Chapter 56:
The Masked Girl
Rides Again!
“I suppose I’ll just walk back…”
Once she had managed to accomplish her impossible dream of meeting a fairy on the very first day of her five-day vacation, Mile thought that she might take a leisurely pace on the journey home. Because she had been uncertain of how long she would actually need for her to accomplish her task, she had hustled on the way out, moving at full speed.
For that particular journey, she had worn a form-fitting suit made of special materials to reduce wind resistance and so that she would not end up with her clothes tattered or catching aflame. Naturally, this outfit was not one that she could allow other people to see her in. If nothing else, it would be incredibly embarrassing.
Thus, she cloaked herself with an optic camouflage as she sprinted along.
However, she had a surplus of time on the way back. On departure, she had declared that she would devote the full five days to fulfilling this desperate, lifelong dream, so returning the very next day wouldn’t look very cool. Surely, she could find some way to spend her time for the next four days.
Plus, she had already thought of a way that she could return home even more quickly if she needed to and checked with the nanos to confirm whether it was possible. The nanomachines had approved, so, even if she put off her return until the very last day, she would have more than enough to make the trip.
And so, on the second day of her vacation, Mile began her meandering journey home.
The area she was currently in was far from the capital, close to the country’s borders. It was a place where fairies might live, so it only made sense for it to be out in the sticks. Mile walked with a lively step down a road that only seldom saw travelers, fielding greetings from the rare passersby.
Though Mile appeared to be only twelve years old, she was wearing a hunter’s garb in a manner that suggested it was not brand new to her, but rather, a well-worn friend, so the travelers did not appear to show any concern for her well-being. If she was over ten years old, then she was probably an F-rank hunter, a proper member of the guild, after all. And, given that she appeared to have been living as a hunter for a least a few years since officially joining the guild, she likely had some sensible reason for traveling out here all by herself. At least, so these adults would judge, knowing much of the world.
Hm?
Just as Mile was passing by some small village, whose name she did not know, a rather odd gathering of people came into view.
On one side, there were about twenty farmers, and on the other side, around ten men who looked like soldiers. They faced each other at a distance of several meters. The soldiers had not drawn their swords, but the farmers were brandishing hoes and spades and sickles. The atmosphere was clearly a tense one.
The situation had absolutely nothing to do with her, but Mile had never been one to simply pass such a scene by. If nothing else, she had a bit of time on her hands—far too much time on her hands, in fact.
That said, she was not about to go leaping into something before she fully understood the circumstances. She cloaked herself with camouflaging magic at once and slowly approached the scene.
“Go home! Obviously no one’s demands are going to be met, so we have nothing to discuss with you!”
“You bastards do know that this is an act of insurrection, don’t you? What you’re doing cannot be taken back! You see that, do you not?!”
This did not seem to be a case of soldiers invading from a foreign land or disgraced members of the military turning to banditry and attacking a village. Although the reason was as yet unclear, it seemed that the lord of these lands had demanded something of the villagers. Had their taxes been raised so high that it was impossible for them to live? Or had the lord made some other unreasonable request of them?
“First of all, you all do understand that what you’re demanding is ridiculous, don’t you?! ‘You need to drastically lower our taxes,’ my ass! The tax rate in this territory is barely any different from the ones around us, and they aren’t unjust. Besides, do you really think that we could lower the taxes in your village alone? If we did something like that, there would be no way for us to explain it to the other villages, and anyway, there’s no reason for it in the first place. Why in the hell would you all ask for something like that?”
Apparently, it was the villagers who had a bone to pick here.
“You shut up! We aren’t budgin’ until our demands are met!”
The farmers brandished their tools. Reluctantly, the soldiers took up their swords. At this rate, a clash was inevitable.
Mile looked around and selected an appropriately shaped tree, clambering up to the top. She pulled a mask from her inventory and strapped it on. Indeed, it was the mask she had used back at the exhibition.
With the mask strapped tightly, she released her cloaking spell and took an imposing stance upon a large branch, shouting down to the farmers and soldiers, “Cease this battle at once!”
“Huh…?”
A girl of tender years, wearing a peculiar mask, had appeared atop a tree out of nowhere. Hearing her declaration, the men stopped moving, staring slack-jawed into the treetops.
“Who are you?!” demanded the man who appeared to be the commander of the soldiers.
Though the soldiers were all taken aback, the farmers remained clearheaded.
This much made sense. No one who appeared in such a manner as this, at such a time as this, could be anything but an ally of the common man. And despite her strange appearance, for her to appear so boldly meant that she must have full confidence in her abilities. Naturally, the villagers were overjoyed at this unexpected reinforcement.
“Hup!”
Mile leapt down from the tree with a shout, landing in between the two groups. Then she turned to face the farmers and said, “I have come to lend my aid to the superior side. They call me, Superior Mask!”
“What the hell is thaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!”
At last, this was a question that the two enemy sides could agree on.
There was something that Mile had always wondered about the books and anime she consumed in her previous life: Why did the main characters always attach themselves to the side that was on the brink of defeat?
Joining forces with the superior side meant that the fight would soon be over and that there would be no more battlefield casualties, no more wives who would lose their husbands, and no more children who would lose their fathers. Bolstering the losing side just meant that the battle would drag on and on and that the number of deaths would increase on both sides.
Of course, it would be a different matter if they were dealing with invading foreign soldiers or village-attacking bandits—in other words, groups who absolutely could not be allowed to win. But if the superior side were a regional force operating within their own territory, and each side had its own claims, and a position that was just, at least from their perspective, then what would be the point of aligning oneself with the inferior side and contributing to unnecessary death and destruction? Though without any extra interference, this conflict would soon end with the impending battle anyway…
Both of the sides in this fight had lives and families, and the soldiers were merely doing their duty by upholding the tenets of their fine profession. They were fighting for the sake of protecting their families and had probably conscripted into duty by the Crown or by their lord in the first place. Even if the cause they were fighting for might be an unjust one, that was on the shoulders of the higher-ups, not the men down here on the ground.
Plus, only a fool would reignite a cooling battle and see more men fall simply because they happened to be influenced by it or have some tie to one of the sides—such as, perhaps, some beauty asking for their assistance.
In every case, it was best to end a battle as quickly as possible. If it turned out that the higher-ups were indeed corrupt, they could be dealt with at a later juncture. Thus went Mile’s thinking, at least.
As for “dealing” with a corrupt official? Well, they could be poisoned, or jumped when they were on some outing, or shot, or set ablaze, or caught in a trap—the possibilities were endless.
Anyway, if things continued this way, most of the farmers would likely be killed, and the rest of them captured. There would probably be a few injuries and even deaths among the soldiers as well. Were that to happen, neither the captured famers nor the other villagers would simply be able to let this go. Thus, it was far preferable to see all the famers captured, unharmed.
Even if Mile were to ally herself with the farmers and help repel the soldiers, the soldiers would just return later with an even stronger force. If the farmers managed to repel them again, then they would face an even stronger force, and the situation would continue to deteriorate further and further.
It was also worth noting that Mile had no intention of sticking with the farmers for all that long in the first place—nor did she have very much interest in facing down the lord and his entire army. If that happened, she would probably have her qualifications as a hunter revoked and end up a wanted girl. At that point, if her true identity as a noble from a foreign land was revealed, it was sure to become quite the problem for international relations.
In order to draw this all neatly to a close, she had no choice but to face the farmers and uphold the decision that the soldiers had made in order to quash this insurrection.
“My good soldiers, you have my gratitude for your fine service. I would like to see your enemies captured unharmed, so please leave this matter to me, Superior Mask!”
“S-sure…” the commander agreed against his better judgment, nodding hesitantly.
Seeing how this mysterious masked girl, who they had thought to be their ally, was now on the side of the soldiers, the farmers were unmistakably shaken.
“Whatever, she’s just one little girl! That’s no big deal!” the leader of the farmers shouted, not realizing that this was a line that had only ever been spoken by villains.
“Here I go!” said Mile, a single wooden sword appearing from out of nowhere in her hand…
***
“It’s over.”
“Y-yeah…”
Lined up on the ground before them were seventeen farmers, captured and bound. They were kicking up too much of a ruckus, so they had been gagged as well.
The eleven soldiers stared at them in awe.
It would seem that nine of the soldiers were normal recruits, one was a non-commissioned officer, and the last and highest-ranking was appointed. The final two were likely components of any assembled squad. Someone had to be counted upon to make the important calls, and such a duty could not be put on the shoulders of just any recruit.
“Now then, I have one request,” said Mile.
“A reward?” asked the commander. “I have no doubt that our groups clashing would have led to injuries—even deaths, if things went poorly. Though you came in as an interloper, the fact remains that you really did help us. Besides, since neither side was hurt, we don’t have to report that the farmers tried to use force against us. No one was harmed, and there was no military action to speak of, all thanks to the influence of a mysterious girl. Naturally, you have every right to demand a reward from our lord, good lady. We will report everything to him, so if you would like to travel along with us…”
Indeed, there had fortunately been nothing that could be referred to as “military action.” Even without her interference, what would have broken out could have scarcely been called a “battle,” after all.
Yet Mile merely shook her head.
“I have no qualms with traveling with you, but what I request is not money. I wish you to make note that these farmers who I captured surrendered of their own volition. I get the impression that this was their intention from the start…”
For a group of farmers to oppose a lord’s military forces was a controversial act. Had the matter been unavoidable, it would have been one thing, but their taxes had not been raised, nor were they higher than any other fief’s, and no one’s wives or daughters were being snatched away. They were merely refusing to pay their taxes—in an act of baseless, personal protest. Mile could not imagine that such people would be treated with kindness.
“Yes, those men are citizens of this territory as well. I couldn’t bear to see anyone needlessly hanged, and doing so would only mean that our tax intake would decrease. I can’t see that being of benefit to our lord, either.”
Hearing the commander’s dispassionate response, Mile thought to herself, I thought as much. Of course, this would not normally be the case. Normally, the farmers would be ruthlessly punished, made an example of to keep all the other villages in line. Was this commander particularly kind? Or was the lord of these lands just a good person?
The farmers could only mumble, thanks to the gags in their mouths, but if they had been allowed to speak, then the conversation would be chaos. The commander removed the gag from only one of the farmers, who he deemed to be the leader. Seeing this, the other farmers thought to themselves, “Good. He will get across what we want to say,” and they all fell quiet.
“Now then, why don’t we have a conversation? First off, am I correct to think of you as the leader of this bunch? Are you the official representative of this village?”
The farmer, a man in his forties, replied, “Yeah, that’s right. I’m the son of the village elder and acting representative, while my old man’s sick in bed.”
“So, why have you suddenly, unilaterally demanded that we lower your taxes? You have to have known that that would never fly.”
“Heh. You can’t fool me! You know as well as I do that if enough of us farmers put the screws on him, our lord would have to listen to our demands!”
“What?”
Both Mile and the commander were stunned, unconsciously letting out a question in their confusion. Though the other soldiers had no voice in the matter, they were bewildered as well.
“Ya see there? Bull’s eye! Look how they’re panicking!” the farmer gloated.
However, the reason that Mile and the others were stunned was most decidedly not because the farmer’s analysis had hit the bull’s eye. Not anywhere near.
“Wh-what precisely is this man going on about?”
“I-I have no idea. Oy, you there! Mind telling me exactly how it is that you came to this conclusion?”
“Heh heh. Fine. I’ll tell you exactly what it is that we know,” the farmer said, as he began his spiel. “Listen up. Now obviously, our lord lives off of the taxes that he collects from us peasants. The wages that you guys get paid and the money that goes to the Crown all comes from that too.”
There were of course taxes levied on merchants and toll fees as well, but whatever, the commander and Mile thought. For the most part, what the man said was correct, and they both silently nodded.
“So, if we say, ‘Lower our taxes,’ whaddya think happens?”
“You’d be refused,” Mile immediately replied.
“Well then, what if we say, ‘If you don’t do what we tell you, we won’t pay our taxes at all,’ then what?”
“He sends out a suppression force.”
This time Mile and the commander answered simultaneously.
That much was an actual fact and a fair summary of their current situation. The commander himself was the leader of said subjugation force.
Apparently, this commander had tried to resolve the situation through negotiation instead of force, but it would not be at all unusual for him, wishing to be able to count the suppression of an insurrection among his achievements, to have wiped out the farmer’s forces entirely.
“Heh heh heh. You’d think so, right? But that’s nothin’ more than a bluff. If they really did capture and kill us, then they wouldn’t be able to collect taxes from us anyway. Even collecting slightly less taxes from us is better than gettin’ nothing. So, eventually, our argument’s gotta get through. Even just before, s’not like y’all rushed us. All you did was wave your swords around a bit. So, I think you understand this, too. Now then, you gonna hurry up and untie us or what?!”
“………”
Mile, the commander, and the other soldiers were stunned.
“U-um…”
Tepidly, Mile called out to the farmer.
“If they were to allow such a thing, then rumors of this would spread, and all of the villages would start making these demands, wouldn’t they?”
“Yeah. I mean, we already heard about that. That’s why we demanded it, too.”
“………”
The soldiers were silent. Mile continued.
“Um, if it goes on like this, then, wouldn’t the tax income from every village decrease? If it looked like that was going to happen, then the people from the first village to demand it would be sold to the mines to make an example, and no other villagers would want to follow them after that, at which point the whole thing would end with no one’s taxes going down. Selling criminal slaves is incredibly profitable.”
“Wh…?”
This time it was the farmer, the son of the village elder, who was speechless.
“N-no, I know what I heard. You can’t fool me! Long ago, in the village of Lobeton, they made their demands, and in the first year they paid nothing! And only thirty percent of what they had paid before after that…”
“The village of Lobeton?”
The commander seemed to have no idea what he was talking about, but the name rang familiar to Mile.
“The village of Lobeton… I read about them in a book, once.”
“Look, you see!”
The farmer looked as though he had just caught an ogre by the neck. However, Mile’s tale was not yet finished.
“In another kingdom, there is a village by that name. Apparently, as a result of their demanding that their taxes be lowered, every male in the village was slaughtered, from infant to elder. The village only survived because the lesser sons of the families in surrounding villages, who inherited no land of their own, moved in with their wives and kids in tow, and other unmarried men emigrated in to make wives of the widows and the woman who had still been too young to wed before the massacre…
“Because of all this, they were exempt from taxes during the year that immediately followed, and in the three years after that, they paid lowered rates. Starting with the fourth year after, it went back up to normal. In other words, the tale of the village of Lobeton is not one of a people who had their taxes lowered but a cautionary tale of a group of farmers and their folly, and what became of their final days…”
“Wh…?”
The son of the village elder, and all the other farmers, suddenly looked very uneasy.
“I suppose in that case we would be the force summoned here to slaughter every man…”
“Whaaaaaaaaaat?!”
“H-hoifithoifithoifithoifitt!!!!!!!”
At this, the farmers all cried out in terror.
Truthfully, such a show of force had been ordered only if negotiation proved fruitless, and in this particular case, it was not a massacre they were aiming for; the soldiers had only planned to capture the farmers to be sold into labor. Killing them would not net the fief a single copper, whereas selling them would make straw into gold.
The lord may have been kind, but he was also business-minded…
“Now then, just who was it that told you such a strange story?” the commander asked the still horribly-shaken farmer; however, the man could no longer muster up the will to speak. Thinking that things were about to go very bad, very quickly, he finally opened his mouth.
“I-It was six days ago…”
According to the farmer’s story, six days ago, a man had arrived in the village on the brink of death. The villagers shared their food and water with him, and as a show of thanks, he told them about his own village’s plans to have their taxes reduced.
Given that such a plan had no chance of working, this was clearly suspicious. As was the fact that the man had stayed in the village for only a single night, leaving the next morning…
“For a swindler, there’s no profit in that plan, which means that his true goal was to get the village wiped out or to cause a schism between the village and your lord because of some sort of enmity, wouldn’t you think? Is this the work of an enemy? Has the village ever picked a fight with anyone? Have you ever tormented a family and driven them from the village, or has some villager ever murdered a traveling merchant and stolen his money? Or…”
“A-absolutely not! No one here would do something so inhumane!” the village leader protested desperately, his face pale.
“Well then, let’s expand this out a bit… What is the status of the other villages?” Mile asked the commander.
“Well,” he replied, “We’ve only just received the missive from this village, demanding a reduction in their taxes and threatening a refusal to pay if we didn’t comply. There’s been nothing from the other villages thus far.”
Of course, this had occurred only several days ago. It was possible that the proceedings in other villages had merely not progressed this far yet.
“That man, or some associates of his, might be traveling around to the other villages, too. If you don’t act fast, then this sort of thing might…”
Now, the commander’s face went pale.
Understandably so. If multiple villages were to mount an opposition at once, this modest force would easily be overwhelmed. The Crown would begin to doubt the lord’s governing capabilities, or think that he was running the territory through some tyrannical means, and might intervene in the lord’s territories. The worst-case scenario would be that the lord’s household could be abolished.
“Wh-what do we do?”
Though he was an officer, the commander was still fairly low in rank. The lowest, in fact, as far as his class went. As nothing more than a member of the forces of a low-ranking noble, he had not exactly had any extensive training. Therefore, though he recognized that they were on the brink of a crisis, he was in no position to be making any snap decisions or taking immediate action. Instead, he was flustered.
Seeing this, Mile decided to take the initiative. Finally the time had come to put to good use all the wisdom that she had cultivated from a lifetime of anime, manga, and literature.
“First off, you need to dispatch one of your men to this village. Tell them that they have no need to worry, that you have heard these men’s opinions and that you are all heading off together to make a petition to your lord. Then, hurry back to the capital. Bring these men with you to keep the rumors from spreading. Inform your lord about the current situation and have him dispatch spies to every village in the territory at once. At that point, you’ll be able to gauge the current climate and locate your enemy’s hiding place. Well, I mean, of course, all that is up to your lord’s judgment. What you all need to prioritize right now is concealing the fact that you know what’s actually going on and then reporting it to the higher-ups as quickly as possible. Think you can manage?”
“Y-yeah. Trimce, you catch all of that? To the village at once! The rest of you, straight to the capital!”
The commander, who seemed to have worked his way up the ranks, was not so proficient when it came to suddenly making unexpected, crucial decisions, but if his compass was pointed in the correct direction, then he could at least follow its lead.
***
“Oh dear, are you all right?”
Along the highway near a village, a young girl came across a man sitting on the ground and called out to him.
“O-oh, well, I slipped down a slope in the mountains and lost everything—my bags, my food, and my water. I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in two days…”
“What?! That’s dreadful. Please come back with me to my village. It’s just over there. We can give you food, water, and shelter for the night.”
Her invitation extended, the girl led the man back to her home, not seeing the wicked grin on the man’s face behind her.
“Thank you so very much! You’ve really saved me!”
After drinking some water and partaking of a hot meal, the man cheerfully extended his thanks to the girl and her father and brothers.
“Please, I must give you some reward for this… Unfortunately, I’ve lost all my belongings.”
“It’s all right, we need no reward. In times of trouble, we look out for one another. If you can pay the favor forward and help someone else in trouble one day, then that’s enough for us,” said the father.
The man showed exaggerated shock.
“My, my! What an extraordinary person you are. I know! In exchange, why don’t I teach you how the people of my village persuaded our lord to lower the taxes that we owed him? To tell you honestly, we used to have to pay up to half of our earnings, but we demanded that the rate be lowered to thirty percent, and it was done! At first they tried to threaten us, but we pointed out to them what a silly thing they were doing—if they crushed our village, why they wouldn’t get a single copper out of us, after all! We kept up the pressure, never relenting, and eventually our lord had no choice but to give in to our demands. The best way to do that is…”
The man prattled on and on, but the girl, her father, and her brothers only stared at him, expressionless.
“Hm?”
The man abruptly stopped his story, feeling the atmosphere growing tense.
“It’s youuuuuuuuu!!!!” the family all suddenly roared.
“Eeek!” the man exclaimed, cringing in terror.
“We’ve heard about you! You’re the miscreant trying to incite a rebellion among the villagers! You’ll be hung for this!”
“No, please, Father, wait! You mustn’t!”
The man looked at the little girl expectantly as she tried, desperately, to hold her father back.
“You mustn’t hang him until we’ve tortured him and gotten him to spill everything! Well, I mean I guess we’ll never know if he’s told us everything, but at the very least, we can keep torturing him until he’s dead…”
“Gaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
***
“So, did he talk?”
“Yeah. He’s not a real soldier or anything, just some hired thug. No matter what we tried to beat out of him, all he’d say was, ‘I don’t know anyone like that! Are you planning on pinning me with some trumped up, false charges?’ and that was that.”
“Of course…”
After it was all over, the girl and the man conversed—not the little girl and her father, but Mile and the squad commander. Suddenly, a recollection of the imperial soldiers who were trying to disrupt trade routes floated through the back of her mind.
“By the by,” said the commander, “Might I ask you something?”
“Certainly. What is it?”
A bit hesitantly he asked, “Do you…really have to wear that mask?”
“Well, obviously! I am the defender of the superior, the unidentified superheroine, Superior Mask, after all!” Mile declared, puffing out her chest.
“Well, but I mean, you did have it off until just a little while ago…” Mile shot the commander a glare, and he quickly backed off. “Er, never mind!”
Eventually, the man did admit that he had been hired by the Empire, but there was no way of telling if that was fact or not. Was he telling the truth? Or was he merely spewing lies because his life was on the line? Or perhaps, was that what his employer had told him to say?
At this rate, his information was no good to anyone, but at least this time, they had warded off a crisis and taken the countermeasures to prevent a repeat of the last time. The king would likely be told of this incident at once, and the lord himself would have a place of honor in having helped to prevent a national disaster. So, at the very least, Mile’s intervention was not for naught.
Thanks to the eloquent persuasion of the commander, Mile received an audience with the lord and twenty gold pieces as a reward. Had things gone down the wrong path, the matter could have become incredibly serious, so compared to what a crisis would cost, twenty gold was nothing.
Blessedly, the lord said not a word about the mask upon Mile’s face, speaking to her as though it were not even there.
He truly was a good person.
And so, as a bonus, Mile provided him with a number of ways by which he might deal with such incidents in the future.
“Um, I was thinking that it might be good for you to put some countermeasures in place, to avoid anything like this happening again later on…”
Mile explained her plans:
First, she suggested that he hold some educational conferences in order to teach the villagers a few basics about the country and the tax system, and about what would happen if they tried to disrupt that, using the ruined foreign village as an example.
Second, she advised him to carefully select some villagers and hire them as information gatherers—in other words, spies. Set them up three to a village, with each of them assuming that they’re the only one there.
Third, Mile said, in villages where there was still a bit of resistance, the lord might send an appointed agitator who could knock the wind out of the villagers with a little “controlled tension,” as well as bring any other dangerous parties to light.
Fourth…
Mile went on and on. The lord had initially been delighted to meet her, having been told that she was an “honest girl with a strong sense of justice, who was wise and skilled with a sword.” However, as their talk drew on, the smile on his face began to twitch. Of course, Mile only continued, not noticing a thing. And then…
“Young lady, what would you think of becoming my family’s vassal?”
Already, the invitations had started.
“Oh no! I’m really just a normal, average girl. To have such a high status would be…”
“Well then, what of becoming my adopted daughter?”
“Oh no! I’m really just a normal, average girl. To have such a high status would be…”
Desperately she turned down one offer after another.
“Oh!”
Finally, Mile had a realization: this was the fifth and final day of her vacation.
It wouldn’t do her any good to return too late. At the very least, she needed to get back before dinner, and already the sun was beginning to set.
“Crap! If I just run normally, I’ll never make it in time!”
And so, Mile made the decision to use the special “emergency measure” that she had thought up on the off chance of just such a situation.
“Nanos, if you would!”
RIGHT AWAY!
Cancel gravity! Yes, just like the gravity-neutralizing material cavorite…
As Mile pictured the effect of the magic she wanted in her head, she issued a verbal command to the nanomachines as well.
“Negate gravity in the perimeter!”
At the moment when she could no longer feel the weight of her own body, Mile kicked off from the ground. She shot steeply upward until she was higher than the highest mountains in the region.
“Distort lower gravity, change horizontal movement to the direction of the capital, and then release the selective gravitational canceling. Now beginning countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go!”
She began to fall in the opposite direction from which she had ascended. Directly toward the ground.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! Th-the wind pressure! My clothes! My clothes are gonna fly right off!!! B-barrier! Barrieeeeeeeeeeeerrr!!!”
“I don’t know what I was thinking…”
It was thus that Mile returned to the inn where her companions were waiting, with only a story as her souvenir, not knowing that she was to be harshly rebuked for all that she had done without the rest of her party.
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