Chapter 120: Romantic Chiefdom

Throughout a process that didn’t seem to dish out many exact rewards in hindsight, Jimmy learned the language these villagers spoke. Other than mixing up some grammar, he considered himself half fluent. He didn’t know what their tongue was called officially, but he called it Scottish. It sounded enough like it at least.

With his speedy study of their tongue, he got much closer to figuring out whatever secret the villagers safeguarded, or in this case, what devious activities the Chief of the village was hiding from what appeared to be everyone else.

To help his case, he found the Chief, and started following him. It didn’t take long to find him. The village was small, and after he heard people mention the word Chief a couple of times, he pin-pointed the exact man he was supposed to follow.

It was a short, beardless fellow named Eric.

Jimmy wouldn’t have ever guessed that he was the leader of anything. Unlike the rest of the much stronger men across the village, he was more fat than muscle tone, had a heinous beer belly, and walked as if he was a sixty year old man. At the mild age of what could be thirty-five at most, absolutely nothing about him was appealing.

The murder of crows leaped from one rooftop to the other. The villagers were none the wiser. Unlike Marta, who was scarred for life today, it was highly doubted that anyone else in the village would be on the lookout for talking crows. The murder of crows was functionally invisible here.

During their stalking, they picked up on the fresh gossip that spread across the town.

Unsurprisingly, everyone was talking about the Chief. Their gossip was so flagrant that even Vorin picked up on a couple of repeated words.

So he asked, "What does baawsa mean?"

"Shaved ball sack. It’s like calling him a featherless cloaca." Jimmy corrected, "They’re making fun of him for shaving off his beard."

"They have fur down there?" He asked.

"Yes, a little bit, but that’s not the point." Jimmy added, "He shaved off his face hair, and people are a bit mad about it."

The investigation started from there. Jimmy could tell that the villagers took pride in their beards, the ones across their face, so the fact that the Chief himself shaved it off was downright suspicious.

"Almost ritualistic," Jimmy muttered, "If he’s some low-level Summoner trying to summon shit, then this is a great waste of time."

On another note, plenty of the villagers suspected that he was trying to impress a Chief from eight villages away. Apparently, that village took pride in being beardless, and the suspicion was that the two Chiefs were pursuing each other romantically.

The villagers were surprisingly progressive about it, with the exception of them demanding that the Chief came out clean if he liked men, rather than steal everyone’s big catches in order to impress the other beardless Chief eight villages over.

This sounded like interesting drama, but it scared Jimmy quite a bit, because he further suspected that he had completely wasted his time here.

Worse yet, he was ready to waste some more of it, to figure out if he wasted his time or not. It was a vicious spiral, but he followed the Chief all day long nonetheless, up until he had to take a break, because he was hungry again.

Vorin could tell that his brother was hungry. Apart from his sluggish, roof-stomping walk, he could hear his brother’s stomach whistling as well. The whistles were like a call for war.

To help stave off his brother’s hunger, he aimed to go fishing, but this was a problem, because in order to fish, he had to fly towards some far edge of the lake, where the humans around here wouldn’t spot, and start to get suspicious over a fishing crow. He had noticed that examples like that had gotten Marta in trouble, and he didn’t want to plant the seeds for the worse case scenario, where the villagers would be aware of the crows following them.

"They can’t see me fish," He thought, "Even these hairy morons could tell that it’s wrong for a crow my size to steal their fish. Even I think it’s wrong. I’m used to small creek fish."

Desperate to not make a scene, he got an idea that perhaps had twice the risks. He wanted to steal fish directly from the village.

This was a bit of a taboo as well, because the last time a crow stole food from the humans, Jimmy, the same brother he tried to feed now, ended up getting banished by the family as a result.

He knew that he couldn’t get banished here, but he was sure that the villagers would care, and then try to fend off the murder of crows.

If one of them got hit by a rock, tossed by these tall monsters, he could tell that even Jimmy wouldn’t be strong enough to reverse the damage.

Then again, most of the caught, and stored fish were stashed away in a blindspot. They were in a big building covered in mud, and even from out here, he could tell that the building had a basement of sorts.

Rarely anyone went there, except of course, when they had fish to store, and this alone gave him the idea to steal from the villagers.

Smoothly, and while avoiding excess wind flaps, he landed above the building, and sunk his claws on the dried mud.

Afterwards, he made his way to the entrance, a two-foot wide hole, essentially opened and closed by the villagers with a fitting boulder, and then he stepped in.

"It’s cold in here," He said, "I didn’t know dead fish could catch a cold."

Vorin walked over the pile of fish, all the way to the middle of the building, avoiding absolute monsters, and looking for the biggest one he could carry.

While he tried to pick the best one, he suddenly noticed that the only source of light in this place, supplied by the entrance where sunlight creeped in, suddenly trimmed away.

Vorin frantically turned around, and saw that someone had pushed the boulder towards the entrance, sealing it shut, and trapping him inside.

"That’s not good," He grunted, "There wasn’t anyone around! Why did they have to close the door now?!"