Me, the Weakest Member of the Hero’s Party? I’m the Villain Though? - Chapter 117
“I was just someone passing through the forest normally.”
Not that they would believe me anyway. The dwarves hadn’t believed that either, and I had ended up spending a night in prison.
In the first place, the only one who had accepted that flimsy excuse was Kyle.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You crossed the snow mountains and were just casually passing through the ‘Abandoned Forest’?”
As expected, the one holding a blade to my neck didn’t believe it at all.
“So this place is called the Abandoned Forest?”
To begin with, I didn’t even know where I was. I had simply been following Kakaros’s guidance toward the Land of the Dead.
“You’re good at pretending you don’t know anything.”
I wasn’t pretending. I really didn’t know anything. But no matter what I said, they wouldn’t believe me.
With experience, I could tell what kind of people they were just by looking. Their eyes were full of suspicion and wariness.
How should I get out of this situation?
The party couldn’t be too far away, so I could make a disturbance and call for help, or I could loosen my restraint a little and deal with them myself.
But before I could make a decision, the other side acted first.
“Ugh!”
The moment he withdrew the blade, he struck the back of my neck hard with the hilt. Before I could even register the pain, my vision went dark.
How underhanded, knocking me out like that. He could have fought me properly…! Thinking that now was pointless, since I was already unconscious.
* * *
I don’t know how long I had been out, but eventually I jolted awake, my body trembling as if struck by lightning. A throbbing pain spread from the back of my neck, and my blurred vision slowly began to clear.
“He’s awake!”
“Shh, be quiet.”
I blinked several times until my hazy vision sharpened. The murmuring grew louder, and soon I could see a large crowd gathered in front of me.
“Huh?”
I was startled by their sheer number, but then a chill ran down my spine when I realized they were all standing upside down.
The next moment, dizziness washed over me, and only then did I realize that I was the one hanging upside down.
“Hurry, inform His Majesty the Fairy King!”
Fairies? I blinked and examined the people in front of me more closely. Looking carefully, they were all tall and slender, with long limbs, they looked very similar to Kakaros.
“No way… forest fairies?”
When I muttered in disbelief, the ones gathered in front of me let out small giggles.
“He called us forest fairies!”
“He must be a human from the west.”
Instead of answering me, they just whispered and giggled among themselves.
In the original work, it was said that the forest fairies who tended the World Tree had mostly been killed by the Black Flame Dragon, and the survivors had scattered.
If my guess was right, the ones in front of me now were those surviving forest fairies.
It was surprising to meet forest fairies who hadn’t even appeared in the original work, but before that, staying alive was the priority.
After all, I was hanging upside down like meat waiting to be roasted.
“What exactly is going on here?”
I asked the ones in front of me. But they only exchanged glances and giggled among themselves, not a single one answered.
It had been the same when we met the Borbo before. It felt like I was an animal trapped in a zoo.
Then I suddenly remembered hearing that when asking a group for help, it was better to call out a specific person rather than the crowd.
So I looked at the small girl standing at the very front, the most noticeable one, and asked again.
“You there, with the pigtails. Where is this place?”
“M-Me? Did you call me? You called me!”
But instead of answering, she only burst into laughter with another girl her age beside her. What kind of situation was this? It was starting to become more frustrating than anything else.
“What are you planning to do with me?”
“That’s for His Majesty to decide.”
At least this question wasn’t ignored.
“I won’t do anything, so could you at least take me down first? I’m getting dizzy.”
“His Majesty has summoned him. Take him as he is.”
I had asked the girls, but the reply came from a man behind me. I recognized the voice immediately. He was the one who had struck the back of my neck.
“Yes!”
Those around him pulled me down from where I had been tied to the tree. Then they hoisted me onto their shoulders and carried me away as if they were transporting a coffin.
