I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 73
073 Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Rat Hole
Unlike Earth, where most of the land is covered in asphalt and human settlements, this world was a landscape of mountains, forests, and fields with human habitations tucked in between.
The roads where carriages traveled were almost always lined with trees of various sizes, even if they weren’t in a forest, and occasionally gave way to desolate, wasteland-like stretches or open fields.
Given these conditions, Juhwan felt a touch of relief whenever they happened upon a village. Lij and Dorothy’s eyes sparkled every time a settlement came into view. It seemed the saying that humans are social animals was true.
Though they didn’t enter every village, under the guidance of the Red Sword party, they stopped at one or two to greet the Village Chiefs.
Karin was introducing him to villages that would be safe to visit even if he were traveling alone—places that wouldn’t rip him off, or would only do so slightly, and offered decent food and lodging.
As the sun began to set, another village appeared. This was where they would stay for the night.
It looked much like any other village. It was surrounded by a perfunctory fence, and the area around it consisted mostly of fields.
In this village, too, the main gate of the fence seemed to be kept open during the day. It was currently halfway ajar.
A few men spotted Juhwan and the Red Sword party while they were closing the gate. They pulled it back open to allow the carriage to pass through.
Juhwan was the driver for this shift. As he steered the carriage toward the gate, he muttered to himself.
“I hope this place is okay. It’ll be trouble if there are bedbugs again.”
“It can’t be helped that there are many bedbugs. Most places are like that,” Lij giggled.
Was she really okay with it? Juhwan thought back to the previous night and reflexively scratched his body. He could tolerate other things, but bedbugs were where he drew the line. Yet, if he slept in the carriage again, wouldn’t he just be wasting money?
During their break, he had asked the Red Sword party if it wouldn’t be better to just camp outdoors this time.
However, the women of the Red Sword party replied that if one wanted to be an adventurer, one had to frequent villages often. They claimed it was the only way to learn how not to get cheated later.
While they were showing him accommodations that generally didn’t deceive guests, they explained that even those places might try to overcharge someone who looked inexperienced or naive.
“No matter how much you try to dress the part, inexperience always shows,” Marie had said.
And they assured him this village was fine. It was a place the Red Sword party stayed at occasionally. Apparently, they changed the straw more often and cleaned more thoroughly than other villages to keep the bedbugs away. Even so, Juhwan found it hard to believe.
Upon entering the village, a scene almost identical to the last one unfolded. The Village Chief and the local men came out to greet Juhwan and the Red Sword party. Only the faces were different.
He locked eyes with Lij. She seemed to be thinking the same thing. Though they didn’t say it aloud, he felt it the moment their gazes met.
Lij tucked her chin and gave a small laugh, and a smile spread across Juhwan’s face as well. He felt a small wave of emotion, wondering if this was what they called a telepathic connection between husband and wife.
The cost for the room was one small copper coin each for an empty house and a barn. While it seemed a bit expensive, they provided hay for the horses, which actually made it quite a bargain in the end.
The horse feed provided by inns in the city was surprisingly pricey, costing one small copper coin on top of a single lina.
Considering that, this was practically dirt cheap. It was likely because the farm itself produced the hay and used feed that was of slightly lower quality than what an inn would provide.
He had thought they might give the horse feed for free since hay was so abundant on a farm, but clearly, nothing in this world was free.
When Karin requested water skins, the Village Chief replied that he would provide them later in the night, around the time they went to sleep.
Karin looked at Juhwan and Lij and spoke.
“Well then, let’s unpack for now.”
“Sorry, but we’ll sleep in the barn tonight.”
“Oh, are you sure about that?”
“It’s fine. It’s all part of the experience.”
At Juhwan’s words, Karin, Jessie, and Marie looked at one another. Then they laughed.
“You must really hate bedbugs. I think it’ll be fine this time, but… well, as Juhwan says, it’s all part of the experience.”
Karin smiled and agreed. The Red Sword party took their old blankets from the wagon and headed for the house. Apparently, the house was colder than the barn because it had less straw.
Lij had a thoughtful expression on her face. She looked up at Juhwan briefly and frowned slightly.
“What is it, Lij?”
“Um… it’s nothing.”
“…”
Lij’s reaction bothered him a little, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. She didn’t look sick or anything; it just felt like she had been about to say something and stopped.
Juhwan and Lij followed the Village Chief to the barn. The Chief looked at Dorothy and Oz, who was perched on her hat, and let out a low chuckle.
“Is that a Horned Rabbit? I saw one once when I was very young. It’s rare to see a child like you carrying a Magical Beast on her head.”
“It’s Oz! Daddy picked him up when he was hurt.”
“Hoho, I see. You two must be very close.”
“Yes! Oz and Dorothy are best friends. Oz is my little brother.”
The Village Chief chuckled again, a doting look on his face. It felt like the first time Juhwan had seen someone in this world act so warmly toward a child. It made him feel a bit better.
The barn was relatively clean. There was a space piled high with hay on one side, and on the other, a goat and a few chickens were wandering around.
“You can use it as you like. We’ll clean up any mess, so don’t worry about it.”
The Chief said this as he placed a lamp that smelled strongly of oil onto a shelf on a barn pillar. There was a small niche carved into the wooden wall just big enough for the lamp.
“Is it alright to use a fire in a place like this?”
Juhwan was worried about a fire starting since there was hay everywhere, but the Village Chief nodded with a smile.
“It’s fine. The lamp bowl is fixed securely so it won’t fall easily. This area is far from the hay, so you don’t need to worry too much.”
With that, the Village Chief stepped outside.
Dorothy had already plunged headfirst into the pile of hay.
The barn was colder than expected. The house had been quite cold too, but the barn practically invited the wind in. He couldn’t tell where the draft was coming from despite the walls. If he just stood still by the wall, cold air seemed to pass right through it. A sigh escaped his lips involuntarily.
‘Did I make the wrong choice?’
However, Lij and Dorothy seemed happy. The two of them were buried deep in the hay.
The Village Chief returned while they were eating food brought from the carriage.
“It’s not much, but since there’s a child… this will warm you up a bit.”
The Chief held out a broth boiled with vegetables. After Juhwan thanked him, the man glanced at Dorothy with a gentle expression.
“My granddaughter passed away not long ago. Many kids survive once they pass three or four, but my little one was unlucky.”
Perhaps Dorothy bore a resemblance to the Chief’s granddaughter.
“The child has such a bright expression. It’s rare to see a child who smiles so much.”
The Village Chief left the barn after saying that. A while later, the water skins filled with warm water were placed in front of the barn door.
Having finished their meal and the warm broth, it was time for bed.
When Juhwan climbed onto the hay pile, his feet sank deep into it. As he flailed in surprise, Lij and Dorothy burst into laughter. The three of them lay side by side, burying the water skins slightly in the hay at their feet, and closed their eyes.
But he couldn’t sleep.
As the night deepened, things began to scuttle around his feet. Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch—they were incredibly fast.
Something seemed to be wriggling even deep beneath the hay where they lay.
Because of the plush hay, he didn’t feel them directly, but the straw moved bit by bit. Wiggle, wiggle. It was incredibly skin-crawling.
Startled, Juhwan sat up, and Lij spoke with a bit of hesitation.
“It’s rats. They’re always in barns. I wondered if you might not know, but did you really not know?”
“…”
Did the people of this world not know that rats were the source of all kinds of diseases?
To think of sleeping with things that carried so many germs…
In the end, Juhwan picked up the sleeping Dorothy and left the barn with Lij. Just like the night before, they spent the night in the carriage.
When Juhwan emerged from the carriage at dawn, the women of the Red Sword party clutched their stomachs and roared with laughter.
“…”
He decided it would be more peaceful to just camp out or sleep in the carriage even when they entered a village. From now on, he would just buy horse feed in the villages and be done with it.
Before becoming a bandit, he had been an ordinary farmer. But last year, he had fled the village because he couldn’t pay the poll tax.
The six men with him now were the ones who had left the village at the same time. Except for one, they had all left because of the poll tax.
The one exception had been chased out after being severely beaten for standing up to the Village Chief, who had stolen his wife. Had he stayed, the Chief would have found some way to frame him as a criminal during the village council.
At first, they had joined another bandit gang. But as former farmers, they didn’t fit in. Those people were monsters who raided and killed, violated women, and even murdered children.
Eventually, they had fled for their lives in the middle of the night, but everywhere else was the same. Unable to adapt to any other gang, the seven of them founded their own. They called themselves the Peasant Bandits. He became the leader.
However, they hadn’t managed to pull off a proper robbery yet. Whenever they thought about raiding someone, the travelers would be only women, or there would be many children.
Thinking of the children, parents, and wives they had left behind in their own villages, they simply couldn’t bring themselves to attack.
Other travelers looked too strong or were sword-wielding adventurers.
But now, their stomachs were truly touching their backbones. They were so hungry that they didn’t care if it was a child or a woman anymore. Who could worry about others when they were starving to death themselves?
“If we don’t manage to pillage this time, let’s just all die together.”
“Even if we don’t try to die, we’ll just starve to death anyway.”
“It’s true. This time, we really have to kill someone or whatever it takes. Otherwise, we’re really going to die.”
“Don’t stop me this time.”
“You’re the one who shouldn’t stop me.”
After each of the Peasant Bandits said their piece, they glared down the road.
Though it wasn’t a forest, it was an area thick with trees. Whether it was a wagon or a carriage, anyone coming through had to take this path.
The trees were large and thick, and from the road, they overlapped in a way that made them perfect for hiding. One wouldn’t be easily spotted.
‘This time, we’ll definitely succeed.’
His throat was parched with tension.
Then, the sound they had been waiting for reached them. Narrowing his eyes, he saw a wagon and a carriage approaching from a distance.
Someone muttered.
“That looks a bit dangerous.”
“Yeah. There are two of them. Won’t we get badly hurt if things go wrong?”
“…What should we do?”
“Then how about we just block the front?”
“Should we?”
They were talking about the trap.
They had dug a shallow trench across the road so that any carriage or wagon would be forced to stop.
They realized too late that it would have been easier to just fell a few trees and lay them across, but they had already finished digging.
At any rate, they thought that if they did that, the carriage would tilt and come to a halt as it passed over.
But if two vehicles came at once, the carriage in the back might slam into the wagon in front. Even if they didn’t collide, an unskilled driver might cause the carriage to overturn.
There seemed to be only women in the wagon, and a child was visible in the middle of the carriage behind it.
“…”
He didn’t want a child to get hurt. The thought of a child who looked like the one he left behind in his village getting hurt right before his eyes made him truly reluctant.
He hadn’t even been that much of a doting father when he lived in the village, but now that he was far away, he finally felt a sense of longing and pity.
But he was the leader. The decision was his to make.
“Alright, let’s go.”
“Let’s do it, Boss.”
“Hurry. They’re already here.”
The seven men hiding behind the large trees rushed forward.
Thrusting forward the swords and pickaxes they had stolen when leaving the bandit gang, the seven of them shouted in unison.
“Stop!”
“We are bandits!”
“If you don’t resist, we won’t kill you!”
“Hahaha! We won’t kill you, so hand over your things quietly!”
The horse pulling the lead wagon let out a loud whinny and came to an abrupt halt. Almost simultaneously, the carriage behind it stopped as well. Fortunately, though both rattled violently, no one fell or was injured.
Today, they might have to hurt someone. They might even kill. Even if they didn’t cause serious injuries, they were the ones holding weapons. He felt certain that someone was bound to get hurt.
The leader saw his own hand trembling slightly. He was so nervous he felt like something might jump out of his mouth.
The leader tightened his grip on his weapon. He couldn’t back down today. He would definitely take something. His stomach let out a loud growl.
Just then, the woman driving the wagon shouted.
“These sons of b*tches!”
The women riding in the wagon cursed, their faces contorted with rage. Then, they drew their weapons and leaped down from the wagon.
They didn’t seem frightened at all. A feeling that something was wrong began to sink in.
