"What the fuck is some retard spewing nonsense for?"
"That's exactly what I told you. The vigilantes are absolutely refusing to—"
"Damn it, who do they think is deaf? There's gotta be a reason for this bullshit! The ones who came along willingly — why the hell are they suddenly refusing to go now?"
The man couldn't answer. He only knew that the vigilantes were refusing to mobilize, but he hadn't thought to question why. He'd just sprinted over to report the news to the captain as fast as he could.
Leaf read the answer from the man's face. In short, he'd have to confirm once more just how incompetent and ignorant his comrades were. Leaf held back a sigh and spoke.
"You really are... damn it. Go find out why they're refusing."
"Yes, sir."
The man turned around, looking dejected.
"No, forget it. Just tell the head vigilante to come here himself."
Leaf hastily corrected himself. Judging by the man's attitude, he probably wouldn't even be able to get a proper answer. The man left the headquarters at a quick pace, completely oblivious to what the captain's words had actually implied.
'Damn it. This adventure party is nothing without me!'
Leaf nervously scratched the side of his head.
A short while after the man left, five men came in. They represented the vigilante groups from each village. Two of them had lost their hometowns to the goblin army. After friends from their hometown, parents, wives, and children were all killed, their hearts were dyed pitch-black with rage. They burned with the desire to exterminate every goblin on the surface right now.
Leaf, wisely, gauged their feelings.
'No need to pour oil on a burning house.'
He immediately made the most pathetic, wretched face he could manage. Leaf's original vocation was as a lumberjack, so he had a rough-looking face. Nothing felt as sincere as the wretched face of a rough-looking man.
Leaf started by saying, "Big brother." He and the vigilante captains were on familiar terms.
"Heard the news... I don't even know what to say."
"Don't know what to say? Did I just hear you say you don't know what to say?"
The man who'd lost his village flushed red all the way up to his neck.
"As I hear it, you had plenty to say before — told everyone what they wanted to hear!"
"Big brother, please calm down. I don't know what's got you so angry, but surely—"
"Don't know what's got me angry? Don't know what's got me angry?!"
The men jabbed their fingers at Leaf.
"You said it! You said if we raided the dungeon, we'd all make a fortune! That we'd change our fates! And what happened?! After we fell for your bullshit, the Demon Lord retaliated! We didn't change our fates — they got completely fucking ruined! Completely! ...We shouldn't have pissed off that one!"
"If you hadn't dragged us into this, none of this would have happened. It's all your fault!"
Leaf fell silent. He was dumbfounded.
'Seriously, are these people children?'
No — they'd never once considered that fighting the Demon Lord might bring consequences to themselves. They'd even threatened certain villages under the guise of securing provisions. Had it never once occurred to them that those villages might scheme with the Demon Lord?
"So what exactly are you proposing?"
Leaf spoke in a voice that had gone ice-cold.
"Should I grovel and apologize? Would that make you feel better?"
"What? You rude little shit."
"I'll shove your politeness right up your ass. I lost half my hometown friends to the Demon Lord too."
Leaf growled. His patience for being respectful was almost gone.
"Did you really expect the Demon Lord to just roll out the red carpet when we went to rob him? 'Oh, heroic adventurers! Oh, wonderful humans! Please, by all means, take the gold I've worked so hard to collect!' Is that what you thought? Holy shit, you people haven't even learned that if you're going to take something from someone, you'd better be prepared to face the consequences?"
"You... you're worse than a dog! So now your true colors are showing!"
"My true colors? You're the ones shitting your true colors all over the place."
Leaf pulled a hand axe from his belt and slammed it into the floor in one swift motion. The blade bit into the wooden floorboards with a thunk. The sudden action made the men flinch. Seizing the moment, Leaf stepped forward and thrust his face right into the vigilantes' group.
"Big brothers, you were all too happy to come along when you heard you could touch some real coin, but now you're getting cold feet? Huh? If you're real men, once you say something, you follow through even if it kills you — so what the hell are you doing? Ha, acting like you're the only victims here — fuck, it's so disgusting my tongue can barely spit out 'big brother.'"
"No matter what bullshit you spew, we're not going to the dungeon."
One man held Leaf's gaze and spoke.
"Who knows which village gets attacked next? Even if we got rich, what good is it without a home and without family? If you want to go, go yourself. We'll protect our hometown."
He needed to change the subject.
Leaf's mind spun fast. The momentum wasn't good. It was only natural that the vigilantes prioritized their own villages. Leaf himself would have dropped everything and rushed home if his own hometown were in danger. What could be lonelier than being a stranger? Losing family, comrades, and home, drifting with nowhere to go — that was what every man feared most.
Leaf looked for a scapegoat — someone to pour their anger onto.
"Big brothers, if someone saw this, they'd think I'd committed a capital crime! Just think about it for a second. Who's the one that actually destroyed your villages?"
"A stupid question. The Demon Lord, obviously. You're the one who provoked his wrath."
His wrath! Leaf seethed inside. His wrath! For some reason, these people hated the Demon Lord yet also showed a strange sort of respect for him. A piece of shit who cried and clung to them to save his own skin, who shamelessly deceived humans, who cowardly stabbed them in the back!
Leaf wanted to grab the hand axe embedded in the floor and drive it into the man's skull. But he kept his emotions in check and spoke calmly.
"That's really quite something. Aren't you even curious? How the Demon Lord managed to selectively destroy only your villages?"
"...What do you mean?"
"I'm calling you illiterate. Ha — use the head on your shoulders, would you? If that bastard hadn't snitched on the fact that you'd allied with me, how the hell would the Demon Lord have been able to attack your villages one by one?!"
The men's eyes went wide in shock.
"Th-then...?"
"There's a traitor! A traitor among us humans! It's obvious, isn't it? One of the villages that surrendered provisions to us turned around and defected to the Demon Lord."
Leaf bared his teeth in a grin.
"Or, who knows? Maybe it wasn't just one — maybe they all betrayed us."
"Sons of bitches who deserve to burn in hellfire!"
The vigilante captains erupted in fury.
"We should've known they'd do that!"
"They sold out their own kind to monsters just to save their own asses!"
Leaf played along, nodding in agreement. Before long, a consensus had solidified among them — that the worst enemy wasn't the Demon Lord or any other outsider, but rather the traitors within their own ranks (which, of course, included Leaf himself) who had sold information to the enemy. In Leaf's eyes, vigilantes who had extorted food from other villages in the name of gathering provisions were also traitors, but he didn't bother voicing that opinion and bringing trouble on himself.
"Big brothers. A man's revenge is never too late — even if it takes ten years. Right now, that's not what matters."
Leaf spoke in a softened voice, almost whispering.
"Either way, those traitor bastards' villages have no military forces. If they go up against us, they lose a hundred times out of a hundred. They're acting all brazen because they're counting on the Demon Lord's protection, but once we deal with the Demon Lord... yes? Killing those bastards would be easier than wringing a chicken's neck!"
"But, little brother. They say the goblins number in the hundreds."
The man's face was a mix of rage, grief, and above all, worry.
"No matter how well-armed we are, we can't take on hundreds of goblins."
"Ha, why the hell would we fight the goblins?"
"What?"
Leaf thumped his chest in exasperation.
"Damn it. Have I not been telling you to think about it this whole time? Look — do those goblin bastards normally travel in packs of several hundred?"
"Ah, we thought that was weird too."
The man furrowed his brow.
"Goblins only ever stick to their own tribes — fifty at most. So how are there several hundred..."
"That's all because of the Demon Lord. The Demon Lord rallies the monsters and leads them. Put another way, without the Demon Lord, the goblins would scatter like they always have — or go back to fighting amongst themselves."
In other words, Leaf held up a finger.
"The Demon Lord has no choice but to move alongside the goblins to command his forces. He can't move quickly with hundreds of them in tow. That's exactly what we exploit — while they're busy, we raid the dungeon."
"Wait. Stop changing the subject. I'm asking what happens if a village gets attacked while we're away."
"Ugh, seriously..."
Leaf twisted his mouth into an ugly grimace.
"Big brothers, what do you use your brains for? Evacuate all your villagers. Stuff them into a single village. That way, you'll have several hundred people gathered in one place, right? That's more than enough to hold off several hundred goblins for days. In the meantime, we raid the dungeon and rejoin you at the village."
Leaf pulled the hand axe from the floor. Then, with a deftness that seemed almost supernatural, he rolled the axe between his fingers like a pencil.
"Once the goblin army is engaged in battle with the village — yeah? — they'll get pretty damn exhausted, won't they? Right? Then, while their attention is on the village, we ram it up their loose assholes from behind. Attacked from both sides — what the hell are those bastards gonna do about it?"
"Ooh!"
The men clapped their hands. To their ears, Leaf's argument made perfect sense. Leaf judged that he'd all but won them over and pressed on. He planned to mix in some impressive-sounding terminology to really seal the deal.
"This is what's called the hammer and anvil. The village is the anvil, and our adventure party and the vigilantes are the hammer — and together we'll pound the little goblin shits into the ground. How about it, big brothers — ever heard of that one?"
"Yeah, actually! Right. Not bad. Really not bad at all."
Heard of my ass, Leaf sneered to himself.
"The key to this operation is speed. Everyone, gear up and get ready. Yeah? One hour — everyone meets at the plaza and we move out. Got it?"
The men all cheered in agreement. They strode out confidently, planning to seize the dungeon's spoils and later exact revenge on the traitor villages. Leaf saw them off to the door.
Leaf returned to his seat and sat down. His head was throbbing. He glanced sideways and saw the female mage sitting there, reading a book in complete indifference to the commotion. Mages — the whole lot of them were out of their minds. That was what Leaf thought. He'd hated magic for as long as he could remember for reasons he couldn't quite explain, and after learning that the Demon Lord Dantalion had used dark magic to deceive him, he hated it even more.
He was calmly preparing for battle when the wooden door opened and the usual subordinate stumbled in.
"Ca-captain."
"You stuttering piece of shit."
Now the mere sight of this man made Leaf curse. He must be coming to deliver more news — that was why he was stammering like that. This time, Leaf asked with the desperate hope that it wouldn't make him angry.
"What is it? Huh? What now?"
"It's the third time. Another village got hit..."
"God damn it."
It was bad news.
For the hammer and anvil operation to succeed, the anvil — the villagers — needed to be as numerous as possible. One of the villages that could have contributed military forces had been wiped out, which meant the operation was that much more disadvantaged.
Leaf let out a heavy sigh.
"Which village?"
When the man recited the village's name, Leaf's expression could only be described as peculiar.
Because that village had no vigilante presence — it was one of the villages suspected of having defected to the Demon Lord. It was one of the traitor villages.