then?”

“So… they said it’s a difficult time for the village, and to overcome this crisis, we all need to contribute…”

“Did those old men force you to sell your body?”

“No, it wasn’t force, it was a request. And I said I understood… They said they had no one else to ask because other people are wary of you… I’m close to you, right? Ehehe…”

Daisy tried to laugh awkwardly and somehow get through this situation. Eugene quietly looked at her and thought.

She must have known that the missing amount was about fifteen silver coins. She had asked for five coins for her virginity, so how much would she have asked for to mix bodies with him after that…

How much must this young girl have agonized and suffered to decide to make up for all the missing silver coins with her body…

Eugene didn’t know much about this young girl. After all, the time he had spent with her was only these few days. Still, there were a few things he knew well.

She was a child with deep filial piety who risked danger to gather herbs for her father with a broken leg.

She was a kind child who treated him without any prejudice, the only one in the village to do so.

She was a gentle child who cried for him, saying he was pitiful when she saw the scars on his body.

Eugene’s heart was burning. Unaware of his feelings, Daisy said to Eugene:

“Noah is the same age as me, but he’s been acting as the village vigilante, right? It’s similar to that…”

“Daisy, raise your head. Look at me.”

Daisy slowly raised her face. She tried to act nonchalant, but her eyes were trembling slightly.

Eugene spoke to Daisy, trying hard to suppress his boiling anger.

“This is not something a fourteen-year-old girl should be responsible for. There’s no need for it, and it shouldn’t be done.”

“But…”

Before Daisy could say anything, Eugene cut her off firmly.

“No. There are no ‘buts’ here.”

“…”

Daisy was silent for a moment, then opened her mouth.

“Then what should I do…”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ll say it again, this is not your responsibility. It’s not a mistake you made, nor is it something you should step up for. This is something adults should resolve.”

“…Is that so…”

“Yes.”

Daisy lowered her head again at Eugene’s words. She was silent for a while.

“Huu… huuu…”

Daisy’s shoulders shook, and soon she bit her lip and sobbed quietly.

Eugene didn’t say anything.

He just carefully patted this young girl’s back.

The night felt especially long for the two of them today.

As morning dawned, Eugene stepped out of the house. He walked quickly straight to the village hall where the old men were gathered.

As he opened the door of the hall and entered, the old men were sitting around a table discussing what kind of deal they should make with the merchant who was soon to visit the village.

When they saw Eugene, they welcomed him and guided him to a chair and an empty space.

Eugene’s furrowed brow, which had been apparent since he entered the village hall, showed no signs of relaxing.

Realizing that the atmosphere emanating from Eugene was not normal, the old men realized that something had gone wrong.

Rumors about barbarians from the North were infamous. Among them, of course, was the story that they couldn’t resist alcohol and women, especially young women.

The old men knew that Eugene, unlike such rumors, was quite polite, and they had heard directly from him that he wasn’t from the North, but they hadn’t completely erased their prejudice against Eugene.

From seeing Eugene and Daisy interacting comfortably with each other, they thought about why Eugene had saved her without receiving any compensation. They concluded that it wasn’t pure goodwill, but because Eugene liked Daisy as a woman.

So they offered Daisy as a gift in apology for the insufficient reward.

They thought that even Eugene, who had been behaving decently, would accept it with satisfaction. Believing that he might even be generous about the reward issue if they did well.

‘It seems he’s not satisfied. Should we send other young women…’

These old men made such assumptions and first appealed to Eugene about the village’s difficult circumstances.

“I think I know why you’ve come. Would you listen to us first…?”

Eugene responded in a cold tone. As if saying, go ahead and try to explain.

He was like a bomb ready to explode at any moment.

“The village’s situation isn’t good, and we tried to gather as much as we could, but the money was terribly insufficient. We asked that child to make up for our lack of sincerity… But it seems you’re not satisfied. I’ll look for other girls of a similar age…”

Before this old man could finish speaking, Eugene slammed the table with a bang! The wooden tabletop cracked and the table collapsed weakly.

“Why… why are you doing this…!”

Eugene didn’t want to show any courtesy or manners in front of such people. He stood up and berated them.

“If the money was insufficient, you should have called me! You tell a fourteen-year-old girl to sell her body? And now that’s not enough, you say you’ll call other girls? And you call yourselves the elders of this village? You senile old fools-!”

Still not satisfied, Eugene picked up the chair he had been sitting on and threw it to the side. The chair that hit the wall shattered into pieces, and fragments flew in all directions.

The old men, trembling in fear as if facing a monster, belatedly understood what this barbarian was angry about.

He was furious about them passing on to a young girl a task that adults should have resolved, and about abandoning conscience and decency because of the crisis they faced.

“Do you know how much that young thing suffered? She told me to take just five silver coins because she’s a virgin. Is that something that should come out of a child’s mouth? You…! You damned…!”

The old men weren’t entirely unashamed of what they had done. They had just neatly folded up such feelings, tucked them away in a corner, and pretended not to see them. But now, the guilt they had turned away from raised its head and mercilessly gouged their hearts.

“We’re sorry… I’m truly sorry… None of us felt good about it. But what could we do… If we gave you all the reward money, this village would be finished. We need to trade with the merchants who will soon visit the village…”

“That’s why I’m asking why you’re saying this now, you damn old fools-!”

After that, Eugene threw five more pieces of furniture he could grab nearby. Even then, he was fuming for a long time. Only after some more time passed could he barely regain his reason.

The old men cleared away the broken table and brought a much smaller one from somewhere, placing it in front of Eugene and sitting down. They moved a little further back than before and carefully opened their mouths.

“Then, what should we do…?”

“Huu… Let’s do this. Where’s some paper and a pen?”

Eugene wielded the quill pen on the paper they brought. The old men were surprised once that he knew how to write, and surprised once more by the content he wrote on the paper.

“I can’t reduce the amount I was supposed to receive. Instead, I’ll receive the missing amount later. Since the coins are too severely damaged, let’s consider it as if I received fifteen silver coins, and I’ll come to receive the remaining fifteen coins later.”

“Later, when…?”

“I won’t charge interest, but I’ll come to receive it in one year.”

“One year… That should be enough time to gather it. Are you really okay with this?”

“I don’t usually do this. Put your seal on it before I change my mind.”

“Thank you… Really, thank you…”

The old men stood up and lined up one by one. They each left their fingerprints by pressing their ink-stained thumbs firmly on the paper placed on the table.

“Is this the end of it now…?”

After Eugene carefully rolled up the debt document and put it in his bosom, he said firmly.

“Not yet. You haven’t apologized to Daisy yet.”

“Ah, yes, of course. We did a terrible thing to that child. We’ll go right away to ask for forgiveness. Let’s go now. All of us together.”

“I’m so ashamed and pathetic that I can’t face that child…”

“But what can we do… Let’s move quickly.”

“Elders… What brings you all here?”

When Eugene led the old men into her house, the surprised girl asked Eugene, who was at the front.

“You’ll see.”

The old men approached her one by one and sincerely apologized.

“I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have made such a request… In fact, it wasn’t even a request. It was practically coercion… We’re truly sorry.”

“No, it’s alright. I agreed to do it, didn’t I? It wasn’t coercion. And in the end, I couldn’t do it anyway.”

“No. In any case, thanks to you, things have worked out very well. We’ve agreed to leave the missing amount as a debt without interest to be paid back later.”

“Ah…! That’s great!”

Daisy had a bright expression, then suddenly turned her head. She looked at Eugene. He nodded slightly, meaning it was okay. At this, she smiled.

After that, Daisy graciously accepted all the apologies from the old men. Then she kindly saw them off to the door.

“Well then, shall we go in now?”

After the commotion that had started in the morning finally ended, the two went inside the house. As Daisy came in, her father called her.

“Daisy, come here for a moment. The splint on my leg seems to have shifted, could you take a look?”

Daisy approached her father with an innocent face.

She had forgotten.

That the walls in her house were thin, so sounds from outside could be heard very well.

So she hadn’t thought about it.

That her father, lying in bed, would have overheard everything the village elders were saying.

Daisy, who was about to fix the splint, was instantly subdued, caught in her father’s grasp.

What followed was a scene Eugene had experienced before.

There was a smacking sound from her bottom, as if beating laundry.

“If such a thing! Happened! You should have! Told this father! Right away!”

“I’m, I’m sorry…!!”

“…”

Eugene quietly stepped backwards. Then he disappeared outside the door.